Building a Following

While there were dozens of equally useful followers to be had in Warlords of Draenor, the limited following size and specific abilities of followers means making strategic choices for which Druids we enlist into our service. To maximize your effectiveness, you will want to choose 5 followers which meet the following requirements:

• At least 1 of each talent specialization: Restoration, Balance, and Feral (thankfully, Blizzard rolled Guardian and Feral specs into a single category for the purposes of followers)
• At least 1 of each ability counter: Hazard, Minions, Spell
• One follower whose Combat Ally ability you want to make use of while in the Broken Isles

You can use secondary abilities to help you choose among two or more followers who meet one of the above-listed criteria. Here’s a table summarizing the specializations, basic counter, special abilities, and combat ally abilities (if applicable) of all eight possible followers:

Using the criteria above, I chose:

• Mylune for Combat Ally Awesomeness
• Brightwing for Restoration/Minions and healing troops who would otherwise expire
• Broll Bearmantle for Feral/Hazard and reduced starting mission cost
• Sylendra Gladesong for Restoration/Spell and her special ability to generate a Wild Mushroom

Having met all the specialization/counter requirements, that let me choose among the remaining followers: Naralex, Zen’tabra, and Keeper Remulos. I chose Keeper Remulos because he’s amazing looking, and his special ability is interesting. This is not to say you couldn’t make different choices. Macrologia over on Reddit, for instance, prefers the more directly helpful (+15% increase to success based on specific hazards) provided by Naralex and Zen’tabra, but I personally find Sylendra’s mushrooms to be a much more enjoyable — and Restoration-appropriate — mechanic. And Brightwing is a fae dragon so it’s basically not possible that I would not have included him. Of course, if you want to get technical about it, Dom Perignon has created and shared an excellent spreadsheet to help you decide based on the types of missions you intend to pursue:

Druid Champion Analysis

by Dom Perignon

Wild Mushroom + Ancient of War = Win?

I am currently researching the fifth tier of Order Hall advancement: Ancient of War:

Allows you to recruit an Ancient of War. Ancients of War have a random Druid Specialization and can counter a Boss. Also has Strength of the Ancients: Increases success chance of missions by 30%.

My current thinking is that it may be possible to keep him alive using Sylendra’s Wild Mushrooms and subsequently switch over to Elune’s Chosen instead:

Allows you to place a work order for 1 of your 3 weekly Seals of Broken Fate in exchange for Order Resources.

This assumes that he sticks around even if you change your advancement choice which is potentially a very expensive hypothesis to disprove! I will, of course, update this post if I get up the courage to give this a try.