Hela Guide: Abilities, Crosshair Tips & Combos (Marvel Rivals)

🎯 The core idea

Hela is a hitscan long-range Duelist who wins fights on crosshair discipline, not tracking. Every tip in this guide points at the same habit: park your crosshair at head height where the enemy is about to walk, hold still, and let them run into it. Do that consistently and she turns into one of the strongest carry picks in the current meta — do it while chasing flicky tracking shots and she feels mediocre.

• free costs nothing
• cheap small cost
• setup needs preparation
• grind pays off slowly
• skip the thing to stop doing

Nightsword Thorn: the hitscan gun that does the real work

Nightsword Thorn is Hela's primary fire — pure hitscan, no travel time. It currently deals 80 damage per shot and 160 on a headshot, a two-shot headshot kill at full damage. Ammo capacity is 10 shots per clip.

1. Aim for the right side of the head freeMarvel Rivals' third-person camera makes the head hitbox noticeably bigger on the right side. Favor that side over dead-center and you'll land more headshots than you expect. 1:04
2. Stop tracking, start parking freeAgainst strafing targets, center your crosshair on where they're about to walk and hold it there instead of chasing them across the screen. It's far easier to hit and works for nearly every engagement. 1:25
3. Set your crosshair to head height and hold it there freeLearn where a given hero's head sits and leave your crosshair at that height rather than making big vertical adjustments mid-fight — keep your movement horizontal instead. 1:45

Piercing Night: build ultimate charge, don't rely on it for damage

Piercing Night is Hela's secondary fire — a thrown swarm of four blades that latch onto enemies and explode after a short delay, dealing individual hit damage plus a separate explosion. The explosion component currently deals 35 damage per blade. It has an 8-second cooldown per the video.

1. Throw it into groups to farm ultimate charge cheapThis is the main reason to use the ability at all — tag as many targets as possible rather than aiming it like a precision tool. 3:31
2. Finish low targets hiding behind cover cheapThe explosion has real radius, so aiming at the edge of whatever the target is hiding behind can still catch them and secure a kill. 3:51

Soul Drainer: it's an AoE stun field, not a single-target snipe

1. Save it for dive threats grindThis ability is especially strong against dive tanks and other fast-moving divers — landing it locks a mobile target completely still instead of just slowing them. 4:34
2. Lead fast targets by predicting their path grindAgainst a diving Spider-Man or Black Panther, aim at their feet and predict the direction they're committing to rather than where they currently are. 4:54

Soul Drainer can interrupt certain enemy Ultimates outright, per the Marvel Rivals Wiki — worth holding in reserve against animation-locked ults, not just as a dueling tool.

Astral Flock: your escape, not your kill-securer

Astral Flock turns Hela into a crow for an 18m dash with a bit of carry — landing it right lets you bunny-hop for extra distance. It has a 15-second cooldown and grants complete immunity to damage and crowd control while active, confirmed by the Marvel Rivals Wiki.

The video says the dash "gives you a bonus of 25" without specifying what kind — the Wiki's balance log clears this up: it's 25 bonus health, added in the Season 4.5 patch (Oct 10, 2025) alongside a reduced cast time.

The core playstyle: pick off isolated targets, don't chase tracking duels

1. Burst down out-of-position tanks freeA tank that's out of line of sight of their supports melts fast to two headshots — this is one of the highest-value targets you can find. 2:07
2. Play a flanking off-angle if your stun aim is solid grindA flank Hela wins duels by landing Soul Drainer reliably, but sacrifices ultimate charge and overall damage uptime compared to playing with the team — it's a higher-skill, higher-reward playstyle. 13:59
3. Play main Hela while you're still building aim confidence setupStaying with your team, waiting for enemies to overextend, and picking them off is the lower-risk way to learn the hero before trying to flank. 15:02

Goddess of Death: Hela's ultimate

Goddess of Death sends Hela high into the air and switches to a first-person view where you throw explosive Nastrond Crows down onto enemies below. Per the Wiki, activating it grants a separate 1000-point health bar — if that health bar is emptied, Hela reverts to her normal form at whatever health she had before activating rather than dying outright. Per the video, it lasts 10 seconds and deals 125 damage per skull impact; the Wiki doesn't list either figure separately, so treat them as the video's numbers rather than independently wiki-confirmed.

1. Time it around enemy shields grindPop it right as a Doctor Strange or Emma Frost shield breaks, or right after they've used a cooldown that takes them out of position — don't activate it into a fresh shield. 9:07

Passive: Nastrond Crowstorm

Per the Marvel Rivals Wiki, a defeated enemy generates a crow at their point of death that explodes after a delay — the video puts that delay at roughly 1.8 seconds, a figure not separately listed on the Wiki. Getting a pick near an enemy's main line or their supports can chain into a second explosion, which pairs especially well with the Namor team-up's squids covered below.

Team-ups: pick based on playstyle, not raw power

Unlike heroes with one clearly-stronger team-up, Hela's two are roughly equal in value — the right pick depends on whether you're playing main or flanking.

Venom — Hel Tendrils

1. Take Venom if you're playing off-angle duels grindA longer, slowing stun is far more valuable when you're relying on Soul Drainer to win 1-on-1s on the flank. 14:21

Enhanced Venom, per the Wiki, also makes Piercing Night fire additional projectiles and heal you on a direct hit — the video only mentions the healing, not the extra projectiles.

Namor — Deep Wrath

1. Take Namor if you're playing main with the team grindA main Hela gets more picks and better sightlines, so the extra distraction and chip damage from squids compounds more than it would on a flank. 11:52

Enhanced Namor, per the Wiki, spawns an undead monstro at the point of impact on every attack while Goddess of Death is active — turning the ultimate into even more of a threat, matching what the video describes.

What this guide doesn't answer

The video doesn't give exact numbers for Piercing Night's direct-hit damage per blade or its cooldown beyond the creator's own stated 8 seconds, and it doesn't place Hela on a tier list — both need a dedicated source before we cover them honestly. What we can say: she's currently framed as one of the strongest carry Duelists when played for crosshair discipline over mechanical flair, which lines up with the aim-focused fundamentals covered above.

How this guide was fact-checked

Every ability name, cooldown, and damage number above was checked against the Marvel Rivals Wiki's Hela page and its dated balance-change log, not just the video's commentary. Three points in the video didn't hold up exactly as stated: Nightsword Thorn's "80m" close-range claim (the Wiki's current falloff range is 35m), Soul Drainer's framing as a single-target ability (the Wiki and an extracted in-game tooltip confirm it's a 3m-radius AoE stun), and the Namor team-up's "assist" trigger (the Wiki specifies KOs). All three are corrected above with the current values. Ability names and exact numbers were additionally confirmed against extracted video frames of Hela's own ability tooltips shown on the practice range.