Strategy
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
At the start of each round, players are assigned to the four lanes randomly. Strategically speaking, two lanes will be duo lanes and two will be solo lanes. The specific lane colors that are solo and duo are also randomly decided at the beginning of the match. Players are randomly placed, but duo parties are more likely to be queued into the same lane.
Support-centric characters like Ivy or Dynamo perform best in duo lanes with a high-DPS counterpart. Self-reliant characters with sustain or poke abilities, like Shiv, are better 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 Watcher's Covenant 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
- Creating space will define which areas are controlled by your team, which Neutral camps are safe to farm, the length of your zipline, the vision you have on your mini-map etc.
- During the Laning phase, this is considered crucial, since positioning will define how far your Troops advance and it will impact ultimately on your last hits/denies and kill oppu
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.
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, 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 whilst denying the enemy from getting souls from yours.
- 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.