Champed Heimdall : Sneaky good or just meh?

LavaManLee

My Heimdall is 1/1/0 and currently have hoarded 150 pulls.  No matter what, I am not touching my hoard until OMD leaves.  For those with a champed Heimdall, what are your thoughts?  Do you use him more than you thought?  Less?  Any good partners?  Just curious if it is worth pulling for him or not.  Thanks!

Vhailorx

I don't have him champed yet. But there is some discussion of this topic 9ver on his dedicated thread.  The answers provided so far seem to suggest that he is good, but maybe doesn't have an ideal partner to be part of the current meta.  But if someone comes along that passively generates fortified tiles in a specific, high value color, or if the current meta (passive insta-damage or boosted protect slogs) changes, then I could see heimdall becoming meta.

In the meantime, he is probably most useful with apoc, since apoc's red when  boosted and costing only costing only 3ap is very strong.  (And in pve of course, there is basically no viable cl10 team that doesn't include a damage booster, so apoc, kitty, or okoye, or a gimmicky stunlock, so pairing with apoc makes sense there too).

ThaRoadWarrior

He is strong with BRB for sure

JHawkInc

I would agree that he's solid, but needs a better partner to be meta.

I like him with Thor/Okoye, Thor generates his three colors, you match blue for Heimdall, and can target specific colors with fortified tiles to balance things out (Thor generates one too-few green? Heimdall makes green fortified tiles to reduce cost to make up for it). Okoye yellow to farm team-up AP, Thor's green for the AoE, Heimdall was tanking because he's boosted (and healing with his blue), and if you get enough colors of fortified tiles out, that plus Okoye's passive boost lets Heimdall do downright insulting damage with that red.

Heimdall needs a 5 that does more with fortified tiles. I think that's where he would really shine.

Borstock

He's too much effort at the moment. That can change, very quickly, but he's not "there" yet.

Michael1957

At 4/4/2 presently he is great support, especially for low AP power teams . His blue at 4 can quickly infinite airborne Vulture , and use Vultures blue green generator for a fast 3rd teammate like Iceman or Polaris who is 4 stunning almost every other turn 

HoundofShadow

My favourite is IM40 and Shuri. 

I can see how Polaris/BRB with him work. This team could be a modified version of Thorokoye:

Okoye tanks, true heals and boosts damages, while Thor provides ap gain to fire power.

Heimdall tanks, true heals and reduces cost of power to 3 aps, while BRB provides blue and green aps. This means BRB could fire his Skuttlebutt! up to 4 times instead of once. Polaris is there to speed up the process and provides stuns if necessary.

Bad

I agree he needs a partner, but not for to fortify. Heimdall could become meta if it appears a good yellow battery. Then a good champed heimdall can excel in defensive meta with his yellow, making the best one allies inaccesible and taking hits with damage reduction. And when they land, nightmare starts. That move alone can act like a scarecrow if it is experienced enough times.
It is a question of just time that a 5* yellow battery like elsa appears.
Right now it is a pretty funny character.
And the support he offers its great.

MadScientist

Heimdall, underleveled Valkyrie and a blue stunner (Iceman, Gamora, Polaris, ...) can lock down opposing teams very fast and reliably.

Daredevil217

Bad said:

I agree he needs a partner, but not for to fortify. Heimdall could become meta if it appears a good yellow battery. Then a good champed heimdall can excel in defensive meta with his yellow, making the best one allies inaccesible and taking hits with damage reduction. And when they land, nightmare starts. That move alone can act like a scarecrow if it is experienced enough times.
It is a question of just time that a 5* yellow battery like elsa appears.
Right now it is a pretty funny character.
And the support he offers its great.

Uhhh. There is a pretty great yellow battery in the 5* tier (best battery in the game by far). His name rhymes with snore. And he does not make Heimdall meta (even just on offense there are much better options). Heimdall won’t be scary on defense until he is paired with a dangerous fortified tile spammer. Right now, one doesn’t exist.

To the OP, you can check my 5* ranking guide in the character section of the forums to see my initial impressions of him. Also his character thread.  My TLDR is fun, nowhere near meta, but has the greatest potential to be of three latests (with the right partner).

I played for wins in Red Guardian’s PVP and played about 60 matches with Heim. All of the following worked VERY well against the non-meta/non-defensively annoying teams: Daredevil, Yelena Belova, Professor X, Thor, Onslaught, Doctor Doom, Green Goblin, Beta Ray Bill, Hawkeye, Loki, and Hela. A bunch of really good partners. No stand out amazing ones. 

Bad

Daredevil217 said:

Uhhh. There is a pretty great yellow battery in the 5* tier (best battery in the game by far). His name rhymes with snore. And he does not make Heimdall meta (even just on offense there are much better options). Heimdall won’t be scary on defense until he is paired with a dangerous fortified tile spammer. Right now, one doesn’t exist.

Thor cannot be considered a battery or a good partner for him. First, his AP gained is random. Second, on defensive play he will be on full health. Third, power creep makes him a poor choice.
About heimdall, Prismatic cleave is a power too conditional for to rely on. Perhaps being the ultimate option if he is the only one left.
I think 10 times better the support he offers. That is what makes him dangerous.

BlackBoltRocks

You want Yellow battery? 4* Kingpin. And what's this about Heimdall being meta defensively thanks to his Yellow? Archangel laughs at that all day long. Don't have Archangel? Elsa's Red.

Right now I see Heimdall as a bacon-saver. In Operation Spiders, my 1/1/0 Heimdall helped me claw out victory several times by reducing the costs of Apocalypse's Black and Red. If I do complete him, it'll be purely for the amazing support his Blue offers.

Bad

BlackBoltRocks said:

You want Yellow battery? 4* Kingpin. And what's this about Heimdall being meta defensively thanks to his Yellow? Archangel laughs at that all day long. Don't have Archangel? Elsa's Red.

Kingping needs time to give yellow, too. Are you going to use archangel on pvp? Then tell me when will you play, I need free wins.
Yes. Defensively his yellow is great, given a good 5* yellow battery appears.

BlackBoltRocks

Bad said:

Then tell me when will you play, I need free wins.

HAHAHA no.

Vhailorx

Bad said:

Daredevil217 said:

Uhhh. There is a pretty great yellow battery in the 5* tier (best battery in the game by far). His name rhymes with snore. And he does not make Heimdall meta (even just on offense there are much better options). Heimdall won’t be scary on defense until he is paired with a dangerous fortified tile spammer. Right now, one doesn’t exist.

Thor cannot be considered a battery or a good partner for him. First, his AP gained is random. Second, on defensive play he will be on full health. Third, power creep makes him a poor choice.
About heimdall, Prismatic cleave is a power too conditional for to rely on. Perhaps being the ultimate option if he is the only one left.
I think 10 times better the support he offers. That is what makes him dangerous.

I'm with daredevil here.  Thor is the best yellow battery in the game (WAY more yellow than any other 1.67 yellow ap per turn passively), and it's not enough to make Heimdall dangerous.  On the other hand, imagine a 5* that passively generated red fortified tiles (say 2 fortified tiles for each friendly match of a few specific colors, like iron spider making web tiles).  Now that team is dropping 5 or 6ap prismatic cleaves just a few rounds into each match, even with the dumb ai.  in match 3 you could add apoc into the mix and (if you position the characters properly) and the ai will be have a 3ap apoc red in no time.  that would be a very annoying team to fight. 

The Heimdall-yellow focused strategy you are suggesting is probably fun to use, but it's slow, as heimdall's yellow is not a a battery so much as a not very efficient arbitrage engine (you have to pick the right partners, and even then it's only 8:6ap).  I think his yellow makes him annoying for the reasons you cite (he can make more vulnerable allies harder to target, and gets DR and ap arbitrage etc), but it's not enough unless he has some real damage output to punish teams that struggle to overcome his defenses. 

ThaRoadWarrior

I’ve been experimenting with Magik, who passively fortifies whenever someone uses a power and adds red to the board once purple is in play. In Pick 2 it’s underwhelming - it starts super slow but picks up steam as you go. The more stuff gets fortified the better off you are. I’ll try it with BRB as third in pick 3 later.

I ran him a few times with Vulture/BRB in this divine champions event, but i'm currently floating at 353 points so make of that what you will defensively. When you throw Vulture up on yellow, vulture makes all his colors he normally makes for a turn in addition to his strongest color, so it's a pretty good battery in a pinch, but still that's an offensive team and there are faster options for sure. All the nukes are competing for the same colors mostly.

I have a hard time imagining Power-Cheapeners ever being in the defensive meta, since the advantage they provide is letting you spam multiple powers per turn - as the AI is not allowed to do that, they'll only ever be so useful. So in my mind, his best defensive buddy is going to be someone who interacts with fortifications in an interesting way, like himself or like Shuri, or like the Stepford Cuckoos synergy perk on Frost that reduces incoming power damage when she's in diamond form.

Vhailorx

ThaRoadWarrior said:

I’ve been experimenting with Magik, who passively fortifies whenever someone uses a power and adds red to the board once purple is in play. In Pick 2 it’s underwhelming - it starts super slow but picks up steam as you go. The more stuff gets fortified the better off you are. I’ll try it with BRB as third in pick 3 later.

<snip>

I have a hard time imagining Power-Cheapeners ever being in the defensive meta, since the advantage they provide is letting you spam multiple powers per turn - as the AI is not allowed to do that, they'll only ever be so useful. So in my mind, his best defensive buddy is going to be someone who interacts with fortifications in an interesting way, like himself or like Shuri, or like the Stepford Cuckoos synergy perk on Frost that reduces incoming power damage when she's in diamond form.

I have been experimenting with Magik on and off for a while now, and I have found her to work reasonably well with 4* torch (since their passives work so well together and they only overlap on red.  That's fun pairing, but I think it can be described in the same fashion: very very slow to to get started, but increasingly dangerous as a match progresses.  Alas, that sort of team is not particularly valuable in PVP where speed is just about as important as reliability and sustainability.  I can see heimdall being the same sort of partner for her.

As for the question of whether power cheapeners could ever be meta, I am a bit more bullish than you.  In order to have a place in PVP, teams must be: (i) exceptionally fast and reliable on offense (apoc + polaris), (ii) exceptionally annoying on defense (brbitty), (iii) very sustainable (thorkoye) or (iv) some combination of the all those things (hulkoye). 

Assuming we ever got a good partner for Heimdall (my example was a character that creates fortified tiles on matches a la 4* peter parker and web tiles), the pair would have both tons of offense (because a few match3s to start the game could give them super cheap nukes to spam and some decent defense too (PVP defense is basically just about making every match as painful as possible rather than actually winning, and it's extremely hard to suppress multiple 3-6ap powers).  On top of that, heimdall is a true healer with high health and match damage, so it should be more sustainable than healthpack sinks like hulkoye. 

ThaRoadWarrior

What you may really want is some sort of Mr. Fantastic rework type power that will fire off something active free when some fortification-based condition is met passively. 

Actually though - a power cheapener could be defensively meta if you have several strong powers on the same color like Coulson/Hawkeye. That team is swimming in so much blue after a turn or two that they all get to fire their blues off on the same turn. So Coulson/Hawkeye may in fact benefit from Heimdall even with all that overlap. I guess it's also worth a try.

Daredevil217

Bad said:

Daredevil217 said:

Uhhh. There is a pretty great yellow battery in the 5* tier (best battery in the game by far). His name rhymes with snore. And he does not make Heimdall meta (even just on offense there are much better options). Heimdall won’t be scary on defense until he is paired with a dangerous fortified tile spammer. Right now, one doesn’t exist.

Thor cannot be considered a battery or a good partner for him. First, his AP gained is random. Second, on defensive play he will be on full health. Third, power creep makes him a poor choice.

If power creep has passed him by, I’m curious which 5*s you rank higher than Thor?

Off the topic of Thor, even if this yellow battery existed, Heim wouldn’t be meta. His yellow isn’t what makes him scary. “Oh no, he sent people airborn! I now have to... wait a turn to fire my power?” If that “puzzle” has you hitting the skip button, I... yeah. He also spends 8 AP to get 6 back, but to get the colors needed to make teams work, he is limited in his partners.

As everyone else has mentioned, the blue passive is easily the gem of his entire kit. But, as of now only really works offensively and he is a slow character overall. Tanky, sustainable, fun, absolutely! But too slow to be a player right now. 

Daredevil217

I’ve yet to play Heim in pick 3, but that seems to be where he’ll shine most offensively. Anyone try Green Goblin/Heimdall/Iceman?

I didn’t  like the latter two together in pick-2 because Ice makes it so Heim never gets to fire his blue. However, all three together have good actives on every color. Once you get Bobby’s cheap green out Goblin will passively fortify those repeaters. All of a sudden you have all of those strong active abilities getting cheaper for a nice snowball effect. 

Heimdall/Loki/Goblin could be similarly gross. Fire Loki’s cheap purple and he will spam the board with 4 black countdowns that multiple when you match them (which Goblin will passively fortify). All of a sudden his glider is only 3-4 AP. Of course spamming it is hard because it’s tied to that stupid countdown, which is why I think on paper the above team may be better.  

ThaRoadWarrior

I mentioned it in the Heimdall thread, but sandwiching him between Shuri and P4nther works very well also. You prioritze Shuri's red initially, and probably P4nther's Blue and Yellow until very quickly you have half the board fortified and all your powers cost 3ap, most matches are doing wild damage from matched fortifications and protects as well as delivering additional AP, AND the opposing team's powers cost +3. If there were 5*s who could do ShuriStuff I think it would be a game changer for him. His red hits extremely hard when you meet the fortification conditions, so having that many options to populate a board with them really helps. P4nther's yellow comes out unfortified but creates 3x fortified SAPs for you when it procs, his blue makes 4x fortified SAPs right away, and then Shuri's red makes 5x fortifications that prioritize friendly specials (and at 5 covers removes a fortified enemy special which can really save your bacon situationally).