It’s a good idea, @erjoh , but 50 armor is nothing considering you can easily go over 1000 armor points with the armor you give them. More or less 50 would be practically the same. 10% attack is decent though.
I think you’re misinterpreting what I said 
What I meant is that when you’re outside of combat there is no longer any sense of urgency, because your thrall is not at a risk of dying… so if you wanted to, you could take your time…
And no, under normal circumstances it is not going to increase downtime at all… because with proper healing food in most encounters your thrall will never lose enough HP to require “waiting” for healing… they will typically be at full health before their health regen and the bonus from healthy diet even kicks in… but if they aren’t and you’re in a rush… simply pressing use on a piece of food will give them extra healing or you can just use a bandage which will be far superior.
Keep in mind, healthy diet only gives them a 10 health regen bonus and only outside of combat.
In 99% of cases both perks are kinda useless, but in that 1% of cases one of them can prevent your thrall from dying, while the other can only help healing it up slightly faster IF it survives… but it would be too late if your thrall died to that last 100 damage that commanding presence would’ve compensated for.
That about sums it up… use whichever you want thou 
It’s not like I’m going to get paid if you take my advice 
I think we can safely conclude both perks are pretty useless. 
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The number of people in this thread incapable or unwilling to read a parse is… interesting.
So now you see why I started this thread. This is exactly the type of response I’ve found everywhere else I’ve asked. There is no consensus other than what should be obvious by now, that neither perk is all that valuable. Thanks for the insightful commentary. In the end I have to choose one, so I’m going with Xyver’s rationale that even a 1% chance of not dying is better than a faster regen time AFTER the fight.
Now for a more interesting debate: War Party vs. Well Trained. The consensus everywhere else I’ve asked strongly favors Well Trained, which is what I’m currently trying out. But War Party adherents make their own strong cases. What say forumites?
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Well trained is better but not as fun.
I go for Healthy Diet. Passive regen is always a winner.
Hard to say because of the bugs, @Wanderlust .
War party is fun. If both thralls are performing in synergy, they are quite effective.
Well trained gives you a significantly better thrall that might endure harder fights. But two thralls always give more dps than one. They are more fragile, though.
To play safe, I would go for well trained.
But I generally don’t do authority builds.
Keep in mind that the potion of bestial memory is very easy to craft. You don’t need to lock yourself in any build. I change builds depending on what I will be doing. Are you hunting or gathering mats? War party with a bearer and a fighter. Going through a tough fight and neex a strong thrall? Well trained. Feeling corageous? Versatile build, with a disposable thrall. Want a challenge? SAV build with no thrall.
I suggest you just take the 10 minutes and read that entire guide that was linked, there’s a good chance you’ll learn lots of new things, there’s also a section that discusses the strengths and weaknesses of those 2 perks.
To save you the trouble of speculation thou, there’s no objective superior choice without context… which one is better is situational and depends on a lot of things… your playstyle, the equipment you want to use… the enemies you’re fighting… etc. ultimately it will be a choice, both of them work just fine.
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Oh man, how I wish that was true on PS5. The main reason for picking war party just for fun and in easier scenarios is war party acting up so often . It’s a real headache. You need to be always paying attention to check if one of the thralls isn’t spacing out.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t in the same session…
Whip them or something 
cut their pay if they’re not working and they’re hired.
Usually repeating commands solves it for the moment, but it doesn’t always last, @Xevyr . Other times not even that.
Imagine two thralls fighting a mob and one of them simply decides out of the blue to put away his weapon and come back to you, while the fight is still going, leaving the other thrall alone to fend for itself. It’s good for a few laughs, but if you lose a thrall because of that, suddenly it isn’t so funny anymore.
Even if one thrall returns to you, it shouldn’t be an issue if you’re fighting alongside your thralls.
That is completely irrelevant, @Ciero9 . It shouldn’t have put the weapon away and quit fighting while there were plenty of enemies near it. This was a comical example. Sometimes one of them just stands there not even defending itself. Of course it is an issue and a big one at that.
I use war party to level thralls. When I’m not leveling thralls I don’t use authority period.
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Same. Authority is rarely something I even consider because by and large it has been useless for me. Although I did try corrupting authority to fly mah bat to the ceiling a few times.
Mostly in encumb or pvp spec.
But to answer OP and agree with others: do what you feel works best for you.
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This forum is my most trusted source of reliable information about this game, given the wildly contradictory things you read on the net. And it appears the consensus here is that it depends on context, but either works.
@Rust & @Kikigirl, neither of you use Authority, but I assume you use thralls? Is it your feeling that there are much better perks elsewhere or that Authority isn’t enough bang for the buck?
I’m currently running the following build:
STR-0
AGI-15
VIT-5
AUT-20 (Commanding Presence, Well Trained)
GRT-0
EXP-20 (Efficient Harvest-Beast of Burden)
We are PvE only, I love to build and craft, but my wife is more combat oriented and wants to do more dungeons/vaults/combat, etc. We use bows to pull and punching daggers up close in order to get as much attack speed possible to help Commanding Presence, incremental as it is. I have a Berserker and my wife is still using an Accursed III Fighter.
Does that context change the calculus any? Any suggestions for a better PvE build. If you’re not putting points into Authority, and you’re fighting alongside your thralls, how do you keep them alive? Do you just have outstanding gear? I’m finding it hard to improve our gear without the many recipes I still lack. On EL I was able to go to specific places to get specialty books and recipes. Here I have to pray to RNGesus and I don’t think he plays on this server.
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Authority means you’re giving up points elsewhere.
For strictly PVP I do STR 20 AGI 20 VIT 20, this gives me the ability to benefit from perks in all 3 that help immensely in combat. I’ll do this if I’m leveling 1 thrall slowly.
For farming (usually with thralls) I do AGI 20 VIT 20 EXP 20. I’m able to carry anything, farm anything and benefit from the full health as well as agility bonuses with weapons.
IMO not having full VIT at the very least and only partial points in AGI or STR can be way more troublesome than it needs to be. My friends that do authority do at least full AGI, VIT and AUT if they’re leveling thralls.
Thralls used to be a constant but -for me- the only benefits are for helping me a bit in combat, backpacks or snake pits at my base. You can take down a 3 skull world boss on your own and the thralls often just stand there anyway.
But as for keeping thralls alive, even your best geared thralls can die pretty easily. Learn your enemies and how they affect thralls. Gear them in Epic as soon as possible, even drops from enemies, make sure they have legendary weapons, always have lots of food and keeping healing pots on them helps. If they look like they’re losing health to fast, run and command them to leave. Regroup, heal, go back.
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The issue I have with your #'s is that the 0 grit is making your experience annoying in that you get winded easier
For PVE I bounce between two builds.
Agility
AGI 15, Vit 15, Grit 10 EXP 20
SL medium armor with exchanging the gloves with other set (recommend stygian soldier for bump to health and stamina) M Black blade with Fencer weapon fitting as primary
This gives you flexibility but still able to dominate most, if not all of the map. You don’t need the help of any thralls since you can carry it all. The fencer weapons fitting adds 10 to your light damage but subtracts 6 from your heavy. This gives your weapon a predictable damage regardless of type of attack and maximizes combo efficiencies (LLLH) with minimal stamina drain (you got 2 full combos worth within stamina regen) and great speed.
Authority
Godbreaker armor (technically 3pc of godbreaker and 2pc of chilled GB) weapon is anything really but bow would be the best.
V20, Aut 20, Grit 10 EXP 10. This is also my standard sorcery build as well.
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Get used to brewing potions of bestial memory. Don’t lock yourself in a build, because they are all situational.
Now, the mannequins even allow quick swap, so you can have the gear to match your build. Place a preservation box and 3 manequins with some weapon stands in a room near the exit. Change builds when necessary.
Test several builds to find the sweet spot fir all-around-build you will spend most if your time in.
Learn to gather materials efficiently. Know the bests spots in the map and farm big. Farming near the base is just for when you are starting. This applies even on Siptah, although at a lesser extent. Then you’ll do farming runs with a specific build, gear and followers.
On pve, for combat, the build is mostly the same that you use on pvp, but you can sacrifice 5 points in Vitality and put them in Expertise so you can carry a little more and, most importantly, benefit from heavy armor while keeping your encumbrance on the green.
You want full strenght and full agility. Rolling thrust is a must, not so much for the extra armor pen, but for the stamina cost free strike you get with it. You want second skin instead of combo master.You won’t be doing many finishers, so it’s better to benefit from those 10% more armor pen you’ll get from Precision Strike from Agility.
For pve, you prefer Crushing Swings to Blood-mad Berzerker. For pvp it’s the opposite… You should go to 15 Vit to get those extra 100 points Robust will give you.
There’s nothing you can’t beat on pve with this build, but you can go full SAV if you want, but you’ll have to reduce the weight of your armor so you can use heavy.
Thralls suck anyway, so if you are counting facing mobs, take one you can afford to lose if things go sour. Give it a mace, put fast healing food in its inventory and equip it with dragonbone armor. You can refine it, obviously, but it won’t make a world of difference and Dragonbone is cheap to make. Better still is giving it the epic armors you loot.
When thralls were better, it used to pay guiving them supreme armors. Now, not so much, so you won’t be wrong if you take the most efficient route and just give them a decent kit.
Goof luck out there and keep those bestial memory potions flowing.
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