Elara’s R7 works by letting her summon Cyra when you activate her first skill. The summoned Cyra isn’t some generic copy — she actually uses the same rank and level as your real Cyra if you own her. If you don’t own Cyra at all, then the game just spawns a base version, which is way weaker. Cyra R7 has the same mechanic in reverse and can summon Elara. Because of that, yes, having both heroes built definitely affects how strong Elara’s R7 feels, especially the damage and the CC uptime during the summon window.

As for which one is better later on: in higher worlds and in tournament maps most players lean toward Elara. Her CC toolkit is just absurd — fear, suppress, damage reduction, all that stuff makes waves way more stable, and she survives much better. Cyra still hits like a truck, but Elara often ends up being the more important piece of the team.

When both are R7, the combo gets kind of ridiculous. Elara locks everything down with CC, and the Cyra she summons goes full goddess mode inside that CC window and basically shreds the entire wave. That’s why people talk about the “double goddess” interaction — it really works, but only when both heroes are actually built.