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I am almost comfortable enough to start doing my own builds or at least wanting specific items if I could remember the dang names of them.
Tried Bebop and man I could not get him to click with me. Grabs felt good if you could make them but I did not have much follow up other than bomb which tended to glue to minions when trying to spam click it on enemy heroes.
Tried Haze and that went better. I am still torn on a dedicated passive ability versus activateable passivr as Shiv. Still she's a nice assassin character with an ult that doesn't get oppressive till later. Seven remains just a constant threat and forced back three pushes cause he would just1 ultimate off thr zipline out of spawn.
Getting a win by throwing a teleport cloak over the entire enemy team to drop directly on top of the weakened patron and killing it's last 5% or so of health with Barrage / Satchel before dying immedietly after the Satchel explodes felt great. We had a terrible first half of the match then rallied, but almost lost it (we had the weakened patron to like 25% before getting routed and it fully healed). But the turn around and last few seconds of the match felt so good.
I still mostly suck, but it felt good to top the board on something (even if it was just objective damage).
I feel like I am abusing the "favorite" character option too much. 90% of my games are Pocket, and I think I'd enjoy more Seven, Abrams, or like Wraith. But instead it's always Pocket time.
Oh well, at least I feel like I have a better understanding than before.
I feel like I am abusing the "favorite" character option too much. 90% of my games are Pocket, and I think I'd enjoy more Seven, Abrams, or like Wraith. But instead it's always Pocket time.
Oh well, at least I feel like I have a better understanding than before.
Honestly getting pretty tired of Seven being in every match and getting nasty amounts of kills. I'm still a low enough MMR where people can't counter him properly, but high enough I have to start getting sweaty whereas I've only now completed trying all the heroes one time.
Honestly having a hard time choosing 3 for sure. I know partly it's cause I'm better at the game then when I started but it's hard to go for the one that feels right.
Or I may just migrate to Marvel Rivals or Smite 2.
Edit: Yeah, last couple lanes I have been going against people making twice my souls and pushing in my lane hard. Thankfully no hackers so far but man it feels bad. Game thinks I'm way better than I am.
Thankfully I made up for it by buying Curse and hamstringing enemy carries but I dunno about this game for me.
I feel like I am abusing the "favorite" character option too much. 90% of my games are Pocket, and I think I'd enjoy more Seven, Abrams, or like Wraith. But instead it's always Pocket time.
Oh well, at least I feel like I have a better understanding than before.
Honestly getting pretty tired of Seven being in every match and getting nasty amounts of kills. I'm still a low enough MMR where people can't counter him properly, but high enough I have to start getting sweaty whereas I've only now completed trying all the heroes one time.
Honestly having a hard time choosing 3 for sure. I know partly it's cause I'm better at the game then when I started but it's hard to go for the one that feels right.
Or I may just migrate to Marvel Rivals or Smite 2.
Edit: Yeah, last couple lanes I have been going against people making twice my souls and pushing in my lane hard. Thankfully no hackers so far but man it feels bad. Game thinks I'm way better than I am.
Thankfully I made up for it by buying Curse and hamstringing enemy carries but I dunno about this game for me.
I feel I have hit the point where I am often just unable to match my lane partner (either because I am higher in MMR than my skill actually handles, or because Pocket takes extra Spirit damage and they pair me against poor matchups).
In those cases, sometimes I just abandon my lane to go join another player or begin roaming. I suck at early game and need the help to get over the hump. And then once the ball starts rolling I can conrtrbute better.
Again, I am not good, but for the sake of fun I find that if I am clearly losing my lane that I will have a better match if I go play with a duo, even if that means losing a guardian early, because once I get past the first chunk of gameplay I can start having more fun, and half the time it turns into a recovered win anyway. But even if it doesn't I at least get to engage in something as opposed to feel outplayed for the first 10 minutes.
I could understand it happening once but it has been back t9 back, the soul barely spawns and is denied and when I check they are double my soul count.
Guess I should just take a break cause the game expects more from me than I can handle.
Again I am not that good but lordy it getting me in the sweats. Would be nice to figure out which heroes click best for me.
This one warden was on point just stay8jg right ou5 of my lady geist ult and melting me down.
Getting better at laning and not playing it as a hero shooter exclusively, I may be missing it if its there but man it needs hero independent keybinds.
Alas, changing my buttons then changing them again gave me a case of the old stupid fingers, and especially at high levels of play it can be game ending getting confused from an ability to an active skill.
Probably just take a break, I still haven't really found heroes I truly click with and a lot of the item builds I don't understand or can't remember the name of what I want to build down the way. Honestly I'm just so pampered by LoL's robust item suggestion that figured things out. I just don't quite know the names or what I'm building.
I will say it is hilarious when folks are on voice comms and only use it to bitch and moan at their teammates instead of communicating their intentions.
Haven't played for a bit, sticking to that break like I said.
I do want to say I like things like Active Reload that only triggers if you attempt to use it, allowing you to save it from going on cooldown for later. I still mess it up like the dickens but I think it's a nice touch.
I do wish they had a better store layout. Someone posted one to show how items flow into each other and I understand what someone was saying about spirit items being more connected since most of them build into each other unlike weapon and vitality.
Getting better at laning and not playing it as a hero shooter exclusively, I may be missing it if its there but man it needs hero independent keybinds.
I could understand it happening once but it has been back t9 back, the soul barely spawns and is denied and when I check they are double my soul count.
Guess I should just take a break cause the game expects more from me than I can handle.
Again I am not that good but lordy it getting me in the sweats. Would be nice to figure out which heroes click best for me.
This one warden was on point just stay8jg right ou5 of my lady geist ult and melting me down.
What do you mean the soul barely spawns? It always spawns on last hits, in my experience.
I could understand it happening once but it has been back t9 back, the soul barely spawns and is denied and when I check they are double my soul count.
Guess I should just take a break cause the game expects more from me than I can handle.
Again I am not that good but lordy it getting me in the sweats. Would be nice to figure out which heroes click best for me.
This one warden was on point just stay8jg right ou5 of my lady geist ult and melting me down.
What do you mean the soul barely spawns? It always spawns on last hits, in my experience.
As in it had just spawned and the other player will deny it almost instantly.
I could understand it happening once but it has been back t9 back, the soul barely spawns and is denied and when I check they are double my soul count.
Guess I should just take a break cause the game expects more from me than I can handle.
Again I am not that good but lordy it getting me in the sweats. Would be nice to figure out which heroes click best for me.
This one warden was on point just stay8jg right ou5 of my lady geist ult and melting me down.
What do you mean the soul barely spawns? It always spawns on last hits, in my experience.
As in it had just spawned and the other player will deny it almost instantly.
Oh, that's obviously what you said the first time. I was just misreading it. Sorry.
I've been primarily playing Lash. He's fun, lots of control, fairly tanky, mobility in and out of fights.
The game is interesting. I can definitely see the bones of Dota in lots of the design (both gameplay and heroes). I don't know the characters all super well so I am using mental shortcuts (i.e. that guy is like pudge, this guy is like tiny, etc). I do ok in lane but still having trouble with the transition out of laning and the strategy required (when to push together, when to split push, etc). I'm only playing with randoms though so part of this is just lack of coordination.
I know Infernus and Haze have dedicated passives for their 3s so it is a dead key that could be remapped.
Been watching players and big part is reading the ebb and flow of a game, when you need to push/defend lanes, map awareness and calling out missing enemies (alt + clicking enemy portrait will do a missing callout).
Most importantly always be farming. Breaking crates and killing jungle camps, delivering urn when you can to maximize souls to get needed items. It's partly why securing and especially denying is so important in the laning phase as it can make a huge difference in the early game. Each denial is an 80 soul differen (-40 from them, +40 to you) and securing souls after an objective.
I readily admit I buy too many tier 1 items when I could be getting a 2 or 3 and not great at farming so I end up falling behind.
I played a game last night where I couldn't get a single soul. Every time I last hit the guy would send one perfect shot off that would impact the *instant* it spawned
It was very frustrating and made me hate the MMR matchmaking.
I played a game last night where I couldn't get a single soul. Every time I last hit the guy would send one perfect shot off that would impact the *instant* it spawned
It was very frustrating and made me hate the MMR matchmaking.
One useful feature here is to try to last-hit with melee (typically when their healthbar is glowing). Melee hits secure the souls immediately.
I just got a deadlock invite. I have never played DOTA, DOTA2, or LoL. I played the Pokémon moba for a weekend a couple of years ago.
I don’t have a crew who plays this. Is this worth trying out?
I'd still try it out, the movement and verticality are the two new things it really adds to the MOBA formula. I do respectably in solo but the matchmaking is all over the place so treating it like an experience rather than climbing the ladder is just better for your sanity. Also alpha build so lotta problems despite the praise.
More I look at, the more I see the importance of knowing the store items and how bad the game lays it out for you. Custom community builds can only do so much versus knowing "hey know is the time to buy X survivability" vs just going full glass cannon.
-I like the art. Reminds me of the middle ground between "looking good" and "super readable" that DotA 2 took between Heroes of Newarth and LoL. Animations are fantastic.
-I am super overwhelmed by the shop. If anything needs changing, it's this. They need some additional at a glance info, or arranging the icons better.
-There's a LOT not covered by the in-game tutorials. Camps, jump dashing (the tutorial mentions this, but doesn't show you exactly how to do it and it's tricky), the urn, different ability slots, flex abilities. This guide was the best I could find on this stuff. Not sure how up to date it is.
-A lot of heroes feel like redundant copies of each other. Like they only had ideas for 6 heroes but had to release with the same number as Overwatch 1 did.
-I'm just overwhelmed by everything. Everything moves so fast, you pretty much have to memorize the entire shop because you won't have time to browse in match. You also have to memorize counter picks, like which heroes you need a healing reduction item against, etc.
-Snowballing seems more extreme than other MOBAs. Everything moves so fast in the lanes, camps only feel like something to do if the enemy forces you out, and by that point it's probably too late. Your fast travel tram lines extending the farther you push in also accelerates the snowballing.
⚠️ Handling Disconnections and Replacements
If a player leaves your game, you can request a replacement in Discord with the match ID and report the person leaving if it was intentional. You can pause the match with the P key if the player is likely to return soon. If a player leaves the game, the match becomes safe for everyone else. To subscribe to a match, spectate it and look for the replace button in the ESC menu.
The Item shop is much less confusing if you make / borrow saved builds. Even if a build may not be good, just being able to explore/save a build in Sandbox then eliminate like 85% of the thinking during an actual game really helps.
But the big steps in understanding for me mostly went
* oh hey Spirit is confusing but I can stick with the generic scaling improving ones
* survivability for me matters more than damage
* Active skills (esp Majestic Leap) are where shit really pops off
If you're just using pre-made builds, what is even the point of a shop? It's why I was generally never a fan of items in MOBAs and why Heroes of the Storm was my favorite. Counterintuitively, I've found the simple "choice between 3 talents every 3 levels" to offer more versatility and depth than the choice of 100 items from typical MOBAs. You're going to be running 80% the same build on each hero every match, with maybe one item reacting to the other team.
I think they need to straight up prune the shop choices. Have 4 very distinct choices each category tier instead of 9-14 overlapping ones.
Builds give you a starting foundation for what goes in to an effective loadout for a given character, so instead of being overwhelmed by the variables of enemy and ally team comps, skill build orders, item selection and prioritization, and in-game objectives, some of those things are taken care of and you can focus on learning the others
Also worth noting that this is still very much in active development, like wall jumping and ropes were just added, so I wouldn't count on comprehensive documentation or tutorialization for anything for a good bit
Best case, the items end up in the same place as DotA/LoL: you're instantly familiar with what each one does, and stick to the exact same build for each hero every game with maybe 20% wiggle room.
Those complex shops were made for matches and death timers that last 3 times longer though. Plus at the end of the day I don't think they add anything to the game compared to much, much simpler systems like HotS.
I think their approach to ability points is an interesting new take. I think it would be a better experience scrapping the items (they won't) and expanding on directly upgrading abilities. Have souls instead tie directly into ability point gains. Give more ability upgrade options besides the linear more damage->lower cooldown.
After about 40 games with Pocket, I am consistently not the worst person on my team. I tend to get a lot of assists with various abilities, and sometimes my ult can swing a match (similar to a well placed Seven ult). I still suck at early game laning and often just pair with someone even if that abandons a lane, but come mid game and the build coming online, it feels real nice to jump in from nowhere, drop an ult or a Satchel, kill or wound some dudes and bounce out.
Reminding myself that it is a game of attrition and that even just wounding and scaring people off moves us towards the goal or pivoting to take out a tower helps ease when I don't secure a kill. I don't play mobas, so learning about the game flow is taking a bit of time.
Played about 2 matches with every hero. Initial hero opinions.
Heroes I don't get
I didn't feel like these heroes offered any value over other options
Dynamo- Basic kit seems really weak. Only use is the ult setting people up, but other ults can also do that or just outright kill people.
Haze- A stealth fast travel hero that suggests ganking, yet zero burst kit. A whopping 6 seconds of stealth, decloaked at 18m. A low damage sleep dart for a stealth hero? Death blossom ult is weak or near useless unless there's only a lone enemy with zero minions nearby.
Paradox- The wall might be useful, but it doesn't even seem to stop minion bullets? Everything else about her seemed terrible. How is her ult not just a worse version of Bebop's grappling hook, a basic ability?
Lash- Fun to go "weeee!" when you grapple someone, but his abilities seem like they take WAY too much effort for the payoff. Way better results for less effort in the other tanks.
Ivy- I'm calling this the "Io" of Deadlock, after the DotA hero whose whole thing is enhancing an ally. Maybe there's some amazing play here at coordinated higher skill levels that I will never see.
Viscous- Puddle Punch is crazy hard to position and time right in the middle of battle, for results you do better with others. I could see the ult being crazy like Pang's in DotA, but damn if I can steer it.
Yamato- Seems underpeformering as a damage dealer until you can fully upgrade her power slash.
Heroes cook pretty good
Infernus- Insane how much value you get out of such little effort.
Bebop- Blitzcrank with a crazy damaging ranged attack. An ult that can get so crazy, it's up there with Seven's for the entire reason they had to include a stun item.
Mo & Krill- Just a great tank kit. Not a single mediocre ability.
Abrams- Besides a good kit, has a hidden gem advantage in that his gun is so damn good at soul shooting. It's got a spread that makes it extremely easy to hit, and reloading isn't a commitment. You practically force your opponents to melee every single last hit.
McGinnis- I...don't see how this isn't completely broken? Her kit just gets everything. The crazy setup & sustained gun of Bebop. Torb's auto-hitting Overwatch turrets. Tassadar's Heroes of the Storm wall. A "fuck you you're dead unless you immediately flee the field for the next 13 seconds" long range AoE ult. An AoE heal that also provides a 35% attack speed buff to everyone.
Like...what? It's like fighting Overwatch Torb except his molten core is always up and he heals and buffs teammates oh and also he long range nukes.
Posts
Tried Bebop and man I could not get him to click with me. Grabs felt good if you could make them but I did not have much follow up other than bomb which tended to glue to minions when trying to spam click it on enemy heroes.
Tried Haze and that went better. I am still torn on a dedicated passive ability versus activateable passivr as Shiv. Still she's a nice assassin character with an ult that doesn't get oppressive till later. Seven remains just a constant threat and forced back three pushes cause he would just1 ultimate off thr zipline out of spawn.
I still mostly suck, but it felt good to top the board on something (even if it was just objective damage).
And sure enough I enjoyed Warden.
God damn cop.
Oh well, at least I feel like I have a better understanding than before.
Honestly getting pretty tired of Seven being in every match and getting nasty amounts of kills. I'm still a low enough MMR where people can't counter him properly, but high enough I have to start getting sweaty whereas I've only now completed trying all the heroes one time.
Honestly having a hard time choosing 3 for sure. I know partly it's cause I'm better at the game then when I started but it's hard to go for the one that feels right.
Or I may just migrate to Marvel Rivals or Smite 2.
Edit: Yeah, last couple lanes I have been going against people making twice my souls and pushing in my lane hard. Thankfully no hackers so far but man it feels bad. Game thinks I'm way better than I am.
Thankfully I made up for it by buying Curse and hamstringing enemy carries but I dunno about this game for me.
I feel I have hit the point where I am often just unable to match my lane partner (either because I am higher in MMR than my skill actually handles, or because Pocket takes extra Spirit damage and they pair me against poor matchups).
In those cases, sometimes I just abandon my lane to go join another player or begin roaming. I suck at early game and need the help to get over the hump. And then once the ball starts rolling I can conrtrbute better.
Again, I am not good, but for the sake of fun I find that if I am clearly losing my lane that I will have a better match if I go play with a duo, even if that means losing a guardian early, because once I get past the first chunk of gameplay I can start having more fun, and half the time it turns into a recovered win anyway. But even if it doesn't I at least get to engage in something as opposed to feel outplayed for the first 10 minutes.
Guess I should just take a break cause the game expects more from me than I can handle.
Again I am not that good but lordy it getting me in the sweats. Would be nice to figure out which heroes click best for me.
This one warden was on point just stay8jg right ou5 of my lady geist ult and melting me down.
Somehow I am in the top 20% which is baffling
Apparently it is hero based MMR, so if you won a game with them you are the best ever.
Probably just take a break, I still haven't really found heroes I truly click with and a lot of the item builds I don't understand or can't remember the name of what I want to build down the way. Honestly I'm just so pampered by LoL's robust item suggestion that figured things out. I just don't quite know the names or what I'm building.
I will say it is hilarious when folks are on voice comms and only use it to bitch and moan at their teammates instead of communicating their intentions.
I do want to say I like things like Active Reload that only triggers if you attempt to use it, allowing you to save it from going on cooldown for later. I still mess it up like the dickens but I think it's a nice touch.
I do wish they had a better store layout. Someone posted one to show how items flow into each other and I understand what someone was saying about spirit items being more connected since most of them build into each other unlike weapon and vitality.
What are you wanting to change per-hero?
What do you mean the soul barely spawns? It always spawns on last hits, in my experience.
As in it had just spawned and the other player will deny it almost instantly.
Oh, that's obviously what you said the first time. I was just misreading it. Sorry.
The game is interesting. I can definitely see the bones of Dota in lots of the design (both gameplay and heroes). I don't know the characters all super well so I am using mental shortcuts (i.e. that guy is like pudge, this guy is like tiny, etc). I do ok in lane but still having trouble with the transition out of laning and the strategy required (when to push together, when to split push, etc). I'm only playing with randoms though so part of this is just lack of coordination.
Been watching players and big part is reading the ebb and flow of a game, when you need to push/defend lanes, map awareness and calling out missing enemies (alt + clicking enemy portrait will do a missing callout).
Most importantly always be farming. Breaking crates and killing jungle camps, delivering urn when you can to maximize souls to get needed items. It's partly why securing and especially denying is so important in the laning phase as it can make a huge difference in the early game. Each denial is an 80 soul differen (-40 from them, +40 to you) and securing souls after an objective.
I readily admit I buy too many tier 1 items when I could be getting a 2 or 3 and not great at farming so I end up falling behind.
It was very frustrating and made me hate the MMR matchmaking.
Only thing I can say for certain right now is that I'm overwhelmed by the shop. The icons are very nice. The general layout is not.
it's hilarious
I don’t have a crew who plays this. Is this worth trying out?
One useful feature here is to try to last-hit with melee (typically when their healthbar is glowing). Melee hits secure the souls immediately.
I'd still try it out, the movement and verticality are the two new things it really adds to the MOBA formula. I do respectably in solo but the matchmaking is all over the place so treating it like an experience rather than climbing the ladder is just better for your sanity. Also alpha build so lotta problems despite the praise.
More I look at, the more I see the importance of knowing the store items and how bad the game lays it out for you. Custom community builds can only do so much versus knowing "hey know is the time to buy X survivability" vs just going full glass cannon.
-I like the art. Reminds me of the middle ground between "looking good" and "super readable" that DotA 2 took between Heroes of Newarth and LoL. Animations are fantastic.
-I am super overwhelmed by the shop. If anything needs changing, it's this. They need some additional at a glance info, or arranging the icons better.
-There's a LOT not covered by the in-game tutorials. Camps, jump dashing (the tutorial mentions this, but doesn't show you exactly how to do it and it's tricky), the urn, different ability slots, flex abilities. This guide was the best I could find on this stuff. Not sure how up to date it is.
-A lot of heroes feel like redundant copies of each other. Like they only had ideas for 6 heroes but had to release with the same number as Overwatch 1 did.
-I'm just overwhelmed by everything. Everything moves so fast, you pretty much have to memorize the entire shop because you won't have time to browse in match. You also have to memorize counter picks, like which heroes you need a healing reduction item against, etc.
-Snowballing seems more extreme than other MOBAs. Everything moves so fast in the lanes, camps only feel like something to do if the enemy forces you out, and by that point it's probably too late. Your fast travel tram lines extending the farther you push in also accelerates the snowballing.
I have over 5000 MOBA hours over 15 years, and I'm 90% lost.
I dunno about getting a rando replacement on Discord though.
Also I think part of why the item shop is so confusing is whereas most mobad have about 6 item slots, deadlock has up to 16
But the big steps in understanding for me mostly went
* oh hey Spirit is confusing but I can stick with the generic scaling improving ones
* survivability for me matters more than damage
* Active skills (esp Majestic Leap) are where shit really pops off
I think they need to straight up prune the shop choices. Have 4 very distinct choices each category tier instead of 9-14 overlapping ones.
Also worth noting that this is still very much in active development, like wall jumping and ropes were just added, so I wouldn't count on comprehensive documentation or tutorialization for anything for a good bit
My Steam
Those complex shops were made for matches and death timers that last 3 times longer though. Plus at the end of the day I don't think they add anything to the game compared to much, much simpler systems like HotS.
I think their approach to ability points is an interesting new take. I think it would be a better experience scrapping the items (they won't) and expanding on directly upgrading abilities. Have souls instead tie directly into ability point gains. Give more ability upgrade options besides the linear more damage->lower cooldown.
I don't mind the items as a concept - shop is going to talk some time to get used to.
Reminding myself that it is a game of attrition and that even just wounding and scaring people off moves us towards the goal or pivoting to take out a tower helps ease when I don't secure a kill. I don't play mobas, so learning about the game flow is taking a bit of time.
Heroes I don't get
I didn't feel like these heroes offered any value over other options
Dynamo- Basic kit seems really weak. Only use is the ult setting people up, but other ults can also do that or just outright kill people.
Haze- A stealth fast travel hero that suggests ganking, yet zero burst kit. A whopping 6 seconds of stealth, decloaked at 18m. A low damage sleep dart for a stealth hero? Death blossom ult is weak or near useless unless there's only a lone enemy with zero minions nearby.
Paradox- The wall might be useful, but it doesn't even seem to stop minion bullets? Everything else about her seemed terrible. How is her ult not just a worse version of Bebop's grappling hook, a basic ability?
Lash- Fun to go "weeee!" when you grapple someone, but his abilities seem like they take WAY too much effort for the payoff. Way better results for less effort in the other tanks.
Ivy- I'm calling this the "Io" of Deadlock, after the DotA hero whose whole thing is enhancing an ally. Maybe there's some amazing play here at coordinated higher skill levels that I will never see.
Viscous- Puddle Punch is crazy hard to position and time right in the middle of battle, for results you do better with others. I could see the ult being crazy like Pang's in DotA, but damn if I can steer it.
Yamato- Seems underpeformering as a damage dealer until you can fully upgrade her power slash.
Heroes cook pretty good
Infernus- Insane how much value you get out of such little effort.
Bebop- Blitzcrank with a crazy damaging ranged attack. An ult that can get so crazy, it's up there with Seven's for the entire reason they had to include a stun item.
Mo & Krill- Just a great tank kit. Not a single mediocre ability.
Abrams- Besides a good kit, has a hidden gem advantage in that his gun is so damn good at soul shooting. It's got a spread that makes it extremely easy to hit, and reloading isn't a commitment. You practically force your opponents to melee every single last hit.
Holy $*@#!
McGinnis- I...don't see how this isn't completely broken? Her kit just gets everything. The crazy setup & sustained gun of Bebop. Torb's auto-hitting Overwatch turrets. Tassadar's Heroes of the Storm wall. A "fuck you you're dead unless you immediately flee the field for the next 13 seconds" long range AoE ult. An AoE heal that also provides a 35% attack speed buff to everyone.
Like...what? It's like fighting Overwatch Torb except his molten core is always up and he heals and buffs teammates oh and also he long range nukes.
I also suck and this could all be incorrect.
I still can't tell how item components work. They don't seem to discount the higher items they're connected to like other MOBAs.