How not to mess up follower leveling

[Sounder]

Don't end up here: you have 3-4 followers who are 98+, one or more of which is level 100. Most of your new missions are now level 100, and most of those take 2-3 followers. This is an easy place to get to, but it really drags you down because the rest of your 97-and-under crew can't contribute or earn XP, you have level-100 mission generation that is going to waste, and your lower-level-mission generation is now poor.

How to avoid this: always be giving your highest-level followers a break. NOT pushing them up a level keeps your mission generation down where more of the rest of your team can use it. If you're benching at 98, don't let one level until enough of your team is 97+. (Ideally all of your rares/epics, and any green with a unique counter or Epic Mount.)

ALSO, you have to restrain yourself from gaining new followers in any way until you've researched their level and determined it won't raise your current max. This is how I blew it today, I bought the blue Kang from the Frostwolf rep vendor without realizing he'd be 100.

I'm going to find out if deactivating him lowers my quest generation again, but I have to get to 21 followers first. If anyone knows for sure, please reply. I will update post with my own findings.
-----
Update: Got to 21/20, deactivated my one lvl100, and all 10 or so new quests that have come in since then have been below 100. Whew!
-----
Update 11/19: Blizzard just hotfixed mission generation so that the levels of missions you get better reflects the levels of followers you have active. So there shouldn't be a need to hold back / deactivate your highest level ones anymore.

[spleen1015]

This has been a worry for me as I level these guys.

The one thing I have noticed is will alts. I have 4 alts at 92 and I am having their followers run missions when I am not playing them. I'm going to end up leveling them too high and hurt the news ones that I pick up when I start leveling again.

Bad design here, IMO.

[Deleted]

What? I'm currently in shock reading this. I'm currently level 98 and just got a level 99 epic follower from Nagrand yesterday.

I have still some level 91 followers and I did all of the garrison missions except the ones for gold and always used my lowest followers first.

Still I have some followers that are really low and red missions give zero XP. WHAT?

What if a mission gives bonus XP. Would a follower on a red mission gain that bonus XP? Otherwise I'm fucked. What the hell?!

[Shardik]

Yeah, I got pretty boned by this, all my 100 missions require abilities that I don't have on anybody above 97, and I only get 1 or 2 missions below 94 a day. I'm hoping they put in a fix for this, maybe a way to reroll missions to get more, or a an option to set the level of missions you're looking for.

[Soulzar]

You will still get lower missions, just not as frequently. I'm slowly but surely lvling up my low guys with the 1-4 I get a day that are not 100 .

[Thelxi]

Where are you people getting enough resources to spam mission from? When do you plan on upgrading your buildings?

[RoKPaNda]

I keep reading posts about these garrison oddities like this and I keep being glad that I'm not really bothering with my garrison.

[foxHeart]

Where are you people getting enough resources to spam mission from? When do you plan on upgrading your buildings?

By killing rares and looting lots of treasure. I've also got Lumber Mill and Trading Post work orders going all the time, which helps. You also get a lot of resources from the stables by doing the capture quests then the dailies after that. I have way more resources than I can really even use right now because I have to wait until I have the achievements done before I can even make the level 3 buildings.

It helps to know there are just certain things you don't really need right away if you're trying to save up resources. Like Lumber Mill level 2, which is utterly worthless. After doing stuff out in the world and gathering timber while leveling, I have had more trouble being unable to carry more than 250 at a time than I have filling work orders. I never don't have enough to place one. So medium trees are worthless to me. The only good thing about level 2 is you need it to get level 3, where you can get an npc to increase the size of your work orders. Just take into account what level 2 buildings do before you buy them and think if they're really going to do anything for you, basically.

@ the OP. Yeah...I prioritized one follower over the others and got her to 100 as quickly as I could. Now I've got a bunch of low level followers, some even epic fml, and it's tough to level them because almost all my missions are 100 or high 90's...sucks.

[Annoying]

You will still get lower missions, just not as frequently. I'm slowly but surely lvling up my low guys with the 1-4 I get a day that are not 100 .

You get a ton if you don't ever run the 100's. You just have to pile up 6 or 7 of the 100's missions, and you'll have 3-4 <100 missions flowing in each time they complete.

Where are you people getting enough resources to spam mission from? When do you plan on upgrading your buildings?

Lumber mill, killing every rare mob, gathering almost every treasure. That nets you easily enough to upgrade every building to 2, and to have a huge backup of resources

[Sounder]

Now that I have Garrison lvl 3, I'm going to run LM + Trading Post for a while until I'm comfortably ahead on GR, retiring LM once I het the tree follower.

[Deleted]

Is there a list somewhere of rares? Or an achivment with them? Couldnt find it...

[Sounder]

The list of fixed followers is in game. Any view that shows your active followers also shows the followers you have not acquired below that.

You can't sort it by rarity, but it's easy to scan it for the followers that are always (at least) Rare, or Epic, when acquired.

If you select one of them, you'll see the quest or achievement that grants them.

[J50]

Is there a list somewhere of rares? Or an achivment with them? Couldnt find it...

The add-on handy notes is really helpful for hunting them.

[Sounder]

Update: Blizzard just hotfixed mission generation so that the levels of missions you get better reflects the levels of followers you have active. So there shouldn't be a need to hold back / deactivate your highest level ones anymore.

[Ergar]

Update: Blizzard just hotfixed mission generation so that the levels of missions you get better reflects the levels of followers you have active. So there shouldn't be a need to hold back / deactivate your highest level ones anymore.

Yeah im seeing a lot more lower levels ones now. I have 5 followers at 100, and the rest at 94-99, and like 1/3-50% of my missions are lvl 100, and the rest are below that.

[Abujan]

I have 20 followers at 100 and I am still getting level 93-96 quests, so i dont think it should be a problem having some low level followers.

[PBitt]

Yeah, my followers on my main are presently kind of screwed up. All my alts are going to have some badass followers by the time they level up to 100, though.