MidAT A GLANCE
Strengths
- Hard control: Shadow Strike (fear)
- Mobility: Arcane Shade
Weaknesses
- No protection from crowd control
SKILLS
Primal Force
Cooldown: 2 s
Valentina gains 8–50 extra EXP each time she deals damage to an enemy hero. Cooldown: 2 seconds.
If the enemy hero's level isn't higher than Valentina's, 30% of the damage dealt is converted into her HP. The EXP scales with Valentina's level.
Shadow Strike
Cooldown: 7–5 s by level
fearslow
Valentina casts Shadow Strike in the target direction, dealing 340–665 (+185% MP) magic damage to enemies hit and slowing them by 40% for 1 second.
Enemy heroes hit by Shadow Strike are marked with a Shadow Sigil for 4 seconds and will be terrified for 1s when hit by Shadow Strike again within the duration (a unit can only be terrified once within 4 seconds.
Arcane Shade
Cooldown: 12 s
dash
Valentina dashes in the target direction, firing 3 Shadow Bolts at nearby enemies that deal 125–225 (+30% MP) magic damage each. Valentina can cast this skill again within 6s (costs Mana). The cooldown of Shadow Strike is reduced by 1 second each time a Shadow Bolt hits an enemy.
I Am You
Cooldown: Varying (>= 10 seconds) s
slow
Valentina slows the target enemy hero by 70% for 0.5 seconds and gains the ability to cast their Ultimate. Casting the enemy's Ultimate turns Valentina into the enemy hero's form and allows her to inherit their Basic Attack type for up to 12 seconds. Her regular skills remain unchanged, unless the enemy's Ultimate has a Morph effect.
The stolen Ultimate's level will be equal to Valentina's level and the cooldown will be 120%–100% of the target's cooldown (but not lower than 10 seconds). Valentina gains (+100% MP) Physical Attack for the duration if the enemy is a Physical Damage hero. This cannot be used on an enemy Valentina.
WHO COUNTERS VALENTINA
Pick them when the enemy has Valentina · score is their advantage
Masha11.1
You simply walk out of what Valentina needs to finish casting. You are slippery enough to make Valentina's burst miss.
Valir10.5
Your ultimate is worthless in her hands, and you win the trade that follows.
Julian10.5
Your ultimate is worthless in her hands, and you win the trade that follows.
Gusion10.4
Copying your ultimate gives her almost nothing, and your burst removes her outright.
Argus10.3
You can dodge the burst window Valentina needs.
WHO VALENTINA COUNTERS
Pick Valentina into them
Zhuxin11.5
Your burst deletes Zhuxin before they can respond. You simply walk out of what Zhuxin needs to finish casting.
Grock8.8
Taking his ultimate turns his own engage into your fight-winner.
Carmilla8.5
Taking her ultimate turns the link against her own team.
Atlas8.5
His ultimate in your hands wins the fight instead — taking it is the whole matchup.
Irithel8.2
Close matchup — your burst deletes Irithel before they can respond, but Irithel answers with a fragile frame.
BEST TEAMMATES
HOW TO PLAY VALENTINA
Your Ultimate (I Am You) is your strongest tool. Steal high-impact Ultimates like AoE crowd control (Atlas, Minotaur), healing (Estes), or suppression (Franco). Avoid stealing Ultimates that rely on specific passives or kits (Wanwan, Popol, Fanny). Use S1 (Shadow Strike) to terrorize enemies, and S2 (Arcane Shade) to dash and reduce your S1 cooldown.
HOW TO PLAY AGAINST VALENTINA
- No protection from control — a stun before the engage wins the duel.
HIDDEN MECHANICS
What the in-game descriptions do not tell you: crowd-control rules and verified skill quirks. How crowd control works →
Primal Force- The Magic Damage dealt by Valentina's own skills only benefits 30% of her Magic Lifesteal.
- Fully gain EXP when the damage is from emblem, battle spells, basic attacks but not on non-minion enemies, such as summons.
- Damage from battle spells and equipment cannot be converted to HP.
Shadow Strike- Fear — basic-level control: interrupts only some skills, not most channels; blocked by control immunity.
I Am You- Cooldown starts when the duration of this skill ends, or through manual cancellation.
- The target enemy will have a back-animation indicating that enemy Valentina is possessing their ability and has not yet used it. The indicator vanishes if the ability is used or cancelled.
- If Valentina turned into the enemy hero's form, neither of her nor the copied hero's voice lines will play.
- Regardless of the form of the target hero, Valentina can only copy the default/1st phase of the ultimates. (e.g., you can only copy Roger's Wolf Transformation―not Restore Human Form―even if he is in Wolf Form.)
- Ultimates that require activation from their non-Ultimates such as Wanwan's Crossbow of Tang and Fredrinn's Energy Eruption can be use immediately by Valentina. However, siphoning enemy Hilda also contains their respective stacks, strengthening the stolen Ultimate.
- For Phoveus, the ultimate is always greyed out, but when tapping the ultimate button, Valentina can switch to his form with the entire skill set.
- Valentina cannot inherit Attack Speed Ratio from a copied hero.
- BUFFs, stacks and summoned units that came from the copied hero will disappear as the skill duration ends or when Valentina manually cancels it. Valentina's death cancels the copy immediately, which also cancels in return.
- For Lukas, Valentina will copy the current availability of Unleash the beast as well as his current amount of Hero's Resolve and can normally gain it from her damage. I am You begins cooldown (from a maximum of 10 seconds) as soon as the ability is cast. Her attack range is set to 2.6 as Lukas.
- Physical Basic Attacks does not benefit from extra .
- When the description of the stolen Ultimate says "basic attack" or "skill," it only refers to the copied hero's basic attacks and skills (including non-Ultimates); thus, Valentina's skills are not included in the definition.
- For Leomord, Valentina gains all of his basic abilities before Phantom Steed reaches her, which grants her the set of enhanced abilities.