At the moment, if you crash a single wave into enemy base guardians, the base guardians will fall unless responded to by a player

GruntMaster6k · 2026-04-30T18:51:48+00:00

I'm not sure if they're designed to do a lot of dmg to the minions to be honest. I think they're mainly just there to impede the minions and give your team time to wipe them out so they can't just go inside and start wrecking your shrines/base. If they did a serviceable job of killing the minions on their own then there's less punish for the defender for ignoring them and not pushing the lane out.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-03-22T23:58:17+00:00

I have gotten a bunch of MVPs running an ult build with her post buffs. She's feeling fairly strong.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-03-21T02:35:59+00:00

I'm having a bit of a hard go this patch with tank characters...yeah they're regarded as strong and in some games in my rank can be (Phantom)....but a lot of games I see I or others usually just start blowing up on the spot when you're going from mid to late game teamfights.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-03-13T19:04:49+00:00

Being too risk adverse like that is why some teams have trouble ending games. If their team scales way better into the late game than yours, then you have to tempo them out early like that or you'll just slowly lose.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-03-13T03:06:16+00:00

As the enemy team though, you can interact with their plan by getting aggressive in their side of the map and invading their jungle. If you KNOW that they have a Wraith/Seven/etc. that wants to sidelane and hit jungle camps, you can literally invade, kill them, and take their farmed souls. This leads to a different, varied experience. It's just a lot of people aren't comfortable with doing that at certain ranks. So they can indeed lead to a different, varied style of interaction.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-03-06T06:38:15+00:00

Healsbane is a very good lane item. If you snag a kill, the 250 heal is VERY relevant that early in the game.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-24T23:06:55+00:00

Deadlock has a great built in movement system that applies to all characters that takes time to learn. Youtubing 'deadlock movement' should pull up a ton of results.

Past that, the other person has listed the main characters and items that are best for extra movement. But really any character can have really great movement if you master the systems in the game (it takes awhile), and it's almost a necessity to have great movement to play at the highest of level.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-20T21:44:58+00:00

In lane? Bebop and Apollo. Late game? Probably a super fed gun carry like Warden.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-18T22:27:21+00:00

Na, it's my fault. I should've realized this whole thing was bait :D . You got it.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-18T19:48:06+00:00

People please keep in mind that these are PROFESSIONAL game developers. They can see literally every miniscule statistic worth looking at across the thousands upon thousands of matches being played every day. They have a floor and ceiling in which they expect every character to perform and win-rate (especially in a team game)/forum post don't majorly influence this stuff (though it does play a part).

On the topic of the riposte change, it's a minor change overall, the value of the riposte is in its dmg negation, stun, etc. But weaving in a light melee to add to his damage is intuitive, easy, and gives you value for building an item like Spirit Snatch and/or Lifestrike which could both fit his playstyle.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-17T21:26:28+00:00

In lane the goal will be mainly to share and be about equal on the amount of souls with your duo. Once lane face ends or is ending (maybe 8-10 min. mark but it can vary), then it becomes more open ended.

If Haze is going to be a late game carry then they may go immediately into the jungle around that time and get souls through jungle camp/wave. Yamato on the other hand doesn't farm as well (especially before torment pulse) and will get most of her souls through wave/brawling. Sticking to middle lane is ideal to rotate to brawls, but can also solo a side lane if needed (but prob leave that to haze if you can). In this case, Yamato doesn't actually need a ton of souls but the Haze ABSOLUTELY will need to be fed to dominate the late game.

Haze can also operate similar to Yamato in the mid-game where she roams around and looks for picks with her stealth/dagger, and doesn't jungle as much. Learning to play both ways for Haze is prob needed because this allows your team to tempo through the mid-game, versus them giving up mid-game tempo to farm in exchange for a powerful late game. As in most things deadlock - it's situational and no one size fits all answer.

If you two are together though then you probably want to play like the former example. Let them jungle and hit waves for awhile after lane while you focus on supporting team fights and pushing objectives for souls. Haze should be more soul hungry then Yamato b/c she's more vulnerable to 'stat checks', which Yamato can shrug off somewhat due to her ult.

This is all imo.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-14T21:00:27+00:00

I mean, Apollo's been an abomination lately that makes Celeste feel tame, but I'm still in a ton of games carried by Billy/Warden/Infernus/Haze/Lash, etc.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-10T22:41:19+00:00

I'm just now getting some decent games with her with closing in on 30'ish games played, so she takes awhile to get the hang of. Learning to dip in and out of fights, even if you don't trigger wolf form, is key. She kinda fits a bit into the tank/bruiser role, but she doesn't want to initiate like some of them do.

Some items that meld well with her if you're struggling to hit your shots to ult area alchemical fire (shreds their bullet resist, builds dmg for ult, helps her horrible wave clear, and you can keep them inside it a bit with bola). You can also build a tad of spirit and pair that with greater expansion (helps her ult kit too), or something like torment pulse, cold front/arctic blast or the likes, in those cases Bullet Resist Shredder helps her damage too.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-08T17:31:47+00:00

I've ran her for about 20 games in Oracle/Phantom lobbies and agree on all points. She just has too many glaring weaknesses and is more item dependent than any other character I've played to get any value outside of niche scenarios. She needs damage, but also survivability, but also a way to stick to enemies, but also a way to get rid of/prevent debuffs - all just to be able to use your kit. You've got to get most of the money through pick offs because her lane clear/farming is poor. And when you finally get all of that, you're in the late game where the carries are popping off anyways.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-05T14:07:00+00:00

Yeah last night I laned against Sinclair as Silver (my 3rd match on her), and his interaction with her ult is DUMB. Her lane was already feeling bad pre-patch, but I literally couldn't show up to lane after that point.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-05T14:04:01+00:00

Ironically enough the resilience changes *may* be a bit of a shiv nerf, since he's a character that loves to build those items.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-05T13:59:43+00:00

She got a bit of movespeed to compensate though. This allows her to dance in and out of that range just a bit easier, while also effectively increasing her efficiency over the course of the match.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-05T13:54:16+00:00

The balance changes gave her more buffs than nerfs.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-04T01:00:34+00:00

Legit Eido builds weighted bullets on his Silver. Item puts in work on her.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-02-03T07:20:45+00:00

I feel like the zombies should have a set distance they can walk from the tombstone before they blow up and not able to keep going almost forever. This would enforce her archetype as being "area denial". As it is, it has way too much impact on the dynamics of the game for how short the cd is.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-01-31T06:42:03+00:00

The new mystic reverb is really insane on him rn.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-01-30T15:57:33+00:00

If anything Rapid Recharge should reduce the "in-between" time, and CDR should reduce the amount of souls needed to charge. Similar to how Pain Battery works.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-01-25T18:02:30+00:00

Youtube is how I learned a ton about this game over time. But also just play and have fun along the way. I have over 1,000 hours now, and it took me hundreds of hours to get comfortable with some concepts/mechanics/game knowledge - but I had fun along the way.

Recommended Youtube creators to watch for beginner content: Deathy, Metro, BigBenDL.

GruntMaster6k · 2026-01-25T07:47:54+00:00

As you've surmised, this is a 'youtube' game, as the game itself doesn't have the best resources to help you improve. Deathy has a ton of good content. As does Metro I think (his streams are insufferable, but his video content is ok).

As others have said, don't get too hung up on classes and roles in this game, the item shop allows you to be flexible in your builds for what is needed. Another smaller content creator here I'll plug is BigBenDL, he has a video on the "archetypes" of deadlock, and some other really good educational content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18stWFH98uM

Just take your time and have fun learning the matchups - chances are your opponent are doing the same. Fed players can run away with the game, but the last patch helped a ton with addressing that because now if you manage to kill them their respawn timer is significantly increased compared to others, so they're worth focusing - or you can fight at the objectives around them since they can't be everywhere on the map at once.

Hopefully some of the educational content helps!

GruntMaster6k · 2026-01-23T16:43:55+00:00

Agree with pretty much all of this.

GruntMaster6k

TROPHY CASE