Deadlock Hidden Mechanics: Troopers, Combat, and Resistance Explained

Hello everyone, my name is Nathan. I make educational content about deadlock. And today we're going to be talking

about some of the things the game doesn't explicitly tell you or explain. We're going to talk about hidden

mechanics and just things you may have heard of before, but you don't really know exactly how or why they work. If

you're a new or returning player, this video is especially going to have a bunch of useful information. So, we're

going to talk about troopers and structures, combat mechanics, boounds, stats, and hidden hero scalings,

investment bonuses, and I'll explain how resistant threat really works. Of course, everything is timestamped, so

feel free to skip ahead to any topic you want to know more about. Starting with trooper waves, and these are going to be

your main source of soul income during the entire game. Sharing a wave with one or two teammates can be slightly

beneficial for your total team income, as you'll get a combined 108% of the total soul value of the troopers.

However, sharing a wave with your entire team only gives each person 16% of the troopers value, totaling at 96%. which

means that grouping up with a lot of people nets you and your team less souls overall, especially when you consider

the souls lost from waves elsewhere. So, make sure almost every single trooper wave is cleared by at least one person

in your team and don't group up too much. There's also, of course, the medic troopers that drop a health pack, and

these health packs heal you for a flat amount plus 16% of your missing health, which means that you'll generally want

to clear these last when your health is going to be the lowest. And if you're planning to pop healing right when

you're low, try to first get the heal pack and then pop the right. The heal also divided between the players that

are in the AoE. So if you are full HP and your teammates low, try to give them solo heal by walking out of range. Now,

just in case you didn't know this yet, you can parry guardians, disabling them for a few seconds and allowing you to

get more damage off on them while pushing or even allowing you to dive your enemies. Guardians start the game

with 75% damage resist gradually scaling down to minus 50% during the first 12 minutes of the game. So this means that

often during the first few minutes if you get a hard push it's kind of pointless to try and damage the

guardian. So instead just try to get some poke on your enemy laners while they're busy clearing your troopers or

go for a box run instead. And then as the lane goes on it becomes a lot easier to take down your guardian. And after

the laning phase you can often just run up to them even without a wave. just parry it and take it down alone in a few

seconds because unlike other structures, guardians don't have any back door protection. Killing walkers gives your

team additional slots, often called flex slots or extra slots. And when you take down a walker, the remaining two will

get extra health. And then when you take down a second walker, the last one will get even more health. And that means

that if you are able to take down the middle walker, the blue walker first or second, you totally should because

taking the other two side walkers down first will leave you with a very tough walker in the mid lane that will often

be really hard to take down. When you are near one of your walkers, you gain 15% spirit and bullet resistance. So you

have an advantage while defending. And just like guardians, walkers also start the game with 75% damage resist scaling

down to minus 50%. But they reach that minus 50% at 20 minutes. So, if you won your lane, it's generally not going to

be worth it to immediately try and push and take down the walker. Instead, just try to push down your wave as far as you

safely can, usually into their walker, right? And then use the time you have until the next wave to invade their

jungle, take their slot machines, camps, boxes, or to help out another lane, take down their guardian. Killing base

guardians increases the zipline speed you and your team get in that lane. So, that's very nice to keep up the

pressure. And these guardians have bullet resistance that scales down based on how many players are nearby. So the

more players in your team are nearby, the easier they are to take down. Before you can hit the patron, you of course

have to take out both of these shrines on the sides. But even if you are not able to take down the patron right

after, just taking these shrines alone already has value because when you do, your troopers get beefed up by 30%. So

it becomes a lot easier to push down the patron afterwards. Shrines also use the same bullet resist logic as base

guardians with just slightly different numbers. Some games you're only 14 minutes in and your team is already 20k

behind. happens very often, of course, and it's very easy to give up at that point. But you'd be surprised how

winnable these games really are. First, you have to understand that if a lead stays the same, it will potentially get

smaller over time. So, a 10k lead when the teams are at 40k and 50k souls, that's like a 25% difference, right? But

if you and your team manage to keep that difference at 10k, by the time you're at 90k and 100k, that's only about a 10%

difference, right? Now, there's also several combat mechanics that can help you get back into the game. If your team

is behind, you get bonus souls for everything. killing troopers, objectives, camps, players, everything

is going to be worth more. And this bonus scaling you get goes up based on how far behind your team is. Currently

peing at 30% bonus souls if the net worth difference between the teams is 20% or more. And that is a lot of extra

souls. If your team is behind by more than 10% or 15% for the first earn, the earn drop off will be located over here

on the map. So the earn is a lot safer to turn in and it's also worth more. And this is an amazing way to close down a

lead because people are not going to be paying attention to it. So, if you are aware of this and you pick it up, it's

often pretty easy to just turn it in and you're going to close the lead down. So, be that person that pays attention to

the net worth differences between the teams and the in-game timer to see when a comeback earn is about to spawn. Also,

I've got two more quick tips for the earn. So, the first earn at 10 minutes always spawns in the yellow lane and it

then alternates every 5 minutes between green and yellow. And the second tip is to make sure that you always try to

secure or deny the souls that come out when the earn is delivered because these contain literally 50% of the total value

of the earn. So even if you don't get the turn in, you can still salvage most of the damage done. Now I often see the

advice thrown around of if you're behind, you need to make something happen. And not everyone will agree with

me here, but I personally am of the opinion that this is bad advice for most players. Mainly because it's often

misinterpreted. Right up until the very highest ranks, people don't actually know what to do with leads and how to

close out games. People will get 10 kills, not buy enough defensive items, overextend, get caught alone, and die,

giving the enemy team lots of comoles. So, the way I see it, if you're on the losing team, you should generally value

stability in the game. If you're not constantly dying more and losing objectives left and right, you're doing

fine, and you benefit a lot from the combat souls. And often, all you have to do is just wait for the enemies to

inevitably throw away their lead. There's a reason why games last forever in the lower ranks. you don't really

need to take any risks. You just have to play a stable game and make sure you're farmed up. Now, the reason I don't

really like this advice is because people tend to misinterpret it. So, there'll be like 010 and then they run

in 1v3 for the fifth time. They obviously die and they go, "Well, I had to try something." But that is not how

it works. Instead, there are situations where the advice is absolutely correct. If you are 30, 40k souls behind as a

team, your patron is in the last phase, and you just miraculously managed to kill their fat carry, but the rest of

their team is still alive. Well, maybe risking it all and flipping midballs might just be the only way you could

still win the game somehow. But this cut off point of where the game is truly lost and you need to make something

happen just shifts based on your rank. And you need to actually make something happen as a team, something calculated,

not just some random play that's never going to work. Every hero has different base stats and scalings. You can find

these by hovering over here on the bottom left or up here. Make sure to check out your hero stats because you

might just find some really interesting stuff like Pocket who starts the game with minus 15% spirit resist. Mina who

has faster stamina regeneration than the rest of the cast. Seven Rem and Mo but not Krill take reduced crit damage

because their heads are so big. And Rem has a minus 5% melee resist scaling. So make sure you beat this little [ __ ] up

whenever possible. Some heroes also have hidden spirit scalings. seven, Great Talon, Sinclair and Viper's movement

speed, Wraith's sprint speed, Victor's health regen, Great Talon's bullet damage, Ka and Warden's bullets per

second and fire rate, Haze and Yamato's ammo, and even Pa's melee all skill with spirit. Now, as you get more souls

during a match, your character levels up, and you get boons, which increase some of your base stats. These can

differ quite a lot from hero to hero. For example, Lady Gist gets nearly double the amount of health per boon

compared to Mina. Which means for Lady Gist, it makes a lot more sense to buy stuff like resist and sustain items.

Whereas Mina, on the other hand, might buy items like stamina mastery that help her avoid taking damage in the first

place by being mobile. In addition to the stat increases, each boon also gives you an ability point to level up your

abilities. And knowing how many souls you need to reach a certain amount of ability points can help you identify

when your big power spikes are. For example, when I play pocket, I spend 6 AP to upgrade my clo and satchel. And

then I need another eight points to fully upgrade my affliction. So, when I get 13.8k souls, I have 14 AP and I got

my old maxed, which is a really big power spike that I should be aware of and I should play for.

>> If you're enjoying the video so far, come and join my brand new Discord. We already have over 100 people in there.

And I also host free coaching raffles in there. So, if you're interested, check out the link in the description. And

while we were here looking at base stats, you may have noticed the investment tabs over here. So when you

buy items, you're investing into the three different categories and you get extra sets from doing so. You get weapon

damage for investing into the weapon category, flat health for the vitality category, and spirit for the spirit

category. So for example, when I buy mystic slow, I'm investing 1,600 souls into the spirit category, which means

that even though this item does not give me any spirit by itself, reaching the 1,600 soul investment spike gave me 11

spirits. Anyways, there's of course a bunch of spikes here, but the most important ones are 800, 4.8k, 8k and

9.6k. There's always exceptions, but it's common to spend at least 800 souls in each category in the laning phase.

And there's also a very strong incentive to spend 4.8k souls in each category as well. This spike is even marked with a

little star, as you can see. So, even if you're playing a spirit build, seriously consider picking up a tier 2 and a tier

three weapon item, for example, to reach that 4.8k spike because you'll be improving your gun damage by at least

50%. So, for example, on pocket when I buy swift striker to get to 4.8k 8k gun together with cultist of course my

weapon DPS goes from 118 to 173. So that's a really big increase and that's excluding the weapon damage I get from

cultist as well. And beyond the 9.6k souls spent in a category you'll get a lot less value per soul spent as the

checkpoints are spaced out further. So be aware of that as well. So when you're creating or using a build think about

these investments because with some exceptions for most heroes it's going to be worth it to try and hit that 4.8k

spike in every category before say 15 or 20 minutes. So if you already hit the 4.8 8k spike for spirit. Consider buying

some vitality items to hit the 4.8k vitality spike before you move on with more spirit items. But besides that, I

wouldn't really obsess over these spikes too much. The most important part of good builds is just getting the right

items. I also have a full in-depth guide on how to create good builds from a few months ago if you want to learn more. It

still holds up fine aside from the 4.8k spikes that were not in the game yet back then. Resistance strat might seem a

little confusing at first, but it's actually pretty simple. To show how it works, we're going to use Gist Bomb,

which with this item and a single boon does exactly 100 damage. So, that's very convenient. Now, if I use my spirit

strike by beating up Rem, his spirit resist will be lowered by 6%, which means he now takes 6% extra spirit

damage from any source, including our teammates. So, our bomb now does 106 damage. So, we got six extra damage. And

now, if Rem starts buying spirit resist, our bomb damage will be 100. So the damage you see in the tool tip here

reduced by the percentage spirit resist that Ram has plus six. So if Ram now buys spirit resilience, he'll have 30%

spirit resist, which means our bomb damage will be reduced by 30 damage and we will do 70. And if we use our spirit

strike again, he'll be at 24% spirit resist, right? 30 - 6, which means that he'll take 24 less damage from our bomb.

So we'll do 76 damage. And notice how that's the same plus six damage that we got before. That number stays the same

no matter how much resist the enemy has. If they have 50% spare resist, our bomb will do 50 plus six damage. And this

essentially means that the more resist enemies have, the more valuable shred becomes, right? Because six damage on

top of 50 or 70 damage is a lot more than six on 100. And of course, it works the same for bullet thread. Right now,

we're doing 100 damage per bullet. And we give the enemy 50% blue resist, which to be fair is a very extreme example. Of

course, our bullets will now deal 50 damage. And buying bullet resist shredder will increase our damage not by

10% like it says here, but by 20%. As we're now doing 60 damage per bullet, which is really good value for only

1,600 souls. So that's also why this item was nerfed in the patch last Friday. And not only heroes have resist,

troopers, jungle camps, and structures also do. So sources of shred that work on non-players like bullet resist

shredder and mystic vulnerability are often but definitely not always valued more than something like spirit sap or

weakening headshot which only work on players. And different sources of shred stack diminishingly. So if I buy spirit

snatch and mystic foam I will not be shredding an enemy for 12 + 8 equals 20% but for only 16%. And the same sources

of shred don't stack with themselves. So if my teammate and I both buy mystic foam, those don't stack on the same

enemy. So ideally, you want to diversify the sources of shred on your team. So if your teammate already has bullet resist

shredder and you still want more bullet shred as a team, consider buying something like weakening headshot

instead. There are two exceptions of sources of shred that do stack with themselves, and those are rusted barrel

and crippling headshot, which if you and a teammate proc on the same target, they do stack together diminishingly as well.

All right, that brings us to the end of the video. I really hope you enjoyed and learned something. If you did, consider

liking, subscribing, leave a comment if you have anything to add or if you have a question. Also join my new Discord and

I will see you guys in the next video. Love you. Bye-bye.