At the start of each battle, this Hero gets +20% attack for 6 turns. In battles with multiple waves, the effect is refreshed at the beginning of each wave.
Special Skill: Gift Sack
Deals 205% damage to the target and nearby enemies.
Summons an Elf Minion for the caster and nearby allies with 10% HP and 10% attack inherited from the caster.
The target and nearby enemies get -24% attack for 3 turns.
The target and nearby enemies get -34% defense for 3 turns.
All-In-One Reference, courtesy of @Lumi tap on image to view it fully
Christmas (Winter) Heroes now all have a family bonus for unique heroes of the same family.
Winter Family
Bonus for 2 / 3 heroes:
+2% / +3% health for Minions
+2% / +3% attack for Minions
Balance Changes
February 2022
November 2023 (2nd Balance update)
What do you think of Buddy?
This thread is for thoughts and discussion on Buddy.
Based on preferences Forum members have expressed, please try to stick mainly to Buddy and not wander off topic too much to other heroes.
Some Popular Questions for Discussion
Is Buddy worth summoning for?
Would you use Buddy on Defense? Offense? War? Quests/Events? Titans?
Which heroes on your Roster best pair with Buddy?
What heroes would you take when facing Buddy as an opponent?
Would you give Buddy Ranger Emblems? Which Talent Grid path will you choose?
What do you think of Buddyâs special?
What do you think of Buddyâs character design?
If you Summoned Buddy and would like to post your results, please include some thoughts on why you Summoned Buddy, and whether/how you plan to make use of her.*
*NOTE: Summon Results posted without any commentary/feedback at all should be flagged as Off Topic and removed, based on preferences expressed by the Forum community. Please include some comments about what you think of Buddy when posting Summon Results. In addition to opinions about Buddy, you are also encouraged to include how many Summons it took before receiving Buddy (or how many Summons youâve done without receiving Buddy), so other players are presented with realistic experiences of the rarity of Seasonal Event Heroes.
Avoiding Overspending & Heartache
Or: How many summons are needed to get a Seasonal Event Epic Hero?
Itâs important to remember that Seasonal Event Heroes have extremely low summoning odds. No amount of summoning will guarantee a Seasonal Hero.
On average, in a 10-pull, you have a 25% chance of summoning a particular Seasonal Epic Hero.
But that statistic can lead our minds astray in exactly how our odds play out as we continue summoning.
Some useful insights:
58 times out of 100, youâll get a specific Seasonal Epic Hero by pull 30
95 times out of 100, youâll get a specific Seasonal Epic Hero by pull 104
99 times out of 100, youâll get a specific Seasonal Epic Hero by pull 160
Putting that in Perspective
42 out of every 100 people wonât get a specific Seasonal Epic Hero by the 30th pull
If 1 Million players each summoned 30 times, 420,000 of those players wouldnât get the specific Seasonal Epic Hero
5 out of every 100 people wonât get the specific Seasonal Epic Hero by the 104th pull
If 1 Million players each summoned 104 times, 50,000 of those players wouldnât get the specific Seasonal Epic Hero
More Insights & Reading
I highly recommend reading these two threads for more information and context on summoning odds:
If youâve read them a million times before, you may consider reading them again before deciding on your budget for summoning. A little time spent deciding on how much money you want to risk on summoning goes a long way to avoiding disappointment, frustration, and regret later.
This elf is still my only D dropper in green and I love him on quest teams. I limit broke him and thought others may want to see the stats. For emblems it was all HP/D:
If this nerf plays out as expected Buddy becomes a massive casualty and innocent bystander. He is not the problem, the problem is purely a combination of all the 5âs together. Any nerf should impact only the 5âs and, IMO, only the family bonus and synergy. The heroes individually on other teams are far from broken.
Buddy is still a green D dropper, which is rare, but suffers from short turn duration compared to say ramming pulverizers. The meat shield gave him a nice enough bonus to compensate, especially with his high HP for a 4*. It can also save a team spot from a second healer, which is a prime use for me.
This 30% reduction hits Buddy disproportionately hard compared to a 30% reduction off of a 5* hero.
If this buff goes into effect and you have a base Buddy +20 say, you would need to use aethers just to get him to where he was pre-nerf to get his minion HP back up. That is a pretty lousy use of aethers IMO. If you have just base Buddy or post nerf Buddy +20 I really question how worthwhile his minions are. Even my current one +19 and LBâd has relatively âweakâ minions by game standards. Theyâll be rendered are par with the Glenda, Zulag, Reuben era minions. Those heroes arenât supposed to be minion summoners though, Buddy is.
Buddy will get benched hard by a lot of people, which is a shame and completely unnecessary.
There is no reason this nerf should hit Buddy, Carol, Rudolph, and Frosty aside from a potential family bonus reduction. Their cards and stats are fine.
I know this is the Buddy thread, but it gets lost in the balance thread because everyone is so mad about costume Krampus.
I canât be the only one who feels cheated out of a great 4* for absolutely no reason, right?
Nope. Came here to complain about the nerf myself.
I used Buddy as a tank for a while and got his hp over 1500, pre troops. A 10% minion is a 150
Hp minion. Now his 7% minion is a third as tough at about 100 hp.
Why?
Is this because they want Pengui owners/summoners to continue feeling good and have $omething to $ummon for? Because I donât see Buddy causing any trouble anywhere. Not top 100 wars. Not high diamond raiding. Not events. Nowhere.
The nerf to Buddy makes so little sense Iâm actually shocked Carol didnât also receive a nerf to her minions.
My impression is that they did not even think of the 4*. They have regularly stated that players âare more interested in 5* heroesâ (translation âthis is what we can get more money out ofâ) , so they just looked at the 5*.
Meanwhile, the Circus family got a kick-a$$ family buff, having a 50% of passive cleanse while only one is on the battlefield, and 100% when there are three. Not even Proteus works against them anymore (just experimented it myself today)
As much as it hurt me to say it, they seem to be right
Just look, people complain everywhere about krampus. Itâs krampus here, krampus there, useless, nerfed to death, bad game, greedy, destroyed blablabla.
Dozen new threads and even in completely unrelated topics all you here is they destroyed krampus and nearly nobody talks about the 4*âŚ
I think itâs a shame what they did with buddy. He has emblems and was really high on my limit break list. Now Iâm not sure anymore.
His super sturdy minions were nice for no heal tournaments especially in combination with Carol and the family bonus, but now even with limit break he would be worse than a week ago. And those new heroes get stronger and stronger so Iâm not sure how well he will do in the future.
At the moment I will definitely not limit break him, and the only reason why he can keep the emblems is I have no better alternativeâŚ
I did limit break mine previously and, in rough numbers, he now matches what he was at +20 not limit broken pre nerf. The aethers somewhat compensate the nerf as it comes to minion strength.
Iâm not sure on most rosters that makes it worth it. In my case I would say no. If I had done other 4âs first and was saving Buddy to this round I would not do him probably.
The D drop was nice but his main, or at least equal, purpose was meat shield. I donât like using two hero slots on healers. My best green healer being Melendorâs costume, which is HoT, the minions compensated.
Even pre nerf his minions were weaker than say Seshatâs and people were saying her minions are weak compared to the latest heroes. The whole thing is just kind of ridiculous.
I think their comment about 5* is true to the extent of high paying players and the forums. Remember, most players never come to the forum. For the vocal minority (in terms of player percentage representation) the statement is true. There are keys 4âs to get/are âworth itâ and the rest is 5* or bust. That minority also represents a disproportionate amount of revenue though.
I will say the bulk of the players rely much more on 4âs. For example, I thought what they did for HA8 was one of the best ideas theyâve had in a while. The 4âs in those events were my primary targets.
Anyways, I canât get the aethers back so I am still deciding if I:
Leave him and make do with his reduced stats
Strip emblems because ranger is a very crowded class for me and deal with wasted aethers on a lesser used hero
Something else I havenât thought of
I did only play with him a little post nerf, but the weaker minions were noticeable and it was much harder to stack them as slashes did so much damage.
Personally, finally pulled Buddy after chasing him forever ( see quote about Winter family )
SGG has two schizophrenic game design visions
Special skills get worse with rarity ( looking at you shared ally damage / shared enemy damage ) or Special skills get better with rarity ( looking at you HP Boosting / DOT )
If the game was less P2P / P2W, we might get some player friendly game balance but even game designers are hampered by TZS need for profitability and responsibility to shareholders
the only non-5* hero i can think of that the forum blew up over was Treevil. and thatâs specifically in a Rush Attack context, not a whole-game context.
it is sad whatâs happening to Buddy. i donât use him because Almur is actually more than enough for me on my green stacks to be able to use effectively, but Buddy pre-nerf was definitely a fun hero to have in the game.
It is more than I expected TBH, so letâs see if we can raise the issue enough to make this happen. It is hard not knowing their criteria for determination though.
I still donât like their âreasonâ. âDelayed quite a bitâ? What? Address the problematic heroes and leave the rest alone. You donât nerf Gravemaker because The Circus folks are at large. (Or wait, they buffed them , but you get my point).
Anyone still use this guy? I know they gave him his original minion HP back, but the game moved past that I feel. I think the prolonged nerf robbed him of the second half of usability, maybe I am wrong?
Special Skill: Gift Sack
Family Bonus
Balance Changes
What do you think of Buddy?
Avoiding Overspending & Heartache 
Related Threads
Is Buddy worth Summoning For?
, but you get my point).