#1 - July 7, 2015, 10:57 p.m.
A few ideas (note: not all of these are mine).
1) Unity bonus is built into all follower relics. This is exclusive with the Unity bonus on rings. This will give solo players a little bit of additional flexibility build wise.
2) XP bonus/MF bonus from multiplayer groups is removed and added baseline to all characters. At this point the additional speed and power granted by party play is sufficient incentive.
3) Increase the power of followers slightly. These are still something of a holdover from Vanilla D3 when group play made the game significantly harder and should get a small buff to reflect this. While they definitely should not equal a full player, a bit of additional firepower on their skills would be awesome.
4) A long term idea: Give each merc a unique skill (we can choose it in their talent tree) and assign it to a new button. It would be a long cooldown but powerful ability to make solo play a little more interesting.
For example:
Templar: Will Of The Templar - You and your follower become immune to all damage for 2 seconds and are healed by 20% of your maximum health every second for 3 seconds after this effect ends.
Scoundrel: Thieves' Guild - Summons 4 duplicates of the Scoundrel that uses the same abilities as your follower. These last for 30 seconds. When a duplicate dies, you gain 20% increased damage for 3 seconds.
Enchantress: Morph Ovum. All enemies on screen are turned into chickens and take 30% more damage. Lasts for 10 seconds, 5 seconds on elite monsters.
Thoughts?
PS: This is part of a larger thread of ideas for D3's future. Feel free to give it a look: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/18301002494?page=1