Paper HeronBuild and Guide

The spearhead of the Impromptu (Plant) team, Paper Heron is our most recent Chinese New Year Limited character and a very interesting unit puts all of her eggs in the Impromptu basket.

She scales up remarkably well among the high-power peers of the 3.X generation. Impromptu is always kind of a difficult Archetype to judge as it functions very differently from other teams and also has extremely rigid team-building requirements.

Plantpromptu is a beast at both single target and multi target situations, as [Qi Panorama] maximizes [Impromptu Incantation]’s power by making the split attacks deal the same amount of damage as the main one, and just straight up hyperbuffing all of its stats while condensing it into 3 attacks at most. 

In most Archetypes that have access to an Array, Impromptu is extremely powerful with theirs. The unfortunate part is that it’s a bit awkward to make use of it in Starpromptu, as Paper Heron is pretty focused on her own brand.

For those building Impromptu teams, Paper Heron is an extremely powerful choice and a definite want if you’re able to set it up. Any amount of investment into this archetype is valid, as Plantpromptu is extremely versatile and hits very hard.

If you’re not building Impromptu teams, Paper Heron is most likely a skip. She cannot be used in any other teams, and Plantpromptu is behind the Top 3 Damage Dealers (Liang Yue, Beryl, Brume) currently. On the other hand, her team isn’t difficult to set up and her BiS (An-An Lee/Tooth Fairy/Kiperina) isn’t that difficult to get. Tooth Fairy and Kiperina were BiS for Impromptu teams to begin with, and An-An Lee is available from the beginner 6-star selector.

Gameplay:

Let’s go through Paper Heron’s kit step-by-step, starting off with her insights.

Her Precognition is that of a standard Impromptu character until you reach it’s second paragraph. Like Barcarola, Paper Heron assigns an Afflatus to [Impromptu Incantation]. In this case, it’s Plant instead of Star and deals Reality DMG instead of Mental DMG. If you use both of these units at the same time, whoever is in the higher position will proc the Afflatus (so if Barcarola is in front of Paper Heron, it’ll be Star).

The rest of her insights revolve around deplaying [Qi Panorama] and boosting its effects. It is also the most integral part of Paper Heron’s kit, so let’s see what it does.

[Qi Panorama] is an Array, meaning that it cannot coexist with things like [Pulsing Field] or [Horror Story Night]. At base, this Array increases the damage dealt by [Impromptu Incantation] and makes it’s split attacks deal additional damage as well. The trade-off is that [Impromptu Incantation] can only hit up to 3 times per round, but every ‘additional hit’ effect will instead make it deal additional damage.

There’s a progression mechanic to this Array, however, called [Glimpse of Tao]. This buff can be leveled from 1 to 3, after which it returns to 2 (similar to how [Pulsing Field] functions). At 1, it makes all split attacks deal the same damage as the main attack. At 2, it deals additional damage based on the amount of enemies present. At 3, it grants extra offensive buffs to the attacks and deals additional damage based on present enemies.

If that wasn’t powerful enough on its own, Paper Heron also gives a free ATK buff to allies scaling with the amount of [Impromptu] characters on the team.

Let’s go to her Ultimate next, as it’s the most important part of her kit.

“One Paper, Five Armies” is a mass attack that scales in damage with stacks of [Eureka] owned by Paper Heron. Like all Impromptu Ultimates, this adds additional points to the attack for that round. The key thing here is that it advances [Glimpse of Tao] one stage, and it’s the primary way of progressing your [Qi Panorama] Array.

Her other spells are less consequential, but given that she is a Limited unit, she has extra privileges.

“Reader of Qi” is a mass buff that grants herself stacks of [Valley Wind] and allies [Auspicious Wind] while increasing the DMG Dealt of [Impromptu Incantation] for that turn. That first buff is consumed by Paper Heron to further increase [Impromptu Incantation]’s damage, while the second buff grants bonus DMG Dealt and Incantation Might.

Her least interesting card is “Shaper of Qi”, a simple 2-target attack that grants extra hits to that round’s [Impromptu Incantation].