How strong are the bodyguard followers in Legion?

[kamuimac]

I like it, have them do important missions or have them follow you in your own missions, its a choice the player has to make with some strategy and time management involved.

its not a choice thought - campagn missions have priority over eveyrthing else so no real choice to make

[Ilir]

I like the bodyguards of Legion a lot more than in WoD.

You don't need a stupid building to have one. You don't need to wait 10 years for them to rez if they die.

[Deleted]

I tried the druid one with about 800 gear and it's complete garbage. I like more to pick the active or passive skills.

[dyzz]

Rogues only "aoe" until wrath was blade flurry which had a 2 min cd and only hit one extra target.

True, but it has been 10 years so I merely forgot.

[Ilfayt]

True, but it has been 10 years so I merely forgot.

Yeah, a lot of people didn't have AoE back in Vanilla or even TBC. I remember maining Shadow Priest and being screwed when I had mass waves of mobs. Mind Sear, as weak as it is, is welcome on anything like 'mass whelpling waves!' or round ups for AoEing down.

Hell, some of the ones that did have AoE's they were mind numbingly weak and were eventually either buffed to where they were core in their AoE or new spells were added(Divine Storm for Ret for example).

[Soeroah]

I took one as a Demon Hunter who was listed as a "guardian", thinking they'd be a tank, because trying to solo a group quest boss was kicking my ass. The Follower barely did anything of note, definitely didn't hold threat.

Seems like a minor DPS increase at best from my limited testing.

[Bonaduce]

As a caster it often helped in a pinch, being the difference between dying to an accidentally aggroed extra mob or surviving

[Arril]

As an Arcane Mage the bodyguard was a big help until item levels got to the point where I could survive accidental aggro's.

You have to pay Order resources to assign a follower to be your bodyguard, so it's worth thinking about because unless you play hours a day you aren't exactly overflowing in Order resources early on. SO more than half the time all of my followers were doing missions for me, but if I wanted to do group quests or tough world bosses, I'd assign a bodyguard.

[Krom2040]

It *seems* like bodyguards scale with your ilvl now. I could be mistaken, more testing would be necessary. It just appeared that the warrior bodyguard was doing about 10% of my damage even as my ilvl increased.

[ReleaseDay]

Most likely they will be useless as the WOD ones were.

[Otimus]

Most likely they will be useless as the WOD ones were.

Vivianne was not useless. She was a powerhouse that had a free no cooldown Garrison teleport when maxed out.

[Deleted]

I had while leveling aswell sometimes a bodyguard. but you must remind. that most bodyguards are realy needed in your classhall for your missions what is more important that some dps increase

[bufferunderrun]

can you customized them a bit (armor, weapon, mog) or are they just a fixed model?

[papajohn4]

Old School wow was an aoe fest if you played rogue, Mage, warlock, and whatever else could pummel AOE. You just mounted and dragged entire camps of mobs in EPL/WPL/ETC and aoe'd them down. So I am not sure what exactly your talking about.

Not sure if trolling... Only classes that could aoe grind back then was frost mage and prot paladin.. And they need to have good gear and kbow how to play..

[Nevcairiel]

you even want to have them with you due to certain items they get that net you more Order Resources from world quests while they accompany you.

One thing I wondered about that, does that also apply if you don't use the one thats permanently with you, but only gives you a "button" to press occasionally where he shows up and stuns the mob, or does a big damage cooldown?

Because I really get more annoyed at the permanent bodyguards then anything else, and I'm a tank so I don't need them to tank for me.

[KaPe]

Vivianne was not useless. She was a powerhouse that had a free no cooldown Garrison teleport when maxed out.

Vivianne was an exception to the rule. Her Alliance counterpart was pretty weak and didn't do nowhere near as much damage, even when maxed.

[Nevcairiel]

Vivianne was an exception to the rule. Her Alliance counterpart was pretty weak and didn't do nowhere near as much damage, even when maxed.

The damage of Delvar Ironfist was fine, but he is a melee with all the disadvantages that came with that. <.< Typically died rather quickly.

[Eurhetemec]

True, but it has been 10 years so I merely forgot.

Whilst you're wrong about the specifics - the AOE'ing down - you're entirely wrong about the play-style, because even pre-TBC a lot of DPS classes could not only chain-pull but get in massive fights and live. Of course there were others for whom it was "one mob at a time, careful now!".

[bufferunderrun]

Vivianne was an exception to the rule. Her Alliance counterpart was pretty weak and didn't do nowhere near as much damage, even when maxed.

vivian damage was good only when doing mobs with huge health so her dot could stack to infinite and i'm pretty sure that was a bug that blizzard never cared fixing

[irdsyd]

The legion bodyguards are often very good in my experience - but they vary considerably by class.

The windwalker bodyguards are fantastic. One tank, one healer, one dps and heal, and one a group stun that increases damage taken for the 10+ seconds the stun is in effect. The tank (chen) works really well. However, if they are in a very long tanking fight they will claim exhaustion and stop being effective. If they die (which doesn't happen a lot) they respawn after the fight. If you die... they will respawn when you resurrect. Particular bodyguards have useful properties for world bosses (eg dispelling). However, other classes often only get 2 bodyguards instead of four - and do not always get a tank. Many of them only operate on a long cooldown rather than being constantly present. They also don't tend to get in your way or impede looting like WOD bodyguards - the AI is much improved.