Comments

Comment by Snuggly

Yay!

Comment by brekthegreat

With the recent nerf to Scavenger it will be pretty tough to buy these from the vendor since they cost 1000 resources...so i hope this mission comes every week or two, like the raid missions.

Comment by 523477

Can anyone tell me if there is a mission requirement of some kind or some other quest/achievement that must be completed before this NPC will have these for sale? I have checked with him and he has nothing at all. Or has this been removed from the game?

Comment by Aaahead

If this works like other follower retraining items, you'll be able to use this on deactivated followers, but not followers who are currently on a mission. ~~And you won't get a confirmation warning before it's applied, so click carefully!~~ (A confirmation dialog box was added.)

Comment by Eido

Details about Follower Ability Retraining Manual, Follower Trait Retraining Guide and Follower Retraining Certificate:

You will be prompted with a confirmation before using either item on a follower.
Rerolls any non-permanent Abilities/Traits.
View the tooltip to see if a Trait is permanent or not (ex. Bodyguard).
Upon reroll, you may receive the same Ability/Trait as before.
Does not affect follower iLvl.
List of possible rerolled Abilities
NOTE: Ablilities are follower class AND specialization specific.
This information is listed on an ability's tooltip (ex. Anti-Magic Shell "Requires Frost Death Knight.")
List of possible rerolled Traits
NOTE: exclusive Traits "will not be assigned to a follower who already has another exclusive Trait."
See #3 in the list below for more information on exclusive Traits.

Complete lists:

List of all Abilities.
List of all Traits.
List of exclusive Traits.
Exclusive Traits "will not be assigned to a follower who already has another exclusive Trait."
There are no exclusive Abilities.
Example of an exclusive Trait: Alchemy.
So if your follower already has one of these exclusive Traits, they will not gain another.
However, since some of the exclusive Traits are NOT permanent, your follower may lose the exclusive Trait upon reroll.
List of permanent Abilities.
List of permanent Traits
Abilities that cannot be obtained randomly.
Traits that cannot be obtained randomly.

Comment by vegidio

Be careful, you can use this item on your follower and get the exact same abilities :-P

It's a stupid design, if you ask me.

Comment by Grimnarl

I blew 3k resources trying to retrain Ahm. Didn't like the first ability reroll so tried again and it switched him back to his original set, arg. SO tried one more time and he got the same one as the first time I rerolled him. So perhaps there are only two choices and that's it.

Comment by nordveien

These currently do not stack (first week of 6.1).

Comment by Azphorel

I really wish I'd read up on this item before getting it but it seemed very cut and dry to me. I used it, my dude 'dinged' and nothing changed. At first I'd thought the item had glitched so I came here before putting a ticket in or poking Orlyia at the forums in order to see if anyone else had this issue and if there was a quick reload fix or something. I'm glad I did to avoid the ticket queue but I'm very disappointed to learn that I just rerolled into the same abilities and that that is both common and intended for this item. Really not worth getting unless you are resource capped and don't care if your soldier gets a new ability or not.

Comment by oscarucb

A Blizzard GM just confirmed this item is currently known to be broken, confirming the observations of multiple users that it often makes no change to follower abilities, far beyond what random chance should allow.

My original ticket:

I used three on a single follower (Lin Tenderpaw) and three times in a row the abilities did not change.

Getting a duplicate ability combo once has a low but plausible probability (10% chance, assuming a uniform random distribution over the ten possible unique ability combinations available to that follower). However getting the same outcome three times in a row is far worse than is believable. If the space was truly uniform random, then getting the same reroll three times in a row should be a 1 in 1000 occurrence (0.1% chance) and I'm simply not that lucky.

The fact that multiple players are reporting this problem strongly suggests there is a bug at work here, or some additional restrictions on the possible reroll space that they are not telling us about.

This is the latest response from Customer Support:

Game Master Coranyto reporting for duty and i've just read about the troubles you are having with Lin Tenderpaw. There's tons of new changes that were just applied from our last patch so I can definitely see why you would reach out for help here and I've got some info for ya below.

Our developers are actually working on this as it is a bug with our latest patch. They should be close to having it fixed but haven’t' received word as to when a fix will be released. Typically with patch bugs like these, a hotfix will be pushed to address multiple things at once. I have gone ahead and added your information to the current bug report that we have so hopefully it will assist QA into discovering the problem and getting it resolved more quickly. ^_^

Sadly we are unable to intervene and provide XXXXX for players while the issue is being looked into, however I have included two websites below. The first being our developers Known Issues blog, and the second our Hotfix forum post! You can keep an eye on both of these websites for more information through-out the week as to what our Developers are working on and when they were fixed!

Known Issues - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/14865856454

Patch Notes - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/18061645/

I wish you the best of luck and hope you have a fun rest of the week! If anything else comes up in the future, we're always happy to help out. <3

TL;DR: Blizzard confirms that the retraining items are bugged, and if you want to be safe you should save up any such items for later use after this bug is hotfixed.

Comment by Tipspid

Do not buy this item

Comment by Neci

I would like to choose my own ability. Not that I'm complaining on my Rogue. Everything is 100%. Still, would love to change abilities for my alts and make them like my Rogue. Random abilities can hurt you really bad as it did my Pally.

Comment by Casn

Remember that when rerolling Abilities for follower, those are selected only from those avaible not only to his class, but also to his specialization. Several followers, like Soulbinder Tuulani, in their default state have abilities that are not avaible to their specialization, so if you reroll, you lose those abilities for good.

Comment by Melandroso

I just bought one of these and it worked, so they have been fixed now. So go ahead!

Comment by 1361074

WARNING: Still bugged. The CSR cumdump once again admitted it was a bug but at the same time said it's not a bug. Told me it can't message the devs, but I could.

@#$% this. I'm out.

Calling my bank, getting a reversal for the WOD purchase, just because.

wowhead has been great, but unfortunately it's impossible to play WOW anymore because of the massive ^&*!ery at blizzard. I hope wowhead is able to find some other game so they don't tank when blizzard does.

Comment by 293593

My Harrison Jones had:

Kick
Sap

I used the Follower Ability Retraining Manual and it gave him...

Sap
Kick

Comment by Eillesthis

These stack now, like Follower Retraining Certificate. I almost cried.

Comment by armrule

This is still broken in 6.2

Comment by 141298

This is still broken! Tried it again tonight to see but it didn't work. Won't purchase any more; wastes too many garrison resources.

Comment by armrule

fixed in 6.2.3

Comment by Sumona

Used this thing seven times, abilities just swapped slots, didn't get new ones.. talk about 'rerolling' more like, retrolling.

Burned 7k Resource now.. great. A weeks worth of waiting.

Comment by AverageStalker

I feel like this thing pretty much always gives you a couple of the same crappy traits. I've used it 5 times now on leeroy jenkins and literally every time, he has the same 1 crappy ability that I have 11 of, and then it swaps out between 1 other very mediocre ability. I am sick of spending 1k resources on this piece of trash and will not be using it anymore. I wanted to warn anyone else thinking of getting good abilities from this- even if you get 1 good one, the other will be rubbish. You are better off recruiting new followers.

Comment by Vifor

Lately (after Legion pre-expansion patch) it seems that using Follower Ability Retraining Manual or Follower Retraining Certificate can have as effect the follower gaining same ability twice. I'm not sure if is intended, or is accidental and will get fixed.
I added some screenshots to prove it, I hope they get approved.

Comment by 1739974

BUGGED
I've wasted 3000 resources on this item, and one "reroll abilities AND traits" special. NONE have changed 3 different character's "Sprint" ability to anything at all. (the usual, i have 4 sprints, no group damage mitigation, trying to ditch a sprint)

My Opinion is there's a marker somewhere saying some of these can't change. Which frankly makes the description false, and should be changed and refunds given, but no luck on that front (I HAVE tried via tickets. They say no very nicely, but still no :)

A simple fix would be to just give a "Cannot change that ability" message if there's a secret "no change" set rather than just taking the item, wasting the resources, and doing nothing at all.

And this isn't just a "rolled same ability", the odds of doing that 4 times in a row are laughably unlikely :)

Please fix this.

Next, because I'm either a glutton for punishment, stubborn or just plain dumb, I'm going to try to change the Other ability I have 4 of...

Comment by gealex

4 years later and it is still worthless

Comment by Fatness

Still broken somehow. The hacks at Blizzard officially don't give a $%^& about doing their jobs.

Comment by noamchomsky

Still bugged in 2020. As many have noted here in these comments, it usually makes no change to any follower abilities.

Comment by Kaorhy

Edit: seems to be fixed few days after my reports? Need to check if it's actually fixed.

Still broken in 2023. Using it does nothing at all to your abilities. Do not buy it.

Garrisons can still be lucrative and that's a shame you cannot optimize your followers as intended.

If you read this please report this as a bug (you can also try reporting it on PTRs), you can copy paste this:

"The item Follower Ability Retraining Manual (item id 122272) sold for 1000 garrison resources no longer works. It should reroll non-default and permanent abilities from garrison followers. Nothing happens when the item is used. Please fix this item. Thank you."

Comment by WedgeMcCloud

Having just used this item on PTR, Dragonflight build 10.2.0, this item can be confirmed to be working - however it also is entirely capable of re-rolling abilities exactly the same as they are, appearing as if the item does not work. I used it twice: The first time rolling the same abilities, showing no visual change whatsoever; and the second time re-rolling the same first ability and a different second ability, meaning only the second showed any visual effect for the change.

It all seems to come down to RNG, with no excluding the current abilities as a possible result - which is the same as I generally recall it having the ability to do so before (as most follower classes have something like 5 possible abilities, making for a much higher chance of re-rolling the same abilities in the same order).

Comment by Doloria

Follower Retraining Still Broken:

The problem? Selected a level 40 follower at the mission table who wasn't on a mission. Clicked on Retaining guide/manual in inventory. All traits and abilities on the follower lit up (although only the Follower Retraining Certificate is supposed to change both abilities and traits). Clicked on the message asking for confirmation to "upgrade" follower. No change. Retraining guide/manual disappeared. Repeated on different characters. No retraining guide/manual/certificate worked.

Reported bug.

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Quick Facts

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Follower Ability Retraining Manual

Item Level 1
Binds when picked up

Use: Reroll the abilities on a follower.

Max Stack: 20

Sell Price: 15

Vendor Locations

This item can be purchased in Frostwall (10) and Lunarfall (9).

Guides

Garrison Town Hall Daily Quests Guide to Farming and Spending Garrison Resources in Warlords of Draenor Warlords of Draenor Follower Guide Warlords of Draenor Garrison Missions Guide

Follower Ability Retraining Manual

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