Arknights: In-depth Review - Heidi

Heidi is the future 5★ Bard Supporter welfare Operator from Episode 10: Shatterpoint. Her kit is designed around combatting some of the most important gimmicks from this new Episode, bringing a level of block control we have never seen in any other Operator before. In this article we will discuss how she compares to Sora and other similar buffers.

Heidi can be obtained through the Episode 10: Shatterpoint Unsigned Notebook missions and through the new Tuning System. You can claim Heidi by clearing 10-11 on Normal mode, and additional Potential tokens by clearing 10-15 Normal, 10-15 Hard, 10-17 Normal, H10-1 and H10-3.

Heidi comes with a plethora of different buffs to ensure that she will never be a deadweight, ranging from purely offensive ones to strong defensive options with rare buffs. As previously mentioned, her Skills also contain great block control effects that shine in this new Episode, but can definitely see use elsewhere with proper planning.

Heidi’s stats fall in line with what would be expected of her archetype and rarity. Compared to Sora, her HP is significantly higher but her Attack is somewhat lower. As we will see later, this is somewhat fixed by her Talents.

When Heidi has her Skill 1 equipped, all allies within range gain an Attack +5% (+1% at P5) buff. When she has her Skill 2 equipped, all allies within range gain a Defense +5% (+1% at P5) buff.

This Talent is very similar to Nightmare’s, and adequately changes depending on the job she wants to perform with each of her Skills. The Attack buff pairs with her offensively-oriented Skill, while the Defense buff coincides with her survival-oriented Skill. Additionally, these buffs do affect herself, resulting in an Attack stat comparable to Sora’s when her Skill 1 is equipped.

As her archetype allows her to transfer some of her stats to allies in range, any buff she receives will translate into more stats for your actual combat Operators, making this Talent pretty decent, even if the buffs themselves are very low.

When Heidi is deployed in Episode 10: Shatterpoint stages, all allies within range recover an additional 0.5 SP per second.

This is quite a powerful buff, letting Operators within her range trigger their Auto SP skills significantly quicker (even more than with Ptilopsis!) but the restriction is also pretty massive. 

Only being able to take advantage of this buff in Episode 10 is fine, considering how powerful it is and how Heidi’s Block control really shines there, but some of the most powerful Operators for this story chapter (particularly Mudrock) do not really care for SP boosting that much. The range restriction can also be troublesome, though it pairs well with Burst DPS Operators that will want to be within her range already to benefit from her other buffs.

Overall, powerful Talent, but too restrictive and not viable enough to raise Heidi exclusively for it, especially considering how she’s obtained halfway through the Episode.

When activated, all allies within range receive an Inspire buff equal to 110% of Heidi’s Attack, and their Block count is reduced by 3 for 10 seconds. This Skill has an SP cost of 20.

Compared to other Operators of the same archetype, this Skill’s Attack buff is only beaten by Skadi the Corrupting Heart’s “The Tide Surges, The Tide Recedes”. Reaching a peak buff of 420 Attack to all Operators within range, this Skill could potentially allow characters with quick bursts of damage to take down dangerous targets with ease. This buff is even stronger than Sora’s, whose Attack buff only reaches 385.

The issue with this Skill is it's incredibly short duration. Despite providing a strong buff, the very short timer of 10 seconds is not enough to fully cover any relevant DPS skill, even missing Exusiai’s Overloading Mode by 5 seconds. Due to this extremely short duration, Heidi will struggle to find adequate buff targets where her effectiveness would be beaten by Sora’s weaker but longer buff. Some viable targets for this very short buff are Ash’s Assault Tactics, Amiya and Ch’en’s Ying Xiao - Shadowless and Chi Xiao - Shadowless or Cutter’s Redshift to name a few.

Another important point to take into account is the cycling of this burst. While Heidi has significantly worse uptime and duration compared to Sora (33% vs. 40% or 58%, 10 vs. 30 seconds), the cycling of her buff is fairly quick, allowing her to possibly catch different skill triggers better than Sora could if they are triggered constantly, such as the aforementioned Exusiai. This also lets her adjust her Skill activations better to provide a higher buff uptime, as seen in the following images.

Her Block count reduction is a significantly more niche effect, but it can be quite powerful as an artificial gate for enemies or, if used in her introductory chapter, to easily control one of the main gimmicks. Be careful when using it, though! Operators whose target count is tied to their block count (such as Centurion Guards) will lose a significant amount of their damage from this effect!

When activated, all allies within range receive an Inspire buff equal to 70% of Heidi’s Defense and 30% of her Max HP, their Block count is increased by 1 and Heidi’s archetypal healing is increased to 30% of her Attack for 20 seconds. This Skill has an SP cost of 30.

This Skill provides a powerful burst of tankiness through a flat Defense buff of about 200, higher than any other Bard Supporter, and a strong regeneration of about 110 HPS to anyone within range, which can recover the HP of Operators such as Mudrock or Hellagur. This regeneration, while worse than Sora’s Hymn of Respite, combines well with this Skill’s other defensive effects to make your Operators significantly tankier.

The most unique effects of this Skill are the Inspire buff on Max HP and the Block count increase. Regarding the former, this is one of the rarest effects in the game, and is only seen in one other Skill: Aak’s Type-γ Stimpack. Compared to this Skill, Heidi’s buff is significantly lower clocking in at just 450 extra Max HP due to the buff scaling off her low stats, while Aak's buff scales by 80% of the target’s own Max HP, resulting in a much larger potential increase.

Of course, these skills do have significant differences. For one, the Operator receiving the buff will still have to survive Aak’s multiple drug shots, making this unviable for squishier Operators, particularly ranged ones. Heidi is also able to apply her buff to everyone within her range, instead of just one target and herself.

All of these effects combined can be somewhat useful in surviving a dangerous enemy’s onslaught, but generally it will pale in comparison to either focusing on DPS to take targets down before they become a threat or to employing a regular Medic with good HPS, such as Ptilopsis, Purestream or Sussurro.

If you want to take full advantage of this Skill, you should focus on fully utilizing her Block count increase. This is another powerful but rare buff, and Heidi is one of the best Operators to apply it due to her quick cycling and affecting all allies within her range. Compared to Nian, her Skill duration is significantly lower but her uptime is better (40% vs. 34%) with short cycling so it can be used multiple times during a stage if need be.

Generally though, defensive buff Skills such as this one will pale in comparison with more offensively-oriented buffs. While this one has powerful boosts, you will rarely need it to let your toughest defenders survive most things, and whatever they would need this for is probably not supposed to be blocked. This Skill retains a niche in powerful block control (which is a pretty good thing to have in her introductory Episode, particularly if you lack Mudrock), but generally you will be using her first Skill more often.

So, should I build Heidi? Are her buffs enough to rival Sora? Maybe even to act as a substitute for Skadi the Corrupting Heart? The answer is PROBABLY NOT. Heidi’s buffs can be powerful under the right circumstances, but she falls a bit short of being great at anything she does. Her Attack boost is pretty good, but players will often have other options available that are both stronger and free of the hassle of Block control, while her defensive boosts are not strong enough to work as anything but a niche Block control and Max HP buff, in case we ever need those. Players will generally not get much out of Heidi’s kit they can’t already get elsewhere, particularly since she can only be obtained as late as Episode 10.