Im going to start this off with the issue i see in how balance changes are handled. Its always global buffs that put some heros above the rest and keep low heroes in the trenches. If one hero is bad, and you do a global buff to fix them. guess what?? That hero is still bad compared to what other heroes are doing. Lets take gun for an example. Valve decided to do global buffs and get gun to 135% While not addressing the heroes like calico can have 4.8k gun investment but still outgun heroes like wraith. It is ridiculous that, that can even happen. There are so many heroes with op guns that ALSO HAVE ridiculous over powered spirit scaling. Take grey talon for example. This character has some of the most ridiculous and over power spirit and gun scaling the game has to offer. But people still say hes trash. Why? because its easy to close the gap on a grey talon and delete him. But he can literally kill someone in 3 charged arrows or 1 clip if they hit their shots. a hero like wraith on the other hand. gets 2 cards for hitting a full clip of 52. Thats bonkers. mean while wraiths gun is trash horrible and literally anyone has a better damaging weapon. doesn't matter who. rem, dynamo, they all out dps wraiths gun. But she has cards right? Wraiths balance is so wack and shes a a great example how how these devs will ruin and gut 1 hero to make the rest of the cast shine. There needs to be less micky mouse band-aid fixes/patches that focus on whole groups and actually address specific individual issues.
0. Pausing. Remove the pause feature all together or use your brains that god gave you and put some common sense into it. Everyone and their grandmother is sick of people pausing the game seconds after it starts. Pausing shouldn't be a thing in an online game period, but since you people must insist on it, why isn't it blocked for 5 minutes?
1. The Economy Gap: Early Game "Tax" Items
The Issue: Low-cost active items (Slowing Hex, Disarming Hex) are available as early as 3 minutes into the game, but their reliable counters (Unstoppable, Dispel magic) are gated behind 3,200+/6400 souls and a 15-minute timing.
The Frustration: This creates a "Dead Zone" where players are forced to throw away their build progression just to survive a low-skill, point-and-click item. You shouldn't be "neutered" by a 1,250-soul item for 10 minutes straight with zero viable counter-play.
Example would be a bebop in lane vs mina. Bebops rush slowing hex, mina's are completely useless for the remainder until they leave lane or rush buy an item. making their power worse than it was before.
2. Mechanical "Bailouts" for Low-Skill Heroes
McGinnis Turret Buffs: The introduction of "Deferred Damage" on turrets removes the primary counter-play for catching a player out of position. An out-of-position McGinnis can now spam 5 turrets and a heal to win a trade they should have lost.
Aimbot/AOE Dominance: Heroes like (Graves/lady giest life steal and McGinnis turrets) provide too much reward for minimal aim while also proccing actives like suppressor (McGinnis turrets), while Ivy, Paradox, and Lady Geist have AOE abilities (Thorns, Essence Bomb, pulse grenade) the size of "small cities" that offer too many status effects (Slow + Immobilize) for how easy they are to land.
3. The "Identity Theft" of High-Skill Heroes (Mina)
Nerfing Skill Ceilings: The nerfs to (Mina)—specifically gutting stamina regen and jacking the TP cooldown to 22 seconds—have removed her identity.
The Result: She has become a "glass character without the cannon." Meanwhile, high-mobility favorites like Celeste remain "bouncy" and untouched, showing a lack of consistency in how "annoying" mobility is balanced.
4. The Punishment of Efficiency (Net Worth Scaling)
The Problem: Respawn timers are scaling aggressively based on Net Worth/Efficiency rather than just game time or KDA.
The Scenario: A player can be 1-5 but leading in souls due to superior farming/denying, yet they are punished with a 20+ second longer respawn timer than the enemy "brawler" who is ignoring the map.
The Frustration: The game is literally putting efficient players in a "Time Out" to allow less skilled players a chance to catch up.
5. Soul Sharing & "Welfare" Mechanics
The Issue: The current soul-sharing radius allows teammates who contribute nothing to a kill or a lane to receive full credit and currency.
The Result: This inflates the rank of "useless" players and dilutes the carry potential of the person actually doing the work. It rewards "Overwatch-style" deathballing over strategic laning.
6. lack of obvious balance changes.
The issue: Obvious broken over scaled abilities are left untouched or are looked at like they are fine. or underpowered heroes that are never buffed.
Wrong changes to heroes. taking away a heroes identity like mina.
You have No and skill that you people refuse to address. wraiths original ult was reworked do to the exact reason why mo's ult should also be reworked. Doorman shouldn't be allowed to place doors on objectives, McGinnis shouldn't be allowed to block objectives with her wall. Kelvin does too much and you ppl, know it. His arctic beam has way too low of a CD does WAY too much damage while freezing stamina regen and his ice grenades have no business freezing stamina regeneration. Its a classic case of not addressing the actual issues of a hero while buffing the ever living shit out of them, just because you made their ult CD longer. Sincalir ult is the most broken thing in this game. In what world does it make sense that sincalir gets any ult 3 times before any other player can use theirs once? Not too mention his spirit scaling on his bolts are insane and make no sense. over powered. never addressed. Yamatos power slash does more damage than a venator ult. yet everyone seems to think its fine when its not. I could go on and on but thats not the point of this post. Heroes are commonly band-aid fixed. you devs will remove one thing but you people didn't actually remove it all you people did was make it a t3 upgrade or made it do 0.1 less damage. Those arnt fixes or changes those are slaps in the face that shows the community that you people are happy with the bad balance state of the game. you devs are happy with these no skill 3 button press one shot combos. Because if you people wernt okay with it youd actually address it instead of saying oh instead of 10 minutes you can now do this at 15 minutes. Its ridiculous you people are delaying the issue making it worse not better.
Items: Warp stone/ should have a delay with using abilities when used. or should have the same effect as majestic leap. cant be used while taking damage.
Items like dispel magic are basically useless with the amount of CC in the game. Dispel magic needs to have charges. make the item the same price as slowing hex but you can buy the item again to get an extra charge. so at 3200 souls you get 2 charges instead of one, make the cool down the same as slowing hex/disarming hex.
Coldfront/arctic blast: Items like this are crutch items that are unhealthy for the game. People dont use it for its intended purpose for the slow effect. if you removed the damage the item wouldn't be bought. Its just free damage every 25 second and it scales with spirit.
Make an item that deflects cc abilities back to the sender, if you get slowing hexed it bounces of me and sticks to you slowing hexing you.
Torment pulse/ items like this do too much damage and are hand holding items that ruin a game. Why does this item get to become 2nd/3rd most damage at the end of a game simply by being near an enemy? Its low skill and ratty. it should pump out a slow or something not damage.
decay/ only real issue with this item is with shiv and the fact its an auto lock ability it should be a skillshot. Shiv shouldn't be allowed to gain rage from an auto lock active ability. But again items that do passive damage for simply clicking on someone doesn't belong in a shooter style game. Those things belong in top down games.
Make an item that pushes enemies back.
"Deadlock is leaning too heavily into 'Player Retention' mechanics that compress the skill gap. Between rubber-band respawn timers, and the lack of early-game counter-items, the game is starting to feel like it's designed to hold the hands of casual players at the direct expense of the veteran, efficient player base. We want a game that respects skill and punishment—not one that taxes you for playing correctly."
Just seems like the devs on this game have what i like to call dota brain. They think cause it works for dota its good for deadlock. When infact the things that make dota "skillful" is the exact things that make deadlock braindead and hand holding. were playing a shooting style moba where aiming matters position matters more than a top down point and click game.
Heroes that play the game for you, should NEVER be viable in high ranks/pro play. if you see players picking ladygiest, graves or McGinnis in deadlock night shift that screams balance issues. The fact that the devs are so blind or just unwilling to change their directory with this game is what will kill it in the future. I want to play a game where my decisions matter and arnt watered down just to make someone else feel good. If i play bad, i want to know i played bad i dont want a system that says well actually. No thats bullshit.
Kelvins arctic beam Does too much fucking damage. the range is too far the fucking cooldown is too low for what it does. It freezes stamina regeneration AND IT SLOWS YOUR FIRE RATE?! remove it and the frost grenade doing 600 damage plus freezing your stamina regeneration for 5 seconds?
Wraith- you people dont know how to balance this hero. She is the most useless piece of shit hero in the game for 20 fucking minutes. Her gun does no damage
her tp DOES NOT NEED TO BE 45 FUCKING SECONDS LONG!! ESPECIALLY FOR A T3 UPGRADE! Wraith tp t3 should be a instant cast or give her an unstoppable effect during cast. Her tp shield should also activate upon the beginning phase of the tp not when you land.
Bebop- Remove the double hook feature from simply landing an uppercut, doesn't belong in the game. Hook doesn't even belong in the game. His hook range is ridiculous and makes absolutely no fucking sense. nerf it Make the hook dispelable.
Witchmail- is a broken item that needs to be nerfed. the 1 second passive for a 4 second CD reduction on all abilities is ridiculous.
Mina's tp has no business being 22 seconds long, this heros identity basically got stripped away. Her thing was tp and fast stamina. Her stamina is now .3 faster than the rest mean while celeste and ivy get low gravity. Its like giving celeste the same 10% low gravity as ivy but saying lets give celeste 13% ridiculous. give mina back her fast stamina and give her tp a 12-15 second CD for her tp.
Calico- Having a hero that throws over powered "gloom bombs" has an auto locking slash feature and a free escape that procs items while taking 0 damage if that is fair to you, than idk what is. On top of all that 3k damage burst potential. you give this cat one of the best guns in the game, yet you people fail to give a hero like wraith an actual gun. I dont get it. You people are backwards with how heroes are balanced.
A hero thats supposed to do gun damage does 0, a support gets to stomp someone for 1k damage a "spirit" hero gets a better gun than wraith but everyones so obsessed with pressing buttons that do burst damage all this bullshit goes under the radar for so long and it makes actual gun heroes useless. because of how this game is poorly balanced.
ALL actives should be skillshots:- I'm so sick of people pressing buttons with auto lock features and dealing ridiculous amounts of damage. Im sick of people pressing a button with an auto lock feature that silences/disarms or stuns someones. Those things should be earned. not a free button. If those things actually took skill to land, Dispel magic and unstoppable would be fine as the only counters. but its not.
DRAFT:- I'm sick of the stupid ban system. Its stupid its a placebo and if anything its bad. It will purposely make you wait in a longer queue because the ban system already pre planned to put you in a match where the hero you want to play is going to be banned. and the hero you dont want to play against and banned will be in your lane on the enemy team. and you have to fight that hero on a hero you didn't want to even play with to begin with. it makes queue times longer.
The match maker also purposely puts 3-4 counters to your specific hero on the enemy team and gives you a bunch of random composition heroes and will put a player as an anchor while giving them a bunch of boosted players that get farmed all game and do less than 20k damage in a 40 minute game. Itll put you against the worlds best bebop but give you an initiate feeding bebop. The match making in this game is in a really bad state. It purposely gives one team good heroes and the other team bad heroes with bad players. It puts people learning new heroe's on the same team as people with 70 matches played against a team of people with 1200 matches played and theyre on their on tricks.
Comeback urn: Enemy team should not be able to instant return a comeback urn on the enemy side. They should have a 3-5 second delivery window
May as well bitch about this here: Street brawl: Trash game mode for the following reasons. Respawn timers before 2 minutes are too long. If you die in the first minute of the game even on a walker round the game is over. you spawn on the zipline as your walker is being destroyed. The fact that the devs dont see this issue and havnt changed it is what makes me angry. Their version and vision of fair and balanced is corrupted and makes 0 fucking sense. and it shows with 90% of the items/heroes/game.
The game doesn't offer you counters when you need it but will give the enemy a million knock downs and focus lenses slowing hex/disarming hexes. The game wont ever offer you a dispel magic or an unstoppable.
Heroes like lash and 7 and bebop etc always seem to get items like unstoppable. always. the system prioritizes the wrong shit way to often. Or if playing a 2 stamina hero the game will hesitate to even offer you extra stamina. Players should be able to suggest items they want.
It will offer you 3 good items in 1 turn, But never offer you the other 2 items you need. You skip a bad roll though and the game will shove those items you JUST SKIPPED in your face. No bitch. I skipped those items for a reason, dont show me those again!
1 reroll is a terrible balancing idea. Its honestly pathetic. maybe 1 per roll but 1 for all 3??? Terrible.
TL;DR: Game balance = trash/ Spirit=OP Hero=overpowered/underpowered/playing favorites items=unbalanced lack of critical thinking skills brainless autolocking. Matchmaking=trash (feels rigged) wraith=dogshit requires too many items and farm again. street brawl=trash
If there is swears here and there i am sorry. I put this together over a month and sometimes would add when angry. I have read through it and tried to edit everything to be modest. If i missed any or came across rude i am sorry. Im just passionate and feel like i have the 180 degree philosophy for this game than the devs do.
0. Pausing. Remove the pause feature all together or use your brains that god gave you and put some common sense into it. Everyone and their grandmother is sick of people pausing the game seconds after it starts. Pausing shouldn't be a thing in an online game period, but since you people must insist on it, why isn't it blocked for 5 minutes?
1. The Economy Gap: Early Game "Tax" Items
The Issue: Low-cost active items (Slowing Hex, Disarming Hex) are available as early as 3 minutes into the game, but their reliable counters (Unstoppable, Dispel magic) are gated behind 3,200+/6400 souls and a 15-minute timing.
The Frustration: This creates a "Dead Zone" where players are forced to throw away their build progression just to survive a low-skill, point-and-click item. You shouldn't be "neutered" by a 1,250-soul item for 10 minutes straight with zero viable counter-play.
Example would be a bebop in lane vs mina. Bebops rush slowing hex, mina's are completely useless for the remainder until they leave lane or rush buy an item. making their power worse than it was before.
2. Mechanical "Bailouts" for Low-Skill Heroes
McGinnis Turret Buffs: The introduction of "Deferred Damage" on turrets removes the primary counter-play for catching a player out of position. An out-of-position McGinnis can now spam 5 turrets and a heal to win a trade they should have lost.
Aimbot/AOE Dominance: Heroes like (Graves/lady giest life steal and McGinnis turrets) provide too much reward for minimal aim while also proccing actives like suppressor (McGinnis turrets), while Ivy, Paradox, and Lady Geist have AOE abilities (Thorns, Essence Bomb, pulse grenade) the size of "small cities" that offer too many status effects (Slow + Immobilize) for how easy they are to land.
3. The "Identity Theft" of High-Skill Heroes (Mina)
Nerfing Skill Ceilings: The nerfs to (Mina)—specifically gutting stamina regen and jacking the TP cooldown to 22 seconds—have removed her identity.
The Result: She has become a "glass character without the cannon." Meanwhile, high-mobility favorites like Celeste remain "bouncy" and untouched, showing a lack of consistency in how "annoying" mobility is balanced.
4. The Punishment of Efficiency (Net Worth Scaling)
The Problem: Respawn timers are scaling aggressively based on Net Worth/Efficiency rather than just game time or KDA.
The Scenario: A player can be 1-5 but leading in souls due to superior farming/denying, yet they are punished with a 20+ second longer respawn timer than the enemy "brawler" who is ignoring the map.
The Frustration: The game is literally putting efficient players in a "Time Out" to allow less skilled players a chance to catch up.
5. Soul Sharing & "Welfare" Mechanics
The Issue: The current soul-sharing radius allows teammates who contribute nothing to a kill or a lane to receive full credit and currency.
The Result: This inflates the rank of "useless" players and dilutes the carry potential of the person actually doing the work. It rewards "Overwatch-style" deathballing over strategic laning.
6. lack of obvious balance changes.
The issue: Obvious broken over scaled abilities are left untouched or are looked at like they are fine. or underpowered heroes that are never buffed.
Wrong changes to heroes. taking away a heroes identity like mina.
You have No and skill that you people refuse to address. wraiths original ult was reworked do to the exact reason why mo's ult should also be reworked. Doorman shouldn't be allowed to place doors on objectives, McGinnis shouldn't be allowed to block objectives with her wall. Kelvin does too much and you ppl, know it. His arctic beam has way too low of a CD does WAY too much damage while freezing stamina regen and his ice grenades have no business freezing stamina regeneration. Its a classic case of not addressing the actual issues of a hero while buffing the ever living shit out of them, just because you made their ult CD longer. Sincalir ult is the most broken thing in this game. In what world does it make sense that sincalir gets any ult 3 times before any other player can use theirs once? Not too mention his spirit scaling on his bolts are insane and make no sense. over powered. never addressed. Yamatos power slash does more damage than a venator ult. yet everyone seems to think its fine when its not. I could go on and on but thats not the point of this post. Heroes are commonly band-aid fixed. you devs will remove one thing but you people didn't actually remove it all you people did was make it a t3 upgrade or made it do 0.1 less damage. Those arnt fixes or changes those are slaps in the face that shows the community that you people are happy with the bad balance state of the game. you devs are happy with these no skill 3 button press one shot combos. Because if you people wernt okay with it youd actually address it instead of saying oh instead of 10 minutes you can now do this at 15 minutes. Its ridiculous you people are delaying the issue making it worse not better.
Items: Warp stone/ should have a delay with using abilities when used. or should have the same effect as majestic leap. cant be used while taking damage.
Items like dispel magic are basically useless with the amount of CC in the game. Dispel magic needs to have charges. make the item the same price as slowing hex but you can buy the item again to get an extra charge. so at 3200 souls you get 2 charges instead of one, make the cool down the same as slowing hex/disarming hex.
Coldfront/arctic blast: Items like this are crutch items that are unhealthy for the game. People dont use it for its intended purpose for the slow effect. if you removed the damage the item wouldn't be bought. Its just free damage every 25 second and it scales with spirit.
Make an item that deflects cc abilities back to the sender, if you get slowing hexed it bounces of me and sticks to you slowing hexing you.
Torment pulse/ items like this do too much damage and are hand holding items that ruin a game. Why does this item get to become 2nd/3rd most damage at the end of a game simply by being near an enemy? Its low skill and ratty. it should pump out a slow or something not damage.
decay/ only real issue with this item is with shiv and the fact its an auto lock ability it should be a skillshot. Shiv shouldn't be allowed to gain rage from an auto lock active ability. But again items that do passive damage for simply clicking on someone doesn't belong in a shooter style game. Those things belong in top down games.
Make an item that pushes enemies back.
"Deadlock is leaning too heavily into 'Player Retention' mechanics that compress the skill gap. Between rubber-band respawn timers, and the lack of early-game counter-items, the game is starting to feel like it's designed to hold the hands of casual players at the direct expense of the veteran, efficient player base. We want a game that respects skill and punishment—not one that taxes you for playing correctly."
Just seems like the devs on this game have what i like to call dota brain. They think cause it works for dota its good for deadlock. When infact the things that make dota "skillful" is the exact things that make deadlock braindead and hand holding. were playing a shooting style moba where aiming matters position matters more than a top down point and click game.
Heroes that play the game for you, should NEVER be viable in high ranks/pro play. if you see players picking ladygiest, graves or McGinnis in deadlock night shift that screams balance issues. The fact that the devs are so blind or just unwilling to change their directory with this game is what will kill it in the future. I want to play a game where my decisions matter and arnt watered down just to make someone else feel good. If i play bad, i want to know i played bad i dont want a system that says well actually. No thats bullshit.
Kelvins arctic beam Does too much fucking damage. the range is too far the fucking cooldown is too low for what it does. It freezes stamina regeneration AND IT SLOWS YOUR FIRE RATE?! remove it and the frost grenade doing 600 damage plus freezing your stamina regeneration for 5 seconds?
Wraith- you people dont know how to balance this hero. She is the most useless piece of shit hero in the game for 20 fucking minutes. Her gun does no damage
her tp DOES NOT NEED TO BE 45 FUCKING SECONDS LONG!! ESPECIALLY FOR A T3 UPGRADE! Wraith tp t3 should be a instant cast or give her an unstoppable effect during cast. Her tp shield should also activate upon the beginning phase of the tp not when you land.
Bebop- Remove the double hook feature from simply landing an uppercut, doesn't belong in the game. Hook doesn't even belong in the game. His hook range is ridiculous and makes absolutely no fucking sense. nerf it Make the hook dispelable.
Witchmail- is a broken item that needs to be nerfed. the 1 second passive for a 4 second CD reduction on all abilities is ridiculous.
Mina's tp has no business being 22 seconds long, this heros identity basically got stripped away. Her thing was tp and fast stamina. Her stamina is now .3 faster than the rest mean while celeste and ivy get low gravity. Its like giving celeste the same 10% low gravity as ivy but saying lets give celeste 13% ridiculous. give mina back her fast stamina and give her tp a 12-15 second CD for her tp.
Calico- Having a hero that throws over powered "gloom bombs" has an auto locking slash feature and a free escape that procs items while taking 0 damage if that is fair to you, than idk what is. On top of all that 3k damage burst potential. you give this cat one of the best guns in the game, yet you people fail to give a hero like wraith an actual gun. I dont get it. You people are backwards with how heroes are balanced.
A hero thats supposed to do gun damage does 0, a support gets to stomp someone for 1k damage a "spirit" hero gets a better gun than wraith but everyones so obsessed with pressing buttons that do burst damage all this bullshit goes under the radar for so long and it makes actual gun heroes useless. because of how this game is poorly balanced.
ALL actives should be skillshots:- I'm so sick of people pressing buttons with auto lock features and dealing ridiculous amounts of damage. Im sick of people pressing a button with an auto lock feature that silences/disarms or stuns someones. Those things should be earned. not a free button. If those things actually took skill to land, Dispel magic and unstoppable would be fine as the only counters. but its not.
DRAFT:- I'm sick of the stupid ban system. Its stupid its a placebo and if anything its bad. It will purposely make you wait in a longer queue because the ban system already pre planned to put you in a match where the hero you want to play is going to be banned. and the hero you dont want to play against and banned will be in your lane on the enemy team. and you have to fight that hero on a hero you didn't want to even play with to begin with. it makes queue times longer.
The match maker also purposely puts 3-4 counters to your specific hero on the enemy team and gives you a bunch of random composition heroes and will put a player as an anchor while giving them a bunch of boosted players that get farmed all game and do less than 20k damage in a 40 minute game. Itll put you against the worlds best bebop but give you an initiate feeding bebop. The match making in this game is in a really bad state. It purposely gives one team good heroes and the other team bad heroes with bad players. It puts people learning new heroe's on the same team as people with 70 matches played against a team of people with 1200 matches played and theyre on their on tricks.
Comeback urn: Enemy team should not be able to instant return a comeback urn on the enemy side. They should have a 3-5 second delivery window
May as well bitch about this here: Street brawl: Trash game mode for the following reasons. Respawn timers before 2 minutes are too long. If you die in the first minute of the game even on a walker round the game is over. you spawn on the zipline as your walker is being destroyed. The fact that the devs dont see this issue and havnt changed it is what makes me angry. Their version and vision of fair and balanced is corrupted and makes 0 fucking sense. and it shows with 90% of the items/heroes/game.
The game doesn't offer you counters when you need it but will give the enemy a million knock downs and focus lenses slowing hex/disarming hexes. The game wont ever offer you a dispel magic or an unstoppable.
Heroes like lash and 7 and bebop etc always seem to get items like unstoppable. always. the system prioritizes the wrong shit way to often. Or if playing a 2 stamina hero the game will hesitate to even offer you extra stamina. Players should be able to suggest items they want.
It will offer you 3 good items in 1 turn, But never offer you the other 2 items you need. You skip a bad roll though and the game will shove those items you JUST SKIPPED in your face. No bitch. I skipped those items for a reason, dont show me those again!
1 reroll is a terrible balancing idea. Its honestly pathetic. maybe 1 per roll but 1 for all 3??? Terrible.
TL;DR: Game balance = trash/ Spirit=OP Hero=overpowered/underpowered/playing favorites items=unbalanced lack of critical thinking skills brainless autolocking. Matchmaking=trash (feels rigged) wraith=dogshit requires too many items and farm again. street brawl=trash
If there is swears here and there i am sorry. I put this together over a month and sometimes would add when angry. I have read through it and tried to edit everything to be modest. If i missed any or came across rude i am sorry. Im just passionate and feel like i have the 180 degree philosophy for this game than the devs do.
Last edited:
