Master Deadlock Survival: Positioning, Awareness, and Smart Play Tips

Dying is one of the worst things you can do in Deadlock outside of losing your patron. So, if you're spending a bunch

of time scrolling while you wait for the respawn timer, we're going to talk about a few big concepts and quick tips to get

your eyes back on the screen that you want to be looking at. In Deadlock, 90% of bad or avoidable deaths come from

being out of position. And good or even decent positioning, it isn't as simple as just where you're standing. You need

to take into account the 11 other players in your lobby, both on and off your team. And in regards to staying

alive, it's more important to keep track of the enemy team. And this is majorly going to influence almost every decision

you make in this game. And there's a few questions you need to be asking when you look down at your mini map every few

seconds. Number one, who's on the mini map? Or rather, who's missing from the mini map. Number two, where are they?

And then number three, how much danger am I in? Or will I be in if I stay here for more than a couple of seconds? And

now that we've brought up danger, there's one more really important thing that you do need to know, and that's the

three hidden lanes in Deadlock. And these lanes run horizontally across the map. As opposed to housing objectives,

they correlate to how close you are to the enemy's base. The first one is mid. And this is just simply the area between

the guardians where most of the laning phase of the game happens. This zone is in between the barbed wire. It's no

man's land. It's just as easy for an enemy to be here as it is for you. So, if your enemies are missing, know an

engagement is possible. The next zone, and the most important one, is the skirmish zone. This is the zone that

occupies the guardians to just before the walkers. And when you're in the enemy skirmish zone, you are invading

their territory and either directly or indirectly through the trooper wave, putting pressure on the enemy's

objective. And that pressure forces the enemy to come to you and react to that and relieve that pressure. So, if you

think that you're alone in this area of the map, you likely will not be for very long. You only want to be in this area

of the map if you have enough awareness of the enemy team to know that you're alone, if you're planning to leave very

soon, or if you're prepared to fight the enemies that you may run into. Those are the only times that you really want to

be in that area outside of, you know, obviously pushing. And this area is also closer to the enemy's base than mid. So,

it's easier for an enemy to rotate to you or leave a jungle camp that they may have just been farming around the corner

to come and fight you. And then finally, the siege zone. This is the area under and behind the walkers up into the

enemy's base. The siege zone of the map is somewhere you should generally avoid unless you're making a dedicated push to

siege the objective. It's incredibly easy for the enemy to rotate to you in this zone. It's filled with stronger

objectives and harder geometry to escape through. And for each zone that you get closer to the enemy's base, it becomes

exponentially more dangerous because the enemy can rotate to you faster the closer that you get to their base. And

now you know about the three hidden lanes. We'll ratchet back up to those three questions we asked ourselves

earlier and take a look at example. But unfortunately in replays you can see even missing enemies health bars. So

just bear with me for the purpose of the example that there are still enemies missing even though we do see their

health bars. And so I'm walking up to the walker here. So for question one, who's on the map? I see on the other

side of the map there are three enemies and one of them just died. So two enemies are there, one enemy's dead.

Infernace is smack in the middle of the map. So we got four accounted for. Lash and Billy are missing. And so we're

already missing two people. I've already failed a question one. We don't need to know exactly where every single enemy is

at the map at all times to make a push or to push into the skirmish zone. But we can't be so clueless to their

whereabouts that they're literally right behind us like lashes here without us knowing. We're way too deep without any

idea of where the other two people are. We need to have at least some idea of that. Speaking of where two people are,

question two, where are they? I've got no clue. If Lash had just pinged mid and I felt confident fighting Billy, then I

could keep pushing into their siege zone here. But again, I failed to even ask this question. I'm just getting tunnel

vision on doing walker damage while my team is fighting on the other side of the map. And so, you can already see how

failing to ask these questions is a critical failure. And so, question number three, how much danger am I in? A

[ __ ] ton. There are multiple missing enemies. And on top of that, I'm in the siege zone. So, the ones that weren't

missing that were fighting over on the other side of the map or in furnace can get to me very, very quickly. And so,

without much fanfare, I completely misplay. and Lash utterly shits on me. He gets to show off his first grade

typing skills and keeps it moving while I am left looking at a black and white screen. And so if you find yourself

dying a lot without accomplishing anything like I did just there, you're probably failing to ask those three

questions. So to recap, who's on the map? Where are they? How much danger am I in or will I be in if I stay there?

And remember the last one, it increases the closer that you get to the enemy base. And so that's the big three hidden

questions and the three hidden lanes concepts you can employ to help keep yourself alive in your games. But I do

have a few more quick tips for you. And the first one's going to be to don't chase kills. Be happy with positive

trades. Chasing low HP enemies is a huge mistake I see newer players making. Specifically in the skirmish zone and

into the siege zone. Running around aimlessly trying to secure a final kill in these zones is a mistake because

number one, that enemy is probably already running to a teammate that's likely stronger than you since you

probably just used a bunch of your abilities and health to fight that person you're chasing. But also because

you're losing seconds that you could be spending stealing their farm. If they're running from you, they're not running to

the nearest jungle camp to go farm or the center sacrifice to go and break. Don't put yourself into a dangerous

situation when you've already won. Be happy with that. Then the next tip I got for you is to use your character's

unique abilities to escape in unique ways and utilize verticality. A lot of heroes have abilities that maybe don't

seem like a movement ability, but they can be used as such, and getting vertical is often one of the best ways

to escape someone if they can't make that jump. Calico and Shiv, their twos are very similar in this regard. They

both can get big vertical boosts with it. Skill the side of a building like Spider-Man, Vindicta, she can engage

then unengage her two as well. Funny, I didn't even realize until I'm recording these are all twos. And then that's not

even counting like actual movement abilities like Lash's grappler, Holidayiday's bounce pad. Are all of

these twos? Is every movement ability in this game a two? I'm just realizing this. Then guys, just keep these few

simple counter items in your back pocket. They're really helpful. Um, rebuttal and healing right. These are

both going to serve you well in lane. You can easily counter some really punch happy heroes with rev with revolver with

rebuttal and healing right is going to prevent you from having to go back to base and heal in 95% of the situations

which you should always look to avoid to go back to base to heal because you miss out on all the souls that are being

farmed in your lane anyways. Then debuff remover which removes every non-ultimate effect in the game. So if Vindicta is

throwing a crow at you or if you get silenced you can easily debuff remove it and keep it moving. If people are just

sticking stuns on you, you can use this to get rid of that. And then counter spell is a really strong item that

counters some heroes like Lash or Yamato almost directly. Look to keep these items in your back pocket and just

identify a place in your build that you like buying the counter items. You'll be much better off with some defense

instead of rushing to the next biggest damage increase. Then guys, that's just about all I got for you this time.

Though I did want to mention one thing, and that's just, you know, I'm an above average player at best. So, the

educational content on this channel is always going to be fair fairly new player focused until I rank up enough to

the point that I feel like I'm confident explaining the more advanced concepts. I just don't feel like I'm a big enough

authority to explain those advanced concepts really. But some tips I've learned and how to feed less are

perfectly up for grabs in my view. So, I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two in my almost a thousand hours of

uh deadlock now. So, if you learned a thing or two from the video, I would really appreciate you giving it a like.

I'd be tremendously grateful and it's just one of the best ways to support the channel. But the best way to support the

channel is to become a member. And so members, thank you guys so much. Your support means the world to me and I'm

just so grateful for you and all the people that watch the video tonight. So guys, I hope you have a fantastic day

and if you have any questions or anything like that, feel free to drop them in the comments. I will uh be sure

to answer them. So guys, have a fantastic day. I will see you again soon. Peace.