This is a great idea.

you think this I hard for you pc users as a ps3 user I'm baffled can someone explain the dlc
followers? so I can have a decent vote

I've only tried a few of them (Lydia, Erandur, Rayya, Brelyna, Meeko and Faendal) so I can't vote.
I always seem to end up with the same followers. But I like Erandur and Brelyna for their personalities.

Serana is the best written follower in the game. No discussion. She's a mage and essential to boot, so you don't have to worry about her dying in combat.

Don't vote for pets (trolls, Bran, Sceolang, Garmr, CuSith). Agmaer and Belevar are melee warriors with light armor as their main skill, so they're not incredibly useful. Ingjard and Celann are melee warriors with archery as a backup - Celann is a good tank. Durak is a decent sniper with his crossbow.

No idea about Hearthfire and Dragonborn.

Serana is only good when walking through the Dawnguard locations where she's specifically scripted to say certain things. Outside of Dawnguard she reverts to a normal basic follower.

I would have voted Beleval if she didn't have missing follower dialogue - I hate seeing silent subtitles.

I hate it when polls are setup where I can't just pick one. I wanna vote for Serana but the damn poll isn't letting me.

Am I the only person that finds Serana to be drastically overrated? I prefer followers who are actually good a combat. All she seems to do is infect me with vampirisim (friendly fire) and spam raise undead. My first run through of Dawnguard had literally hundreds of ash piles from goats, chickens, foxes, and rabbits. I learned the hard way that if travelling with Serana Fast Travel is a must.

She still is has the most fleshed out personality of all available followers. People love Lydia, but she's just a generic housecarl; Mjoll and Brelyna are examples of characters with interesting backstory, but your interactions with them are less complex than those with Serana. Though I admit I'm not sure how she behaves outside of the Dawnguard areas, as I prefer to travel alone and I rarely took her with me after I finished the DLC.

Why Beleval? She didn't strike me as particularly useful. I was hoping for another Bosmer archer, similar to my first character, but unfortunately she's not skilled with a bow. She's also capped at level 25, which is important to some players.

Well that's the problem I can't have everyone on one single poll so yeah..

But it's still the same with Dawnguard

She likes to kill steal in my game, or kill everything before I shoot one bolt. I like that.

My three favorites are at the end of section 5... Damn you.

BUT, I voted

Cicero
J'zargo
Farkas
Durak
Faendal
Serana
Rayya
Group 1
Group 5

Because I play mostly Assassins, I had to go with Cicero, then Jenassa. Though I would have to say that J'Zargo is a very close as well. He is freaking hilarious as you wander around with him.

Though I am a bit disappointed that the Dark Brotherhood Initiates (Male or Female, doesn't matter) didn't even make the list...

Yeah I had a tough thought if I were going to put them on the list sorry

I'm just partial to Bosmer, and they look really good in Oblivion. Unfortunately, we never get a female Bosmer companion in the vanilla game, and when we finally get one she has unvoiced dialogue... you'd think Bethesda would have done some quality control. They hired the same actress to come back and voice new lines for Beleval, and yet neglected the important generic lines which they left out the first time because Eola didn't need them.

Frea>All others. She's immortal, has the best starting equipment by far, she can duel-wield, she has a unique voice, and her backstory is second only to Serana's in depth (Even that's arguable).

I chose:
Frea-Explained above.
J'zargo-Only vanilla follower that can be lvl. 81
Teldryn Sero- Guy's a boss.
Marcurio- Game's best caster follower.
Derkeethus- Immortal and the best archer.
Serana- Deepest backstory.
Rayya- Dual wields curved swords!

The easiest choice was (1) (Frea>Everything)
The hardest choice was (3) (I like Illia and Sero)

The vanilla housecarls all have the exact same statistics and skillsets, so there is no reason to really categorize them as seperate followers.

They do have different VAs, though, which means that while Lydia sounds like she hates you, Jordis sounds eager to help and nice and sweet until she turns into a monster in battle. Calder sounds bland, Iona SOUNDS LOUD and Argis sounds cool and likeable. Personally, I love Argis and Jordis but can't stand the rest.

And she attacked me for no reason when I came home with my new friend, Ogol. Her dead body has been stashed the basemant ever since. She's definitely not getting my vote!

Agreed. Frea and Serana are my favorite. After these two, it'd be Aela and Farkas. Erandur too. Wish I could marry Frea and move into Skaal village.

Farkas and Erandur? Some of the worst in my mind

Farkas is a boss, as well as what I'd consider my character's best friend next to Ralof. Erandur is an efficient spell caster, and has good dialogue and an interesting background.

Vilja. Swedish accent and all. Yes, I know it's a mod, but it leaves anything Bethesda does so far in the dust it's ridiculous...

As characters I like them (ok, I adore Erandur, he's one of my favorite characters in the entire game), but as followers... Farkas' skills are completely mismatched and Erandur only knows low-level spells that don't match the fact that he levels up to 50. He has the advantage of being one of few mage followers who switches to melée weapons when needed, and he IS efficient on lower levels, but when it comes to BEST follower... No.

I don't look at stats when determining best. Plus Farkas kills things pretty easily despite his flawed specs, and Erandur handles his own as a support role. Good enough for me. Especially when I give them upgraded gear. They may not be the best combat wise, but they're good enough. I don't rely on my followers to kill things anyway.

My list is Serana, Frea, Aela, Farkas and Erandur. For mainly story reasons, but they all whoop ass. Especially Serana Frea and Aela.