Heroes of the Month

First, let's get the obvious out the way:

To be completely fair, of course, not every player automatically has or can easily get glass!Khagan, and for folks who do have him, well, you do have to level him five times (sure, four costumes, but still) to get him up to his full costume-bonus power, whereas Andre only takes leveling once. 

Having said that, if you're going to use a Slow-speed hit-three hero... come on; Khagan hits harder by both % and by stats, bypasses defense buffs in Glass form, buffs nearby allies, and arguably has better passive to boot.  (And of course there's the option to use the Toon form with its passive instead, as desired.)

The comparison to Eliane -- who is herself a HotM nearly a year older -- is perhaps even more troubling.  Sure, her stats don't quite keep pace with Andre's, but she's faster, hits all instead of hitting three, and while her hit by % is less than Andre's (in addition to the stat difference), she also applies damage over time AND recharges her own mana from the fire damage (or any other fire damage applied to enemies) AND dispels all.

So... is there a use case for Andre?

• stats: if Andre just has bigger numbers than anything else on your roster, and you're not exactly picking up hordes of more recent red 5* heroes, size does matter at some point

• tank: if you're gonna roll a Slow hero on defense outside of Rush, most of the time you want that hero to be tanking.  If your foe is going to color-stack against you, having a defense buff against incoming blue (strong damage) could help.  Andre's Cover ability might help buy you a little extra time for another of your defenders (who might matter more, because of a more devastating Special or the ability to heal/revive) from getting sniped by damage.  It helps a bit that Andre can't be tagged by defense-down ailments.

Having said that, note that Cover is assigned randomly (and thus may not be as helpful as you think) and that Andre is putting himself in the line of fire to use Cover (which means he will get burned down faster.. and his HotM stats generally may not stand up well to premium heroes' damage when he's taking MORE damage by using Cover).

And defense against blue might theoretically help Andre as a tank defender, but is likely to matter less on offense (since defenses tend to be less color-stacked anyway, and you are less than likely to bring him against a blue-heavy or blue-tank team, since red is weak on attack vs blue).

"Boost Health on Enemy Special" is nice in principle, but even if it fired 100% of the time an enemy Special went off, boosting health by 100 is something you might scarcely notice during an entire fight.  (And for some unfathomable reason, it only works 50% of the time -- and if your foes are firing a bunch of Specials all at once, you're likely already toast anyway.)

I'm generally a pretty firm believer that many heroes - and even most HotM - do have a use case for at least some players, even if they attract scorn from those players who have the luck and/or budget to attract premium-portal alternatives.

But I find it pretty hard to defend Andre in his current state.  Doubly so because this month, the new Fated Summon offers Daemon as a choice -- who is almost certainly a better (though lower stats, but Very Fast with superb utility) 5* red project to work on for free-to-play, cheap-to-play, and/or newer players than Andre.

If you're lacking in red 5* at all, or anything like Andre's stats, he may have some place in your roster - but when a Fated Summon offering is perhaps a viable alternative, you might want to at least wait to see if Andre gets a buff before investing the effort and resources to level him.