OK, this question seems to be in my wheelhouse. I think I’m in a similar situation to OP. I kept hoping and hoping for a better yellow option than Bane. Then, on Thanksgiving, out pops this little badger guy, and I was like, “Oh - KAY”. And I’m not a big fan of randomness, so I really wanted a better option to pop out while I was leveling this little critter, but alas, to date, I’ve pulled two more Danzas, and he’s still my best yellow option until I can get the mats for Onatel.
So I have maxed Danza, given him three levels in the talent grid, and used him A LOT in all contexts. My observation is that, yes, the three tricks do tend to occur with approximately equal frequency, despite what you will feel when you throw two straight snowflakes during a boss wave. (It will be tempting, but throwing your mobile device against a wall at that point will only create more problems!) As noted, the snowflake leaves you basically no worse off than you were before it happened. Yes, you wasted some mana and it will take some extra time to recharge, but you didn’t lose defense (a la the rabbits) or anything. The swords attack (damage + blind) absolutely will save your bacon and win some fights that would otherwise be unwinnable. It is that good. The fun factor for me was throwing swords when I was farming 7-4 and wiping out a whole wave of fully charged minions at once. I felt like Thanos doing the snap! So there is some fun factor there.
As pointed out also, his health and defense are quite good, and at the time, the top criteria for my main heroes was, “Don’t die.” Despite his mild appearance, Danza is surprisingly good with this mandate. He’s a hearty little booger. I do think folks tend to underestimate him in raids. I think my defense team is reasonably solid as a whole, but I’m pretty sure Danza has won me a couple that I should have lost because the attacker was counting on seeing a snowflake and he or she got swords instead.
Bottom line is, if you are hardcore going for the win every time and you have a more consistently performing option, you are going to hate Danzaburo. I like winning as much as the next guy, but I had (and still have, really) no better options, and I have been pleasantly surprised with his overall performance, especially his defense. That said, I haven’t had experience with many comparable yellow heroes yet, so mine is an incomplete picture, but if you set your expectations accordingly, you can do worse than Danzaburo.