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Unfortunately, the General Discussion area tends to be full of "lolscrub", "inb4____" type of talkers so I am turning to the more mature, more level headed community of my home server!

What buildings do you guys put as your favs on your main(s)? (I have 2 mains but many alts)
What followers do you guys seem to prefer to level up and gear? (I'm having trouble deciding!)
What is your opinion on the current state of professions?

I personally hate the click-wait Facebook-Game-Playstyle of the profession buildings and wish they had come up with something different. I also feel like some professions have been gutted too much and it makes me sad. With how the Garrisons have been put together, I find very little purpose in leveling alts (I have 13) aside from logging in to gather herbs/ore.

Maybe I'm missing something, I don't know. Thoughts?

01/30/2015 06:24 AMPosted by Allelya

What buildings do you guys put as your favs on your main(s)? (I have 2 mains but many alts)

For Mormel I've gone with a goblin theme so I have a lot of gobliny buildings (workshop, salvage, engineer hut, barracks for goblin guards and even a trade post). The others (alchemy and gladiator santum) are done more for benefits than a theme. The end result is her garrison is a military-industrial trading fort.

For Gerhilda I have a little bit of a mage theme (mage tower and enchanter study) going on along with a tavern for just a hint of dwarven flare. Everything else (barracks, salvage, gladiator's sanctum and alchemy lab) are done strictly for their benefits. Thus her garrison is a fort village with a sizable mage population.

01/30/2015 06:24 AMPosted by Allelya

What followers do you guys seem to prefer to level up and gear? (I'm having trouble deciding!)

I've had absolutely awful luck with Mormel's followers and, lacking an inn, I don't have an easy way to rectify it until 6.1 comes out. My only recourse has been to level and gear up every follower she gets in the hope it will turn out better than the others.

Gerhilda not only has an inn bit amazing luck with her follower's abilities and traits. She has several mages in her ranks but her followers are pretty diverse overall with their classes. The goal I achieved with her was to get at least four counters to every ability with my active followers (ie not ones working buildings or deactivated).

01/30/2015 06:24 AMPosted by Allelya

What is your opinion on the current state of professions?

The professions themselves I'm ok with. They are simple and straight forward which makes them feel bland and samey but the benefits they provide are appreciated. However the garrisons epitomize a chore and a very draining one at that. I struggle to keep two running everyday and it only gets worse for people who love having alts.

01/30/2015 06:24 AMPosted by Allelya

Unfortunately, the General Discussion area tends to be full of "lolscrub", "inb4____" type of talkers so I am turning to the more mature, more level headed community of my home server!

You have my sincerest sympathies, and you've come to the right place.

What buildings do you guys put as your favs on your main(s)? (I have 2 mains but many alts)

I have two mains at the moment myself, one on each side, and both of them are engineers (though I have two "backup mains" of a sort, again one on each side; this is my Alliance "backup"). I keep the barracks with both of them for flags and bodyguards, especially the latter for my warlock on this side to compliment demons if I go demonology (destro spec, I use Grimoire of Sacrifice), and both of them have their salvage yards. My warlock has a mage tower just for a lark (and it helps if my daily quest thing sends me to Frostfire Ridge, as that's the only waygate I have open at the moment!), and my paladin H-side has the war mill to collect scraps for armor.

With characters that have only need one profession building in the main keep, like my paladin (mining/engineering) or this guy (mining/BS), I usually use the third small space for the storehouse. My warlock is engineering/inscription, so he has both of those in addition to the salvage yard.

What followers do you guys seem to prefer to level up and gear? (I'm having trouble deciding!)

To be honest, my levelling and gearing is a bit slapdash. I just go with whatever I have on hand. Though both my warlock and my paladin - and this guy, if I remember - have inns, but I don't tend to look for anything specific.

What is your opinion on the current state of professions?

With this character, I started with my blacksmithing well below 600 - I think he was barely above 300. If you have multiple characters running around in the garrison mines (or just money to burn to buy it off the AH, which in this expansion is a real possibility), there's a whole crap-ton of ore to burn, and the fact that the Draenor patterns are not skill-level specific is a BIG help. After 600, it does kind of slow a bit, but it's not TOO bad.

I only have one fully kitted out Garrison, and that's for Plains here, none of my alts have hit 100 yet (no time to play).
But my thoughts on the whole thing?

The Not Good:
They completely broke professions this time around, pure and simple. Things are either TOO easy, or way too expensive/difficult (getting profession mats and "intro epix" vs. some level 3 buildings and upgrade tokens). I understand they're playing catch up for new folks to the game, but they fumbled the "how" of it pretty badly.
And yeah, the "click/wait" for prof-buildings gameplay model sucks vacuum.
The barn and the Lumber mill seem like missed opportunities / unfinished ideas.
A source for cool expansion themed TMog stuff is nice, but the drop system attached to it is ridiculous.
And cooking is just weird now. The stat-feasts make NO sense.
Addons trivialize missions to a almost gamebreakingly ridiculous extent.
I hate the 20-25 follower limit. Haaaate hate hate hate it. SMFH.

OTOH:
Fishing is a lot more fun now
I love having a DE system that I don't need an alt for (I wish we had one for Lockpicking).
I love everything about followers, and how you can give your garrison character via who you put in it, mine is full of humans, and cats, and tree people, and arakoa, and ghosts, and basically anyone who doesn't "fit" the GRR ARRG GRONNK SMASH "Horde" theme. (I desperately need to get Doc Schweitzer.)
Missions maybe be click-wait chumpery, but they're also are a nice way to feel "productive" while I'm not playing.
Aesthetically they're awesome.
Campaign quests rock.
One of the funnest things in game is get a couple guildies and rock an invasion, seriously, stroke of genius there. Plus, it's an awesome way to give your guildies a boost via the gear-bags and other goodies that you get from Golding an invasion.

All in all, I expected to hate Garrisons, but I don't, I think they're pretty awesome. But they're also something I definitely feel came at a high cost. And they don't seem "done" to me...there's a lot of unfinished ideas and papered over potential there.

01/30/2015 06:24 AMPosted by Allelya

What buildings do you guys put as your favs on your main(s)? (I have 2 mains but many alts)
What followers do you guys seem to prefer to level up and gear? (I'm having trouble deciding!)
What is your opinion on the current state of professions?

I consider Cail here as my main, though I actually tend to bounce between four or five "mains" depending on what I feel. Then I have an army of alts... regardless, Cail was my first to level.

As such I was careful to try and streamline his garrison as I leveled (and for sometime afterward) to produce as many resources as possible. Lumber Mill with Tree-Druid Follower, Trading Post, relentless follower missions (25 thanks to the barracks), and relentless exploration for hidden caches, rares, and the like. I put in the stables for those mounts. Eventually I noticed a strong steady trend of positive resource flow, so when I peaked about 6k I began to remodel and be adventurous. I replaced my Stables (after getting all the mounts) with a Barn for savage bloods, leather, and fur for alt professions.

Shortly afterward I began leveling my other 4 "mains" and figured only one needed a t3 Barn, so I put it in on an alt and replaced Cail's with a Dwarven Bunker. Since I had such a steady flow of resources, and I was nearing the end of my renovation stage, I could justify dropping a few hundred (20 per work order x 36 orders...do the math :P) in return for armor scraps and follower gear. I kept his Barracks for the bodyguard and the racial theme (and because it looked neat!) and I kept the Trading Post for the resources and eventual Auction Bot. I also eventually replaced the Lumber Mill with a Tavern for the Follower Recruitment...and because it looked neat! :P

Cail has been an Engineer since inception so I put in the Engineer Hut. Across from it is my Storehouse (Bank, Gbank, Transmogers) and beside it is my Salvage Yard.

My relentless Follower Missions continued and in what seemed to be no-time nearly all of them were of "purple" quality. As soon as they hit 100 I began arming them with the upgrades I got from the Dwarven Bunker as well as the upgrades that dropped from the Salvage Crates that they brought back. Again, in no-time it seemed, more than half of my 25 follower team was 655 and I was getting Salvage Crates like crazy. Upgrades, Mog Items, and Gold galore!

Now, his Garrison has stabilized. Not only do I feel it's fitting for the character, but its very useful for my general needs. Cail's even swapped from Engineer to Scribe and the building swap has been very helpful, making profession leveling relatively fast, easy, fun :), and useful since everything I'm making can be either sold on the AH or used on myself or an alt.

On professions themselves, I'd agree that they feel rather thin. However, I feel for now they make up for it with their utility and ease of leveling. Again, swapping professions no longer means running through low level zones or AH hounding for materials and the gold for training. I can get it done in the Garrison making things I'll actually be using. Plus, I'm confident that this isn't a final state. They'll be adding and possibly tweaking the profs in later patches, so I'm not stressing it.

As for followers, I had no plan. Thanks to Mormel's comments I now have a better idea to work toward, but at the time I just upgraded them as they came. With the Tavern I've recruited for professionals, wanting to swap out certain followers for more "gnome flavored" followers... but again thanks to Mormel I'm rethinking my strategy.

As for the other bits, I agree it becomes a bit of a chore especially across multiple characters. I for one still rather enjoy it though. Coming off of MoP I had a full gambit of 90s with Ranches and I enjoyed rolling through each of their farms for an abundance of whatever I was farming, so I'm still having fun rolling through five garrisons doing maintenance. Lately I've been choosing to let them slide in favor for RP or running instances, but I can always come back to the picking herbs and mining ore to replenish stockpiles as needed. :)

BLook says " Hail Blook Beater" every time he sees me. I'm okay with this.

As for followers, I had no plan. Thanks to Mormel's comments I now have a better idea to work toward, but at the time I just upgraded them as they came. With the Tavern I've recruited for professionals, wanting to swap out certain followers for more "gnome flavored" followers... but again thanks to Mormel I'm rethinking my strategy.

Yay! I'm helping! :D