Comprehensive Guide to Items and Builds in Deadlock

Why are there so many items in Deadlock? Which ones should I buy? Which ones should I avoid at all cost? And why is

there an item of a guy holding five aces when there's only four aces in a deck of playing cards? That and much more will

be answered in this video. What's up, friends? This is Metro, and today we're going to go over everything items and

builds in Deadlock. We're going to go over how items work in general, which ones are universally good for every

character, which ones are niche, and what what items you should really buy, and what items you should really buy for

your character in specific. And then we'll go over how to create your own build, and how to work around items. So,

to start with the basics, there's three categories of items. One is the weapon tab, one is the vitality tab, and one is

the spirit tab. Um, in general, items in the weapon tab up your gun damage. There are exceptions. There's certain items

that you know add damage to other categories of items. For example, there's items in the weapon category

like spirit vent that will up your spirit damage of your team and yourself. And there's also items in the, you know,

vitality tab that will add some weapon damage. But in general, I would say orange adds weapon damage, green adds

survivability, and spirit adds spirit damage/casting damage, which is mostly your ability damage depending on the

character you play. Now, that being said, not every character requires all three types of items. Some characters

are more specific to weapon damage, and some characters are hybrid characters that really benefit from everything. And

the beauty in Deadlock is you can make some characters work as certain types of characters. What I mean by that is you

can play some characters as garden characters, but you can also play that very same character as a tank or as a

spirit character. And we're going to go about all of that today. So, in general, before we even start with any items uh

at all, you should know there is a thing called investments. Okay? And what the investment stats do is they give you

bonuses depending on what items you buy. So, if we're looking at the weapon investment, the more you invest in

weapon items in general, it doesn't matter if you buy close quarter here or if you buy restoshot, which restoot

heals you, right? And close quarter adds damage on close range, it will give you a passive bonus to your weapon damage.

And as you can see in the stat itself, the weapon damage is going to go up with uh the money invested. That being said,

there is diminishing returns. So in general, the more you spend in a category, the less returns, diminishing

returns you're going to get for the weapon investment in total. What do I mean by that? Well, if you look at the

scale, up to 9,600 souls, right? Up to 9.6K is usually a lot of value, right? If I spend 9,600

on weapon items, which I'm going to do real quick, uh I will get exactly um I will get exactly 58% extra weapon

damage just as a passive bonus. Okay? And this works on every character. Anything above that you really don't

want to consider. Okay? Anything above that is really small diminishing returns. So, for example, at this point

in the weapon tab, if I were to spend another 6,400. So, if I were to spend another like 50% of what I just spent, I

would only get a return of another quick math 14% weapon damage extra, right? Which that's obviously not worth, right?

I just got five 58% weapon damage for 9.6k and you're telling me I have to now invest another 9 or 6.4K to get another

14%. Right. So what we can um learn from that in general is up to 9.6k is the sweet spot for weapon investments, but

also vitality and spirit investments. Okay, the uh the spirit and the vitality scale work the exact same way to where

there's a very good return bang for your buck until 9.6k. What does that mean for us if we buy

items? It means that if your character wants that specific type of damage, it is worth it to get, you know, at least

9.6k in that category. And a lot of characters, or I should say like 80% plus of the roster of characters

actually benefit from getting to that value eventually throughout the game, getting to that value in all three

categories. And Wraith is a perfect example here. And I'll just show you what happens in my Wraith build, right?

um as I progress through my build and as I buy items, the build is designed to where um eventually when I have my final

or when I have my main build ready, I will actually end up with exactly or almost exactly 9.6k investment in all

three categories. What does that mean? I spend my money as efficiently as possible for a character like Wraith

because Wraith does good does good D. I can't speak today. Because Wraith does good gun damage, but also really

benefits from the health she's getting, plus 32% because she's a squishy character. She wants more health, but

she also does obviously a lot of spirit damage with her cards, with her Tesla cannon, and with her full auto. Right

now, there are characters in the game that play differently, okay? And there are certain builds in the game that

focus more on a specific investment. for example, a spirit nuker like Pocket, right? For example, he wants a lot of

spirit items because he just scales very well with spirit damage and his is his his damage overall is very spirit heavy

focused, right? So, if we're looking at a very popular build of pocket, which is for example, you will notice once we go

down the line essential, but buy whatever you feel you need. I'm just going to buy here. You will notice, you

know, once we get to like later game, it's going to look a bit different. Weapon investment very low and there is

some vitality investment, but mostly it is spirit. You need to keep in mind that you want to definitely get to the the

9.6k in the in the main cate categories you like, but it's not super essential for some characters, right? So, for

pocket, for example, you know, you will shoot a gun, but you won't do as much gun damage. So, it's just not worth it

in most cases to invest more into gun to get to that gun threshold. Okay? And that that's like the basis of investment

in general before we even talk about items at all. Another thing you want to keep in mind for items in general, just

because you spend more money on an item doesn't necessarily mean it's much better. Let's look at a very easy

example. Let's look at an item like extra health. It's one of the cheapest items in the game, 800 category, right?

That's the lowest amount you can spend on an item and it just gives you 175 health. Then we look at the upgrade

fortitude, right, which gives you 375 health, so barely above double and it has some other effects that are really

valuable. But that being said, if you're just looking for health, it's not necessarily worth it to upgrade to

fortitude, right? Because fortitude gives us a bit more than double the health that extra health gives us, but

it costs four times as much, right? So there is diminishing returns. So, a lot of the time you want to look at items

that give you the best bang for your buck, right? There is a limit to the items you can buy. Otherwise, you could

very easily spam a lot of, you know, very cheap items and it would be viable. The reason it's not super viable in most

builds is because you eventually you will get slot capped, right? You won't be able to buy more items and then um

you will have to start selling. And a good build is is a build that does not sell as many items or, you know, tries

to um keep the the amount sold as small as possible because once you sell an item, you only get half of it back,

right? So, you're losing half the money you invested. Now, there's some items that are still worth buying that you can

sell later without really losing anything. A perfect example would be monster rounds. Monster rounds is an

item that gives you more damage against NPCs and lets you absorb more damage from NPCs. Okay. And that includes lane

creeps, but it also includes jungle creeps. What does that mean? If you're playing a farming character, right, if

you buy monster rounds, you'll effectively be faster at clearing jungle, be faster at clearing lane, and

you will take less damage, right? So, you will be able to not go to ba back to base as much, right? because you're

going to be more tanky against creeps, which means you can buy this item early on farming characters like seven, like

Wraith, like Inferno, right? And later down the line, you can sell it, but you will probably not have lost money

because the 800 you invested early to speed up your farming is going to give you more money than the 400 you will

lose from selling the item, if that makes sense. Right? So, not every item you have to keep throughout the entire

game. And usually if you are following a build, which we we'll go into, you know, deeper build crafting a bit later in

this video, but if you're just going for a build and eventually you end up being slot capped, right, where let's say

you're here and you don't have another slot and now you want to buy something like e-shift, right? So, you have to

sell something. Um, and what you would usually want to sell in this case is one of the cheaper items in the build,

right? Like the cheaper items are a bit less impact. So, let's say I want to really get counter spell here because I

want to like absorb some um some uh really good ultimates from the enemy, right? Counter spell is a great item to

to like counter something like a lashalt because you can just press parry and avoid the lash, right? So, if I want to

buy this item, I have to sell something. I would probably sell one of the cheaper items. So, what would I sell? I would

probably end up selling suppressor here. Why would I not sell something like cold front, improved spirit or spirit sap

instead? Well, you can, but all those three items, the thing they have in common is they upgrade to something,

right? So, they get more efficient, right? You can upgrade spirits up into silence wave. It even tells you in the

in the build, right? you can upgrade cold front into um Arctic Blast and later down the line if you have the

money you can also upgrade improved spirit into boundless. Right? So these items are efficient and very good right

now in the current meta depending on when you're watching this video because they can upgrade into stronger items

where suppressor is always going to have this effect which is really strong but it will never be more than the 1,600

item because you just can't upgrade it. Right. Okay, so that out of the way. I know there's a lot to take in with

items, so I'm going to try to keep this as simple as possible. And if you have any questions, please let me know in the

comments, and I will gladly answer all of them. Um, most guides I've seen that go into items make it really

complicated, but it really isn't. It really isn't. If you don't know how to pick a build, I would go for a build

that is um one of the pro players or streamers of the character because there is a thing going on right now where

there's fake builds. We call them fake builds in the pro scene or in the in the highle streaming scene because it's like

um it's a person that impersonates someone else or it's a person making an absolute troll build and there is a a

way to abuse the system and get a build very popular. Victor, right, has a pretty slow

uh travel time on on his bullets, right? So, if you're like sitting in lane and you're having troubles hitting the

enemy, right? Like, let's say I aim directly at him, you will notice all my shots are missing, right? Because the

the travel time is pretty slow. Once you get closer, it's going to be, you know, uh, a bit more accurate. You can also

obviously just predict, right, where you aim a bit in front of them, which is still hard by the way, even for me, but

there you go. I did some damage there, right? So something like high velocity would be a great option, right? Just

logically thinking because it adds bullet velocity. And as soon as I buy this item and I do the same thing on the

same distance, you will notice even if I aim directly at them, I will be way more consistent at hitting my shots. Now,

this is all like personal preference, right? You can decide, hey, I would rather leave my shots, not spend 800 on

this, and maybe go for more, you know, early spirit instead, right? because I want to use my spells better or more.

Right? This is all personal preference and that's why there's a lot of builds in the game that are all solid that have

different ideas and you can form your own as well. Let's look at a few examples and figure out if an item would

be good on your character. And all you really have to do for this is apply basic logic. Haze is mostly gun

character, right? Her fixation stacks, they apply more weapon damage the longer you shoot. Okay? And her old also

applies bullet damage the longer you shoot. Right? So most of Haza's kit is bullet damage. Right now she does have a

sleep dart that does spirit damage. In fact, it's high scaling. But obviously unless you're running like a really mey

build where you only throw sleep darts, which is funny, but it's obviously not the the best way to play haze right now,

right? And you can figure this out, by the way, if you're not sure how a character plays. You just look at like

the the first like few popular builds and you will realize, wait, it's all orange and green items, right? And

barely any barely any purples, right? Fixation says shooting a target increases your bullet damage on target.

Gain one stack per bullet hit two if it hits a headshot, right? And for every stack you get on the enemy, so for every

fixation stack, your damage will go up against that target, right? And every few um every few stacks,

there's also a burst of spirit, right? As you can see, as the 55. But the point is, the more of these stacks I have on

the enemy, the more damage I do. So, how can we use this to figure out what items to buy? Which one would you say is

better to buy? Swift Striker, which gives me fire rate, or something like melee charge? Should be very simple.

That was a very easy example, right? Obviously, swift striker is better here. Why? Because it just gives us flat fire

rate. And what does that mean? That means a our bullets come out 20% faster. So we also do 20% more damage. Right?

Fire rate is also damage the way is the way you want to think about it. But more importantly, because we have higher fire

rate, we shoot bullets faster, which means we apply fixation stacks faster, right? So the more bullets we shoot or

the faster we shoot, um, the more fixation stacks we're going to apply and the more damage we're going to do. That

also means that something like fire rate is just more effective than something like just straight up weapon damage.

Right? If we're looking at something like intensifying magazine, what this item does is it increases our damage the

longer we shoot, which sounds good, right? Wait, haze is a gun character. This sounds like a good item. But the

reason almost no one buys this on haze is it's just better to have higher fire rate. Whereas intensifying magazine just

gives us more damage. We're not applying fixation stacks more. So this entire effect of fixation is going to be

applied slower, right? You can rule out a lot of these items by just looking at them, right? So for example, there's

niche case scenarios and the beauty is you can make some weird wonky builds work. For example, slowing bullets is

not a bad option, right? It gives you fire rate, but it also slows the enemy. So if you, you know, have trouble

catching up to them or you have trouble hitting them, slowing them down will help, right? So you can definitely run

slowing bullets on haze, but we can rule out something like spirit shredder bullets, right?

um because this gives the enemy a debuff to their spirit and we don't really do a lot of spirit damage. So, this would

never be worth buying on haze, right? The more the longer the game goes on, the more money you earn, by the way,

from everything. Creeps give more money per minute and players. So, if you kill an enemy, player plus boxes, everything

in the game gives more money the longer the game goes on, right? So, it's harder to come by a lot of money early, right?

So, in lane, obviously, you want to buy some cheap items, right? And these are mostly 1,600 or 800 items. So you can

get your damage ramped up early. And then the longer the game goes, right, the more expensive the items we will

get. So suddenly like after landing once we have like 12k invested overall, we buy our first 6k item here because we

can afford it, right? Hopefully at that point and it is a major power spike, right? And then the items only become on

average more expensive at this point as you can see, right? So, in general, you start with cheap items in the early game

and then you go um into you go into more expensive items later down the line. At this point, I think we

can talk about some items. So, you want to find a build you enjoy first and then you can start innovating later. So,

let's look at items in general and let's first go into items that are always good, right? There is a difference

between different items. There's items that are solid on almost every character and then there's items that are more

niche. And when I say more niches, it means either you don't buy them on your character at all. Sometimes they're just

designed for other characters or they're very specific in very specific scenarios. So, I want to point out and

explain to you why some items are just always solid. Okay? And we'll start with vitality because it's the easiest to

understand. These are items that just make you live longer. And there's a few that are always going to be solid where

you can almost never go wrong if you want to choose. And you know, one is extra health. It will give you more

health. It will make you more survivable. Some characters are really tanky

inherently. So, fun fact, on those characters, buying extra health is probably not worth it because they're

already really tanky. But this is especially good on characters that start very low in a health pool, right? We're

talking Mina, we're talking Wraith, we're talking Haze. And you can, by the way, very easily want to figure out if

you want to figure out how good your character is um or how tanky your character is at the start or throughout

the game, you can very easily look at your character, right? Pick them in the practice range. You will see their base

HP, right? But you can also just press tab, click, click max level, and you will see how much base HP uh the the

character has on max level, and different characters have different scaling, right? So Abrams is on 2,200 HP

and then when you level up infernal resilience it gives you even more, right? So he's very very very

beefy on base, right? And then we look at something like Mina in comparison. If you level up Mina to max, she's like

barely half of what Abrams is, and that's on base level, right? So So she's the squishiest character in the game,

right? And there's a lot of characters in between, right? Basic items that are always solid. extra HP, always solid.

And then there's two 1,600 items that are super meta and have been super meta for a long time now, and they will

always be solid. And those items are called battle vest and enchanters emblem. Why are these items great? They

give you base resistances. In the case of battle vest, 18% bullet resistance, and in the case of

Enchanter's Emblem, 15% spirit resist. Everything else in this item is just a bonus. But what these items do is they

will stop you from taking damage, right? They will reduce the damage you take from a specific damage type. Spirit

resist is is anything casted. Any spirit effect that procs from any person's abilities is spirit damage. And spirit

damage is very prevalent right now. So, I want to say this is like probably the most popular item in the game. Okay. And

bullet resist is anything that comes out of, you know, an auto attack, including melees. Melees, fun fact, count as

bullet damage. So, resist items are really, really solid in general, right? You buy these on almost any character um

universally. And uh there's upgraded versions to these that you can buy later in the game, which are called bullet

resilience and spirit resilience. Now, these items I would not recommend on all characters because they double the price

and what they do is really they up your resistance, right? they have more resist. So, Enchant's emblem has 15%

spirit resist whereas spirit resilience has 25, but as you notice for double the price, that's not really a big increase

in resistances, right? So, to make this item worth it, you need to look at the passive effect, which says when below

30% health, gain additional spirit resist. But here's the catch. Think about this, right? If I only get the

massive spirit resist when I'm 30% health, if I'm a really squishy character like Hayes, like Mina, right?

Like if I'm a character that is not necessarily tank, this item is not really worth it a lot of the time. Why?

Because when I'm at 30% health, any ability in the game will probably one-shot me anyways, even with high

resists, right? So I will live a very short amount of time. So you know, just to compare, these items always solid

because they give you always the resists, whereas these items are items you want to buy on tanks first and

foremost, characters that are very tanky. Why? If you have a beefy a right and uh you are let's say you are like

pretty high level and you have a bunch of items right which items will increase your health right so let's say you're

running a normal okay I'm buying random items right now please don't do please don't do this one to one followics build

or something but um yeah my point really is I'm at 3k HP right so once I end up buying something like spirit resilience

let's say I'm in a fight and I go down to like a third HP P, I'll still be around 1,000. In fact, I'll be 1,100

something mathwise, right? So, I get the bonus spirit resist effect for like a,000 HP, right? So, for like 1,000 HP

of mine, I will take way less spirit damage, whereas on haze, I might only have like 500 400 HP to play with with

that effect, which, you know, puts me in kill range. Okay. In the vitality category, healing right in lane. This is

an item you proc if you're low, right? You activate on yourself. if you can self cast it or cast it on a teammate

and as long as you don't get hit by an enemy player. You can get hit by creeps here by the way and lane creeps but as

long as you don't hit get hit by an enemy player you will heal right. So if you are low in lane and you don't want

to back in back to base, which is a big mistake anyways for most players that I see a lot where they go back into base

early and lose a lot of farm, right? Because if you go back into base, you will lose a lot of farm from the wave if

you're in laning stage, you buy healing, right? Other options, if you don't want to do the active cast, if you want to

stay active in lane, extra region is another good option. Just gives you base regen. And then for characters that use

a lot of melees, melee life steal is also a great option, right? So, these are items that will make you allow you

to live in lane. I forgot to add one more. A bit more advanced, I would say, and probably not the best for new

players. This is Vesto shot. It heals you a lot if you hit an enemy hero with it. The catch is um it goes on a cool

down no matter what. So, if you miss the shot on the enemy hero, it will go on cool down, right? And you won't heal at

all. But if you're good at aiming and you feel like you're confident, if you manage the cool down correctly, it can

heal you a lot, right? In fact, it heals you 50 50 HP every 6 seconds technically if you hit a shot on the enemy hero

every 6 seconds, right? So, this is a great option for a bit more of an advanced player. Another universally

good item right now that every spirit kick that buys basically that scales well with spirit is improved spirit cuz

this item is so cheap for what it gives you, right? If you just want the raw spirit power, um, you buy this very

early and, uh, it also gives you out of combat regen, so it also helps you heal a bit, right? But if you buy this really

early, let's imagine you don't have spirit investment yet. You buy it, you get the 18 spirit power from the item

itself, and then you get another 11 from the base investment, right? Because you invested in spirit. So my spirit just

went from zero, right, on level one. If I buy this as first item, my spirit goes from 0 to 29 in a cheap 1,600 item,

right? So, this item is super solid because it just makes everything spirit based stronger and especially early, it

will give you a big power spike in your spirit abilities. Um, if you're wondering about how winning the lane,

but a big part of winning the lane is killing the enemy troops faster than the enemy kills your troops, right? Because

you want to push the enemy tower and monster rounds just helps with that. So, if you buy this as first item in lane,

uh it will just help you kill the creeps faster, which means you will have more pressure on the enemy tower. So, this

item is amazing. And if you want to win the lane in, uh in terms of damage and you want to trade a lot, and this is a

play style preference, by the way, you can do this on almost every character, right? If you want to be aggressive in

lane, you can buy headshot booster. Headshot booster is like insane. It's one of the best items in the game. It's

very slept on, right? So, if you hit all bodies, doesn't matter. every 6 8 seconds if you hit a head it's going to

do extra 50 damage which doesn't sound like a lot but that's like a lot a lot in the early game right like Mina on

base level I have like what 600 HP if you hit Mina in the head a bunch right like eventually she's just going to be

dead in lane right so headshot booster is an amazing item a lot of new players like to go for magazine items okay we're

talking titanic mag because this feels really nice early right you don't really have a lot of bullets

right? And you feel like you're reloading half the time and then you know the average newbie buys Titanic Mag

and suddenly you have like double the capacity, right? And you can shoot for a long time, which you might say that

feels really nice, right? But for most characters in the game, this item is actually bait. Why? Because a big part

of Deadlock is the movement. And um one trick with movement in Deadlock is while you slide, you don't use up any ammo,

right? So once you, you know, become decent at movement, which will happen over time if you play the game enough,

once you become decent at movement, something like ammo is not going to be as valuable anymore on most characters.

There are exceptions, but on most characters, it won't be as viable because a lot of characters or a lot of

players are good enough and they have enough movement speed to where you can permanently slide later down the line.

I'll give you an example right here on Mina. I can, if I um move correctly and I have a certain bunch of items that

give me a bit of movement speed, which a lot of items in this game give you movement speed, I can extend my slide

basically forever and I could have shot for like 20 years, right? Like notice how if I do it correctly, I

can really extend the magazine for a very long time. You want to like learn the basic movement in the game and the

best way to do it is like being forced into learning it, right? If you always have ammo, you know, it might feel good

in the moment, but then later down the line again, it's going to come back to bite you in the ass. That is early

survivability, okay? And these items are always solid, universally useful against specific other characters, counter

items. Okay? if you want to think about countering the enemy. First one I want to mention or two is silence wave and

slowing hex. These are items that have active effects and slowing hex um silences the enemy's movement abilities.

What that means is this silences stuff like Mina teleport, wraith teleport, inferno dash, Kelvin um Kelvin ice path,

uh a lot of movement items. Abram's charge, shift dash, right? So, Mirage teleport, the list goes on and on,

right? So, this item, if you playing catch and you're having troubles catching the enemy and you are the

person that initiates, this is an amazing item if you want to catch out specific characters that you know can

get away pretty easily. And the same goes for silence wave, even more so, because silence wave disables all their

abilities. It's a it's a crazy item. The the sad part is or you know for some of you the fun part you have to aim it so

it makes like a wave. It's pretty easy to hit to be fair but um if you buy slowing X all it it auto aims for you.

So if you hover like close to an enemy and you apply to them it will go on them automatically. But silence wave is going

to disable all their movement or all their spells for the duration of of the the item which is on base level 3.75

seconds. Right? So, these are items you can buy against characters that get away from you, okay, and you really want to

catch them. If you are going up against someone on the enemy team that is very farmed and very far ahead of the of the

rest of the lobby and you're really struggling with one player in specific, metal skin is a great option against gun

characters. This literally just stops you from taking any damage from that character for three and a half seconds.

Um, it does slow you down. It's kind of like the, you know, if you played Super Mario 64, it's kind of like the the

metal suit um in style. But yeah, metal skin, great option against gun characters.

And if you're struggling against spirit burst, okay, and spirit burst is very good right now. Sadly, there is no super

insane um 3,200 option for that, right? You could buy spirit resilience. Um, but

there are items in the sixk category that go really, really hard at negating specific damage. One of them is

spellbreaker. The way it works is if you were to go up against a lash and the lash always initiates with a ground

slam, you can buy spellbreaker and make the ground slam basically do no damage to you. Other options, if you are poor

and you're struggling and you really want to live longer and you feel like that's the issue in the game, reactive

barrier is a great choice. This automatically deploys a barrier whenever you get movement locked. And there are a

lot of movement locks in this game. Okay, I can give you a few examples. Hey, sleep dart counts as a movement

lock. If you get bop hooked or uppercuttered, it counts as a movement lock. If you get charged by an Abrams,

it counts as a movement lock. If you get infernus altered or wraith altered, it counts as a movement lock. Right. Point

is, most characters in the game actually have abilities in their kit that will activate this item. This item is active

against like 80% of the cast, basically. Are there more versatile options in in terms of defensiveness/countering?

Spirit and weapon shielding. Both of those items just deploy a barrier once you take a certain threshold of damage.

These are especially great early on in the lane if you want to live longer. Spirit shielding definitely a bit better

right now because again, especially in the early game, a lot of the damage in the game right now is spirit damage. So

all that really needs to happen in the lane is right if the enemy uses like a spell on you and it does at least 150

damage. This deploys and when it deploys you will get a barrier which is basically the way if you don't

understand what barriers are. It's bonus HP on top of your HP that lasts for a bit. So it's like an extra health pool

that lasts for 8 seconds and usually 8 seconds are long enough to where you can kill the enemy or they can kill you.

Another item I forgot to mention which is actually like just the cheaper version of metal skin is return fire.

This gives you some bullet resist but more importantly when you activate this it will return all the damage you take

uh back to the enemy. So what you can do especially on tanky characters I can show you really quick if you are going

up against the h >> dedicated my life to the >> h start shooting you can um you can

activate this item and you can basically make the haze kill herself if you have more HP than her. So I I'll show you

real quick what this would look like but h shoots me. So, I activate this metal skin and suddenly

she takes way way way. And suddenly she takes way way more damage um than you she actually deals to

you. And there's also a few things you can do very specific items, niche items in the weapon category. One of them is

capacitor. Capacitor is a skill shot that upgrades from Tesla cannon. But basically what the active skill does is

you shoot out a beam in front of you. Kind of looks like this. And that beam hits the enemy and slows them by the

maximum slow possible. Right? So if if you get hit by it, it's going to slow you down massively. Let me show you one

more time. It's a massive slow, but more importantly, it removes all the buffs

that the enemy had on them. Okay? And when I mean all the buffs, all the non- old buffs, sorry. So, um I can name you

a few just to give you an example. Seven's power surge is an active buff. Okay? Warden's overshield that he has is

an active buff. Viscus' cube that he has around him is an active buff. So, you can if the viscus hides in the cube, you

can just capacitate the cube, remove the cube. Abraham's uh spirit aura is one um is is a buff that you can remove and

even return fire. There is layers to counters. So if the enemy is running return fire, the enemy pops a return

fire and then you shoot them with capacitor and it would look like something like this where

>> I pop I pop this but I can remove it instantly. Right. So yeah, very expensive item but it is a counter item.

And then there's also other offensive counter items like armor piercing rounds. if the enemy just becomes really

tanky. Let's say you are playing a character that does a lot of gun damage and you go up against like a tank like

Abrams and that Abrams bought plated armor, right? Or bought a lot of bullet resilience, right? And he's like just

very tanky, you can buy armor pissing rounds and armor pissing rounds basically make it so half of your

bullets are unavoidable. Okay, so half of your bullets will go through whatever he has, whatever resistances the enemy

has and they will deal full damage. Okay. So, that is a great option. Also, um one more category that I should

mention that is very popular and you should start learning early in your journey um is anti-heal, right? There's

a lot of different healing in this game, right? A lot of characters have passive healing, active abilities, active

abilities that heal. Um to name you a few, Ladygeist can, you know, drain your life and heal that way. Um Victor, new

character that just released, right? Victor has insane amount of of healing with this too where he heals with this

too over and over, right? And you can also obviously buy items that heal you, right? Like leech is a very popular one.

Um like infuser, like vampiric burst, which is all items that heal the the the active player a lot. So if you want to

counter those, right, if you realize the enemy has too much healing, you need to buy anti-heal. And there's a few options

and you can make it easy for yourself if you're not sure. You go um you go type in healing reduction

and you don't misspell it as healing redemption. Okay. And these are the items that are uh well these minus blood

tribute. Blood tribute reduces your own healing. It's a very specific item. We don't even have to get into this. Do not

buy this item. I know it sounds cool, but it's super hard to use. People still have not really found a use case. I'm

sure there's niche case scenarios. Just a side tangent, but okay. So, um there's a very basic one. The cheapest option

you have is called heelbane. Healbane makes it so whenever you deal spirit damage to the enemy, they will also

receive 35% less healing from any source for 8 seconds. Okay. And this is like obviously very easy to apply for most

characters, right? Most characters can deal spirit damage very easily. So, uh this is a great option unless you're

playing like a full gun character. Hilane is a great cheap option. Um, one of the most liked ones is toxic bullets.

The way toxic bullets work is they apply a damage over time effect to the enemy, but they also apply healing reduction.

And the way it works is when you buy toxic bullets, you build them up. And once you have enough bullets, it's going

to tick them down. But more importantly, it's not even that the strongest part about this item is not the damage it

does. It is the amount of healing reduction it applies. Right. pain. Um, next

next item, bit more situational, pretty weak item right now. Again, depending on where you when you watch this video is

might change. Um, decay is like a targeted anti-heal. It uh it anti-heals even more than toxic bullets. So, all

you have to do is you actively cast it on an enemy of your choice and it's going to fly to them. You can't miss it

really, right? As long as you're in range, you cast it, it's going to fly to them, and it's going to do that same

damage over time effect, which is even stronger than on toxic bullets. Um, but more importantly, it reduces their

healing by 40%. Okay. And then if you want the absolute luxury of healing reduction items, there's two other

options, or I guess three. uh crippling headshot and inhibitor both apply 30% healing reduction, but they have their

other effects and it would be too much in this video to go into very specific effects right now. Right? If I wanted to

talk about every single item, um this would be like a 5hour video. But these two items are 6k. They have good, really

good effects. Both of them are very solid items right now. And they apply healing reduction. And if you absolutely

have an enemy that doesn't die because he heals so much, spirit burn. It gives a 70% healing reduction. And the way you

proc spirit burn on the enemy is you deal a certain amount of spirit damage. And after you deal a certain amount of

spirit damage, you're going to notice an aura appearing around them. And that's going to be the signal for you that you

pro the spirit burn on the enemy. And they're going to take a lot of damage over time. And they're basically not

going to heal at all. This is what this is going to look like. As long as you deal enough spirit damage,

this aura appears. And now they're burning. And by the way, this aura applies to everyone in that radius. So,

you can apply this item on multiple characters. Um, and it does, yeah, it does really good damage and it applies

healing reduction to the entire enemy team. And this is super super good on AOE spirit characters like Pocket or

Lash. And I'm not saying your entire team needs to run an anti-heal, right? But you need to make sure that at least

in a team fight, a few people have it or at least one person, right? Because no, if no one on your team has healing

reduction, the enemy's healing is going to be 100%. And there will be someone on the other team that will do a lot of

healing, right? Someone like Kelvin, for example, that can heal the entire enemy team. Let's say I'm against a Kelvin in

the dome, right? Notice how I can kill him, right? and his healing reduction does not really

apply, right? Or not nearly as much as it was before. >> Make me hurt you.

>> In general, an ability that has a scaling of higher than one is probably really solid if you're using it a lot,

right? And here, let's take an for example, Victor and jump start. I'm sure a lot of you that have been playing for

a bit have seen this. Jump start has an eight 1.8 spirit scaling. Okay, if you press tab and you hover over the

ability, it will show you. And what that really means is for every point of spirit you get on your character, the

ability is going to scale times 1.8, the healing of the ability. Okay? So if I buy something like boundless spirit

here, which gives me a lot of spirit, suddenly my healing will go from 154 all the way to 270. So like almost double by

just buying one item. So this is my Victor build. Um what I like to do is I I'm a a guy that shoots his gun a lot. I

like aiming. I'm come from a shooter background, right? So, my build probably has more orange items on average than

the average Victor build, right? A lot of other Victor builds running are running no orange items at all. But

because I come from a shooter background and I like aiming and I'm very good at aiming, I sneak some orange items into

this build. What this does is I will do more gun damage than the average Victor, which means I will be more effective on

longer ranges because otherwise a melee victor, right, is just going to have his aura and do mostly close-range damage.

Whereas I can be a bit more aggressive on medium to long distances, which might catch the enemy off guard. That does not

mean that my build is by far the best build, right? It just means it is a different play style than let's say

someone like Vegas. Not a single orange item in this, right? So what does Vegas have like around the same value in

money? He has above 9.6k spirit investment again in at least two categories which you should always have,

right? If you want to make your own builds. But uh more so than that um he does mostly spirit damage because we're

having only spirit leveled, right? So his gun is going to do very very little because it's not leveled up at all, it

it's going to do very little damage. But because he has so many spirit items, items that do closer spirit damage,

items that give more charges, right, and items that heal from spirit damage, his aura of suffering especially is going to

do a lot for him. He's very deadly on close range and he can sustain a lot and heal a lot on close range, but he's not

going to do as much damage on longer ranges. Let's go over like how to make a build now. Okay, as a base example, and

I'm going to pick one hero here just so we can, you know, like have a baseline of um of how it works. Obviously, it's

different for every hero, but I just want to give you my thought process on how I create a new build. So, I'm going

to start with a completely new template here. Let's go into a build and let's pick a character, yeah, that is very

basic to learn, which is seven. Okay, what do we know about seven? Seven has decent gun damage, but is mostly a

spirit character, right? Like every single one of his abilities um does a lot of spirit damage. And while the

scaling might not seem like a lot here on paper, right? I know I said earlier that 1.0 Zero is a good scaling. This

car this character works in a way to where you will just add a lot of spirit damage and become stronger and stronger

spirit is. So what does seven do better than other characters that we can abuse, right? Seven's power surge and his old

are AoE abilities. AoE abilities means they hit multiple targets, right? So if I have power surge on and enemies are

close enough together like this, they will jump over and this can actually hit multiple targets by the way, right? So,

if there's enough characters clumped together, what my power search will do is it will literally jump to every

single character if they're connected and you know, I can end up killing I can end up killing people that I'm not even

shooting, right? And the ultimate, if you have not seen seven's ultimate, you should have by now in the game, right?

It creates a storm cloud and it does massive AoE damage in an entire area. And both those abilities, what do they

do? They have in common. They are spirit damage, right? So, we already know we want to focus around mostly spirit to

start the game with. Okay. And um the other abilities both the stun is not that great in like it's not like a high

damage ability, right? It's used for the stun because you use it like once every like it has a pretty long cooldown,

right? You use it for the stun. It's not going to be like a nuke and the ball can hurt a lot if the enemy sits into it,

but it's like more like a zoning tool. Okay. So, how do we start doing a build? What do I tell you? First thing we need

to do is win the lane, right? How do we win the lane? We can just go for something like monster rounds to shove

the wave, right? Even though I just said it's a spirit character, we can start with something that will give us an

advantage against creeps. Let us shove the creep wave. Um on the other hand, we can also easily start with something

like extra spirit and improved spirit which is going to give us um more uh more spirit damage will which means we

will do more damage with our abilities in lane. Okay, so both of those would be viable options. The the main thing if

you've played seven in lane is that power surge is just really really powerful. Okay, so there's an item in

the game that lets us reduce the cooldown of that of that spell, right? And there's also an item in the game

that lets us extend the duration. Now, we could run both, but it's usually overkill later down the line. This will

almost always be active. So, you can either do one or the other depending on what you want. Um, the main meta right

now is going to press cool down. Okay, so in lane, we have a plan, right? We buy monster rounds. It's going to heal

us. uh we buy compressed cooldown on our three so we can shuff the wave faster and then we can add more spirit damage

to what we have right and then again as I mentioned earlier what are some of the basics that are always good on every

character right spirit resistance right and bullet resistance now we can look at the secondary effects of battle vest

this gives us weapon damage and fire rate not super useful on seven right is mostly spirit damage what does

enchanters give us oh it gives us more spirit power and more ability cool down if as long as we're above 65% health.

So, solid option, right? It's good on almost every character. It's going to help us stay alive longer. It's going to

give us some of that investment in green. It's going to make us tankier, right? But it also will keep on adding

damage on our uh on our um on our spirit power, right? And you know, that's like a good value for lane, like 5,000,

right? And then we can keep on going and play this out longer. Um, if we need more availability, I already told you we

can add healing right or extra regen. You know, usually when people create their build, they add like a new

category and call it like optional and healing, right? If you need it and then you can move those items into the

healing category and have them over here in case you need them, you know, if you are low. Um, so we we did that. So, how

do we continue? We if you're not super knowledgeable about the items in the game, you can

just look for what you would like, okay? And you can look for what would be good against other characters. Let's look at

a few examples. And the beauty of that like really is that you can run whatever you enjoy, right? So for example, a lot

of seven players enjoy suppressor. What does this do? It gives us more spirit power, more health, both things we

always want, right? But it uh also makes it so the enemy will shoot us slower as long as we deal spirit damage. Now, what

is the beauty with um with seven if we buy this item? Since all of our abilities do spirit damage, that means

if the enemy shoots us here, right? and uh um you know tries to burn us.

Notice how as soon as I activate any spirit ability and shoot him once, he's going to shoot way slower,

right? So this is an amazing option for example suppressor against gun characters that shoot their gun a lot.

Right? So you don't have to run this. You can decide to if you see a haze on the enemy team or a haze against you in

lane or an infernus or a wraith or characters that just shoot their gun a lot. Suppressor amazing option. What

would be other options you can do? Um if you want to play mostly like a three build if you want to play around your

search of power search of power is insane which by the way this is called power surge and this is called search of

power. So it's kind of confusing but what this does is you can just read and figure it out yourself. Um imbue an

ability with permanent spirit power. Imbuing means basically activating one specific ability with this spell or with

this item as bonus. When that ability is used, gain bonus movement speed and maintain full speed while attacking.

Right? So, this gives us more spirit on the ability we imbue it on and it gives us

um more fire rate. So, we proc the ability faster and it gives us more movement speed, right? So, this is an

amazing item for seven. And again, we are looking at the investment tab, right? We want to also while we keep

this in mind, while we create our build and now we're like getting into Midame and while we create this build, we also

want to look at our investments and we want to get to exactly at least 9.6k. And what do we say about seven? What do

we establish? Seven is a character that does mostly spirit damage. So, we want definitely want to get to 9.6k spirit

investment. And we probably want to get to 9.6k um vitality investment as well because

vitality is always good. Being healthier means you die less, right? And then we can add as many damage items as we want,

right? And what I like to do is I like to go fast and fleet is an amazing item to go fast. It makes us so makes us just

faster and it gives us slow resist, right? So I buy this kind of later. And again, because we don't have really a

lot in weapon invested yet, it still gives us some bonuses that, you know, like make us do more damage, right? Uh

so it's it's like a value investment in that sense. And then we can continue going down the line. If we need a bit

more tankiness, right, we can go for like a shielding item here like a weapon shielding or spirit shielding, which is

going to give us a barrier once um we take a certain amount of damage, right? Um if we need life steal, we can go for

an early spirit life steal that gives us healing when we shoot the enemy heroes, when we shoot creeps, and we later can

upgrade this into two of the most amazing items in the game for seven, which is lejo and fuse up. So, let's add

spirit life still. >> There you go. >> Okay. And after that is done, um, you

know, we're getting there. What did you remember earlier? We can upgrade to boundless, right? Um, so we can add

boundless in the build because we have uh we have improved spirit. We upgrade to boundless and suddenly we are already

at the 9.6k spirit investment, right? And this is really how you structure a build. You look for what you like and

you buy it. You just got to keep in mind, and this is going to be the last chapter of this video because there's

already a lot of information I g gave you, but this is like a really important one. There are some items that are

situational and those items are just conditional and sometimes they just don't work on specific characters. What

am I talking about? For example, melee items, right? Items that give you melee damage.

Melee charge point blank gives you close-range melee damage. and melee resist, life strike, spirit snatch,

torment pulse, right? These are all close-range items that do melee damage. And obviously, they're probably not good

on seven, right? Because obviously after landing, you're probably not going to go around punching people. I mean, you can

if you want to, but there's better characters in the game to punch people, right? Like characters like Abrams,

Billy that benefit that have abilities that benefit from being close range to the enemy, right? So, we can rule out

melee items for this character in general. at at least for right now, right? What else can we rule out? A lot

of the high gun damage items because again, you do most of your damage with spirit. So, you're probably not going to

end up buying any of these orange 6k items, right? Like sometimes you might still go for specific um 3k items like

toxic bullets will apply anti-heal and it's pretty good on seven, right? Or spirit rent will apply spirit debuff on

the enemy. So, it's going to up our spirit damage, right? So these items are very good on seven. But in general,

we're not probably not going to buy a lot of 6k orange items, right? So you don't have to worry about that category

at all, right? If you first get into buying items. And then there's items that are just

support items. And seven is a carry character. He needs a lot of farm to get online. So we're probably not going to

buy support items. What are support items? Something like a rescue beam, right? Um this pulls a an ally to you

and heals them. Okay. Um, and uh, it also heals yourself. There's something like healing nova, which um,

creates an aura around you that heals you and your teammates in that aura, right? That's support items, and you're

probably not going to end up buying those. There are items that you buy as specific counters in the late game,

okay? And those are kind of important, so I'll go over them real quick. One is spellbreaker. Spellbreaker is like the

anti-spirit item. If the enemy has a lot of really big damage, spirit items or spirit spells that deal a lot of spirit

damage, spellbreaker is great if you can afford it. Okay, this item gives you 75% resist damage reduction on the first

spell of the enemy that hits you and it is every 10 seconds and it also gives you spirit resist and debuff resist,

right? And uh plated armor is kind of the same thing for a gun where it stops certain gun effects from procking and

stops some of the bullets of the enemy gun hitting you altogether. Right? So these are hard counter um late game

items, which um reminds me the biggest mistake I see new players do when they buy items is they react too

much to the enemy. They buy too many defensive items. um they buy a lot of life steal, right?

They rush something like leech that gives a lot of healing or they buy a lot of armors that I just described, right?

They buy these items which I just explained as situational depends on the character, right? And what ends up

happening because they buy they so scared of dying that they buy so many defensive items that suddenly they don't

do any damage anymore, right? And then they sit in the game and yeah, they might live a bit longer. It might feel

okay, right? like the enemy shoots you and you die slower. But if you invest all your

uh your resources, all your money into defensive items, what's going to happen is you won't have any damage. Right? If

I bought like super early spell breaker on seven, I would have less money to get all these like upgrades to my spirit

damage unless your goal is to completely tank, right? Which that is a viable option on certain characters, right?

Like if you're playing like an Abrams or like a a Victor, etc., right? Some characters just one exists in the

enemy's face. But even on those characters, you will notice, right? If you're going into an Abrams build,

they're not all green. It's not all green, right? Like let's go crayon, right? That's a lot a lot of orange

items, right? Or let's go something like Listic. I don't know if Listic's built like I think this is Listic's build.

This is all like purples, right? like he does a lot of spirit damage, right? And notice how both of these builds I just

showed you of like two really good players, they still had less green items than either orange or spirit, right? And

that's that's my point. Like don't buy too much green. Like don't go to defensive. You need to be able to kill

the enemy before they kill you, which you can worry about surviving, right? And it's there's nothing wrong with

buying green items. I buy them, too. In fact, all of my builds have a lot of green items, too. And that's about it.

It's really hard to cover everything items. I wanted to make this video because I wanted to get like a like an

easier introduction into the very complex system that is the build crafting in this game, right? For the

people that were curious. Again, you don't have to learn all of what I just gave you and more in the next week,

right? just follow a build along and like the first thing you should do is like pick a build of a creator you like

or a pro player you like and just follow that build and just learn what those items do in that build and that's all

you really have to do if you if you're first getting into the game or you want to like start learning how to make

builds yourself, right? and everything else is going to come over time and you will realize you will actually learn

faster than you expect because once you figure out some really cool combos with like items and you make your own first

build and it feels, you know, first build probably going to be feeling like [ __ ] but imagine you make like your

third build and suddenly you're like, "Wow, this works really well." Like, you know, it's like a really rewarding

feeling and it's really fun for me, too. Yeah. Hope that helped out. If you like the content, if you want to see more

content like this, please consider subbing. Um, we're going to make more of those like tutorials. Um, more in-depth

tutorials, next things. I have planned guides coming out on Victor, guides coming out on Billy, and then I want to

do a laning guide, and eventually we're going to do a macro guide, etc. So, yeah. Thanks for watching, and see you

next time, friends. Bye-bye. going to run it back.