I'm playing a conjuration type battlemage through the dawnguard quests and i'm having trouble deciding whether to go dawnguard or volkihar because of the followers you get from each side. What i'm trying to do with my conjuration character is have as many followers with me as possible so it's like I have a small army with me. I know from playing on my other characters that dawnguard has the armored trolls which you can have with an additional follower. With 1 troll, 1 follower, and 2 summoned thralls i'd have 4 not including whatever my follower summons. With the Gargoyle amulet from the volkihar you can have 2 gargoyles out at once but would that cause my 2 atronachs to disappear? Sounds kind of confusing but i'd just like to know which side would be best for my playstyle.

So remember I wanna have the most followers out at the same time. I just find it fun. I don't really care if I don't get the crossbows for this character.

Also, i'm playing on an xbox so I can't mod.

I think you can only summon the Gargoyles in Vampire Lord form, but not 100% sure on it.

You can summon Gargoyles ONLY in vampire lord form, and the amulet allows to summon additional gargoyle for only 30 seconds. You can summon the gargoyles and then turn back into normal form and the gargoyles won't dissapear, but transformation takes a few seconds and I don't believe it would be a very useful tactic.

You're both correct. I'd summon my second atronach, then turn vampire lord, then summon the gargoyles. It's not really that hard but I see what you mean.

If anything, I summon a gargoyle in VL form just so I don't have to kite. Otherwise the VL form will rip just about anything a new one. There isn't really a need for "friends".