Goodbye! Now that's certainly one way to start an article. Blizzard has confirmed this evening that a hotfix patch this week will see the removal of Friend of a Friend in Battlegrounds.
A developer note on the upcoming removal indicates that they saw game-warping strategies with the card and it was an overall negative for the health of Battlegrounds. No more Brann Bronzebeard "fun" for folks in Battlegrounds, but the team does say they like experimenting with the boundaries in Battlegrounds and will continue to do so - they're just going to keep an eye on problems and address them quickly if needed.
What are your thoughts on Friend of a Friend being removed? Are you happy to see some space open up for other strategies? Was it one of your favourite cards to play with? Let us know in the comments below.
Quote From GnomeSayin Hello all,
We wanted to let you know that the Friend of a Friend minion is being removed from Battlegrounds in an upcoming hotfix patch, currently scheduled for Wednesday.
A note from the Developers about this change:
Friend of a Friend led to drastic power spikes when combined with Brann, and drove play patterns requiring an extremely high number of actions per turn. While we think there is room in the game for these types of strategies, in this case it proved too pervasive and game-warping for the overall health of the game.
We know that some players have really enjoyed Friend of a Friend. Looking forward, we think it’s important to continue to push the boundaries of the game and explore what we can bring into it, but we also think it’s important to try to respond quickly when we’ve pushed too far. Keep an eye out for exciting updates as we continue to explore and fine-tune Battlegrounds to make it the best game mode it can be!
Comments
Nice to see quick action. Was very boring seeing every game end with full golden amalgadon boards. Makes me wonder what the game would be like without tickatus buddy on FoaF and/or no dongs instead of no maexxna
DIdn't play much BGs, what exactly did it do that was so broken? the only time I played it it gave me some underwhelming buddies
Adding to @HentaiLover's comment, some buddies would also highroll you into an almost infinite loop. Triple Brann into Friend of a Friend gives you 3 shots at discovering some pretty powerful buddies, like Tickatus' buddy (which gives you 3 Darkmoon Prizes of a higher tier) or Flurgl's buddy (which transforms all 6 star units into Amalgadon as it is the only 6 star murloc), for example. Zephrys' buddy also gives great consistency to this strategy as it can easily give your second copy of Brann (if you only have one) and Friend of a Friend himself.
I did this strategy recently, ended with 4 Divine Shield/Poison Amalgadons (three of them golden), an ultra buffed [Hearthstone Card (SI:7 Sefin) Not Found], brann and a flex spot, a full hand which included two copies of my original buddy (which I didn't have time to play) and more random buddies and random cards I bought just for the sake of spending all gold before the timer ran out.
If you want a taste of the power of this card, just check Dog's last game posted on Youtube.
I guess if you got Golden Brann you were discovering 3 random buddies and due to the fact a lot of them were not discoverable I assume it led to consistent triples thus ruining the fun in this mode.
Personally I haven't tried that strategy but, If I am right about how it worked, I believe it was frustrating and consistent enough to make Blizz take this step
Man, this minion was really cool. Maybe they could've made something like "After you sell this minion discover a buddy" to balance things out a little bit, but I guess the game is better without it.
Probably the shortest time a brand new BGs minion was in the game before it got removed. Didn't realise he was such a menace, but then again I barely play BGs
this card reminded me a lot of the (bad!) old times when brode was still around, when i thought on every patch: "do they even play their own game?"
glad this times are over and glad this card is gone!
i think we can all blame kripp for this
Why blame Kripp? He was the one who invented that strategy?
Quite a quick response. That patch bgs balance patch was excellent but friend of a friend ruined it. Now that he's gone, bgs will surely be more enjoyable.