Strategy

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Strategy in Deadlock is based on the game's unique mechanics, focused on a combination of both third-person-shooter mechanics and MOBA gameplay. In the game's current state, many aspects of the game's strategy have been derived from high MMR play, tournaments, and knowledge from similar titles.

Laning

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

At the start of each round, players are assigned to the four lanes according to a 1-2-2-1 setup (The two sidelanes are solo lanes and the midlanes are duo lanes).

Support-centric characters like Ivy or Dynamo typically perform best in duo lanes with a high-DPS counterpart. Self-reliant characters with sustain or poke abilities, like Shiv, are typically suited for the solo lanes. The random placement seems to account for this, though the exact mechanism is unclear.

Laning is strategically divided into three phases:

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

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. An example of heroes with complementary abilities are Seven and Ivy. Seven can use his ultimate, Storm Cloud, as crowd control while Ivy can use the ability Air Drop to move him towards opponents. Similarly, Dynamo can teleport inside the enemy ranks and start his Singularity, while friendly Infernus charges up his Concussive Combustion, guaranteeing that the explosion blasts every target in the vicinity.

Micro Strategies

Uptime

Uptime relates to farm camps (either Troops or Neutrals), to advancing lanes, to harassing enemies, to taking down towers etc. Everything that doesn't make you idle and generate value could be considered uptime.

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 horizontal 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, Rune 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 be related to creating space in different lanes and related concepts.

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.