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Best Garrison Follower Team
Me love it when plan comes together.
In the Warlords of Draenor expansion, a crack commando unit was developed by a military leader to help fight a war against the Iron Horde. These men soon realized that Lore be damned, this was all about the phat loots. So today they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them….maybe you can hire The Super Team.
When it comes to garrison followers, it’s nice to have an A-Team, a Super Team, that you can count on. A team of specialists that will 100% any follower mission your garrison can throw at you. When it comes to free raid gear, or a pile of apexis crystals, you want a team that’ll go out there and bring back the goods… damn near every time.
But how? How?
Step 1 – Recruit
Some followers are born great, and others have greatness thrust upon them. To make this team, you’re going to need the former. Time to get a bit racist, but in a good and non-oppressive way.
Select three followers from these racial types:
- Mechanical: Ziri’ak, Pleasure-Bot
- Arakkoa: Dawnseeker Rukaryx, Talonpriest Ishaal, Talon Guard Kurekk
- Ogre: Blook, Dagg, Tormmok
- Wildling: Goldmane, Leorajh, Meatball
I normally go with Pleasure-Bot (Mechanical), Blook or Tormmok (Ogre), and Leorajh or Goldmane (Wildling). These three are the easiest to get, since they’re just standing around various corners of Draenor with their thumbs in their butts until you wander along and recruit them.
They’ll do, is what I’m saying here.
Step Two – Training
You’re going to need two of Winning With Wildlings, Grease Monkey Guide, Guide to Arakkoa Relations, or Ogre Buddy Handbook consumable items, depending on the three followers you selected. The beauty of the system is now you can select where to put the trait when you train them. In the past, there was a chance that one racial affinity could overwrite another through pure random bad luck. Not anymore. Now you can select which ones your followers will have.
Mechanical: Wildling and Ogre
Wildling: Mechanical and Ogre
Ogre: Mechanical and Wildling.
By setting up your followers in this way, these three will be all you’ll need to knock out those tough garrison missions. That means more room for Treasure Hunters. Cha-ching!
Garrison Scavenger Team
This place looks like it was built by scavengers.
Everyone likes gold. Can’t ever get enough of it. But in Warlords of Draenor, garrison resources are a currency unto itself. You can’t run missions without it. It’s what gets buildings built and upgraded in your garrison. Et cetera, et cetera.
When it comes to your elite team of garrison followers, it never hurts to have a couple three four Scavenger followers to help bring in some of those sweet sweet resources. So you better make sure that if they’re taking up a spot on your starting lineup, they’ve got the skills to get the job done.
Speaking of min-maxing ubermensch, the folks over at MMO-Champion sat down and weighed stats, crunched numbers, and did what they do. What they came up with is a list of effective ability counters for Scavenger followers, from best to absolutely horrible.
Group Damage: 261.08
Massive Strike: 238.83
Magic Debuff: 197.75
Danger Zones: 173.08
Timed Battle: 160.83
Minion Swarms: 113.33
Powerful Spell: 93.75
Wild Aggression: 63.33
Deadly Minions: 0
So if you’re shopping for Scavenger followers, use this list to tell the difference between a prime rib follower and a follower that’s pure hot dog meat. That’s right, nothing but lips and arseholes.
Leveling With A Bodyguard
Save me Kevin Costner.
I’m late to the game as far as garrison bodyguards go. I just never felt like I needed one. That’s the beauty of rolling as a Death Knight. You kill things. Things don’t kill you.
The true sweetness of using bodyguards is unlocking their level three ability. Leorajh, for example, becomes a mobile garrison mission table. Now that’s pretty damn handy, which is why I decided that I’d have him bodyguard Deathrokk while he worked on the Draenor flying meta achievement.
The dps that a bodyguard brings to the table isn’t anything to sneeze at either. Three thousand more dps is three thousand more than you had before. Unless you’re running with Delvar Ironfist (Alliance) or Vivianne (Horde). Viv is a beast from what I’ve heard. She/he is the kind of tandem you want rolling with you when you’re leveling up through Draenor.
I’ve got a level 91 warrior that I may take to 100 and use to score another gold garrison before Blizzard closes up the factory. Picking up a bodyguard would be a nice change to running solo. So once Deathrokk finishes up his Flying meta achievement, I may bust out the warrior and use the steps below to buff up a bodyguard to becomes some kind of useful.
- Build the Barracks – You automatically start with this one.
- Find a follower with the Bodyguard trait – Vivianne is one of the first quests you get after establishing your garrison. You’re sent to Ashran, visit some of the locals, and then you get Viv as a follower. If she’s really the dps machine as advertised, life’s about to get much more interesting.
- Talador – You’ll probably be around level 94 by the time you get the garrison quest that sends you to Talador. Your bodyguard will become useful very soon.
- Follow the Chain – Once in Talador, follow the quest chain that rewards the Comprehensive Outpost Construction Guide and follower Miall / Morketh Bladehowl. The quest series are relatively similar across factions:
- The Quarry Quandary
- In Ared’s Memory/ Unleashed Steel
- Out of Jovite
- Iridium Recovery
- Gas Guzzlers
- Going to the Gordunni
- Dropping Bombs
- Supply Recovery, Prized Repossessions, Punching Through
- The Lord of the Gordunni
- The Only Way to Travel
- Get the Plan, Man – Once you have the guide, fly back to Ashran and exchange it for the Level Two Barracks Blueprints. Once the prints are in your bag, learn them.
- Start Building – Go back to your garrison, open the architect table, and upgrade the Barracks.
- Hire Your Muscle – Once the Barracks is upgraded take the bodyguard follower (Vivianne in this case, or anyone else you have at this point who happens to have the Bodyguard trait) and click the ( + ) to assign them to the barracks. Go to the barracks and this new follower should be chilling out front. Click on them and chose “I need some muscle”.
That’s it. Oh, wait there’s one more thing.
- You Know About Shrinkage, Right? – There’s nothing more annoying than trying to loot a corpse and repeatedly click on your bodyguard. You can fix that by purchasing a “Bodyguard Miniaturization Device” for 250 garrison resources. The vendor will be in your barracks. Clicking on this will shrink your bodyguard for an hour, letting them roll out the deeps while not being a nuisance.
Weekly Wrapup – Deathrokk Steps Up
The Grind is Real.
Patch 6.2 – Okay, I don’t mind it so much. I haven’t done a damn thing with the shipyard, so screw that noise. Let’s get to it.
Counting Coins
I said I wasn’t sure how the garrison nerfs were going to affect the passive gold making routine I had going. I’d heard bad things, and I wasn’t sure if last week’s numbers were an indication of said nerf. I had a few more days off during the week, so I made sure to log in at least three times a day. This gave me more shots at rewards, from scrapyard bags to crates to straight up gold. Turns out that it was a good move on my part, since my seven day total was 29,288g!
Objectives
Busy week. I started off working on the Tanaan Jungle rep on my monk, but ended up switching over to Deathrokk who wrecked shop on everything. Between Blood Death Knight awesomeness and Custom premade groups, Deathrokk has done quite well for himself. He’s Honored with the Headhunters, and Friendly with the Awakened and the Saberstalkers (due mostly to grinding groups.
How did that reflect on last week’s list?
- Continue with the rep grind. (Still at it. I even started using Zygor’s Daily Guides to help this move along quicker. It had definitely been a great assist in getting this done in short order.)
- Harrison Jones damn your eyes. (All Horde characters on Earthen Ring now have Harrison in their garrison. I’m working on this on an Alliance Warrior on another server, and he’s only one mission away.)
- Get more characters into Tanaan Jungle. (Has not happened yet. Just haven’t had the time or desire. Not until flying is unlocked.)
- Using PVP gear for upgrades. (Turns out that most of my characters don’t have any honor points to buy gear, and I just haven’t been overly motivated to get into PVP. I’ve had enough of that during regular questing – see below.)
- Using Apexis crystal gear for upgrades. (Oh this I’ve done to death. See below.)
Lessons Learned
This has been a very educational week both for good and for bad.
- Tanaan Jungle is a great way to gear up characters. Baleful tokens drop quite frequently, and Apexis crystals are plentiful. I offer as proof, the Warrior that I mentioned in a previous post. In only a few days, his iLevel went from an average of 583 to…
Damn.
- Premade custom groups are a blessing and a curse. They’re great for knocking out quests and grinding rep. But I’ve had two occasions where I’ve beamed over to a PVP realm without realizing it. Next thing I knew, I had an Alliance raid running a train on my corpse. That has a tendency to end an evening early.
- The garrison gold is still there for the taking, and I plan on taking as much as I can.
- Flying. It feels more like an excuse for me to have something to do. It’ll lose some luster once Apexis crystals aren’t that helpful, or once I’m done with the rep and have to go back for the other goodies.
We’ll see how the garrison holds up, not to mention my patience with the rep work. I’ve already switched the character focus once. However, Death Knights are beasts so I think I’ll be sticking with Deathrokk for the duration of the grind.
Weekly Update – Patch 6.2
Ironically this wasn’t supposed to be a selfie.
Patch 6.2 – what does it mean, and what the Hell am I supposed to do with it? Flying, grinding, gold, ugh.
Counting Coins
So how’s garrison gold life in the WoD 6.2 world? I’ve been looking at some of the feedback over at /r/woweconomy on Reddit. Near as I can tell, the jury is still out as far as reaction to the garrison gold nerfs. Some folks are noticing a significant loss in the amount of gold they earn per day, while others still feel like they are still putting up solid numbers. I’ll have a more accurate assessment next week, but over the past few days I pulled in 23,840g. These might have been skewed due to front-loading the big salvage crates at the beginning of the week before the patch. But we’ll see what happens after a solid week of Garrison Gold Nerfing.
Objectives
Great gargling gooey gumdrops, so much to do. I didn’t have much playtime to tackle most of the patch stuff. Even with running the Curse updates, it took a day just to get a follower mission addon that worked. And I needed that addon, because to Hell with trying to navigate the follower mission UI. #GarrisonGoldProblems
Reflecting on last week’s list:
- Finish up some quests and exploration, start on Apexis mission. (Worked on some, but didn’t get too much further along as far as the flying achievement goes. Apexis missions may be put on hold, as well as finishing off old quests. Sole focus to be on, well, the next thing.)
- Start the Tanaan Jungle reps. (Started, yes. I’m missing one. Haven’t made my way out to the cat area, which apparently only has one quest for rep anyway. Regardless, I’ll do them as I can. It might take a bit longer to get flying, but I’ll get there eventually.)
- Harrison Jones missions. (Limited success on this front. Got the one Treasure mission that had eluded me for weeks. Completed it on every character, which finished up Harrison for one of them. The other five need only one left to complete, and four of them need the same one. Confident this will get hammered out this upcoming week.)
- Ride out the Patch 6.2 gong show, let the bugs fall where they may. (Done. Still working on Addon updates.)
- Set the Hearthstone for a couple of characters, putting them in the Laughing Skull village in north Gorgrond (excellent for Lumber Mill). (Didn’t get the chance. Was going to but thought I’d keep the hearthstone set in Pandaria and continue to fly out to the lumber paradise. Nice to be able to jump to Pandaria with a Potion of Luck and grind out gold for twenty minutes.)
Next week missions includes:
- Continue with the rep grind.
- Harrison Jones damn your eyes.
- Get more characters into Tanaan Jungle.
- Using PVP gear for upgrades.
- Using Apexis crystal gear for upgrades.
Lessons Learned
What did I learn this week?
- The Garrison Follower Mission UI blows donkey dick, and I’d rather use a shitty addon than what Blizzard gave me to use.
- Harrison Jones is playing hard to get, and I’m not liking it. Not one bit.
- Passive garrison gold making is still there.
- It’s going to take quite a bit of time for me to unlock flying. I’m still ok with that.
Rokk Talk 