I made this post on my guild's forum and it received a lot of positive feedback so I thought I'd share. Forum link: http://cactar.lwlol.com/threads/follower-mission-theorycrafting.4747/

Key 6.1 follower changes:

• The option to purchase ability/trait rerolls for 1k GR
• The new Treasure Hunter trait
• Scavenger trait nerf (from 200% to 100% bonus)
• New Ogre/Machine/Wildling/Bird racial affinity trait items

In my opinion, the 6.1 "optimal" team setup now consists of:

• #1-3: Super Team that can 100% any mission
• #4-7: Scavenger Team that will maximize GR returns using only 4 followers
• #8-20/25: Treasure Hunter Team (ideally with Inn as a building to generate Treasure Missions) and any additional followers for work orders

The goal is to minimize the number of followers you need for VIP/GR missions and building slots while utilizing the rest of your follower spots on Treasure Hunters.

#1-3: Super Team

With a 3 follower / 6 racial affinity team, you can 100% any mission currently in the game. This will be the team you utilize for raid, legendary quest item, and other high priority missions.

More info here: MMO-Champion post | reddit post

With the addition of Winning With Wildlings, Grease Monkey Guide, Guide to Arakkoa Relations, and Ogre Buddy Handbook consumable items, you can force a racial affinity trait onto a follower.

To be able to proc missions that reward these, you need an active follower of that type. I recommend keeping one of each race on your active roster. Update: A user on another forum claims that they were able to receive the new racial trait missions without having a follower of that type active.

Followers of each type:

• Mechanical: Ziri'ak, Pleasure-Bot
• Arakkoa: Dawnseeker Rukaryx, Talonpriest Ishaal, Talon Guard Kurekk
• Ogre: Blook, Dagg, Tormmok
• Wildling: Goldmane, Leorajh, Meatball

How to actually create the team:

Option 1

Blook (Arakkoa love Beast love)

Lerojah (Ogre love Arakkoa love)

Dawnseeker Rukaryx (Ogre love Beast love)

6 racials Combat experience, and you just need luck about right rerolls using mission itens. Easy to get with alts.

MMO-Champion source

Option 2

Another less Inn-dependent and less resource intensive method is to use the new "exotic" Trait guides you can earn from missions.

• Take Dagg, give him a Grease Monkey Guide and Winning with Wildlings

• Take Goldmane the Skinner, give him an Ogre Buddy Handbook and a Grease Monkey Guide

• Take Ziri-ak and give it an Ogre Buddy Handbook and Winning with Wildlings

In Goldmane's case (and if either of the others came with a profession trait) I'd suggest using the new Trait Retraining Guide to get it off just because.

If you don't get boned by RNG and have any of the manuals overwrite each other, enjoy your dream team!

reddit source

This team will knock out the need to keep more than 3 followers to specifically target VIP missions.

Edit: It looks like 6x affinity plus 3x ability counters on a BRF mission will only net you 97% (Wowhead sample link). The best options here are either: A) Try to attain 6x racial affinity with Blook and Garona included on the team or B) Have a good spread of 6 different ability counters across your Super Team which should shore up any success chance gaps left by 6x racial affinity. Remember that you still have 17/22 other followers that will get you to 100% but the truly optimal goal is to create a 6x affinity team with 6 separate ability counters and Combat Experience/Master Assassin/Burst of Power/Epic Mount/Treasure Hunter on top.

#4-7: Scavenger Team

Based on the available Garrison Resource missions, here's the overall expected return for GR based on ability counter weighted by GR returned by each ability counter (or in other words, which ability counters will yield the most GR):

Group Damage: 261.08

Massive Strike: 238.83

Magic Debuff: 197.75

Danger Zones: 173.08

Timed Battle: 160.83

Minion Swarms: 113.33

Powerful Spell: 93.75

Wild Aggression: 63.33

Deadly Minions: 0

MMO-Champion source & details

There's 2 take-aways from this list: 1) Deadly Minions on a Scavenger follower is a wasted trait for the purpose of gathering GR and 2) There's 8 total counters meaning you can cover every ability with 4 followers.

With this exact line-up, you can 100% every GR mission with max Scavengers applied (and therefore max GR return):

• Scavenger follower #1: Group Damage, Massive Strike
• Scavenger follower #2: Danger Zones, Timed Battle
• Scavenger follower #3: Powerful Spell, Magic Debuff
• Scavenger follower #4: Wild Aggression, Minion Swarms

All other GR missions are single ability counters that can be covered by the team above (remember, there's no Deadly Minion GR missions).

The exact abilities per follower matter due to the high-level 3-team missions needing a particular composition.

With the new ability reroll items, it should be just a matter of RNG until you can reroll to these ability combos on followers that already have Scavenger.

Classes you need in order to roll the ability combinations above:

• Follower 1: BrM Monk
• Follower 2: Feral/Balance Druid, Hunter, Arc/Fire Mage, WW Monk, Priest, Ass/Com Rogue, Enh Shaman, Arms/Fury Warr
• Follower 3: DK, BM Hunter, Arms/Prot Warr
• Follower 4: Frost DK, MW Monk, Prot/Holy Paladin, Resto Shaman, Aff Lock

No additional Scavenger followers are needed.​

#8-20/25: Treasure Hunter Team

Following similar logic to the Scavenger team, below is a list of abilities with their total expected gold return based on having an Inn. When recruiting Treasure Hunter followers, you want to prioritize the abilities below going top down to maximize the traits effectiveness:

Massive Strike: 833.32

Wild Aggression: 666.64

Powerful Spell: 571.65

Timed Battle: 537.47

Minion Swarms: 501.65

Deadly Minions: 470.83

Danger Zones: 444.99

Group Damage: 443.32

Magic Debuff: 302.49

MMO-Champion source & details

Any slots not taken up by your Super Team or Scavenger Team should be slotted with a Treasure Hunter if your overall goal is to generate gold from missions (and at end-game, that's pretty much all there's left).