So I though I understood how epic heroes worked. Originally it seemed that they simply took the place of a hero and a trooper. However, I've seen in a few places references to FF removing epic heroes from the game. If so, how are the handled now? Any info or clarification would help.

Epic Heroes, replaced Legendary Heroes.

Epics are current for the Revised Version of TH, and like you mentioned they replace both a Hero and a Trooper in your squad, they also have 5 Health Rows, and usually a couple of special rules, like Asteros's Charge ability.

Legendaries were originally released with Novgorod, Zor'ka was the first, Hoss, Hoax, and Asteros were going to be next, but when FFG developed the Revised Rules the Legendary charcter class was droped and Zor'ka, Hoss, and Hoax became just regular characters. Origninally Legendaries: ignored all natural 10 effects and had 4 health rows, but very high stats only 7s and 6s.

Hope that clears things up.

Cool, that helps alot