Deadlock Game Roles Explained: Position Strategies & Teamplay Basics

Okay, so you see here, this is the deadlock book of knowledge that I've created. All right, today we'll be

establishing what roles each person on the team will be playing. All right, so role explanation is our first chapter.

You guys get to form your teams, pick your girl pools, and really just figure out how to play the game beyond just Q

and solo Q. >> Some things to note before we go in. This is just my interpretations of the

game. It's may not be accurate when the game is fully solved. It's just an outline. All right, this is just what

has been working for me and how I see it. There is again and the next thing is there's lots of different plays, game

states, drafts, counters, itemization, uh team comps, you know, synergies, all this stuff that make the game more

complex. So, what I'll be going over today is just defaults. Defaults are just how you picture the game, similar

to, you know, like in Valerant or I guess League is the best explanation. Top mid, jungle, ADC, support, right?

Very simple. uh in Dota it's position 1 through five and we'll be adapting those models into deadlock. First things to

know is position one through six, right? And all that means is that one requires the most money to be useful and is the

most impactful with money and six doesn't need the money. The first one we'll be talking about obviously is

starting from position one which is the hard carry sidelaner. It's probably the easiest to understand, right? Highest

DPS, best user stats. You want as much money as you can possibly get. fairly weak early game. Some are weaker than

others. Their mid game is okay and late game they turn into hyper carries and when they have a lot of money they're

extremely hard to shut down no matter what items you buy. They are really good at winning 1 v one trades and are

generally pretty safe. So for example here we have Mirage has tornado to get out of danger. Not to mention his poke

is really good right in a 1 v one because you just get permanently marked. It's really hard to walk up on the guy.

Uh, Victor has res, Wraith has TP, Gisa swap, and FR has dash, right? All those things. Not to mention, another thing

you'll notice is they are all extremely good at farming. Real quick, I'm going to pull up a Del interactive map. All

right? And make sure if you guys have any questions, just just let me know. So, here we'll be building a map. As we

go through the positions, you'll be seeing 1 through six exactly how the map should be structured. The first things

is position one, right? So, let's just say we grab a Mirage. We put him on the side lane. Your whole role as position

one is to scale. You need to scale. You need to get as much farm as you can and you need to be able to apply pressure

when you're evenly matched. Let's get to the laning phase and go straight into defaults. You generally want your Mirage

on the side lane whether it's yellow or green. Again, doesn't matter. For this scenario, we'll do we'll do yellow side.

The best way to scale as anybody knowing. >> Okay. How what exactly is the right

method of maximizing soul efficiency? >> Solo lane. >> Okay. So lane

>> catching waves and uh doing uh camps efficiently. >> Yep. Okay. Exactly. Not that

complicated, right? This is definitely the easiest role in the game by far. Doesn't mean it's not it's like easy to

easy to play. This is the role that you can win games on if you just want to solo queue and just hit rank one, right?

The general midame is very simple, right? You walk up here, you clear the waves, right? Um this is dangerous. I

I'll talk about this in the in the future. Yes, maximizing farm means you clear wave. After you clear wave, you

get about 25 seconds before the next wave comes. You know, if it's neutral that you cleared it on, and then you go

farm camps. All right? And you do this on repeat until your power spikes and until you're like actually strong. There

are different ways to play around the map. I will talk about later, but this is the general gameplay loop. You clear

waves, you 1v one, you out trade, you try and out trade the enemy position one as well. Sometimes you kill and you can

invade. Sometimes you have to concede space because there's like multiple people. This is a general gameplay loop.

Not to mention objectives. Besides this simple way of playing the role, farming, getting max efficiency of souls and

defending your walker while also potentially applying pressure if said position one or whoever is in this lane

is not here uh threatening to kill the walker. You also can play around objectives as well. For example, earn

spawns on yellow, right? You can help fight for this earn pickup. If the earn gets picked up and taken across the map,

you do not want to help. You do not want to go over there and help. You need to just scale and the fight can happen 5v5.

All right. The only times where you can you're allowed to like actually go and fight this urn is one if you have

pressure and you have this you kill their tower and you clear the wave and like maybe you you can make it on time

by teleporting. I'd probably go the safe way. So like this way. But ultimately you want to be playing for your scaling.

Okay. is a very selfish, greedy role. That's the default. This is not the entirety of the role, but this is the

normal thing to do on these heroes. And this is something that even though people kind of do in pubs, they haven't

mastered it and they don't exactly know why they doing they're doing it. Okay, an example I want to pull up is here. I

have Sonia Sniper. I'm sure you guys know. This is one of the best Deadlock EU players and he's playing Lady Guys. I

just wanted to show a short little segment of him, his route, okay? So, you'll see what he can do, right? As you

can see, he clears the wave, goes to do the camp. Okay. Mhm.

>> Clearing camps, clearing camps. He still has time because he cleared the wave first before them. Again, there's a lot

of nuance to how how much time you have in waves and stuff. That's not what I'm here to teach you about. You'll learn

those things naturally, okay? These are just the defaults that we're talking about here. Um,

so yeah, he's clearing wave. even goes into the underground, clears this. And again, G is a really

good farmer. Look at that. She just nukes the entire camp. A lot of the M1 characters, sorry, position one

characters are really good at this kind of thing. Um, yeah, build doesn't matter. Nothing.

The build doesn't matter. I'm just talking about movements. Question for somebody to answer. Why did Sonia go for

this underground camp instead of just going for the wave again? Even cuz it's crashing on neutral. He saw the Rem

pushing it and he has a fast camp clear speed >> and Rem has al and he's just trying to

avoid gank. >> Okay. Anybody else? >> So, so basically the wave is going to

push to his tower and he's just going to farm it under his tower so he has time to farm this camp.

>> Yeah. So, all all those things you guys said is right. The main reason is one number one is info. Okay. Lack of info.

Three people on map. All right. Wave is pushed up. There's no point in walking up. Yes, it's it's very simple. It's

that simple. Um there's only three people on map. He the rem has all he doesn't have swap, right? All these

factors. Number two, he's playing what's called weak side. So weak side, just a clarification for chat, is like you're

playing on the side where your where your team isn't, right? So you have to concede. There's this thing called eb

and flow, I think is what it's called, which basically means like if one side of your map is postured ahead, the other

side needs to be postured back. So depending on where your team is positioned, it's it's like this, right?

It's kind of like it's kind of like this this like somewhat like a line, right? If you have like more people here, like

five people here, right? And then you just have this guy alone over here on the left. Obviously, he can't walk up,

right? Especially with no information, like he has no clue where people are. So he lets the wave push into him. He plays

weak side while his team plays for right side stuff. And he's defending the walker. That's it. Okay. A lot of this

gets automated after a while. Like he's doing it just like out of habit. He's been playing this role for so long. He's

really good at it, right? So, he knows when he can do things like tier threes. This is the first role. It's the most

simple out of all. But it's also the most effective in winning the game late game, right? If you don't have a

mechanically good position one, they can't take you home. No matter how much money they have, they have to be really

good at the game. They have to be really disciplined in terms of positioning and when they can actually take space. All

right. Number two, soft carry or the aggro silencer. This pool is more like it's similar to position one, but they

peaked their strength in the mid game versus the the late super late game. All right, so you see here Yamato ships,

Celest Palamina, Pocket Haze. You can tell obviously this is a very spirit heavy lineup. Okay, the reason being is

because they're more short or burst engagement oriented. Like their cooldowns are the most important thing,

right? Versus like M1's, their impact comes from gun and just left clicking and they have a lot of uptime. These

heroes have a lot of downtime, but get all their damage out in a short amount of time. They're strong early, strong

mid, and they're strong late. So, overall the most well-rounded uh position, but it's still not as strong

late game as the position one, and it's also not as strong early game as position five or six. This role carries

the tempo in the mid game, and they want to be playing more aggressive even if they're playing as a side laner.

Usually, they follow up with the playmaker, which is what we'll talk about later on. That's a different

position. And they are the deciders of winning earn fights between 10 to 20 minutes, even up to 25. I think in the

meta right now, people really like playing Mina as position two. So, I'm going to put her there. You are the

other side laner. Okay. What's different about this side laner is you actually want to show up at fights. What that

means is even though you play as basically the most a similar role to what this hero does, right, which is

like weak side, play for farm, solo wave, maybe share with the hover, which we'll talk about later, and then clear

some camps, you do the same thing. Okay, again, the difference is that this hero is strong and has very large spikes

between the 10 to 25 minute marks. Mina for example when she gets max rake and a lot of a lot of these heroes spike at

10k souls or like 11k now I think which is when they get a max ability and then two points in a different ability right

so Yamato gets max power slash and then two points scrapple Mina gets max rake two points love bbite pocket gets max

affliction two point satchel one point cloak right so you'll notice those things main thing you want to focus on

is that this role wants to be aggressive more aggressive so this is usually the character that you're playing around

with your other positions, right? Whether that's invading, playing for buff spawn, playing for earn turnin. If

the earn spawns here and then you bring it over, you want this hero to be at the fight. You need you actually need this

hero to be at the fight cuz if they're not at this fight, it's Jover. Like you just you won't have enough damage or you

won't be able to kill actually threaten a turn in without this hero. Like it's super important. This is this is the

highest DPS hero on the map at this uh map timer which is obviously the map timer is u this is like a like a 10

minute to like 25 minute. Let's pull up a duc clip. All right. So again lady guys he's playing suck build right which

is pretty really strong early and guys is just a hero and d also will be playing position two. So

you see here if you look at this right given the info on the map he has muges hover. Okay, he

has two he sees two mid and he he's like he's pretty ahead in the game, right? Not to mention he he just like he spikes

radiant regen. He has orange spike, purple spike and he just knows he can take a fight like this and he has four

sucks. All right, so he's playing really aggressive and he's uh able to take space on the map

even if he doesn't kill Shiv here. Um the point is that he's creating space and he's creating opportunity for other

things to happen on the map, right? Comparative to the Hayes who's just playing um where he's just farming and

getting camps. So this is the difference, right? It's very minimal, but it's enough to distinguish the two.

You kind of just have to again figure out yourselves what exactly you um like playing more. And as you see

here, D was able to get this walker and get a kill pressuring the map, which means now the other they're forced to

respond, blah blah blah blah. Okay, the point I want to make is that he is playing to his strength as a position

two and using his lead properly. He knows he's Thanos at 12k. Even if he was like even with shift, he's only down 1k

on shift. He's only up 1k on shift. He knows that he's stronger and so he applies pressure and he even gets a

walker off of it, right? Like he ends up dying, losing losing earn, but you know, again, if you look at the map state,

it's just it is what it is. It's a trade. It's a even trade. Position three, which is the early Midame carry,

and this is supposed to be the threatening presence hero. So, what you're supposed to focus on is high

impact map control. This is a very interesting role. Honestly, 3 through six is still getting solved. This is

just the way I see it. I think it'll definitely change in the future, but again, the whole point of this is to

give you guys an idea. So, you want to make plays around non-objective timers. This position has a wide range of

playable like I say classes like whatever uh which is frontline, mage versus assassins. So, you can see here

position three can be Abrams, Billy, Dynamo, who are like generally front liners or you can have like a great

talent, Viscus, who are like casters/ mages, whatever you call them. You can even have these other heroes that are

like disruptor assassins as well. This is just uh this is a really good pocket player. And as you can see here, this

guy actually is playing the position three in a pub. All you'll see him do is clear the waves. All right. So, as you

see, you're you're playing for the mid presence, right? Like I said here, uh, and you play to threaten like plays on

the map, right? So, I'm like pretty strong here. I I just want to make sure I clear the waves. So, that's what I do.

Clear the wave mid. Um, and then you uh play for a team fight and you're threatening because either you have a

really good ultimate, right? So, I hit a three-man affliction and just instantly win the fight. And again, the position

three is the most important to winning a team fight. What it says here, which says in transitions into playing in the

ball, that basically just means you go from this really insanely strong threatening presence to playing with

your hyper carry and your support. All right? And you're playing kind of like to peel them somewhat. I'm sure you guys

all know what a ball is, like similar in like Overwatch or whatnot, right? That's basically about it. So, you're playing

the mid lane, you want to focus on clearing and doing random stuff uh outside of that. So, after you clear mid

lane, you go and threaten jungle, you go and threaten blah blah blah. All right. And then you go play for the team fight.

Simple enough, right? Everybody understand that? >> Mhm.

>> All right. Four, Xactor. This This role is kind of weird. This is the sixth character in the game. Okay. This is

like the role where we're not sure exactly how it fits, but it's been working so far. And you'll see it's

mainly like the hero pull that I play. So, this is the role that I play, right? Reason I say X Factor is cuz it could

literally be anything. All right? It could be any character, any role you want. It's literally whatever you want.

Most people, as you can see, not even not only on my team, but even on others. For example, like Goober, he plays like

most of these heroes in this role, and he plays this role. play the mid game assassins and then transition into like

a late game disruptor. And if you don't know what disruptor means, it just basically means like doing somewhat good

burst damage and then playing to split up the team, the enemy team. Okay, the goal with this role is to hide your

presence. All right, and you want to create impactful plays around the map. People should always be wondering what

you're doing since you're never showing. And also, one important thing is if a teammate dies or leaves a wave for any

reason, you should be the one to go pick it up. And the reason for that is because it gets you back in the game. It

keeps you up up in money, but also it prevents any kind of threat to killing a walker. So, for example, once again,

this guy um as you can see, he's playing Calico, as you can see, helping push out the wave. Very simple playing to invade.

I I probably I don't have to show here, but it's fine. So, after the wave is pushed, use this pressure to invade.

Pocket should come with me here, but it's fine. Or I mean this this guy here, but it's fine. Um, and then yeah, just

basically creating plays around the map, especially when you have a lead. As you can see, like I'm literally so far up on

this guy that it's just it's just a free lick. All right. And then the next thing you'll

see me do is kind of just like play in the jungle again, not really showing waves unless I have to. And I I read the

fact that Ivy is going to this sinners. Quick question. If Apollo knows that he's going to get invaded on this left

side, should he come and fight here with us in this moment? probably >> I would say

>> not with the wave wave. >> Not he clears the wave first >> before or after he clears the wave

>> right now. This very moment. >> Uh no. >> Okay.

>> Clear. >> Yeah. It's super simple. And you guys know the the exact reason why. What is

what is Apollo's role? What is his position? >> Position three.

>> Position three. >> Position three. Yes. Because you have the position one and two in the side

laners and then three is is kind of the anchor of mid lane. All right. His role here and his job is to pick up the wave

mid since he conceded pressure for whatever reason. He can't just ignore the wave and go play for this vault even

though he has the urge to cuz he's like, "Oh, I have one HP. I go kill it." You know what I mean? No, his role he has to

clear this wave cuz if he doesn't then wave crashes. You lose a lot of money. You lose a lot of walker health and

potentially somebody just comes in and kills it. So yeah, that's my role instead. That's what position four does.

So I'm like, "Oh, I don't have to clear his midwave. My ball can do it cuz he's like the he's a mid lane player, right?"

Then I wait, I be a little rat. I see the Ivy shows and then on the killer. Okay, it's a pretty

pretty simple, but again, these plays are mainly made by the position four, five, and maybe sometimes six, but four

and five usually. So, the way I like to think of four and five is they're kind of like the junglers of this game,

right? You don't really want them to to show presence on map, and you want to make really weirdo plays. also like you

you clear vaults on this rule and you're kind of just like the janitor if that makes sense. Any questions?

>> Uh I have one. >> Yeah. >> I don't know if you explained it or not,

but can you because that rule is about showing like not showing on waves. Can you explain how showing on a wave works?

>> Uh yes. Okay. So when not showing the wave is is basically just not giving the enemy info. You remember back when we

were talking about Sonia and how he wasn't overextending for this wave here, right? He goes under instead.

So, the reason why he can't walk up to this wave is because he has no info, right? Well, he sees four on right. He

sees three right side and one mid. So, there's two missing, right? He can't walk on this wave because there could be

this this position four just ratting waiting next to it, right? Trying to trying to get a get a weird playoff

five. Okay, this one is the strong early mid transitions to into like a util bot late game which you know is just curse

silence wave shred like crippling headshot blah blah blah blah right they want to help what they can they have no

lane to sit in the role that it's the role that ganks and threatens silence the most okay and the whole goal of this

role is to shut down the hard carries either with the position four or with anybody else in the fight okay and you

can win the games with the right pick because if you put behind say like imagine you go against pars right or

like uh or John and they're like just hard farming the side lane and you know if they get

enough souls and they overstat that they will just beat you, right? So you want you need to shut these players down

before they can get to that. So you just go you be a little weird. You go in the jungle, you you try and look for combos.

Paradox swap bop hooks, maybe a kidnapp, right? And that's why I say you have to be a weirdo to play this role because

it's like it's very mind games heavy. you to be a good pick player. It's extremely mind games heavy and you have

to have you have to make predictions that may or not be be um be good and then also have the mechanics to actually

back it up. I'll just pull up scout stream here. This is a very very simple very very simple um role. Sorry, what's

it called? Like example of position five. But basically all it is is he clears the wave, he

pushes the the lane out, and then um after he pushes the wave out, he goes mid

and he ganks the drifter, right? And puts the drifter behind, which is good because that that would be like their M1

on this team. Uh not to mention, right after that, he takes a tower, right? And yeah, this is basically what

you do on repeat, whether it's at their walkers, at the towers, at in their jungle. All you do is you help push out

the wave, a wave where whatever wave you need to push out, right? It depends on where you are on the map. Again, this is

it's completely up to you. And then you look for a gank. Okay, Paradox obviously playing in the jungle here. And as you

can see, the map is kind of coming together, right? We have our pick. We have our We have our mid lane. We have

our ROR. And finally, we have our support, right? Which is just a hard support or peeler. These are this is a

very simple role. It's just you play you you you play support and you heal, you shield, and you play around every

objective in the map. Okay? And you also play to get as much vision as possible. And what that means is you should always

basically be playing on high ground. And you the way you get your money in this game as a support is is through boxes on

rooftops, right? Because you want to be on rooftops to get information on the map and through um just uh like when

you're the lowest cells on your team, you just naturally get souls. Okay, you can even suck a wave here and there if

you need. You can also like be lane janitor similar to like roll position 4 if you need to. This role hovers between

lanes and what you do is you need to be reactive to things in the map. Okay. So, say for example, right, enemy team,

let's say their pick player and their their position four and five, right? They look for a play over here. Let's

say on the Billy uh with their mid lane player, which is Abrams, let's say. So, as a hover, right, you're taking you're

just getting information. You're getting boxes so you don't fall behind in souls and stats. You see that three people are

ganking like mid, okay? They're trying to fight for the mid prow, right? They're jumping your Billy. Okay, so you

have two two options. Okay. Does anybody know what those two options are according to this map state?

>> Barrage or go to Billy? >> Yeah, that's literally it. That's it's that simple. Yes. You either look to

make a play, force this guy forward and h and you you support your your ADC or your your position one and you try and

pressure this walker and kill this walker while Billy, you know, probably dies, but then you have these guys to

defend the tower. Or you can all collapse and try and fight this mid and and then these guys would just kind of

stay neutral. Uh same with Kelvin. Kelvin would probably rotate over or pressure over here. Right. That's

basically it. Any questions here? >> Yep. >> I have a question.

>> Sure. >> So >> when you decide when you're page and you

decide which lane to go, do you go to blue to help the Billy if they have more ults or if you have more ult?

>> Yes. So again, it just depends. It fully is on you as a player in this situation depending on net worth itemization,

which ultimates are up, who's stronger on side lane, if you think you can win the fight, all that stuff. And that's

completely up to you to make the decision. And again, that's where skill expression comes in, right? Again, these

are just defaults. Is that going to answer you? >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. So I know I know it's kind of like very shallow, but again, I'm I'm more acting as a guide/teer versus like being

your individual coach. All right. So that basically concludes the first class. I want you guys to each

individually practice your rules as much as you can. If you can stream, stream so I can maybe pop in here and there. Class

is dismissed.