Strategy

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What's the plan?

Strategy in Deadlock refers to the game knowledge and techniques employed by players to achieve the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy team's Patron.

Team Composition

A Team Composition is the 6 heroes a team employs in battle.

Since Deadlock's matchmaking uses a semi-random roster selection, players are encouraged to learn different heroes and adapt to the needs of their teams instead of fitting into rigid roles. Some heroes like Ivy, Rem and Paige fit a support role since their abilities have strong synergies with teammates. Others like Seven and Infernus fit the carry role, and can have strong individual impact in a game by securing kills. However, most heroes have some flexibility to fit different playstyles as needed.

Laning

The mini-map in the bottom-right corner of Deadlock's HUD.

Laning is the opening phase of the game, where duos of players from each team are assigned to each of the three lanes. The goal of laning is to try to gain an advantage over your opponents to carry into later phases of the game, while preventing opponents from doing the same. Laning phase is generally considered to be over when half or more of the towers on the map have been destroyed, leaving players free to roam across the map.

Understanding Your Lane

Being able to read the situation in your lane and communicate effectively will prevent you from making avoidable mistakes and giving your opponents a free lead. Not every lane is winnable, but mitigating a loss can also be valuable in the long run.

Here are some factors to account for during your laning phase:

• Matchups, or the strengths and weaknesses of the players in your lane. This is based on your hero's inherent capabilities, your playstyle, individual skill or build.
  • For example, if you and your partner are supports with low capacity for damage (ex. Paige and Rem), it may be best to play under your Guardian, to avoid being overrun.
  • While on the initial zipline ride to lane, swapping with other players on your team can let you play with a more synergistic partner, or pair you with a less dangerous enemy duo.
• Resources, or understanding the tools available to players in your lane at each point in time.
  • Certain soul breakpoints can make you weaker or stronger than your opponents (ex. buying more/stronger items, or unlocking your abilities first).
  • Abilities are also a resource -- for example, Lash's Ground Strike can only be used twice a wave, and requires setup beforehand. Knowing when enemies have abilities helps you assess whether or not you should take a fight.
  • Objectives that spawn during lane can also be converted into resources (ex. camps, Bridge Buffs, and the urn).
• Wave Priority, which represents the state of the Troopers in your lane. Troopers will do a deceptively high amount of damage to you if overextended, and should not be ignored. By ensuring your troopers can push further up the lane, you create more safe space in the lane for you and your partner (and likewise a more dangerous space for the enemy duo).
  • If coordinated, you can strategically allow an enemy wave to destroy (or clash) with your own in a risky-to-reach spot. This can force enemies to make risky plays to secure your troopers, or risk missing out on the heal and souls.

Objectives

Taking down Objectives is crucial to unlocking Extra Slots, gaining more Souls for the entire team and earning control of the map, thus gaining a tactical advantage over the enemy.

It's important to find the opportunity to unlock Extra Slots as soon as possible. For example, if one Guardian is down at the end of Laning Phase, it's usually more advantageous to help that lane's Troopers reach the Walkers, as taking down a Walker awards an Extra Slot.

Defenses

Main article: Guardian

Main article: Walker

Each team has a set of defenses that prevent the opposing team from advancing too far. While these defenses do not have to be destroyed to win the game (with the exception of Base Guardians), these objectives must be destroyed to allow your troopers to advance.

Destroying defenses also rewards the responsible hero and team. Destroying a Guardian rewards 1250 souls, a Walker rewards 3500 souls and an extra slot, and Base Guardians award 1000 souls. 30% of these souls are rewarded to the hero(s) responsible, with the remaining 70% being evenly distributed across the team.

Primary Objectives

Main article: Shrine

Main article: Patron

Secondary Objectives

The Soul Urn and the Mid-Boss are secondary objectives that aren't necessary to win the game, but can give a strong boost to the team who secures them, either to hold an advantage or to turn the tide in their favor. They can also be used to bait the enemy team into a fight and leave their main Objectives unprotected for a short time.

Pushing Lanes

Lanes are pushed by killing enemy troopers and objectives. The length of the lane (seen in the zipline and minimap) is based on the progress of the last trooper wave. A lane can only be pushed as far as the closest enemy objective. At the start of the game, the enemy and allied lanes are frozen at the midpoint until one of the Lane Guardians are destroyed. Attacking a Walker or a Base Guardian without pushing their lane first gives them backdoor protection, in which they take much less damage and can regenerate damage taken.

Macro

Macro is the strategic decisions made about the map, pressure and objectives. It is often referred to as the "invisible" influence your team exerts on the map, but can majorly influence the outcome of a game nonetheless.

Map Knowledge

Knowledge of the Map's layout helps with maximizing uptime, positioning, rotations, and other crucial aspects in greater strategies throughout the game. This includes, but is not limited to, knowing Cosmic Veil locations, Powerup locations, and Teleporter locations.

Timings

Knowing Timings for events on the map can allow you our your team to gain significant advantages for a duration of time, or help you know what's available for you to do.

Timings to know regarding enemy heroes:

• Ultimate abilities are available to unlock when the enemy reaches 3.8k souls, which can significantly tilt fights in lane.
• Zipline Boost is unlocked at 6 minutes. If you kill an enemy hero at 6 minutes, they can generally return to the lane much sooner than usual.
• Respawn timers become longer as the match goes on, reaching about 35s at 20 minutes. As such, kills become more significant as the match goes on, representing missed income for the deceased and map pressure for the opposing team.

Timings to know regarding the map:

• Bridge Buffs spawn every 5 minutes, and are a significant force multiplier for the next 160s.
• The Spirit Urn spawns every 5 minutes, and can be used to secure a soul lead.
• The Unstable Rift spawns every 8 minutes after its initial spawn, and can be used to secure a soul lead as well as apply significant pressure on a lane.
• Waves spawn every 30s in lane, with increasing frequency as the game goes on (see Troopers). If you plan on leaving lane, it is generally best to do so right after securing the wave. In a similar vein, it is best to return to lane after leaving or dying before the next wave arrives.
• Midboss spawns every 6 minutes, with increasing frequency after each Midboss killed. Care should be taken not to die while Midboss is (or is soon-to-be) available.

Timings to know regarding pushing objectives:

• WIP

Uptime/Presence

Uptime is the amount of time you spend actively contributing to something in a match, usually by creating pressure against the enemy team or collecting Souls for your team. Time spent farming Denizens, harassing enemies, and pushing troopers towards enemy Guardians and Walkers contributes to uptime, as opposed to "downtime" which can include time spent respawning, idly waiting for objectives to spawn, and rotating aimlessly around the map.

Pressure

Pressure represents a team's effective threat on a map -- for example, the risk of a fight breaking out, a gank on an enemy player, or the amount of farm available to safely claim. Pressure can be manipulated by player leads, hero rosters, or pushing and freezing lanes. By being aware of pressure, you can anticipate what might happen next in a match, and have more objectives available to you and your team.

Creep/Troop denial is a crucial part of the game's laning phase and involves shooting the Souls of one's own trooper when they are killed. This prevents enemy laners from obtaining Soul Orbs by killing Troopers. Denying Souls is still effective after the laning phase, as Souls increase in value as the game continues. Denying Souls after the lane phase grants all Souls to the denier, which can be an effective way to individually gain more Souls if you are farming for an important item.

Pushing up lanes by killing enemy Troopers spreads your team's area of control and removes farmable space from the enemy. If your team is able to control more of the map by pushing up Troopers, friendly Ziplines will extend and allow Trooper reinforcements to help push Guardians and Walkers, further pressing your advantage.

By carefully damaging enemy troopers to equalize the number of troopers on each team within a lane, it is possible to "freeze" a lane in place so that the troops neither advance nor fall back. By limiting your damage to the wave, it is possible to effectively keep it "frozen" indefinitely.

This tactic is useful to keep troops close to your Guardian or Walker for your own safety. By preventing your troops from pushing forward, you can stay within the safe zones of your defenses.

It is also useful for denying your opponent's access to farm due to the distance from their defenses. Since your guardian or walker is the point furthest from their guardian or walker, freezing a lane on your side of the map can make retreat difficult for your opponent.

The healing from the medic pack dropped by a medic trooper can heal your minions and change the balance of the wave state, inadvertently causing your wave to push and breaking the freeze. You can prevent this from happening by keeping your distance from your own wave as it dies and collecting the medic pack only after a few of the minions in your wave have died.

Micro

Micro is the tactical decisions made during individual fights, and represents mechanical player skill. By understanding and improving upon micro, small changes in your gameplay can lead to winning major fights and maintaining map-wide presence through rotations.

Cover

Like any shooter, using corners and walls allows you to be covered against almost all skills and items, since most of them require Line of Sight to be activated or cause damage. Heroes will lean around cover when close to the cover's vertical edge, exposing their head hitbox.

At present, the third person camera is locked to each Hero's right shoulder, which means that peeking on the right side of cover will always expose you less than the left side. Using this to your advantage in the laning phase will give you a significant advantage when trading weapon damage.

Positioning

Managing your positioning will allow you to control more space on the map, be effective in teamfights, deny enemy pushes, and utilize your Hero's abilities most effectively. Controlling more area of the map increases the viable farming area for both Denizens and enemy Troopers for your team. Positioning in teamfights or in smaller skirmishes is critical; staying safe but active in the fight will allow you to apply pressure to the enemy while removing the opportunity for them to gain an advantage by killing you.

Movement

Main article: Movement

The process of moving and positioning your Hero. Involves Ziplines and Stamina usage in addition to sliding. Movement can let you avoid damage and is critical to rotate around the map effectively.

Economy

Economy refers to the overall soul situation on your team. Players and teams with more souls can afford more items and become stronger, gaining significant advantages in all aspects of the game. Economy is closely intertwined with macro and micro -- good macro will lead to a better economy, and a better economy will improve your micro advantages in each fight.

Tempo

Tempo refers to the efficiency of your economy and build. Generally speaking, builds are designed to reach important power spikes for your hero as soon as possible, without compromising upon your survival or versatility. By farming more efficiently, cutting down on less useful items, or knowing when to reach certain spikes in response to different situations, tempo can be improved, allowing you to "race ahead" of enemy players in terms of power.

Counterbuying

Using counter items is an important strategy to deal with strong enemies. Picking counters requires knowing the enemy's strengths and weaknesses and which items are the most effective against them. Active items are often a good choice. Here are some examples of counter items:

• Debuff Reducer, Dispel Magic and Divine Barrier are effective against heroes who rely on passive damage over time, such as Bebop, Infernus, Mirage, and others.
  • These items are also useful against heroes who depend on stuns, sleep, and similar crowd-control effects, such as Haze, Warden, Seven, and others.

• Metal Skin, Return Fire, Battle Vest, Weapon Shielding, and Bullet Resilience are effective against heroes who deal high burst weapon damage, such as Haze and Venator.

• Healbane, Decay and Toxic Bullets are effective against heroes with strong healing abilities, such as Abrams, Lady Geist, and Victor.

• Slowing Hex is effective against heroes who rely on movement-based abilities, such as Apollo, Shiv, Calico, and others.

• Silence Wave and Silencer are effective against heroes who rely on constant ability usage, as they apply a silence effect to the target and reduce outgoing spirit damage respectively. This makes them strong counters to heroes such as Yamato, Pocket, and Lady Geist.

Soul Lead

Earning more souls than your opponent makes you and your team stronger and more likely to win. During the laning phase generating a soul lead over your opponent causes you to get your ultimate before your enemies which can then be used to snowball your advantage.

Box Running

Box running refers to moving around the map in certain routes to collect souls and buffs from Crates and Golden Statues. Pushing the wave into the enemies' tower can give you time to box run and get back to lane without missing out on collecting souls from troopers.

Jungling

"Jungling" or "farming" refers to clearing Neutral camps to earn more souls. Unlike some MOBAs, Deadlock doesn't have a dedicated Jungler role, but some heroes can clear camps faster than others. Some items such as Cultist Sacrifice and Ricochet also help players clear camps more efficiently.

Clearing a trooper wave is generally faster and rewards more souls than a Neutral camp, so it's recommended to clear camps in between trooper waves. The camp respawn timer only starts once all of its Neutrals are dead, so players should clear the entire camp when possible to avoid stalling respawns (Sinner's Sacrifices must be cleared as well). Or alternatively, players can leave one or more Neutrals alive in camps in enemy territory to stall its respawn.

When jungling, players need to be careful to avoid roaming assassin heroes who might steal their unsecured souls.

Funneling

Funneling refers to when the collection of souls on a team is purposefully imbalanced so that a hero can earn more souls than the rest of their team. This is most relevant on carries who become strong with a soul lead. The simplest method of funneling is to have only one person collect the souls from a lane so that the souls aren't split between two players.