***** Hela (Goddess of Death) *****

JHawkInc

Glad to see her in the game. I wasn't super thrilled with her in Ragnarok (I realize I'm unusual in that regard, though I will say it's more about her inclusion in the story, and not the character/actress, because she was awesome), but I'm really glad to see her added both because of Ragnarok and the comics. Also interested to see her as a Thor counter, both literally (punishing green, having an ability that hits random people and could chip at Thor if someone else is tanking for him) and thematically (Thor makes protects to start, she does strike/attack, Thor's green is an AoE, hers is a bit more random, Thor gains a benefit on his red from his own special tiles, and a benefit from his own low health, where she benefits by replacing enemy specials, and by KOing opponents, 2/3rds of their powers are the same colors, etc, there's a nice string of "similar but different" between them, which is cool)

Looking forward to the release and getting a chance to start covering her. Bummer that the early release means less time to cover some of the 5's. In general I don't mind the cycle changing like that (more 5's, fewer 4's), but it needs to come with other things that increase resource gain to balance it out (even if it's like SCL 10 and requires an increased difficulty to get those increased rewards).

jredd

thank you for doing better! and correcting an oversight by not releasing her when ragnarok was still hot. kudos on both accounts!

babinro

I really like what I'm seeing here.

On paper I don't think Hela is going to impact any meta but she's an excellent 5* that stands above pretty much everything we've seen for a long while aside from Kitty.  

I love the attack+strike synergy going on here with the ability to buff everything.  Her green power is quick and deals good damage.  Everything is good...so good in fact that there's no obvious build which is exactly what you want to see of every character ideally.

The potential sleeper hit here that may elevate Hela into meta territory is her black.  In 5* land there is very little love for match blue AP.  Almost no team needs it and Hela doesn't need it either.   Which means that it won't be unrealistic for her black to hit 8+ blue tiles on the board at any given time.   That's adding 3200 damage to each turn but when she downs someone that total practically doubles.  Pretty impressive potential there given that by the time you get the AP you'll have hopefully weakened someone to near death.

Borstock

3/5/5

Vhailorx said:

Borstock said:

The red is the 3 for me, I think. I mainly want that power for the number of overwrites. Otherwise, I have a lot of other reds I'd rather fire at high level. As long as I still get two at 3, it's probably fine there. 

The green could be a monster. Only 8? And has a passive? That could be beastly. Pun intended. 

Black can be fired whether you're running her with Gritty or Thorkoye. It's a rainbow fill-in the AI can't mess up. 

She won't define a meta, but she complements both current ones. I'm probably still using Bishop with Gritty in PvP, though. 

In the abstract, I might agree with you on red.  But (1) you will likely get more overwrites at 5 covers, (2) strikes are better than attacks, (3) black will need somethingike 8+ blues on the board to do damage equal to the red, and gets less effective with successive casts, and (4) bringing someone with a better red costs a team slot, which might make it harder to get a green batter to use hela's awesome green as much as possible.  

So I agree that her red is not world-crushing, and her black likely spikes higher. But I can get much of the value of her black from 3 covers (still enough to dip on my strikes) and I get better strikes from red out of the bargain.  

1- probably only 1, though. 

3- I don't expect to fire either power more than twice before the match is over

4- both Thor and Okoye have solid reds. Her red is useful with Gritty, but the Gritty meta is to get tiles on the board, no matter what they are. Black is fine. 

Either works, tbh. But I prefer having the extra color + passive maxed. 

Bzhai

@Brigby for her black does Hela have to personally down the enemy to trigger the passive or does it apply to anyone on your team?

bluewolf

5/5/3

I just want to say I really like the art at the top of this thread.....nice job!  I'm looking forward to seeing her in game.  The game artists have been doing some really good work lately.

TPF Alexis

She looks fun to me. That black passive is going to be wild in Wave nodes.

ThaRoadWarrior

I really hope this accelerated 5* release rate comes with duplicate feeders. hopefully she'll make a good counter to Thorkoye teams and gritty teams for those of us who are stuck fighting those and don't have them ourselves to mirror match.

ProtoformX

Green triple dipping with Okoye will nuke single targets.  She'll be very fun for pve.  Nice change of pace from the absolute garbage of recent 5 stars.

Yepyep

She looks awesome to me -- and frankly, anything that gets Cate Blanchett's gorgeousness up in front of me a few times a week is hela welcome! Can't wait... A bloodthirsty Galadriel with horns? Count me in! 

As to the character in game, she seems like she might become a material adjustment to the meta, not unlike Kitty has become. Hela's are all strong powers and on the reasonable side of pricing. After all, it takes a move or two for Kitty to really get Grocket's tiles boosted, and with boosts one can get up to 8/9 AP by then. Or, pair her with Bishop in front and Kraven and let those ASP tiles linger a bit.

theomen

Hela good.

https://g.co/kgs/jPBu9s

Steel_Colt

I vote that if we see a lot of Kitty/Hela teams, we'll call them Hellcats.

On topic, she seems good! Fairly cheap powers with the chance of doing some real good damage. Will definitely try to cover her and maybe make her my second 5* Champ besides JJ if I do get her to 13 covers.

TPF Alexis

Steel_Colt said:

I vote that if we see a lot of Kitty/Hela teams, we'll call them Hellcats.

On topic, she seems good! Fairly cheap powers with the chance of doing some real good damage. Will definitely try to cover her and maybe make her my second 5* Champ besides JJ if I do get her to 13 covers.

At least until Trish Walker gets a Character. Then it might get confusing

bluewolf

5/5/3

Steel_Colt said:

I vote that if we see a lot of Kitty/Hela teams, we'll call them Hellcats.

On topic, she seems good! Fairly cheap powers with the chance of doing some real good damage. Will definitely try to cover her and maybe make her my second 5* Champ besides JJ if I do get her to 13 covers.

It would probably be ill-advised to have a dual champ team of Hela (red/green/black) and JJ (red/black/blue) with the color overlap, especially since JJ has just the two actives.  But, on the other hand.....it's not like I can really strongly recommend CM with JJ.  Doom also has too much overlap, especially with the black being shared as his only damage ability.  If you don't PVP much it might be fine, though.

Hela does look fun!  Hoarding for 3 more weeks....

Steel_Colt

bluewolf said:

Steel_Colt said:

I vote that if we see a lot of Kitty/Hela teams, we'll call them Hellcats.

On topic, she seems good! Fairly cheap powers with the chance of doing some real good damage. Will definitely try to cover her and maybe make her my second 5* Champ besides JJ if I do get her to 13 covers.

It would probably be ill-advised to have a dual champ team of Hela (red/green/black) and JJ (red/black/blue) with the color overlap, especially since JJ has just the two actives.  But, on the other hand.....it's not like I can really strongly recommend CM with JJ.  Doom also has too much overlap, especially with the black being shared as his only damage ability.  If you don't PVP much it might be fine, though.

Hela does look fun!  Hoarding for 3 more weeks....

Not the best combo, admittedly, but I'm also still hoping for a Kitty feeder that'll get met the last two covers I need. That would make a solid third 5* Champ that combines fairly well with either JJ or Hela. 

Richyyy

She definitely looks useful and interesting, which ridiculously makes her the best 5* since Kitty all on its own. I'm not sure she breaks past Gritty or Thorkoye as part of a first-choice team, but she semi-counters both and is a definite alternative or third-banana option. Now I have to decide between Hela/Widow/Panther or Hela/GodDoom/CM...

ThaRoadWarrior

I suppose one upside to this early 5* is that Magik is going to get skipped for Shield Training after all.

Quebbster

Steel_Colt said:

I vote that if we see a lot of Kitty/Hela teams, we'll call them Hellcats.

HelaKitty is much simpler.

Yepyep

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I suppose one upside to this early 5* is that Magik is going to get skipped for Shield Training after all.

One can hope (not)! There haven’t been many/enough chances to earn her covers. I’d imagine few have her at 10 covers, at this point. I’m at 2/2/3, myself. 

ThaRoadWarrior

Same, I'm at 0/2/2. I've stopped bonusing new releases and just focused on Chavez to grow my Jessica Jones for quite some time now, and for quite some time into the future (I need 59 more...), so I'll probably miss out on every new release based ST for the rest of the year. I got burned by being 1 Namor short on the Talos release, which was particularly insulting, so whenever he gets featured I'm almost certainly going to be way behind - came out with a 0/1/1 on that one.