Costume Guide – B-Rank Idol Helena

Overview

Helena for PVE

Costume scaling

Helena is very strong at full power, but at lower levels she performs very poorly. In order for Helena to be used effectively, she really needs to be at least +4 with the two damage potentials unlocked. It's important to be aware of this before you start investing.

It's useful to look at 4-Star Kind Student Samay and 4-star Elpis for a baseline comparison. Both Samay and Elpis are easy to get to +5 for new players, because they are 4-stars. Samay +5 increases M.ATK by 50% for 2 turns, whereas Elpis +5 increases M.ATK by 70% for 6 turns (or 80% with potential upgrade).

Let's see how Helena compares:

• Helena at +0 is very disappointing: she gives a measly +35% M.ATK and +25% crit for 3 SP. At +0, Helena's offensive support power for magic teams is worse than the support power of Samay and Elpis.
• Getting Helena all the way up to +3 improves her M.ATK buff by only 20% compared to +0 (from 35% to 55%), and her SP reduces by 1. Helena +3 is only barely on par with Samay, and still weaker than Elpis.
• At +4 and +5 Helena gives +75% M.ATK. This is finally at a level that is comparable to Elpis.

As you can see, even at +5, Helena performs barely better than 4-star Elpis, and is something like a magic version of 3-star Arines. To unlock the true power of Helena, she really needs to have both damage potentials unlocked, which add a total of +40% to her M.ATK buff. What this all means is that Helena needs a lot of investment to be at full power.

Comparison with MC.Teresse

At +5 full potential, B.Helena buffs for +115% M.ATK. This is slightly less than MC.Teresse, who buffs for +120% on both M.ATK and ATK. Although B.Helena is slightly weaker, B.Helena has three important advantages over MC.Teresse for magic teams.

Firstly, Helena's buff lasts for 4 turns with a 3-turn cooldown. She can therefore keep her buff always up without any downtime. On the other hand, MC.Teresse's buff is down every third player turn due to its longer cooldown. This can make a big difference in long battles like fiend hunts.

Secondly, Helena's buff affects all allies, whereas MC.Teresse's buff is an aura with a limited range. This makes Helena much more flexible in terms of positioning.

Thirdly, B.Helena costs only 1 SP (at full potential), whereas MC.Teresse costs 3 SP. This cost difference adds up over time in long battles like fiend hunts.

Healing

B.Helena's healing skill is a nice bonus to her magic buff, but there aren't many battles right now where healing is necessary. So far, healing has only been helpful for A) a few fiend hunts where the fiend deals ongoing burn damage, e.g. Yukwang, and B) for very high level fiend hunts (Lv 11+). Most of the time, Energy Guard skills are far more effective than healing, because they prevent death rather than help you heal back from it. Red Hat Rou and Anti-dystopian Diana both have skills that give Energy Guards to your team, where survivability is required.

If healing is desired, even +0 Helena is pretty good. Assuming Helena is moderately geared and has say 1500 M.ATK, Helena+0 heals 1500 x 1.35 (from her M.ATK boost) x 0.5 = 1013 per turn (or 2026 between every enemy attack, since it heals once at the end of your turn and once at the end of the enemy turn). Helena's heals can also crit, so there is a good chance you'll heal even more than that. If healing 2000-3000 HP every player turn is not enough to keep your team alive, your team was probably dead anyway.

At +5 full potential, especially with crit, Helena pretty much guarantees a full heal every turn.

Helena for PVP

Ever since Helena received her potential upgrades, she has been a top tier PVP pick for magic teams.

It goes without saying that her 1 SP cost makes her great value. However what makes Helena truly brutal for PVP (far more so than H.Lathel) is her 50% crit rate buff. Thanks to this big crit rate buff, attacking teams can gear their magic attackers to have 50% crit rate and max crit damage. When this gearing is combined with B.Helena, you get guaranteed crits for near unstoppable magic damage.

In order to be used effectively in PVP, full investment is required (i.e. +5 and all potentials unlocked). In particular, her 50% crit rate buff is not unlocked until +5.

Conclusion

When Helena was first launched, she was the best magic buffer in the game - but only because she was the only magic buffer in the game. Now that we have access to both MC.Teresse and Elpis, Helena is still very strong in PVE, but no longer essential since there are other acceptable options.

On the other hand, in PVP the opposite is true. At launch, B.Helena was an okay buffer for 2 SP, but now with her potential upgrades, she's one of the best PVP costumes available.

If you are planning to pull for her from scratch, just be aware that she takes a lot of investment (both costume levels and Tears) to make the investment worthwhile, and unlocks an essential upgrade for PVP a +5.