Not in anything resembling a serious competitive list. At Adepticon 2013, you couldn't turn around without knocking over six Heldrakes.
Post-Tau/Eldar, they lost their purpose. As someone who actually was playing a Hades Drake at the time for anti-air, I had to drop it by Feast of Blades that year because there weren't any more flyers in the meta in the first place. Tau chased them all away. It wasn't worth keeping him just as a rare anti-Necron spoiler choice. People thought they'd come back with the new Marine book, but White Scars didn't turn out to be as good in 6th as people expected, and when Centstar eventually came out as the primary competitive choice from that book they again had no relevant targets.
So basically Heldrakes were the internet's boogeyman throughout 6th, but the internet rarely resembles what's actually happening at tournaments. The only Heldrakes I saw at tournaments post-Tau/Eldar were Necron/
CSM allied lists with a single token Heldrake alongside their Cron Air--which were essentially just netlist echoes of what had happened at the prior Adepticon--and those lists were getting obliterated.
At the same time, 360 degree fire arc didn't
make Heldrakes good--by the time that
FAQ came out they were practically at the end of their relevance anyway, and during the period when they actually
were good, everyone had been playing them with normal firing arcs. Give them back their 360 degree firing arc and they'd
still have been irrelevant thusfar in 7th. To be honest, the Vector nerf probably hurt them more than the firing arc nerf--but again, we're discussing two nerfs on a unit that would have still been unused without either of them. We may as well be discussing what would happen if Flash Gitz went down to T3 and cost five more points.
Heldrakes are a reasonably-priced S6 AP3 Template that can find you literally anywhere on the board from the moment of arrival, which is nearly impossible to hide from. When the primary competitive armies are in 2+ armor (Cents/Riptides/Broadsides/Wolf Characters/
GK), sporting Invul Saves (Daemons/Wraiths/Storm Shields), Mech'd up (Wave Serpents), T8 (Wraithknights), or in the air (
FMCs/old Cron Air), there's no call for such a weapon--and the problem with non-Transport Flyers is, their role is strictly offensive. They provide no value if they aren't killing things. They provide no efficiency if the things they are killing are just 4-10 point backfield Troops, which it won't even be removing full squads of in a single pass anyway, meaning it's accomplished nothing.
Now, there are suddenly a bunch of 27-point models zooming around tables that are too fast to be assaulted and tend to have 3+armor/2+ cover at T4. That makes Heldrakes relevant, despite the nerfs, which just proves the nerfs weren't the real problem in the first place. Any unit that is relegated solely to offense will
always draw its relevance from its targets, not from itself.
As an example, imagine you could buy an upgrade that cost 5 points and immediately killed all models with Raven Guard Chapter Tactics anywhere on the board. That sure is an amazing upgrade. Internet sure would be pissed off. Wouldn't ever be seen in a tournament, though. No need to waste 5 points.
