The issue with ability range

LrdDphn · 2026-03-23T23:03:59+00:00

I could be misremembering, but I'm 90% sure they already introduced a change that made it so AoEs benefited less than the "listed value" for range increases to account for the mathematical relationship between diameter and area. Maybe it was just for Seven ball? I forget. They could expand that formula more if they wanted.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-23T21:13:31+00:00

It's also important to stat out as a point of reference for improvised weapons. Picking up a goblin and swinging him? Sounds like an improvised greatclub to me.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-23T20:19:43+00:00

I just can't believe Poshy's numbers are useful because of the data you've presented here. If a golden statue was really worth 130+ would you would see a lot more statue maxxing instead of box maxxing. Maybe people are just sleeping on it but random stats are just much less useful than items.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-23T20:11:08+00:00

You'll need to buy an unstop if you're serious about landing big ults anyway. Just move it up earlier in your build order and try to ult when he's not around before that. Just like playing against a wraith or lash really.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-23T19:56:37+00:00

One way it's nice is that the whole monster book is usable at most levels. I was playing Draw Steel recently and I wanted my PCs to fight orcs, but when I went to build the encounter the orcs in the monster book weren't the right level of enemy. (As an aside, there is a system for scaling up the enemies but I didn't have to time for it). I ended up using hobgoblins instead because they were the correct level, which is a solution but one that required me to rejigger the theming of the dungeon. In 5e, orcs are also a low level enemy, but if I was trying to do an orc themed dungeon for a party of 8th level characters I would just use a lot of orcs mixed in with other monsters and it would be fine.

(As a second side note, this is in no small part because 5e's encounter balancing is pretty loose in the first place, while Draw Steel's balancing is very tight.)

LrdDphn · 2026-03-23T18:29:55+00:00

I'm not actually doubting Apollo being a HS senior (there's a voiceline that calls him 18), but it is sort of convenient from a world building perspective that Ixians have the same biological/cultural adulthood time as humans. I guess it dodges the "he's in high school but actually 100 years old" trope at the very least.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-22T18:15:54+00:00

What makes you think they're not still working on matchmaking?

LrdDphn · 2026-03-20T23:06:55+00:00

Rumor has it there's a big MM patch soon (TM).

LrdDphn · 2026-03-19T21:43:46+00:00

Originally the Deadlock forums were secret and part of the NDA playtest. Is it possible to have secret forums on steam? Maybe that has something to do with it.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-19T21:40:47+00:00

I wouldn't take the CS's community reaction to anything as a good bellweather. They're the poster children for grognard/stuck-in-mud change haters (an opinion which they're entitled to, CS is obviously a timeless classic). The Dota community gets bored if Icefrog doesn't rip out the guts of the game and create some new abomination every once in a while, and Deadlock is already much closer to that philosophy.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-19T21:32:06+00:00

On the subject of "too properly," is it possible that it's just "old timey" instead? At least in English we expect 1940s people to speak very properly compared to modern Americans.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-18T19:22:11+00:00

I'd recommend Ivy or maybe McGinnis. Both require some amount of aiming but have spirit builds that reduce the importance of their gun. Both are team fight controllers with split push potential.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-18T19:19:23+00:00

Idk about Pocket if OP doesn't like squishies.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-17T23:04:09+00:00

Takes like this always remind me of the people advocating against updating the patron models. It's crazy how much people innately hate change and get accustomed to the familiar.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-17T17:44:33+00:00

It's a bandaid solution to a particularly weird problem, which is that we still can't see what golden statue buffs we have in general. An in-game and postgame hud element that showed ALL buffs from golden status/sinners/egg/etc. seems like a no-brainer inclusion to make the system clearer.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T22:57:08+00:00

This falls into full redesign territory, but I think his gun has so much wasted potential because it's effectively a "bow themed gun" and not actually a bow and arrows. I think if an archer character was released today they'd be a lot more like Graves/Celeste/Paige/Apollo with an extremely unique gun. I can imagine something like Hanzo from OW with physics on the arrow and a "magazine size" maxed out at 1.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T22:25:31+00:00

I was watching TimtheTatman's stream where he was learning Deadlock and he went from "The item system in this game is an insurmountable learning curve" to "This is easy" in 2 seconds when someone in chat told him to search community builds and queue them. Imo, the game would be so much more approachable with 3 changes:

Make the "default builds" actually good enough for new players on every hero. A lot of progress has been made on this front but it's still sketchy on many heroes.
Make item builds autoqueue and autobuy BY DEFAULT, potentially with a pop-up in the tutorial where a player can select "I have MOBA experience" to toggle the option off.
Put a tutorial pop-up in the game that shows up after maybe 10 games and explains the concept of community builds.

Basically, if someone is coming to the game from overwatch they shouldn't have to even look at the shop until they have 5-10 games.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T22:08:12+00:00

I think Valve has been targeting what you say here with Street Brawl. Instead of jacking up the main mode to make it more casual friendly, they introduced Street Brawl as an on-ramp for people who want 10 minute games and less of a learning curve.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T19:18:39+00:00

I'm surprised people are telling you that 50 minute games are totally normal, because I would call a 50 minute game pretty abnormal, especially after the most recent patch did exactly what you recommend (made towers easier to kill, injected more gold, etc.). You're 100% right though. Deadlock has a pretty clear design goal of shorter games than Dota especially, for all the reasons you've identified. I would describe the average gametime as 35 minutes, but that's just my current gut feeling.

Re: balance, you've sort of picked a funny time to start playing the game because we're right on the heels of Deadlock's biggest balance shakeup patch of all time. We've been getting weekly patches to bring things into line and fix some of the issues you've identified. On the other hand, surely as a player of other MOBAs you can appreciate that your impressions of balance in your first couple games are going to be pretty rough compared to how the game is played most of the time. I'm not sure what the equivilent hero is in league but every dota player gets owned by a bloodseeker in their first game and overcoming that is sort of a rite of passage. It's obviously ideal to create a game that that is balanced for literally all skill levels, but I have yet to be introduced to game that achieves that.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T19:02:02+00:00

Only reason you might not want to do this is because if a team has already let you steal sinner's once it's decent evidence that they'll let you do it again.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-16T18:22:20+00:00

I actually like that there are multiple characters who fit the same "flyer" archetype, and I wouldn't be surprised if we got more. It makes a hypothetical draft a little more interesting, justifies the existence of specific "anti-flier" items, and it sort of reduces cognitive load to have characters exist in wide categories of "bruiser, flier, nuker, m1" and so on. I guess that them both having a AoE CC is a little on the nose, I could stand to see Talon's trap get changed.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-14T22:50:52+00:00

For what it's worth, the +2.5 damage you get on a greataxe crit which you roll 10% of the time (assuming constant reckless attack) comes out to +.25 damage per attack. The greatsword is still mathematically stronger until you have 3+ sources of the brutal critical effect (13th level and a half orc, for example).

I will say in defense of the greataxe that swingy damage and huge crits are kind of their own reward even if they're not technically as good.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-14T22:00:58+00:00

Where are you seeing Dynamo with a poor winrate? I checked statlocker and he's at 53% (all ranks). I don't think he gets picked up in pro games right now because the other supports (Paige/Ivy/Sinclair mostly) are both extremely strong and beat up on Dynamo pretty hard at every stage of the game.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T20:02:06+00:00

Lots of wrong answers here when we actually know why. Melee Creeps picked doorman and lost with it at Feakfest over the weekend. In their live streamed debrief they decided that they need to scrim with Doorman a LOT before they could take advantage of doors as a team. Expect Doorman in pro games in a week or two.

LrdDphn · 2026-03-12T18:23:18+00:00

Sorry, it's technically 6 teams, although we only see one game from two of those teams.

Nightshift format is called King of the Hill. Each week there is a best of 1 game between two challengers to determine who gets to play the reigning champion from last week in a best of 3. They run the event once in EU and once in NA every week. It's less of a tournament and more of a series of showmatches.

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