Deadlock Build Guide: Master Weapon, Vitality & Spirit Power

What is up, YouTube? I hope you're doing well. Today, we're going to be talking about how to build in Deadlock. I keep

getting asked on my stream about this all the time. How do I build in Deadlock, especially for newer players

coming from other MOBAs? So, I wanted to make a video that I think by the end of it will help you fully understand what

goes into a build in Deadlock, or at least leave you on the right path to getting better on your own in

implementing your own builds in your own games. Now, there are already a lot of good build guides out there, especially

Poshie Pops' video. I recommend watching that, but it's a little bit more advanced, and there's a lot of

information in it. So, I kind of want to consolidate everything into just a general guide that will help you a lot.

So, enough yapping, let's get right into it. Okay, the first thing I want to talk about really quickly, guys, is the

overall stats in this game. So, there's a lot of stats in Deadlock, just like any other MOBA. You know, we have our We

have our power, we have our resistances, we have our health, we have our attack speed, we have movement speed, all that

stuff that's going to exist in other MOBAs. But, the thing that we're going to talk about mostly today are the three

main categories in Deadlock. They're going to be your weapon damage, your vitality, or which is just your health,

and your spirit power. So, pretty simply, your weapon damage is going to scale your gun's damage, your vitality

is going to increase your overall health, and your spirit power is going to increase your spirit power. And most

of the abilities in the game are going to scale with your spirit power. Now, not all of them, and that's what makes

Deadlock cool, but as a general rule of thumb, spirit power is going to increase a lot of your abilities' damage or

usefulness. So, why are these the three main categories that we're going to talk about? Well, for one, they're the three

categories in the shop that we can actually purchase from, and they're kind of like the foundational stats in this

game. But, also in Deadlock, which is unique from other MOBAs, whenever you buy an item from one of these

categories, the game is actually going to give you an extra stat alongside the item that you're purchasing. Think of it

as a little bonus gift for investing into that category. It's different from other MOBAs cuz when you buy an item in

like League or Smite, you're getting whatever on the label of the item. So, you're getting like the stats that it

shows, and maybe the active or the passive, and that's it. However, in Deadlock, when we buy from the weapon

category, we're going to get weapon damage alongside the item that we get. When we buy from the vitality category,

we're going to get a percent health increase alongside the item that we're buying. And then, we buy from the spirit

category, we're going to get spirit power in addition to, you know, the item that we're buying. All of this is going

to be reflected down here in the bottom left. If you just hover over your orange, your green, your purple, you can

actually see the amount that you'll get for each item. So, if I buy an 800 uh weapon item, I'll get 9% extra weapon

damage. Then, it will go to 12% when I get to 1,600 spin in that category. Same thing applies to green, our purple,

everything. You can see it all down here. Very straightforward. If you're ever really interested in the exact

numbers, you can look there. But, at the end of the day, this isn't something you need to worry about too much. Um you

don't want to overload your brain. Just recognize that this is what's happening when you're buying items. So, what does

this mean off the bat? It already means that in Deadlock, there's a lot more variation in the build, and you can get

away with a lot more just because, you know, your damage isn't going to fall off tremendously if you get like a

utility item that's like a tier three spirit item, for example. Because we're still going to get some of that flat

spirit power by just investing into that category. Before we get to the more specific stuff, I want to talk about the

logic of each character's style of play. So, what does this mean? If you're trying to play a new character, you

could go to a streamer's chat and just ask them, you know, what type of character is this? Do I build them gun?

Do I build them spirit? You could look it up. You could try and find like popular builds and see what they're

building. But, like I could tell you that Hayes is a gun character, but that doesn't mean you understand why she's a

gun character. So, that's why I want to give you guys some ways to think about characters or some logic that you can

use on your own to understand what a character does. Especially if like a new character comes out, you can use this,

you know, on your own. You won't have to rely on anybody else, and you can kind of figure out what they specialize in.

So, let's take Mina as an example real quick. Mina has four abilities that scale with spirit. Her one's damage

scales with spirit, and the heal on the one will scale with spirit as well. Her two's actual range of the dash scales

with spirit. Her three, love bites, the burst damage when you hit them enough with it will scale with spirit. And of

course, her ultimate scales with spirit. So, we now have four things, four abilities that scale with spirit. So,

you might be thinking, okay, well, that means she's probably a spirit character. And you're kind of on the right track,

but it's not just that that will justify it. It's also the fact that we have an on-hit effect every single time we hit a

bullet, it's going to do spirit damage. So, you combine both of those things and the fact that Mina's uh base gun damage

isn't the greatest if you just compare it across the game, that is going to lean her more towards a spirit

character. Now, on the flip side, let's take a character like Venator. He has a good fire rate, a high base mag size,

his one scales with weapon damage, so it's not scaling with spirit, it's actually scaling with weapon damage. The

same thing with his two, his three will actually scale off spirit, but not too big of a deal. And then his ult scales

with weapon damage. Now, he does have a thing in his kit where he's resist will actually scale with a bit of spirit, but

it's kind of irrelevant because the point is all of his abilities incentivize it. His gun is really good

as well, and it's going to scale really well with weapon damage. Therefore, this character's identity or specialization

is going to be into the gun category. Some other things you can think about when it comes to this are like your cast

times or your actual positioning in fight. So, for example, let's take Apollo. Why don't you build gun Apollo?

I mean, it may seem obvious because we have four damaging abilities that scale with spirit, so that's part of it. But

there's another thing you can think about why you don't build gun Apollo. Let's just cycle through our abilities

real quick. I'm going to use my one, I'm going to use my two, I'm going to use all of my three.

What did you notice about that? I just sat in cast time for probably about 10 seconds. During all of that cast time, I

cannot use my left click. So, because my cast times are so long, it'll be very hard to get value out of being able to

hold left click non-stop. Therefore, Apollo's kit just kind of doesn't incentivize a gun build. Another example

is Mulan Cril, you know, this is a beefy character that needs to be up close and personal to get use out of his

abilities. All of his stuff is pretty much up close. Not only that, but he has long channels. If I go into burrow, I

cannot shoot my gun at all during any of this. I literally cannot left click. It's also a long channel. When I come

out of it, it takes a sec for me to be able even shoot my gun again. And only that, but our ultimate when we combo

somebody, this is a long duration where we cannot left click. Therefore, I know we want to be in the thick of the fight,

and I also know we're not going to be shooting our gun that much. That probably incentivizes Mo to be more of a

tank slash spirit character. Now, the true beauty of Deadlock is that you can build a lot of different stuff on a lot

of different characters, but if we're talking what's optimal, this is a line of thinking that you can go down to kind

of figure out what works on each character. And there are also a decent amount of characters where it's not so

obvious, and they can actually get a lot of value out of every category, and that just kind of makes them hybrid

characters. You know, you can kind of build a lot of different stuff on them, kind of build towards your style of

play, and that kind of thing. So, remember those bonus stats that I was talking about from before? In Deadlock,

when you invest 4,800 into any category, those bonuses are going to multiply and get way more efficient. You know, as you

can see when we go from 800 to 1.6, we're getting 3% extra weapon damage then 2.4, it's 3% extra then 3.2,

another 3% but when we go from 3.2 to 4.8k, it goes up to 28% increase. That is a huge jump and this applies to every

single category, you know, in vitality it goes up to 18% when it was just increasing by 3 and 5% and in the spirit

category, we go up by 19 when it was just going up by four previously. Now one thing you'll notice is that for

weapon and vitality is actually percentage base which means the longer the game goes on the more efficient

these will get where spirit is a flat stat so this is actually going to be the most efficient early on but isn't going

to scale as well as these percentages over here. So what does this all mean? What it means is that in general right

now and this is what I recommend is that you should actually play for all three of these investment spikes and then

specialize into the style of play that your character actually wants. That means spend 4,800 in the weapon

category, spend 4,800 in the vitality category and spend 4,800 spirit category. Now not necessarily in that

order but at least getting all three of these before you know, specialize into the weapon category. You know, if you're

like a hey or investing in the spirit category if you're like a Mina. Now there are some exceptions to this rule

but as just a general rule of thumb as you get better at building and better understand it, this really can't ever

steer you wrong. But if you are ever confused or it feels bad, you can just look up some of the meta builds and try

and understand why um they are the way they are. So speaking of which, let's go ahead and look at some of the the top

builds from pro players and stuff and see if they go for these 4.8 spikes on each category and kind of see where they

do it. So let's use Mina as an example again. Um let's go ahead and go to the build browser. We'll go to the public.

I'm going to use OC's build. He's considered one of the top EU pros. He's a good Mina player so we'll go ahead and

select his build. Let's just look at it and analyze it real quick. So as you can see here, we get four spirit items and

that's going to be 4,800 spent in spirit so that's going to be our spirit investment. Going to extra health so a

little bit of green then mystic shot so a little bit of weapon and then we go into dispel magic, extra stamina, weapon

shielding. This will also be our green invest so now we have our spirit and our green investment and then combine mystic

shot with spirit Rend and that will be our gun investment. So, we now gotten our three investment bonuses and 4,800

in each category basically. And then we're specializing into Spirit because Mina is a Spirit character. So, the

logic follows. We get our investment bonuses and then we specialize. Let's go even a step further because you might

find yourself in a spot not knowing which items to buy on a character that wants to specialize in a Spirit for

example. Well, Mystic Shot gives us Spirit power and also scales with Spirit damage. The actual burst, the proc will

scale with Spirit. And then the other item that he's getting is Spirit Rend which is actually going to shred their

Spirit resist and since we're a Spirit build that's going to synergize perfectly. So, we've now got two items

that scale perfect with our Spirit build. One is just like good Spirit damage and the other is good utility

because it's shredding their resist which has just made our build super efficient cuz it gave us our weapon

investment while also not really, you know, well not really sacrificing our build in, you know, our specialization

which is Spirit. Let's look at another example. We'll take Lash now. We'll also use another OC's build. He's just a

really good player so let's look at the logic of his builds. We've done the same thing. We've got investment early which

again I talked about before. It's actually the best investment bonus to get because it's flat so it's more

efficient early as opposed to it a percentage. And over here it says pick one whichever you feel Majestic Orb

Stone. In a lot of Deadlock builds it'd actually be like based on what you enjoy in your play style. So, that's something

you'll definitely notice. You know, you'll choose one of these and then you choose one of these and he's saying just

pick one because then you'll notice that's 3,200 spent over here and then it's 1,600 over here which will be at

your 4,800 bonus perfect. There's our green investment. And then immediately he has Mystic Shot and then Alchemical

Fire. Again, Mystic Shot scales with Spirit which is the specialization that we're going for. And then Alchemical

Fire will also give us 10 Spirit power and the damage per second plus the bullet resist shred on Alchemical Fire

scales with Spirit. So, again it just synergizes perfectly while also giving us all our investment bonuses before our

specialization. Let's look at one more example. We'll look at a Haze build. Haze is a gun character highly

incentivized by her abilities. Her old scales off of weapon damage. Her three fixation stacks are going to scale with

weapon. So, kind of just a weapon based character. We'll look at Parzalian's Haze build. He's considered the best

Haze player in the world and I like him a lot. So, we'll use his build. So, let's just look at it real quick. We get

extra health, a little bit of green, and then we go into switch striker, opening rounds, active reload. That's 4,800

spent right there. So, that's our weapon invest. Boom, off the bat. We go into bullet lifesteal, slowing hex. So, a

little bit of green, a little bit of purple. Not quite at our investment bonus. Go slowing bullets. Then we get

our fury trance, which is not at our investment bonus yet, but surge of power combined with slowing hex, that's going

to be our investment bonuses. It's very easy to tell if it's a tier three item and a tier two item, that's your

investment bonus. So, purple is done there. Then we get burst power fortitude and fortitude with our fury trance will

be our green investment. So, it's a little bit delayed, but for the most part, we're still getting all three of

our investment bonuses. And then we're going to specialize into our gun character, which is capacitor, ricochet,

silencer, you know, all those greedy tier four items that will scale really well into the late game. So, as you

notice through a lot of these builds, guys, we're just getting all of our investment bonuses and then specializing

into the category. Now, there are going to be exceptions to this. Like, for example, Vindicator, you're probably not

going to get your spirit invest because he doesn't really have much that scales with it. Or a character like like a

talked about before, Apollo or Moe, you're probably not going to get your gun invest because their kits just don't

really incentivize it much at all. But I promise if you follow this as just like a general rule of thumb, it'll help you

a lot with your own builds. Now, a couple things to add is do not forget to counter build. I think you should have

at least a couple counters in your build or at least always be thinking about them. And if you don't know what items

counter what characters, I have an entire video based on that. Literally every single character in the game and

how to counter them. You know, if you're playing like a greedier character such as like a carry, something like a dispel

magic to be more safe on your own will be useful. Whereas you're playing a support. Again, think about the logic of

your character. Are you trying to help out your teammates? If you are, then maybe you can build something like a

knockdown or a curse to kind of counter the enemy team to help out your own team. Keep using that logic that we

talked about before to figure out what counter items will work best in any given game. Now, it's especially good if

you can slot them in to get your investment bonus in a category you aren't actually specializing in. Just

for a quick example of that, we're looking at a Wraith build from OC's. As you can see here, he gets his weapon

investment, and his spirit investment, all good. But for his green investment, he has extra health healing rate, which

is 1,600 spent. Now, he needs a 3,200 item. He actually goes to spell magic because a lot of people will build

slowing hacks and stuff to counter Wraith, so that she can't TP out. So, if we go to spell magic, that'll give us

our green investment, and it will also give us counter item to help deal with the people that are trying to counter

us. But, of course, Wraith is a hyper carry and more of a gun / spirit character, so we're not really

specializing in that. So, it gets us our investment bonuses here, and then we can go into our damage. Now, the individual

items that we're building in these builds is going to come down to a lot to like the meta, what recent changes have

happened to those items. So, that's going to be a little bit harder to follow. That's where I recommend, you

know, following some popular builds and kind of copying from them, seeing what's meta with like the top players, and then

you can throw them in your own builds based on the fact that, you know, those items are just strong right now. So,

that's why I say here you should use the popular build starting out, especially from higher-level players whose builds

are usually good. So, people like Lightbringer, OC's, ABL, Parzalian, uh Ido, like just a bunch of good like pro

players who generally have pretty good builds. You can follow along with those builds, and you should be feeling pretty

good. However, the caveat is, and this is very important, is you should be thinking about why those items make

sense on the hero you're playing, and why they might have chosen those specific items instead of the others.

The more you do this, the better you will get at building on your own. So, what I mean by this? I think we talked

about a little bit before with the Mina build, where we got the weapon investment by using items that are going

to scale our spirit build. But, let's look at the Parzalian build again, for example. Haze's three or fixation

applies a stack that increases your weapon damage every time you hit a bullet. So, as you'll notice in

Parzalian's build, he has a lot of items that give him fire rate, because the higher our fire rate is on Haze, the

more fixation stacks we're going to apply to the enemy. So, we have an item like Swift Striker, we have an item like

Active Reload. Both are going to increase our fire rate quite a bit, and it's going to give us more fixation

stacks. So, as our tier two green item, why are we building bullet lifesteal? Well, because we're going into a gun

build, and the percentage lifesteal that we get from this is going to scale really well into the late game, because

the more damage we do with our gun, the more health we're going to get back. Why is an item like Slowing Bullets good on

Haze? Well, let's put in an Infernus real quick here. When we ult somebody, they're going to run away. If we slow

them and keep them in our ult longer, we're going to be doing more damage. So, we're just kind of CCing them to keep

them in our ult for a longer amount of time, therefore more DPS. Haze is a gun character, but we're going to tier three

spirit item to give us our spirit investment. And what does this do? It gives us fire rate. When we use our

dagger, we apply it to our dagger, we throw it at the Infernus, and we shoot, our fire rate is heavily increased,

therefore applying more fixation stacks. Let's look at another example. Let's look at Dynamo. We're using Piggy's

build, who's an EU support player who's really good. Um we have an item like Head Hunter in Recharging Rush in the

build. Why does that make sense on Dynamo? For one, gun items are decent on Dynamo because he only has two damaging

abilities, so if you want to do damage to people, you're going to have to be able to do damage with your gun. Number

two, your knock-up on Dynamo, whenever you hit somebody with it, it sets up your head shot perfectly. And if it hits

a little bit harder, we'll get a Recharging Rush from it because Head Hunter actually applies to the

Recharging Rush passive. So, just make sure you're thinking about why those items make sense on each character. Some

of it is going to be a bit more obvious than others, and it's okay if you don't fully understand right away. Sometimes

you won't understand why it is like that, but then when you use the build, it just feels right. So, that's just

another way to learn. But yeah, guys, at the end of the day, Dead Lock is a complex game. There's a lot of variety

and variation in the builds and what you do in any given game or any given meta, so it can get a little overwhelming at

first, but I promise, if you try and think about the logic of each character, you follow this guideline of getting

each spike on most characters in the game and then specializing, and then also make sure you're counter building,

and make sure you're following along with the popular builds and using the right items in a given meta because, you

know, they just so happen to be very good right now because Yoshi decided to change them in the last patch. And then

constantly just think, just use your brain a little bit so you can start to improve and think about things on your

own independently of whether or not pro players are building them. You will in no time be an independent builder, being

able to make all of your own builds that fit your character and your play style perfectly. Or at the very least, after

watching this video, I think you'll just be a little bit more comfortable building and not feel so overwhelmed.

That is it, guys. I hope you guys enjoyed. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them down in the comments

below. I'll try and get back to you, try and answer everything. Make sure you're not feeling lost or anything like that.

And of course, if you learned anything or enjoyed this video, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe. Going to be

releasing a lot more Deadlock content. If you have any like specific guide content that you would like to see, then

let me know as well. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed. Stay safe and healthy as always. I'll see you guys in the next

one. Peace out, guys. Bye-bye.