XPL0SI0NMAN
New member
I've been playing matches with and against the new four heroes added in the most recent update, and these are the rough thoughts gathered after a few matches.
NOTE: This is a repost due to people having issues viewing this. Sorry if this violates a rule or smth
Calico has had a radical but overall beneficial change from her Hero Labs version. She went from towing the line between trap laying assassin and high speed chaser to a more consistent nimble hunter. Before she felt more restrained by having to juggle turrets and the mini-map to understand where she'd be more useful, where now she can freely go about her business to engage at her leisure. Her abilities allow her to not only initiate or interrupt fights, but also get away if things go south. Each one helps accomplish this and ties her kit together very well, chaining one ability after the other to keep an enemy at the exact distance she wants them. The strangest part of her kit is her gun, which has a very confusing spread to it. Despite having no central pellet to her shotgun spread, getting used to her weapon felt awkward but unique.
Her bombs work well to pressure enemies away from her, which can either deprive an enemy from a safe escape or scare a chasing opponent into retreating. Calico's dash gives her an incredible boost of mobility, while also offering a sizeable chunk of damage and healing to prolong engagements. Her transformation is probably her least interesting ability, as it stops Calico from using any complex movement. The speed boost mitigates this, and helps balance out the extra presence Calico has through the verticality of map. Since you know Calico is going to be restricted from climbing across buildings, it's a fun risk-reward scenario where an enemy can try and predict Calico's movement through those channels while she can speed between lanes without serious cost. Despite this, the removal of her icon from the mini-map and small size means she can get away with some fun tricks if you play her well. Her ultimate is also a powerful tool for both approach and retreat, as she can use its high damage bursts to chase weakened opponents or dodge dangerous abilities. She comes out as slightly weaker than the other three, but she easily stands out for having such a tightly designed kit.
Holliday is basically unchanged from when she was in Hero Labs, but is probably the most well rounded of the characters implemented. Her kit gives her a high degree of control over an encounter, letting her set up plays and execute them without feeling complicated or unrewarding. Her bounce pad however is an ability that will probably need changing, as while it's a fun concept is ill fitting on Holliday. There's often more value in mortar striking barrels into a group of enemies or sending someone else on it than Holliday herself engaging with the bounce pad. The bounce pad is a very reckless ability on a set-play character, better suited for characters like Lash or Abrams who excel at diving into the middle of the enemy team. Even with the stun it's very likely you get yourself into a bad situation if you attempt to make use of it, with the exception of going for risky lasso grabs instead of waiting for an overextended enemy. On top of this, it struggles as a mobility tool. Holliday has only 2 stamina which means she's unfit for more intense fighting as she will quickly exhaust herself on escape. To compound this issue, using the bounce pad itself is a bit clunky. The bounce pad only being placed in front of you means that to disengage you are forced to turn your back to an enemy for a split second and then turn back around in order to continue fighting, which puts you at risk of additional damage from your pursuer and missing your bounce pad. Abilities such as Dynamo's teleport or Kelvin's ice path lend well to escapes as they either give you invulnerability or freedom of movement for their duration, allowing you to keep focus on your opponent's actions and react accordingly. Even if you can get the bounce pad down in the right spot and jump away, the final problem arises that enemies can use your bounce pad as easily as Holliday, effectively negating their impact in a chase. Furthermore, the bounce pad is buggy around geometry. Looking towards a corner and placing a bounce pad will often jam it into the wall, while placing it at the edge of a rooftop or near a similar ledge will cause it to appear several feet below the ledge, too low for practical usage.
Similarly to Calico back in hero labs, Holliday feels torn between two separate characters without committing to either. Her kegs and crackshot encourage her to be more methodical, setting up traps with keg chains and precise shots. Meanwhile, her bounce pad and lasso push her to throw herself into the middle of the fight and drag people away screaming. Her lasso offers a branch between the two, incapacitating an opponent if she's able to close the distance. Mo and Krill come to mind for this, except Mo and Krill have the added bonus of being incredibly durable to offer a margin of error in case he grabs at a time that isn't perfect. Holliday is a pretty fragile character compared to others on the roster, so she's likely to be shredded if her team cannot instantly capitalize on her landing a lasso in a teamfight. The lasso also doesn't last very long, often failing to carry a victim even halfway through the distance of her bounce pad jump and giving them an opportunity to escape. Giving the bounce pad more value to Holliday beyond her keg is important as the synergy between the keg and bounce pad force her to play at a range where the combination is viable to get the most value out of the bounce pad, hoping for someone else to take the initial damage stomp it offers instead of risking herself to use it.
A few possible changes could be:
- Giving additional uses of crack shot while airborne via bounce pad, allowing Holliday to finish off wounded enemies with precise shooting.
- Changing the bounce pad's placement to be relative to player movement instead of player aim, to make placing bounce pads for fleeing more intuitive.
- Having the bounce pad place directly underneath Holliday, to make the usage of them less predictable.
- Offering players who use the bounce pad a temporary stamina boost, to either extend Holliday's movement at an ability cost or allow more complex follow-ups to a bounce pad jump.
- The bounce pads launch directly forward regardless of approach, which could be used on unsuspecting enemies to fling them away before dropping a powder keg on their head.
Vyper is a character that went through some turbulence during Hero Labs, and doesn't seem to be out of it in her current form. She's a very aggressive character with very high damage output through her slide and gunfire alone. Her biggest strength and weakness is she is almost entirely at the mercy of the terrain. Any area with a wider slope or two nearby slopes are where she is at her strongest, being able to slide up and down in a circle for a bottomless magazine to unload at her leisure. The issue with this is that it makes her impossible to approach without slows or stuns. She'll be able to avoid a significant portion of damage thrown in her direction due to her high mobility, and can make back most damage taken through lifesteal. With her being able to endlessly fire towards an opponent, it forces the enemy to disengage or suffer greater and greater losses for minimal progress. This is especially prevalent in laning phase, where her sliding and venom can almost perpetually trap an enemy behind their tower. When an enemy attempts to contest her, they often take heavy damage if she is sliding. On the retreat, it's pretty easy for her to dive in for a moment to apply venom and then pull away from the guardian she's attacking. It leaves the defender in a terrible position with only one of three options.
- The defender immediately attempts to pressure Vyper is either killed them or Vyper escapes with little injury to try again.
- The defender holds under tower, allowing Vyper to continually attack with sliding gunfire or venom, repeating the cycle.
- The defender retreats to heal, giving Vyper complete control over the lane.
On another subject, her ultimate was interesting back during the hero labs phase as it able to petrify both ally and enemy as a defensive and offensive tool. The current version however feels a bit lackluster, almost akin to a sleep dagger from Haze. The major factor is that petrifying an enemy gives them 200 damage block, which feels counterintuitive to have an ability exclusively for enemies that protect them against harm. If Vyper or her team cannot put enough damage into a petrified enemy quickly, it's very possible that someone breaks the target out of their stone form early and gives them an escape opportunity. The extremely short cooldown time is its biggest benefit, upgrading into a frequent AOE half-stun that can often negate entire ultimate abilities such as Dynamo's black hole or instantly pin an overextended Shiv or Pocket in the middle of your team. I hope that revisiting the ability to petrify teammates can be in Vyper's future, but as of now she's not much beyond a high damage one-trick pony. As one final note, it's possible for a bola hit in very close range to completely miss, the area of effect pushing itself past the target and exploding directly behind them.
Magician should not have been added to the main roster, and needed some serious work to justify him being where they are now. They're a likely candidate for the best spirit user in the game, with several abilities that require proactive measures to prevent landing. Silences, Ethereal Shift, and other abilities are nearly mandatory as most reactionary items such as Reactive Barrier or Debuff Remover are worthless to stop them. The Rabbit Hex is a damning example, as it ignores almost every single measure taken to lessen its effect unless it destroys the projectile launched by Magician. Even abilities such as Yamato's Shadow Transformation, which is explicitly advertises itself as 'immune to negative status effects' is transformed like it was never active if hit by Rabbit Hex. If it hits, it's what happens when you are slept by Haze without the caveat that taking damage removes the effect. No fighting, no stamina, not even jumping as a rabbit. To worsen it, the victim takes increased damage by Magician and their teammates during the lengthy duration. With nothing but a Superior Duration and three ability points, Magician's Rabbit Hex lasts four seconds. If we compare this to Mo and Krill, they can pin an enemy in place for 3.25 seconds. While Mo and Krill's Combo requires the pair to be within melee range, Magician's Rabbit Hex range is only slightly less than their effective gun range. While Magician's Rabbit Hex causes the target to take 25% additional damage during the entire effect, Mo and Krill's Combo offers no damage vulnerabilities. While Mo and Krill's Combo recharges in 75 seconds, Magician's Rabbit Hex recharges in 45 seconds, or 35 seconds with one point invested into it. You can further lower this cooldown by buying Echo Shard, as you can activate it after every casting of Rabbit Hex to not only double cast it if necessary but effectively lower Rabbit Hex's cooldown to 21 seconds. Most importantly, while Mo and Krill's Combo is a channel which prevents any other action while being used, Magician's Rabbit Hex gives them full ability to act while casting and for the duration. Due to the strength Magician is able to employ with their other abilities, it's very possible to go from full health to dead before Rabbit Hex wears off at the hands of a skilled Magician. If the Magician is working with a teammate, especially one who excels with high burst damage such as Wraith or Bebop, it's almost guaranteed that the victim of Rabbit Hex will not survive.
Despite the victim of Rabbit Hex being completely helpless, despite having defensive items they've purchased exclusively to protect themselves against debilitating effects ignored, despite Magician having such a powerful ability at their fingertips, it's still not the most egregious ability in their kit. Magician's ultimate is poorly thought out and undermines significant aspects of Deadlock's design. Many characters such as Dynamo and Kelvin are designed with their ultimate abilities as a core pillar in their design, and have traits that are lesser to counterbalance having an ultimate that has so much sway over a fight. As Magician is able to steal these abilities and use them, it effectively renders these characters as actively detrimental on their team as they can provide an enemy Magician with an extremely powerful ultimate on top of their already great kit. Ability stealing is a trait in MOBAs which becomes exponentially more powerful with player skill. Rubick from Dota 2 is another character that has an ability steal mechanic, and despite having a mediocre-to-good standard spell array is considered one of the greatest characters in the game because of the potency of ability stealing by itself. Rubick however has to contend with only copying the most recent spell an enemy hero has used, instead of Magician who steals ultimate abilities regardless. This not only lowers the skill ceiling required to get the maximum value out of Magician's ability steal, but also means that Magician can be far more reckless with how they use the ability. Diving into the middle of a team to grab a Pocket's Affliction and then immediately casting it only to teleport out because of a Spectral Assistant placed in the back of the Magician's team is unfair to the receiving team as there is little to nothing they can do to prepare for a Magician ultimate, as each player must broaden the scope of their strategy beyond the enemy team's entire kits, but also the entire ultimate lineup on their own team. If Magician didn't have access to an instantaneous long range teleport this would be less of a threat, but due to Spectral Assistant it makes trying to stop them from pulling off these stunts nigh impossible.
I want to make mention of Magician's immense damage output between Vexing Bolt and Spectral Assistant, but I'm not too keen on the exact numbers so I'll make it brief. Between giving Magician free reloads of their high damage weapon and dual castings of their high damage Vexing Bolt, and on top of Rabbit Hex's nearly unblockable nature, it means that Magician can pretty easily secure kills early game by simply pressing every button on their keyboard. Double Vexing Bolt and gunfire into a weakened player-turned-rabbit means that it's virtually impossible to escape alive. Even disregarding Rabbit Hex, the double Vexing Bolt does heavy damage in an area of effect, meaning with enough souls and decent positioning it's possible to shave off hundreds of health in fractions of a second. Speaking further on Spectral Assistant, the range of mobility it permits is even better than pocket due to the extremely long duration. Placing the assistant anywhere and simply running around a few corners forces the enemy to either hold position at the assistant's location and pray that Magician teleports back or continue chasing and hope Magician doesn't disappear. If the enemy is baited into either option, Magician can almost instantly secure an escape unless against multiple pursuers by putting so much ground between both locations. The duration is so long, it's possible to cross to an entirely different lane and fight for a short time before teleporting back as if Magician never left. Omnipotent and omnipresent, there's little to nothing that can be done to stop a Magician that isn't completely buried from minute one of a match. On top of this, Magician is riddled with bugs and exploits. Their model routinely gets stuck as other characters after using their ultimate, the Spectral Assistant can be used to teleport with the Urn, among other minor things.
If this update had only included Calico and Holliday, I think the Deadlock community would've been in much brighter spirits. Until then however, matches have become a gamble of who gets to play as Vyper and Magician, with the other ten players in the match being delegated as assistants to the lucky two. After nearly four months we've gotten new characters, for Better and Worse.
