Analysis by @medhaos.

The Skills

New Year’s Fan

• Slaying
• At start of turn (SD) / enemy phase (non-SD), grants effects to the following allies:
  • If defending in Aether Raids, grants [Foresight Snare] to the allies closest to the bottom of the map within 3 rows / columns of unit
  • In any other setting, grants [Foresight Snare] to the ally with the highest Def that’s closest to foe
    • In this condition, [Foresight Snare] can only be naturally granted to one ally
• Inflicts the following on foes within 3 rows / columns:
  • Atk/Def/Res – 5
  • Scowl if foe’s base Res is <= 39
• Atk/Def/Res + 11
• Deals +25 damage
• Negates 15 damage
• CD – X before unit’s first attack
  • X = number of [Penalty] active on foe, max 2
• 7 HP post combat healing

An Open Book

• Enables [Canto (Rem, Min 1)]
• At start of turn (SD) / phase (non-SD), inflicts the following on foes within 2 spaces of another foe and have Res < unit’s Res:
  • [Exposure]
  • [Discord]
  • [Stall]
• Atk/Res – 5 on foe
• Guard
• Anti follow up
• Deals damage = 20% unit’s Res
• Negates damage = 20% unit’s Res
• Preempt Pulse

The Builds

Build Note: You probably shouldn’t be surprised at the retreading here.

My original article with the Initial Impressions of Mythic Heimdallr is probably the single greatest misfire I’ve ever had in terms of calling a unit’s viability, because I did not anticipate for a second that she would take over Summoner Duels in the way she did. [Foresight Snare] is effectively a pseudo-Save mechanic, and could be described as an upgraded Rearmed Dedue in a [Bonus] – you put [Foresight Snare] on your two nukes, stick them in a place where they can threaten the enemy team, and watch as your opponents have to effectively play the waiting game for you to either kill them first, or wait for them to try and either break your [Foresight Snare] and either effectively giving up a unit in the process, or wasting their only use of Summer Thórr’s button. Mythic Heimdallr also effectively stymied a lot of offensive compositions herself – especially those who ran lots of [Mov + 1] thanks to her map-wide [Stall] effect requiring a form of self-cleansing to get rid of the debuff. It also didn’t necessarily matter where she was on the map (outside of AR-D) considering that she applied [Foresight Snare] to the ally that was closest to her opponent so she could be safely tucked away whilst her ally did the heavy lifting. In short, Mythic Heimdallr was, to put it politely, extremely broken and not very fun to deal with.

Sample Team: Now you can have two Heimdallr teams in SDS. Isn’t that wonderful?

The reason I launched into this big old tangent about Mythic Heimdallr is because New Year Heimdallr is, for all intents and purposes, the exact same unit. They are used in almost exactly the same ways, and there are very few scenarios where it’s not in your advantage to use one Heimdallr over the other (unless of course, somerhing akin to New Year Hræsvelgr happens where a sudden meta shift makes one outright worse due to a small change). There are two key differences:

1. New Year Heimdallr is not a Mythic Hero. This means she can be used without Lift penalty on any season, but will not enable the extra slot & Reinforcement like her counterpart does.
2. New Year Heimdallr has a visible Res-based Scowl effect on foes within 3 rows / columns instead of Dull All. This gives her the ability to be used alongside Reversal units like New Year Baldr & Hallowe’en Freyja, but makes her overall worse vs any unit with 40+ visible Res

Realistically, there is very little in the way of tangible difference between Mythic and New Year Heimdallr, and I suspect that the main draw of her will be in Summoner Duels S and Aether Raids Offence / Dark Season where she’s not available as a Mythic. They’re both incredibly overpowered units and there’s not really much to say.

The Verdict

Pros

• Blessable [Foresight Snare]. There’s literally nothing else to say here.
• Base Res Scowl effect enables some valuable pairups and disadvantages squishier / lower Res units who need to trigger their Special.

Cons

• Still a very passive unit with poor combat
• Res condition for her Scowl renders it entirely useless against high Res units

Relevant Gamemodes

• Summoner Duels
• Aether Raids (Light / Astra / Dark)
• Arena

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