As far as my experience goes with these two perks, Well Trained wins in 9 out of 10 situations.
TL;DR
War Party;
Double damage output at max. 2 HP pools wasted vs AoE’s. Less consistant attacking. Doubled training speed, inventory capacity, feeding and hallway blocking. More pressure in PvP. Double Concussive Damage Potential (for thrall taking).
Well Trained;
Almost triple damage output. Much tankier follower. Really easy early follower leveling. No negatives.
In theory War Party gives you;
A static 100% damage output buff (2 followers, both with 0% bonus damage from your own stats now, which includes potions, food & gear. Yes, you read that right)
2x combined HP
Twice as much stagger/stun potential
Twice as many inventory slots
Levelling two followers at once
An additional Truncheon for knocking out new thralls
At the cost of;
2x sets of gear (for humans only)
2x food provided (optimally)
2x as much hallway blocked (always -_- )
In practice;
An effective damage output buff of 100% sounds good on paper, but is sadly no more effective than the 80+% that isn’t lost if Well Trained is chosen.
The 2x follower worth of HP pools is a null point, as more often than not both followers will get schmazed by the same attack, turning those 2 split Health Pools into effectively 1.
Twice us much stagger and stun potential is also often wasted, as they generally attack the same target, which would have been staggered enough anyway. In PvP, it is an effective means to keep one enemy player perpetually occupied, but can still be a moot point because your enemy likely has a follower of their own.
Double the inventory slots is great for moving house & farming
Leveling 2 followers at once has its obvious time saving benefits.
Whats not to like about more concussions?
In Theory, Well Trained gives you;
+80% damage output, plus a further varying amount dependant on the follower type because of the +20 to their strength and agility
A single tankier follower due to the +20 Vitality and +20 Grit, granting the average high tier follower +1500 HP. Extra Armour rating varies greatly, but is noticeably more effective on animal followers due their low armour in general (and due to diminishing returns, they get a lot more reduction out it than humans do, as human followers typically have armour you made for them).
Much easier early levelling of a single follower.
At the cost of;
Nothing.
In practice;
80+% damage speaks for itself. There is also the bonus of more consistent damage, as your follower can generally move more freely to make said attacks. For animal companions, this 80+% averages 280% bonus damage when factoring in the +10% (generally) per point in strength & agility they receive.
An average +1500 HP will make your follower significantly tankier. Factor in the bonus armour, and their effective HP skyrockets. Doubly so for animal companions.
All attribute bonuses apply regardless of follower level, effectively making a level 0 follower have the stats of a level 20 out of the box.
In conclusion, War Party is only good for Farming setups & is okay in PvP. Side by side, this isn’t a bad thing, until you consider Authority’s out of the box purpose is to make your followers better combat companions, not better farming companions.
I always felt the only reason to use War Party was to take two human thralls with truncheons and go farm more thralls. I don’t believe any of the stats gained from Well Trained contribute to concussive damage. So have two thralls doing this would be better than one.
Outside of that. And the leveling of more followers like the OP said. Go with Well Trained.
I like to have two followers, for the simple reason that I enjoy to NOT be the “hero”. I want to command more units, not less XD
I’d like to be a commander, cheesing with a bow and yelling commands in the background
I’ve been super busy so I haven’t had much time to play around with the big update. Thanks for this break down and considerations.
With war party I do have a question, do the thralls split xp or do they both get full so for the kill? You may have answered it above with the doubled training speed, just asking for clarity sake.
Yeah, and I’m painfully aware =/ I’m one of those scrubs that wish thralls weren’t butchered this way.
Totaly forgot to say thanks for this post tho! Informative and well put together
War Party + all the sorcery minions you can summon, + as many zombies as you can raise, + the zomb-pocalypse sorcery.
Don’t try this on previous gen consoles, they will crash.
The point being with animated dead, they come out fully leveled, can have more following, and are basically ammunition. Once you have enough followers they do start roving around to attack different targets.
However, unless going all the way into the shambling horde path, or on a recruitment drive, quality tends to be better than quantity.
If one is going war party, and has Siptah gear, this one strongly suggest having outer dark gear on one follower, for the sunder, and some sort of DoT on the other follower. In short diversify status problems.
That said, there is something nice about having a pet human and an animal companion at the same time.
Hi, Thanks for the comparison. Well concluded! Exactly what I have felt.
Downside of Well-Trained? Well, he/she has to eat 10 gruels when you pick them up…
I have been using War Party because it looked cool. But they actually fight like a sissy.
Now I don’t even have any of the final perks, and my Lian with 15 authority hits like a truck.
Really good analysis, thank you for sharing it!
You just saved me a post asking about that comparison.
To me, it is:
a- Situational: like for every scenario you mentioned.
b- Roleplaying: if you want two particular companions to be with you, or if you have a favorite one, or if you want to feel like having a personal small army with you.
I really like that we can choose, and really like both options.
And for the HP pool, I usually have one companion with the “stand and defend” option so they attack from different flanks the same target (at least for a couple of attacks, or forever if you have one fighter and one archer like I usually do).
OK, it was extremely easy to finish the dungeon alone, but trust me if I knew it I would order them to stop following outside. The skeletons in celar wine still hit worst than arena champion and I had to heal the berserker after each fight of 1 skull boss. To the one with the khari 2h he almost die and I was omg, this berserker was wearing 1300 armor . The whole thing is changed, we have to adopt in the new changes again. @tobbiusness can you suggest a build that will still make me a fighter and have a strong (or two) thrall?
War Party seemed to be ok until I went up against the Arena Champion. Killed a 20 Cim Zerker in buffed Cim Plate like he was a scrub and almost took out Delinsia too.
I’m going to respec into Well Trained and see how that works out.
I did have 1 big problem with War Party and that was too often 1 Thrall would just stand back and watch the other fight. Only when the target was dead would the Thrall move up to where the other one was.
Talk about Truncheon, there’s some way to order thralls to switch to truncheon when hitting a designated enemy? Or you equip them with truncheon only in order to make them non-lethal?
I love how FUNCOM runs out of ideas 5 minutes into designing something, “and for the last perk choice in authority, our top crown jewel will be … lets just slap some +20 attributes and call it a day”
P.S. War party should buff thrall experience gained by 50% - what war party thralls lack in damage and survivability should be offset by faster new thrall leveling.
Tbh I have not had any survivability issues with war party? Granted I throw on voidforge dragon armor on my zerkers and they run around with 1700+ armor before grit so that probably makes a big difference
I also feel strongly that the point of OP stating that well trained has more consistent/more damage uptime is severely flawed
My experience with Boss fights is the opposite
Lots of bosses stagger or knockdown your thralls alot and with war party more often than not 1 is still standing and attacking when the other gets knocked around
I feel like war party maybe could use a slight buff but overall performs very well in combat
Another point is with more weapons in your party comes the ability to upkeep more Conditions like bleed, poison, sunder, etc and keep everything stacked
In the end yes I agree that we’ll trained is better but it’s not quite as huge a gap as some seem to think
(at least for a couple of attacks, or forever if you have one fighter and one archer like I usually do).
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. The whole thing is changed, we have to adopt in the new changes again.