Who is really the most powerful follower?

[InDarkestNight]

I've never really bothered to look into this. Personally, I rarely played with followers since I prefered mage and stealth builds. They ruin stealth, and if you're a mage its hard to avoid killing them by accident. Besides, as a mage you can just summon stuff that's immune to whatever element you're using, and you can have two so why even bother with followers?

 

That said, guides I try to look up just seem to focus on how cool they are, often completely ignoring what they do. Few seem willing to take into account all of the game's 70-something followers.

 

Some of the followers that tend to get mentioned are the ones that are either forever essential or have no level cap, especially the ones that are both. Yeah, it means they can technically win any fight, but that doesn't mean they'll necessarily do it in the most efficient fashion. I mean, one of the more commonly cited followers of this type is J'zargo, who is a mage which means his damage doesn't scale with his level. Nobody in general seems to discuss how effective they actually are, just that they're essential and they level forever.

 

Outside of those, I think the most popular is Aela. She's a ranged character with a level cap of 50, making her rather effective. You can also marry her, and marrying followers is actually sorta broken. If they're actively following you, you can get the lover's comfort buff from sleeping in ANY bed, even ones you don't own. So you can refresh the buff by just taking a nap in a bandit lair. Of course a lot of her appeal is probably due to her appearance, let's be real here.

 

I did see someone mention one that was interesting: Ralis. He's that dunmer that you help excavate a ruin on Solstheim. He has a level cap of 60, which is higher than most followers (I think he's only beaten out by the ones that have no level cap). He's also the only follower with the extra damage 2 perk, and he's also among the few that will dual-wield, giving him the highest damage of any follower in the game. The person who made that post even claims he saw someone demonstrate on a youtube video him SOLOING THE EBONY WARRIOR.

 

Outside of all this though, everyone just talks about the ones they find the coolest. Serana for example seems to be the most popular follower of all simply because of how elaborate she is. Personally though, I never liked her. Most of this is because she's forced upon for such a stupid long length of time. I mean, the last time I did the dawnguard dlc she turned it into a complete drag because I was a stealth build and she made stealthing impossible. I literally did the entire questline just watching her kill everything for me because she simply wouldn't let me do anything myself. She's also glitched out on me one playthrough, and I've had her destroy entire playthroughs more than once due to her breaking my quest order (this was before I had memorized when she gets permanently assigned to you). I've genuinely wished I could just kill her and be done with it all quite a few times. Obviously, I'm not one who really cares about how interesting a follower is (then again, I never found her the most interesting npc anyway). Followers are pack mules, tanks, and extra damage. I don't care what their backstory is or how much unique dialogue they have. Besides, there's plenty of quest npcs who are far more elaborate than any follower you can get (possibly excluding the ones that can also be followers).

 

So, who is actually the most powerful follower in Skyrim? Has anyone made them all 1v1 each other and see who is really the most effective? It woulds be nice if someone did this rather than just talking about how hot some of the female ones are for once.

[rodr1ss]

I tried a lot of followers, I don't remember them anymore, most of them because like you, they make them so powerful that you can stay in a tavern and let them finish the game for you.

In comparison the one that has performed the best for my taste is Eola from The Taste of Death, the vanilla quest. She uses magic, if you give him a bow or a sword he also performs well. She is not super powerful, she is not cowed either.

Although I haven't used it in a long time either because I get tired all the time with his only line of "You're one of Namira's faithful now."

After a while I have only left a single mod of a follower, because I like the hairstyle and the face tattoo haha, at the end of the day if you put a wig on her and change her looks with other armor it looks like any other follower you can get , almost everyone is the same, or that's how I feel

There is a guy MxR who makes videos and when it shows a mod that they come in pairs, he made them fight, that always make me laugh, but at the end of the day, since they make them essential, they always get up, so I don't know if it can be compared 1vs1, unless they can die, and I have seen some followers who have that condition, although I never tested them, using an esp just to lose it doesn't work for me

Edited September 25, 2023 by rodr1ss