Why Post-Release Update?

In my pre-release analysis, for the 3rd criteria I said:

>3. ?/5 -- Decided to hold out on this section for her because there are some areas that need to be answered first. She mainly seems to be pushed as a maincarry discard DPS (competing with Diana and Renoa) where her top-end would likely be lower than Diana but higher than Renoa's. She'll also likely be used as a sub-DPS and with Great-Rift effects will definitely be able to be played alongside Diana, at least for the GR. However, some of her interactions need to be looked at thoroughly before I can make strong statements about her damage (mainly how some of her cards scaling works). She could potentially be the best nuker in the game if her signature card scales like Kayron or Tiphera, but it will need to be tested.

She ended up getting some insanely broken interactions, one which was already somewhat expected as a possibility (base ratio scaling) & the other (Sword Rain III) which was rather unexpected but nonetheless extremely strong.

In the video and this post, I will explain her two most broken interactions as well as the teams they are played with & how to play them yourself, as well as amend some statements and analysis from my pre-release post as she is basically the only character who has had enough changes from my pre-release expectations to warrant a new post, since I started doing them.

Updated Heidemarie Criteria:

Pre-release ranking criteria community helped me decide on:

1. How well the character fits with other character's at launch.
2. How easy the character will be able to farm (divine epiphany reliance, i.e. characters like Orlea and Narja would score very low on this metric, but Nine would score quite high).
3. How well-defined their role is. (Do they overlap with other characters? Do they have content where they shine over competitors? What are they best at?

Heidemarie:

1. 4/5 - The same. She's relatively versatile as a DPS unit, with her being used in multiple different teams (Nuke, Driver, Hypercarry) all to relatively good effect. She can work well as an ally for basically any unit if you want her to.
2. 4/5 - The same. Her decks are not particularly hard to farm to be good, unless you are chasing perfect engravements.
3. 6/5* - Previously unrated, but with her interactions known, she is so much farther ahead than other units in damage categories that her teams compete in that this is weighted as to break the scale.

Overall ranking - 6/5

All characters in this criteria.

I also updated several other chars with her inclusion, mainly moving Orlea to 5/5 because of her now being integral to a top1 team, when she was previously felt a bit too niche. & Moving Selena to 6/5 since she's now in 2 of the best teams in the game alongside her getting access to the most broken engrave and being the most damage-efficient abuser of it.

Updated Ego Rankings

E1 - 4/5 (5/5 for nuke), was previously unranked because needed to know the scaling. Now that we know it scales base ratio, this is her best ego by far for nuke setups and biggest damage increase when playing for nuke. Outside of nuke, it's basically irrelevant as its often a removed card in many builds not built for nuke simply because it can cause a lot of inconsistencies.

E2 - 4/5, massive increase in her Sortie/Chaos carry and highest increase in personal damage for her non-nuke DPS set-ups, but most teams she's played in it is basically irrelevant (>80% of the team's damage is Hugo/Selena in her driver teams)

E3 - 1/5

E4 - 2/5, typical mediocre e4 buff. Very low impact but not completely useless.

E5 - 1/5

E6 - 3/5 (5/5 for Sortie), massive increase in her Sortie/Chaos carry and decent increase in personal damage for her DPS set-ups, but most teams she's played in it is basically irrelevant. Ranked 3/5 instead of 4/5 simply because of how deep of a chase an E6 is with how unnecessary it really is for most content if you are optimizing her already.

Partner

Sylvia > everything else. Marin & max refine Solia aren't terrible, either.

Keep in mind partners were recently reworked, which is why 5-star partners are now tremendously better than all 4-star and 3-star options off stats alone, despite them previously being worse.

Oppen-Heider

Her nuke team, which I've coined as Oppen-Heider, utilizes the 2 common nuke supports (Orlea & Tiphera) as the primary buffers, with her signature card Effulgent Release/Compression being the only attack. Heide's Deck uses Effulgent Expansion IV (Create 6 Effulgent Blades) to make as many effulgent blades as possible, in order to get a ridiculously high base ratio card (around 30,000% base ratio).

Orlea & Tiphera buffs only effect base ratio, so compare this to Nine (1200% base ratio nuke) or Tiphera (1620% base ratio nuke) and you can see the difference--you're multiplying a number almost 20x bigger by the same amount, you're going to get damage that is 20x higher.

I talk more about this team and a damage bug in this post.

Deck examples at bottom of post & check video timestamp for more explanation.

Commence the Heide

Her Hugo driver team, which I've coined Commence the Heide, uses Cassius alongside Hugo to abuse her ability to activate 5 target-attacks off of only one skill (Sword Rain III).

I talk about this interaction as it was starting to gain popularity in this post as well.

Selena basically works the same as Hugo.

Another key feature of this team that is absolutely worth mentioning is their ability to use the engrave which gives +30% additive bonus to extra attacks when 5 cards are created, per turn. This stacks every turn and units are able to have 3 of them, meaning extra attackers who can abuse it (mainly Diana, Renoa, Heidemarie and whoever is their teammates) are able to gain up to an additional 90% additive bonus every single turn, for a total of +900% additive bonus to every single extra attack by turn-10.

Important part of playing the teams is just to be able to use your Cassius' buffs before doing your attacks. Both teams can be pushed farther by adding neutral attacks and/or persona cards. Engraves and equipment are highest ways to cap it though.

Deck examples at bottom of post & check video timestamp for more explanation.

Heide Assessment

Previously, I remarked that I was expecting her to be somewhat underwhelming compared to Sereniel--I have never been more wrong. And, I don't know if I'm happy or sad about how wrong I was. One one hand, I love the unit. On the other hand, she's absolutely gamebreaking and her two best teams are multitudes better than all competitors in their fields (I mean the second best nuke being TWENTY times worse is crazy)...

All this is to say, she's a unit, in a twist of fate, got everything they were afraid to give to previous units and more. If I were to ever call a unit a 'must-pull' it would be her. She's beyond meta-defining with her either forcing crazy balance shifts or being one of the strongest units for a long time.

References/Credits:

1. Quan’s 125M Nuke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKNMvPkwaw0 - Heide/Sel team also Quan (no YT link)
2. My 40M Nuke test: https://youtu.be/h0lu4lINixI?si=S7hEkYDRxX1RUXkk
3. My Heide/Hu Tower Clear: https://youtu.be/IDp7GXnjdog?si=ArnaOd9M3m4lZsn5
4. Prydwen Page on Heidemarie: https://www.prydwen.gg/chaos-zero-nightmare/characters/heidemarie
5. CZNMetaDecks (Deck-Building & DB-Site): https://cznmetadecks.com/

Decks shown in video:

• Oppen-Heider: https://cznmetadecks.com/team/ce924ec540b73562bfe656b74bd5f521700c773610e6d485ee01a9cff129e7b2
• Commence the Heide: https://cznmetadecks.com/team/d522f85c7d8bbf4d34b7a7932d373c1c6eb63268e207135de458309314c1bcae
• Selena’s Uber Driver: https://cznmetadecks.com/team/1a21171c1ec7f73863ba5770f398c82560ac921db2857d761f267922bc33a408

Video Timestamps:

• Effulgent Release/Compression - 0:52
• Oppen-Heider (Nuke Team) Explanation - 1:30
• Oppen-Heider In-Game Showcase 1 - 3:22
• Oppen-Heider In-Game Showcase 2 - 3:45
• Sword Rain III - 5:33
• Commence the Heide (Hugo Driver) Decks - 6:25
• Commence the Heide In-Game Showcase - 7:11
• Selena's Uber Driver Explanation - 7:42
• Selena's Uber Driver In-Game Showcase - 8:45
• Guide & Decks on Prydwen too! - 9:30
• Heidemarie Ego Value - 10:31
• Is She a Must-Pull - 12:05

Edit: Updated Commence the Heide decks to be a bit better & fixed an error saying 7 cards must be created instead of 5 (got an engrave mixed up).

Damage breaks because of bug and shows the first number as '0' because it cuts off any number past 7-digits currently.

Test run without proper memory fragments (using FoE for conq set but don't have my conq set equipped too lmao) or perfect ally gear n' stuff (wanted to make sure that e6 Heide is playable on this boss since she has a ton of issues because of how fast her e6 kills hands and them triggering stun on the boss).

E1 is all you need to optimize your damage for your setup (E2 and E6 are sometimes downgrades for nuke, though not by much and nothing you can't play around since at least they don't trigger a lot of hit-debuffs like Kayron E2 does (also easier to play around)).

There's a clip of an E1 Heide in same setup hitting for 125M, so I def could optimize WAY further (no ally tentacles, no intellect of discord, no critdamage engravement, not using right set, only doing 3 WoL Orlea not 4, low crit-damage, inefficient turns because of deck optimizations, etc.)

Without stun (colossus 6x dt-mult effect) its around 7M damage (translates to 700k/turn which is still better than any current consistent damage set-up).

Deck at end of clip.