Deadlock is a complicated game to jump into. Not only does it combine mechanics from MOBAs and third-person shooters, it also has enough unique interactions and characters to stand out from the rest of its competitors and give new players a dizzying amount of information to learn.
If you're a little confused about where to start, or if you're struggling in your first few games of Deadlock, here are some main things you should keep in mind to help you succeed in Valve's ambitious fusion of MOBA and third-person shooter.
Don't Use Your Speed Boost At The Beginning Of The Game
At the beginning of each game, it can be tempting to use your transit rail speed boost to reach the lane early before your opponents do. But, that speed boost has a 340-second cooldown (over 5 and a half minutes), and even if you do reach the lane before your opponent, you're stuck waiting for minions to spawn anyway.
Don't waste your speed boost for such a small benefit, and save it for when you desperately need it. The transit rail speed boost is a fast way to leave and get back into your lane, so use it to help defend your Guardian, join a team fight in progress, or to quickly return to base and come back. Since the boost lasts 30 seconds, using the transit line and speed boost to recover health in the base, then returning to your lane, is the most efficient usage of this ability. Wasting it at the very beginning of the game provides little reward, and you're stuck waiting for it to come back for a long time.
Complete The Urn Objective
A Soul Urn will spawn next to either the Yellow or Purple lane at 10 minutes. It'll take 30 seconds for the Urn to land, and afterward, any player can pick it up and bring it to the opposite side of the map to secure it. Once the Urn is secured, the team that secures it gets bonus souls, and the person who did the securing gets 1 skill point and an additional 25% more souls on top of their share.
After that, the Urn will spawn every 5 minutes, so make sure you keep an eye out for when this objective is available again.
Completing this objective will get your team consistently ahead in souls. If you notice a teammate is carrying the Soul Urn, give them cover until they reach their destination or until they leave your lane. Alternatively, if an enemy is carrying the Soul Urn, put some shots into them to help your team stop them. The map will also tell you where the Soul Urn must be taken to. A red square indicates where the enemy team must drop off the soul urn, while a green square indicates where your ally will have to drop it off.
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When In Doubt, Farm
If you're losing your lane, stick close to your Guardian and just focus on farming as safely as possible. Building up items to drastically increase your damage (more commonly known as damage spikes because of how much they increase your damage) should be your focus, so you can eventually get more powerful than your opponent and push them right back.
Alternatively, if you're unsure what to do at a given moment, then start farming mobs and keep building up to your next item. If you're waiting for waves to appear, head into a neutral camp and collect those souls as well to stay ahead of your opponent.
Focus On Denying Your Opponent Souls
Focus on denying your opponent their souls where you can. When you're laning against someone, the easiest way to get souls is to last hit a minion. Once that happens, an orb will drift from their corpse. Whoever hits that orb first gets the souls from that minion kill. A denial happens when an opponent scores the last hit on your minion, but you shoot the orb first. If you're able to deny your opponent an entire minion wave, then you've practically achieved the same effect as sending them back to the respawn screen.
As a result, don't get too distracted by kills. Denying minions can be more advantageous, far easier to pull off, and if you get enough denies, you'll create a large lead in souls against your lane opponent.
Last Hit Minions With Melee When It's Safe
So, how do you safely secure your own souls without your opponent interrupting you?
The answer is to farm minions with your melee. Melee kills will automatically secure souls for you, but this comes at the cost of pushing yourself up dangerously close to your opponent. Smart opponents will save their crowd control abilities to lock you in place and get free damage where they can.
Meleeing minions can also leave you vulnerable to a gank, so keep an eye out for anyone missing from their lanes when you go for the melee.
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Learn How To Move Efficiently
Superior movement against your opponents will give you a strong advantage against your competition. Knowing how to cut your dash short with a slide so you can melee and secure the last hit on a wounded minion will make it impossible for your opponents to deny you souls. Alternatively, knowing how to move out of range of your opponents with efficient dash-jumps and slides will make you a difficult target to catch (unless your pursuers have also mastered their movement).
Using special moves like jumping and dashing will require stamina, so choosing the best options for your situation is a skill you should work on developing. Most of the characters in the game will have 3 stamina bars — except Ivy at 4 bars and Vindicta/McGinnis at 2. Dash-Jumps will require two bars, but it'll also be the fastest way for you to seamlessly cover ground. You can also end this special movement with a slide-hop (where you land in a slide, then jump at the end to conserve your momentum) for more distance without using more stamina.
Slides are a powerful way to both evade pursuers and quickly push into an opponent. Be sure to end most of your major movement options in a slide to preserve your speed where you can.
Start The Midboss When The Time Is Right
Do not start the midboss if the enemy team is still alive. The midboss in Deadlock is fairly tanky and deals a significant amount of damage to its targets. It's going to take time to bring the boss down, and even worse, it's also going to take more time to claim the buff for slaying the boss. Additionally, when the boss reaches 50% life, the enemy team will be alerted to your team's attempt at bringing the boss down.
When all of these factors are combined, it means your team should not start the midboss unless you've successfully wiped the enemy team. This way, you'll reduce the chances they can steal your buff or kill your tanks while they distract the boss. If you start it any sooner, then you risk the enemy team stealing your hard-earned buff or interfering with the boss fight itself.
Remember, the boss buff goes to whoever hits the orb with a melee attack first.
Don't Farm Minions Together After 10 Minutes
At 10 minutes, minions will no longer give souls and instead, the orbs that drift from their bodies will give all the souls the minion would have dropped. Additionally, souls dropped by minion orbs are now split between you and any teammates near the minion when its orb is secured. Before 10 minutes, if you secured the souls from a minion, it would have given you and your teammates in the lane the full amount of souls.
With these mechanics in mind, once 10 minutes have elapsed in the game, roam around the map and look for kills or farm separately from your other allies. Invading the enemy's jungle, or finishing the neutral camps near your base, are great ways to get more souls without accidentally splitting souls with a teammate. Just make sure you join up with your team again when it's time for a team fight.
Much like the best movement shooters, mastery over efficient movement is key to balancing these two needs well. You'll need to move far enough away from your allies so you can each get as many souls as possible, but also be close enough to save your teammates if they get jumped by multiple enemies.
Deadlock
- Developer(s)
- Valve
