f13.net

I've seen several mentions of followers.  Am I the only one who hasn't been using followers and should I?  Do they eat up xp?

Followers help quite a lot solo. They do not eat up any XP, in fact I think if you give them +XP items you get 20% of the bonus from them.

I've used the Enchantress most, her crowd control and buffs are very useful, and she does a decent amount of damage with some hand-me-down legendaries too. The Templar is fairly tanky and his heals can be an occasional life saver. Not used the Scoundrel, I think he's mostly a crit-buff IIRC?

Bosses tend to one shot the enchantress and scoundrel.  The hilarious thing is that the enchantress can charm minor elites.  They just sit there and let you beat on them.

Followers have no drawbacks whatsoever if you're on your todd.

But gearing them up constantly is a pain in the arsehole, frankly.

Wow I totally thought they stole xp for some reason.  Good to know.

I saw my templar "die" for the first time and the second through twelfth time on the end boss in Westmarch. I didn't know those guys even took damage.

They just fall down and get back up.  It's no big deal.

They're like weebles.

My Templar has spent the majority of Act V hunched over like he saw the Blair Witch. I think he might be a touch undergeared  :drill:

Anyone done the side quests for these bastards yet ?  Are they in any way interesting ?

The Scoundral one was not particularly interesting. I'm hoping there's a follow up as I'm not sure I can handle a mopey Scoundral for the rest of the game.

They have monsters and loot in them, so they're exactly as interesting as anything else in the game.

But, but, story :awesome_for_real:

The only one that seemed to conclude in something approaching a satisfying manner (you know, for a Blizzard story) was the Templar one. The Enchantress one was okay, the Scoundrel one felt like they meant to have another step and then forgot all about it. From a playing-though-it standpoint, the Templar boss was a huge fucking pain in the ass, the other two bosses were much easier.

I am lazy, so I use the templar with my str heroes, the enchantress with my int heroes, and the scoundrel with my dex heroes. They all have something about them I find useful. The Templar's heals and resource regen buff are nice, the enchantress' attack speed buff and charm is nice (like Rasix said, she can charm elites and they'll just derp out instead of murdering you), and the scoundrel ... uh ... makes me laugh sometimes. His blind isn't bad either, I guess!

The templar boss was impossible until I pulled him into the hallway and just facetanked him alone.  Otherwise, I was getting hit far too much and hitting him far too little.  I couldn't outpace his stupid heals out in the open.

I use the templar for everything since I have a legendary relic that makes him invincible and just slapped on a bunch of magic find (which I understand is almost useless now? Forget where I read that...). I don't think they could ever do actual damage so just look for the one that has the utility you like, although with drops how they are it might be best to use the one that has the same main stat.

It's possible to gear them up to do real damage. Magic find is especially pointless on a companion now (fraction of a fraction of the listed value.)

Yeah, my monk is at 125k listed dps and my scoundrel is around 95k.