Strategy

Strategy in Deadlock, at a very basic level, involves leading your army into enemy territory down 3 lanes, destroying objectives and eventually killing the enemy team's Patron. However, the methods for doing this are where the depth and the complexity come in. The Cursed Apple is separated into Three lanes: York, Broadway, and Park. An army of Troopers will be deployed marching down each lane. 2 players will be sent down to each lane.

Laning

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

Laning is the process of managing the troopers on a lane and destroying objectives along it. At the start of each round, players are assigned to three lanes according to a 2-2-2 setup, with two players in each lane.

Support-centric characters like Paige or Dynamo typically perform best when paired with a high-DPS counterpart with sustain or poke abilities, like Shiv.

Laning is strategically divided into three phases:

• Laning Phase (Early game): Players focus on winning their lane by managing troops, clearing Denizen camps, looking for easy kills, and gaining a Soul advantage.
• Midgame: Players who have secured an advantage in their lane begin roaming to assist teammates, while all players continue farming objectives to strengthen their team’s position.
• Endgame: Teams work to solidify their Soul advantage, engage in most of the teamfights, and push to attack the enemy Patron.

This new three-lane setup encourages more dynamic teamplay, with an increased focus on coordination and rotations.

Team Composition

A Team Composition is the 6 heroes a team employs in battle. Strategically employing heroes whose abilities complement each other, or who work best with a certain playstyle is significant for team strategy. For example a Dynamo can use Singularity to trap a number of enemies, while a friendly Infernus charges up his Concussive Combustion, guaranteeing that the explosion blasts every target in the vicinity.

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.

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.

Micro Strategies

Uptime

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, 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.

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.

Cover Usage

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.

Aiming

Some Heroes require more accuracy and skill expression regarding aiming, such as Vindicta, but overall aiming is a crucial part of Deadlock.

Map Knowledge

Knowledge of the Map's layout. This includes, but is not limited to, Cosmic Veil locations, Powerup locations, and Teleporter locations.

Rotations

The process of traversing one part of the map to enter another. Rotation can be related to concepts such as ganking or roaming. Terminology from DOTA 2 calls ganking in the art of appearing from a fog of the jungle to surprise - and potentially kill - enemies, but rotations are more broad and are related to creating space in different lanes and related concepts.

Movement

Main article: Movement

The process of moving and positioning your Hero. Involves Ziplines and Stamina usage in addition to sliding.

Troop Management

The process of killing enemy Troopers and denying the enemy from getting Souls from their Trooper kills. Can also be referred to as Creep Management.

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.

Freezing a Lane

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.

Counters

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, Debuff Remover 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, Mo & Krill, 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 Vyper.

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

• Slowing Hex is effective against heroes who rely on movement-based abilities, such as Vindicta, Grey Talon, Holliday, 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 Breakables 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 Denizen camps to earn more souls. Unlike other MOBAs, Deadlock doesn't have a dedicated Jungler role, but some heroes can clear camps faster than others.

Clearing a trooper wave is generally faster and rewards more souls than a Denizen camp, so it's recommended to clear camps in between trooper waves. The camp respawn timer only starts once all of its Denizens 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 Denizens 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.

Small Denizen Farming

Small Denizens spawn at 2 minutes and respawn every 2 minutes after being fully cleared.

Time	2 mins	4 mins	6 mins	8 mins
Total Soul Value	177	180	186	189

Killing the Small Denizens on repeat can generate 732 souls before 10 minutes.

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.