Druid Class Hall Followers Optimization

[clavarnway]

@Polarthief, if I wanted to use your guide, but did not have Moroes and don't want to farm Lower Kara +100's to try to get him, what champ would you use in place of him?

[Polarthief]

@Polarthief, if I wanted to use your guide, but did not have Moroes and don't want to farm Lower Kara +100's to try to get him, what champ would you use in place of him?

Depends on your CA but you can pick Brightwing, Mylune, or Naralex. If using Mylune as CA (highly recommended), it comes down to if you want an overall better champion (Naralex) or using a 2nd Resto champion (Brightwing), since they also both have Starfall. Breakdown by champions below:

- Overall, the most useful should be Naralex because he provides a solid 15% bonus against missions with Spells and, like Hamuul, he's flexible how you gear him (success or T2 troops). He's not great, but he comes with Starfall (which is only on 2 meh champions and q shit-tier champion) and isn't the worst pick. Gear him for Success or T2 Troops.

- Brightwing is pretty shit. If you want to balance Resto champions and don't want to rely on your AoW to be your second Resto "champion", you're forced to use him. At least he comes with Starfall and might save 30m on your Keeper troop from dying (note that this is actually an anti-synergy with Thisalee though since the quicker you make a new Keeper, the quicker Thisalee gets the extra success chance). Now if they would just make Brightwing simply heal ALL the troops on a mission with a 50% success rate, then he'd actually be insanely good and a pseudo-Shroom generator, but sadly he only works if the troops would otherwise die on a mission, making him worthless when paired with DGW or AoW (since you'd never let a DGW or AoW die once you have the ones you want!). Gear him for Success or T2 Troops.

- Mylune as a mission champion is quite poor due to Treants (T1 troops) just being shit all around, even if you upgrade them to Sisters. She's now my go-to CA because at least the Faerie Dragons do some light damage and it's hilarious to have an army of critters following you everywhere you go (plus, as Celestalon would say: "CLASS FANTASY"), while Naralex's ability is useless on most mobs you'd want to use it on because they're all immune to it (and if immune to the sleep, they don't get the 50% damage taken debuff). Gear her for Success, and maybe a Scroll, if you want to use her as a Success champion and not your CA.

[clavarnway]

Thanks. I have a Resto AoW so I think I'll roll with Naralax as the additional mission runner and Mylune as CA. Thanks!

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When you say

- Meatball (duh) [Ball Generator] {Gear for Duration > Success}

Do you mean gear for duration over success (if gear permits), or gear for duration, then success?

[Polarthief]

When you say

Do you mean gear for duration over success (if gear permits), or gear for duration, then success?

"Duration over Success", basically, Saddle > Carrot > Fetish. Don't ever use a green if you have epics/blues. Now if I had a Fel Imp Tooth (Legendary that is Fetish+Saddle), I would probably do Tooth > Saddle > Carrot, though I would greatly consider if Fetish is better than Carrot. I just like Duration for the extra balls and so you can stick him on as many missions as you can. Moroes on the other hand doesn't have AS important of a bonus item, so him being a success god is better.

That said, you can totally gear however you want (if you wanted a success-based Meatball for example, I'd go with a T2 troop build since he's got a Minion bonus)

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Alright so I decided to make a spreadsheet. This is where I'll keep any new/updated info should anything suddenly change, though I'll still keep posting here. It's got champion breakdowns, gearing, success chances, MAX success changes, and the second page has roster setups and breakdowns (currently has Max Optimization and Thisalee Crow as Combat Ally builds, both with non-Moroes alternatives!). If anyone wants a roster added, feel free to ask and I'll post it up there.

This should hopefully answer any basic questions that anyone might have regarding this topic

PS: @AvatarM, if you could post the spreadsheet on the OP if you're still around for anyone new that stumbles upon this thread, just so it's on the stable page 1 and not 8 pages in lol

[Bugg]

I'm on a pve server.
The usefulness of the combat Ally is in the resources/gold it provides?
I never used one so far... What are the best practices if I would use one? It can't participate to missions, so I should enable/disable him daily?
I usually play 2 hours during weekdays and a bit more in weekends outside raids.

[Polarthief]

I'm on a pve server.
The usefulness of the combat Ally is in the resources/gold it provides?
I never used one so far... What are the best practices if I would use one? It can't participate to missions, so I should enable/disable him daily?
I usually play 2 hours during weekdays and a bit more in weekends outside raids.

Yes, the primary reason for a CA is for the gold (and net resource-positive it provides) from completing WQs. Literally slap Mylune with the gear and put her on CA. (Naralex works too, but if you don't have Moroes, I recommend using Naralex as a mission champion. Also Naralex does nothing when CA'd)

If you need her for missions, do the WQs you want to do for the day and disable her for missions overnight/when you can't play.

[Tiberria]

The problems with swapping a Combat Ally in and out.
(1) You have to make sure that you don't put them on missions that last longer than the next time you might want to do a WQ. I will frequently go to bed at 1 am, get up at 7 am, and see a few missions I want to do before work when I get up (especially the 6 hr duration PvP FFA WQ or a Legionfall WQ that finishes a supply turnin). If the CA is on a <6 hour mission, you will lose the CA rewards for those WQ.
(2) You have to remember to set the CA back to CA and pay the (pretty much trivial) 50 resource cost of doing so before you go out to do WQ. This can be annoying if you aren't at your class hall/forget, etc. I would probably forget to do that quite a bit, also losing some of the CA gains.
(3) Your CA is going to be equipped with CA gain equipment, meaning that it is going to be by far your weakest champion. It's basically like using a green quality champion. It's probably not going to be useful on high level missions or on any missions that it doesn't directly counter, and unless having it off CA lets you do an extra mission, it doesn't really add much.

For those reasons, I think it's highly debatable if it's worth even screwing around with moving your CA in and out vs just leaving it.

[Polarthief]

I mean, it depends. If you have 2 emissaries available and you know a 3rd is coming tomorrow, chances are, you're gonna need your CA past daily reset so you can hammer those out. If you miss out on one or two WQs without your CA, not the end of the world.

Hell, I didn't have mine on today and I got a good 15 or so WQs done today, rip me. Granted, I had NO missions rolling due to the stupid Command Center changes, so while all 3 of those missions were being done, I literally only had my CA (Mylune), T1 troops, I think 2 Keepers, and 1 DGW. 6 Champions, an AoW, a DGW, and one of Moroes's dinner guests were all being used for those ~2d missions.

If you can manage it, great, if not, you can always just leave your CA on permanently.

[Bugg]

Cool, that is something to think about and test.
A question regarding finding Moroes: should I run heroic Kara more than once per day?

[Polarthief]

A question regarding finding Moroes: should I run heroic Kara more than once per day?

You can for whatever reason (I think it's bugged), but it comes down to: do you want to? Obviously you don't have to but like I said, it took me about a solid 100+ runs, so... yeah. Also just in case it wasn't obvious, make sure you only run Lower Kara, because the watch drops from Moroes (the final boss of Lower). I'd also highly recommend going Bear spec so you can set the pace of the run.

I might actually make a "Guide to Speed-Clearing Lower Kara for Moroes (as a Bear)" since there's some pretty nasty pulls you can do, bonus points if you happen to have the DPS Trinket Legendary (it's amazing as Bear, as is the Balance Druid Shoulders LATC).

[Tiberria]

I don't think that having Moroes vs having Brightwing/Mylune/Naralex as a 6th mission follower is a huge upgrade. It might be the min/max best, but you have to decide whether your OCD in getting him is outweighed by dealing with the 1% drop rate or not.

If you do go the route of farming Moroes, for your own sanity, I would suggest trying to do it in a farming group with people who are geared/know what they are doing. Lower Kara has the tendency to be just frustrating with pugs because of how poorly designed it is as an instance relative to current game design. Pug tanks often don't know that you can't go to Moroes before Attumen, and waste several extra minutes. People that don't understand the Kara layout and fall behind the group tend to get hopelessly lost and then stay lost for the entire rest of the run (lol). If anyone dies and releases, it puts them back at the entire start of the instance, which can be like a 5+ minute run from where the group is. In general, it just was an awful idea to make Kara into a heroic 5 man instance, at least if they weren't going to take the time to first fix things like the intuitiveness of the layout design and the run backs.

[Unbelivabru]

I'd also highly recommend going Bear spec so you can set the pace of the run.

I'll second that. Going bear to farm this is extremely effective. If you do have DPS trinkets and is at least a heroic raider you should be able to do it in about 15 min or even less depending on your group.

I would suggest trying to do it in a farming group with people who are geared/know what they are doing.

It does help but sadly it's not that easy to find people to spend a couple hours (or more) running the same heroic dungeon over and over again. Although, as said before, if you have a decent amount of gear you should be able to go guardian and rush through this place really fast.

[Polarthief]

Alright so quick warning: My AoW just died on an Elite Strike. I don't know how, but I'm 99.99% sure I wasn't stupid enough to send him on an uncountered Lethal mission. Dunno if it's a bug or that 0.01% chance that I actually sent him on an uncountered Lethal mission but yeah, just be wary of potential bugs, cuz that's a 6000 resource loss and 3.5 days I'm without an AoW (and then I have to get the right one which could take daaaaays).

I don't think that having Moroes vs having Brightwing/Mylune/Naralex as a 6th mission follower is a huge upgrade. It might be the min/max best, but you have to decide whether your OCD in getting him is outweighed by dealing with the 1% drop rate or not.

Please do not spread misinformation. Moroes is a god among followers once he is maxed and besides setting up Meatball for T2 Troops (which you could do but it feels good to have some Reduction champions), Moroes is the highest success chance with him and a Keeper alone. He's only matched by Thisalee who requires a full health keeper and an AoW (both of these setups yield 160%).

That said, yes, it is outweighed by dealing with a quite low drop rate (it's actually around 2% or so, I'm just an unlucky outlier), but if you want optimization, he's more than worth it.

If you do go the route of farming Moroes, for your own sanity, I would suggest trying to do it in a farming group with people who are geared/know what they are doing. Lower Kara has the tendency to be just frustrating with pugs because of how poorly designed it is as an instance relative to current game design. Pug tanks often don't know that you can't go to Moroes before Attumen, and waste several extra minutes. People that don't understand the Kara layout and fall behind the group tend to get hopelessly lost and then stay lost for the entire rest of the run (lol). If anyone dies and releases, it puts them back at the entire start of the instance, which can be like a 5+ minute run from where the group is. In general, it just was an awful idea to make Kara into a heroic 5 man instance, at least if they weren't going to take the time to first fix things like the intuitiveness of the layout design and the run backs.

That's why I made a macro and I would typically just continue on without them. As a 910 Druid, I can practically solo Kara as a Bear in Moonkin gear, especially when I pop Barkskin, ROTS, Lunar Beam, and KJ Trinket. Massive burst of damage (that also heals from ROTS's Leech), practically invulnerable for a solid 10s, and nearly everything dies before you do, even if everyone else is way behind you

I'll second that. Going bear to farm this is extremely effective. If you do have DPS trinkets and is at least a heroic raider you should be able to do it in about 15 min or even less depending on your group.

Except like one or two runs, I pugged every run. My best recorded time was 7:44, but I only recorded like 30 or so. Worst recorded was around 15-16m, AND someone wanted the spider fragment (and I never turned down a single request). It's also funny because not once did I get a complaint of "you're going too fast!", though I did have a single healer say "you're the worst" (I assumed it was directed at me) and bailed as we were waiting for Opera RP.

[Kluian05]

Alright so quick warning: My AoW just died on an Elite Strike. I don't know how, but I'm 99.99% sure I wasn't stupid enough to send him on an uncountered Lethal mission. Dunno if it's a bug or that 0.01% chance that I actually sent him on an uncountered Lethal mission but yeah, just be wary of potential bugs, cuz that's a 6000 resource loss and 3.5 days I'm without an AoW (and then I have to get the right one which could take daaaaays).

The new Elite missions seem very buggy. Some people are seeing "hidden" counters that can't be countered (such as slowing). If you counter everything at a base the mission should be 3 days right? I have guidies reporting the mission is still at 6 days.

Not sure if you were using the mobile app when starting the mission, but it's also possible that the counter in the app did not match up with what was in the game client (so its potential that there was a Deadly counter but you ignored it because you didn't see it).

My druid has a mission with only 2 counters (except 3 pictured bosses). When I pulled it up in the app, it would always crash the app.

[Polarthief]

The new Elite missions seem very buggy. Some people are seeing "hidden" counters that can't be countered (such as slowing). If you counter everything at a base the mission should be 3 days right? I have guidies reporting the mission is still at 6 days.

Not sure if you were using the mobile app when starting the mission, but it's also possible that the counter in the app did not match up with what was in the game client (so its potential that there was a Deadly counter but you ignored it because you didn't see it).

My druid has a mission with only 2 counters (except 3 pictured bosses). When I pulled it up in the app, it would always crash the app.

Yeah I know about the bugs on the app, but I'm pretty sure I didn't use it for the missions.

Also hidden counters? OH BOY. Time to never use DGW or AoW on these missions again.

[Deleted]

Using Thisalee as a CA is also a disservice like Remulos unless you really need the assistance. She's also a Bodyguard, keep that in mind.

Also oh my god, you use Broll. Your Druid better be an alt.

Awesome info Polarthief

Right now my setup is:
Meatball
Remulos
Mylune
Hamuul
Thisalee
Brightwing
Sylendra
(and got Ancient of War)

Got a hard time choosing if i should make Mylune or Thisalee my combat ally.
The 10% MS and 10% more in one stat sounds very tasty eventhough i dont do many WQ. My druid is also the herb/miner but dont really do that either.

It feels like the low management setup for an alt druid is Mylune as CA and replace Thisalee Crow with Broll.
Not sure if I should go for the Brolli setup.


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BTW on my mage im going to deactivate Moroes after i get 5 of those minnion item.
Having both Moroes and Meatball in my roster is just a bit too much.
Not being able to counter everything on Strike missions can be quite harsh and if I have a roster that can counter more i only need Moroes minions on the strike missions.

But ill see how that goes.

[Polarthief]

Got a hard time choosing if i should make Mylune or Thisalee my combat ally.
The 10% MS and 10% more in one stat sounds very tasty eventhough i dont do many WQ. My druid is also the herb/miner but dont really do that either.

It feels like the low management setup for an alt druid is Mylune as CA and replace Thisalee Crow with Broll.
Not sure if I should go for the Brolli setup.

Broll simply won't give you enough return to warrant using him. 30% is quite a low reduction and it's only on missions he's on anyway. Countering Disorienting for example is a 50% reduction.

BTW on my mage im going to deactivate Moroes after i get 5 of those minnion item.
Having both Moroes and Meatball in my roster is just a bit too much.
Not being able to counter everything on Strike missions can be quite harsh and if I have a roster that can counter more i only need Moroes minions on the strike missions.

But ill see how that goes.

You should still be able to counter most everything that's vital. There's also no need to counter Specialization counters if you're already 100%/200%ing every mission. There's only a few vital counters.
- Cursed is definitely the worst because it's pretty much mandatory if you want the bonus reward.
- Slowing is also quite bad
- Lethal is only bad if you put high health/special troops you're keeping alive on the mission. If you can help it, avoid countering Lethal altogether and just opt to not use important troops.
- Disorienting is a non-issue for anyone's main.

You have 4-5 champions with ability counters and 2 troops who can also counter stuff (dunno if Mage has the healing items so you can get both 7th champ and the bonus troops?). That's more than enough.

Hell after completing my first wave of Elite Strike missions today, I just sent out a second batch all at once. Using 6 champions (Mylune staying behind as my CA) and only using Keeper/Dinner Guest troops (because I'm not risking my DGWs after losing my AoW to a bullshit "hidden" lethal), and all 3 elite strikes are 100%+, and I'd have never been able to do that without Moroes I feel. Also: Elite Strikes will never have Cursed because you start at -100% and need to get back up to 100%, plus there's no bonus reward, so you should only need to worry about Slowing (and Disorienting on alts because base resource cost is 1k per Elite Strike). Lethal should never be bothered with because there might be a "hidden" lethal anyways, at least until they fix that issue.

[Marrilaife]

dunno if Mage has the healing items so you can get both 7th champ and the bonus troops?

Yes they do, you can have Meryl with conjure food perk which works like Sylendra's mushrooms. Other classes with this perk are DH (Korvas - soul fragments), Shaman (Nobundo - healing totems), Warlock (Kira - healthstones) and Priest (Ishanah - lightwell).

[Polarthief]

Yes they do, you can have Meryl with conjure food perk which works like Sylendra's mushrooms. Other classes with this perk are DH (Korvas - soul fragments), Shaman (Nobundo - healing totems), Warlock (Kira - healthstones) and Priest (Ishanah - lightwell).

Awesome, thanks for the heads up as I only knew about Druid, DH, and Paladin (my 3 characters above 100) order halls.

So then yeah, as one of those 5 classes, you have plenty of extra counters and having Moroes is only a huge advantage.

[Deleted]

Broll simply won't give you enough return to warrant using him. 30% is quite a low reduction and it's only on missions he's on anyway. Countering Disorienting for example is a 50% reduction.

Thanks you convinced me to not take Brolli. Even on the expensive missions he might not counter the disorientate and its just one mission.

BTW what is DGW?


---------Magery---------

You should still be able to counter most everything that's vital. There's also no need to counter Specialization counters if you're already 100%/200%ing every mission. There's only a few vital counters.
- Cursed is definitely the worst because it's pretty much mandatory if you want the bonus reward.
- Slowing is also quite bad
- Lethal is only bad if you put high health/special troops you're keeping alive on the mission. If you can help it, avoid countering Lethal altogether and just opt to not use important troops.
- Disorienting is a non-issue for anyone's main.

With previous EU Strike many mage players strugled with the double Minnion Slowwing effect (blizzard to counter). But it also didnt help that i had Aethas as well another low counter follower. If you want Vargoth as CA (the best mission and CA follower), it's hard to counter blizzard, so your forced to take Meryl. I find the healthstone for mage less interesting.

Mages have a interesting followers. The Great Akazamzarak gives 20% boost item just like meatball but it's difficult to make room for him in balanced roster.

MY Mage roster:
- Meatball
- Esara
- Ravandwyr
- Kalec
- Modera
- Meryl
- Vargoth (combat ally, 20% more dmg for entire party)

Possibly you could swap out Ravendyr for Moroes. You might be fan of getting rid of Modera but that makes Meryl too important.
The dream would be that Akazamzarak got Blizzard instead of Counterspell and Vargoth CA ability was given to Millhouse :P.

PS: Dam no max lvl mage didnt expect that Polarthief :P