Greetings Summoners,
Over the past few weeks, The Team has been actively digging into an issue regarding Valkyrie and Hulkling’s damage output being lower than intended. Pinpointing the exact root cause and determining the right way to address it was a complex issue - but at this point, good progress has been made, and the Team has now identified the underlying problem and a path forward.
To summarize the issue, in the October 2025 build, the Team created new Physical and Energy Penetration stats for use in the Wave 2 batch of Statcast Relics. Because Armor and Resistances are combined when calculating damage, this unintentionally fixed an old edge case in how the game handled Armor Penetration. That edge case was that when Armor Penetration was exceedingly high, it would both ignore positive Armor values, and Resistances, and then increase the damage dealt even further beyond that. Now all three stats work as intended and only ignore Armor and Resistances.
The edge case mostly arose when Champions had exceptionally high Penetration stats, and unfortunately, there were a handful of Champions who were regularly reaching those numbers and benefiting from the increased damage. So when the fix was implemented, their damage decreased. This was the case for all rarities of these Champions, not just 7-stars.
The list of Champions that exceeded the threshold of high Penetration Stats, and so had their damage reduced, is:
- Hulkling
- Valkyrie
- Hercules
There are Champions released in or after October who utilize these stats and meet this threshold, but since they were balanced with the new change already in place, their damage is not impacted. Similarly, there are many Champions who use Penetration stats in smaller amounts, and so weren’t affected by this edge case.
It is worth noting that Penetration stats are commonly used as a Defender threat, and often granted by Quest Nodes, so this change has actually resulted in Attackers taking less damage since the October change.
Due to the scope and importance of the fix, The Team has decided it is best for the game’s long-term health to leave the change in place, and then adjust Hulkling, Valkyrie, and yes, Hercules, to restore their damage as close to parity with their pre-change selves as possible.
As far as timeline and capacity, the Balance Team will begin work on these Champions immediately, and hope to have the changes live in-game before the end of February. Due to the severity of this issue, we’re going to accelerate the timeline of this fix to get it out faster than a normal bug fix.
We appreciate your patience while we investigated this issue, and apologize for any confusion. Rest assured, we’re making this a priority and are looking to have this fixed up soon!
