Well, it happened. I ran some missions with Buddy and the reduced minion health was noticeable. In particular it was that much harder to get minions to stack because they couldn’t reliably survive enemy slash attacks, etc anymore.
If he was only emblemed and I could reset him it would be annoying, but less so. Given I took the time to LB him, this is somehow really “sticking in my craw”. How he is now, I would have LB’d different greens. If I strip him of emblems, lord knows I need the ranger emblems, he is even less useful and still sitting there with used aethers.
Here was his pre-nerf version:
Not a single person was calling him broken or demanding a nerf. People with deep rosters probably rarely used him even how he was, but he was certainly a cult favorite and prime F2P target. Also great for people starting. Buddy can carry you far as you progress.
I think the part that irks me so badly is the callousness of it all. The issue was with higher rarity family members, their costumes, and family bonus. A change to the family bonus would have been fine. A change to 5* individual cards would have been just as easy and fine. Them roping in unrelated heroes to the issue to the nerf for reasons I can’t fathom aside from laziness or thoughtlessness is really disappointing. The lower rarity heroes are hindered exponentially by percentage reductions versus higher rarity cards.
I’m not going to say what they do in terms of what is essentially a bait and switch with newer heroes is okay, it’s not. They do also have a proven track record of doing this, so accepting it as a possibility is something you’re inherently accepting as “okay” or at least “tolerable” by continuing to play. For me personally those were never an issue. As a F2P I never had those heroes anyway. If I paid I would be angrier, but also likely would have stopped paying and/or playing.
Generally I thought my heroes were “safe” to emblem and LB. The level of reaction they just took though shows that even a hero that has existed in a completely copacetic way within the game for at least 3, if not 4, years can suddenly be nerfed for reasons entirely unrelated to him. That essentially makes anyone a target because you can’t predict any “corrections” or “balances” will be even remotely targeted in their approach.
Side note, what’s funny is the issue is Mr. Pengi with massed minions. They left him and hurt the Christmas family. There are a lot of non-Christmas minion summoners that are at faster speeds than the Christmas summoners. They have done nothing to correct it because you can pair Mr. Pengi with non-Christmas summoners and still obliterate whole teams. The issue wasn’t the heroes that have existed for 4 years already in the majority of the Christmas family’s case.
Anyways, I apologize for the length. I kind of had to vent. If they can react in such a thoughtless way to their existing hero structure though it kind of makes me think twice for how long I will stick at this. I am aware they don’t care, they only make money off of me from my Mystic Vision views. Losing an MV viewer is nothing to them. I guess by being somewhat active on the forum I perpetuate interest in the game, although that’s a questionable contribution. I will need to think about how/if I react further to this.
I really do appreciate everyone that gave a comment or a like here. There are too many to tag. It was likely never going to sway anything, but we can say we tried I guess
Good luck out there. Enjoy your new free flasks and reset buttons! Worth it.