Mastering Counterbuilding: Essential Items to Counter Healing and Abilities

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Deadlock. Today we're going to be talking about counterbuilding

because you'd think that as someone who's playing games up in Oracle 3, you know, like moderately high level games.

I'm obviously not a Tuscendant, any of that, but decently high level games, you'd think you'd see people in my games

actually counterbuilding every game. But this video brought to you by I'm sad that people aren't counterbuilding. So,

I want to talk about it and maybe make more people aware of how counter building works in this game, what items

to look into, what items to buy, etc., etc., etc. So, let's hop into things. So, this giant pile of items you see in

front of you is effectively a good chunk of the items that you use to counterbuild in this game. There are a

lot of them. Counterbuilding is actually generally straightforward and it's pretty easy to do, but you just have to

understand what's happening. I'm going to start by focusing on anti-heal because anti-heal is one of the most

basic parts of the game. So, there's lots of characters that have healing. One of the easiest examples that I can

think of off the top of my head is Dynamo here. Dynamo has a giant AoE aura around him that does indeed just heal

everybody. There tons of other heroes that have other pieces of healing in their kit. Tons of other heal heroes

that heal. Like off the top of my head, let's see. Apollo has built-in healing. Billy has built-in healing.

Um, Kelvin has built-in heal. Well, Billy Billy doesn't have built-in healing. Every Billy buil he healing, so

you may as well. Guist has built-in healing. Mina has built-in healing. There's just lots of it. Lots and lots

of healing in this game. So, you should probably build anti-heal. What items build anti-heal? Well, there's about two

per category that are solid anti-heal options for the gun characters out there. There's toxic bullets, which are

you shoot people until you build up the uh ability and then they have their healing reduced. Fairly

straightforwards. Crippling headshot actually is just you hit a head shot and they get healing reduction. A little

easier to proc, but it's a very expensive item. Healbane's probably the easiest one to apply considering it just

happens. You hit spirit damage and for 8 seconds they have 35% healing reduction. This item is almost a must buy in most

higher levels of play because it's just such an easy way to reduce healing and it's 1,600 souls. It's very easy to buy.

Another pretty good anti-heal option out there though was inhibitor. Your build bullets build up and reduce healing

reduction. Build up healing reduction. Oh goodness, talking is hard some days. And to reduce outgoing damage. It's an

anti-dive item. It's really good for all those characters building a ton of life steal and just running at you. Next is

the true spirit options, i.e. they're purple items in decay, which is just an active item that does a really big chunk

of healing reduction over a certain rate at at a certain range of just clicking on a person. This one's a little weirder

than some of the rest of them. A lot of the rest of them are just you shoot or cast abilities. Decay you have to

actually aim and click on a person. Provides damage over time and it reduces their healing while it's on them. It's a

very cleansable effect. Like all of these, however, the more you have, the better it is. Spirit burn is a very

popular one that I think a lot of people just don't know has anti-heal built in to it. There's just a 70% healing

reduction applied to people for 8 seconds if you trigger spirit burn. It's a lot stronger than people realize. Most

of these items are in fact very strong. Decay is a pretty solid damage over time. The ticks pretty aggressively.

Spirit burns a big damage item. Inhibitor is just good. Healbane's cheap early and gives spirit power. And toxic

bullets has a great damage over time. And crippling headsh shot also reduces spirit and bullet resist. Like all these

items are just good. You should probably be building them regardless of the anti-healing effect. But it's better to

focus on building them over other items in games where you really need the idea of, oh, they have a lot of healing. I

need to take care of that. This next set of items is what I like to call the uh screw that guy set of items, but that's,

you know, that's kind of a rude way of referring to them. So, they're labeled as anti-actives. Most of these are all

active items that are more or less made to go, hey, that person's being a problem doing this thing. This will take

care of it. Uh, decay is also technically one of them. It's just that it's predominantly focused on healing

and inflicting a damage over time. So, you know, it's a bit it goes in both categories, but it's predominantly

anti-heal. Slowing hex and spirit sap are um early powerful things that help anti- certain characters. Uh turning off

movement based abilities and removing move speed and dash distance is really strong. This hits Calico and Mina

especially hard, for example. Yes, this doesn't do a ton early in terms of saying, "Hey, that guy needs to

die," or, "Hey, I'm turning off that guy's abilities," but it turns into focus lens. So, spirit sap is quite

good. It also just makes them weaker and makes them take more spirit damage. Like, it's just a good anti- that guy

item. The next three are all absolutely screw that one guy particular level items. Uh, knockdown is all about

applying a stun to somebody. However, it's mostly good against characters that go up in the air. Pocket is a great

example of it. pocket floats around through the air while using their barrage. So, if you get a knockdown put

on you while you're up in the air, either setting up or coming down from barrage, you'll get knocked down and

stunned for longer if you get hit by a knockdown. This is mostly for characters like Vindicta and Grey Talon who spend

most of the time up in the air, but it's also really effective against like Celeste and Apollo who spend a lot of

their time floating and bouncing around. It's a really good item. There's a reason most supports build it, and it's

in almost every support build you'll find out there. Same with Disarming Hex. It is the I want you to stop shooting me

for 4 seconds button. There's a lot of heroes this is good against, but off the top of my head, Drifter, Haze, Wraith

are the three biggest uh red flags to use disarming hex on. Silver is also up there when they're transformed. Really

good item. Silence wave is less of a I want this guy to stop doing stuff button and more of a I want to kill that guy

button. It's usually bought on characters like Hayes to combo with their sleep knife to where you sleep

them, you silence them, then you do a bunch of stuff to them. It also does actually do damage, so it triggers on

damage effects as well. Doesn't interrupt channels, but it is still a silence ability. It's also good on like

Victor, for example, because you can just silence him really fast and it's pretty cheap at 3200 souls. These next

two items are super anti- this guy needs to go items with focus lens and cursed relic. Focus lens is typically something

that you would build on carries to make sure that you win your 1v ones by silencing someone, reducing their spirit

resistance, spirit power, and making sure they take extra damage when the silence wears off.

It also is just something that upgrades some spirits app. So, it's pretty good to build one early into the other one

later. Get your power spikes, your 4.8k spikes, etc., etc. Chris Rotic actually recently got a change to make it so that

you just deal 8% less damage if you own the item doesn't stop most people from buying it anyway. 8% damage in a game

where your damage numbers get wildly inflated as not as much as you'd think. And this item is super necessary to deal

with certain characters. 3.25 second duration that does get extended by item duration effects means that for

basically three full seconds someone just doesn't get to play the game. This is really good into your Minas and

Victors of the world. And honestly, if you pull open the hero roster, it's kind of hard to point to a carry hero that

this isn't good against. It's good against seven. It's good against Infernace, good against Drifter, good

against Victor. I already said that. I know. Good against Yamato because they can't pop their ultimate. Good against

Viper because they have a really hard time getting off some of their stuff. It's just an incredibly powerful active

item that is really good against just shutting down those carries that are running at you and killing you super

fast and allowing your team to turn on them and kill them. Most good teams that you run to in ranked will usually have

bought one of these on at least one, if not more than one people on the team. And you might look at that 8% damage

penalty and go, "But I need to make sure I'm killing people." If your team can't kill the enemy Victor that's running at

you at Mach 20, buy cursed relic. Make him at least have to stop for 3 seconds to give you time to fight the rest of

the team while he can't do anything. All right, so this next set of items are a bit more nebulous than the rest of them.

Anti-heal and anti- character activives typically have pretty clear-cut use case scenarios. Disarming hacks is good for

the gun heroes. Knockdowns for the flyers. Cursed relic is for the victors of the world. Anti-heals for anyone that

heals. These protectionbased things and these defensive based things are a bit more use case scenario. But we're going

to start by talking about the protective active items that you can get. Spell magic is one of the best freaking items

in this game. The ability to just purge all non-ultimate, very important, non-ultimate negative effects currently

applied to you is massive. It also gives you a chunk of healing and a move speed bonus for 3 seconds after popping it.

You usually have to be very careful with when you pop this because when you pop it, it cleanses everything that's on

you. If you're in the middle of a fight and people are still throwing stuff at you, you're just going to get all those

effects reapplied to yourself. It's still incredibly powerful and it's one of the best defensive green items you

can buy that is selfish, but man, you still have to be very careful with when you pop it. It also comes with 16%

spirit resist, which is really nice because a lot of spirit characters like to apply a lot of debuffs to people.

Next on the list of these fancy items is metal skin, which is literally I push button, bullets don't do anything. If

the enemy team has more than one bullet carry, this becomes an almost must buy because first of all, it just comes with

15% bullet resist. And then also, you press the button and then for 5 seconds, those bullet heroes don't hurt you. Yes,

there are lots of ways that bullet heroes get around items like this. I believe that armor piercing rounds goes

through it, but those interactions have changed. So, forgive me if I'm incorrect. But the item is still very

strong against any hero that just wants to hold left click against you. Counter spell is a very powerful item that sees

more play the better you get at the game because learning how to parry in the first place is such a big part of the

skill floor of this game that learning how to parry and then learning how to parry damage from the effects of enemy

abilities and items means that you're just getting higher and higher up in terms of the more complex parts of the

game. The bottom line is you parry, but instead of parrying the melee, you parry an ability and it just basically

completely negates it. Whatever ability was going to hit you, you get a heal and you get spirit power and you get move

speed. This is an item that I should really buy more and learn to use better because it is very, very strong. But I'm

really bad about using it. So, you know, don't be like me. Be better than me. Learn how to use counter spell. Divine

barrier is an upgrade from Guardian Ward. Forgot the name of the item. It removes all non-stun debuffs from the

target and provides them with a barrier and move speed. You can apply this to yourself as well, by the way. This

doesn't have to be applied on someone else. Cool down is reduced by half when you put it on someone else, though.

You'll usually see Rem and Paige buying this almost every single game because both of them use it really effectively

in tandem with the rest of their kits. The item's just really, really strong. Being able to cleanse effects off of

other people or yourself is really good. If you're a support player at all, buy this item. And you could argue to buy

this on carries as well if you're just lacking other green items to buy and you don't want dispel magic for some reason.

I suppose if they're all running like general gun builds and they don't have a lot of spirit stuff, Divine Barrier

could be an option. But these both function pretty identically. It's just that Divine Barrier is usually the item

that the supports buy to save their teammates. Unstoppable is the oh my god, please stop stunning me enemy team. I

just want to play the game button. It can't be used while you stunned or slept, but if you preemptively pop it

for 5 and a half seconds, they can't hit you with most powerful status effects of the game, including stun, silence,

sleep, roots, and disarms. Meaning that for the next 5 and 1/2 seconds, you're just going to run at the enemy team

until they're dead or until you're dead one way or the other. It also gives you debuff resistant bonus health, and

that's just nice to have. It also upgrades some debuff reducer, so if you're buying that early for your green

spike, it can turn into this later. Colossus is another one of those just good active items. It functions similar

to unstoppable and that you activate it and you gain a bunch of resistances. It's just that this resists bullet

damage and spirit damage and gives enemies near you minus move speed. It also just gives you a percentage of base

health, which is a pretty rare upgrade, as well as actual base health as well as a percentage of weapon damage, which is

all just really good all combined together. It's a great item. 10 out of 10. Use it on your brawler bruiser

characters that are having trouble staying alive. This next pile of items is basically just the I want to not die

as often pile of items. When you have other activives that your character wants to buy or other activives that

your character needs to buy over these, Pocket's a great example. Pocket really, really likes to buy warpstone to get in

and out of fights, as well as Arctic Blast in order to do as much damage as possible. And since you are limited to

only having four active sloths, you can't always buy metal skin, dispel, magic, unstoppable, and have room for

Arctic Blast and Warpstone, right? So, a lot of these items take the place of those other items or are just good to

buy in tandem with those other items or just good defensive items. This top row here is basically the green items that

you buy in lane to get through the laning phase alive. Battle vest is basically the anti-bullet item that also

helps you be a better bullet hero. Enchanter's Emblem is the anti-pirit item that helps you be a better spirit

hero. Reactive barrier is good if you are against characters like Abrams or Billy who knock you around and move you

around because you regen stamina and get a barrier when you're hit with these CC abilities. Spirit shielding is good for

when a pocky keeps throwing their suitcase at you or throwing their uh cloak at you or keep getting lash

smacked or something along those lines because it gives you a barrier in response so you can keep fighting after

you've gotten hit. Weapon shielding is pretty similar but for weapon damage. The stop row is all great items that

will get you through laning phases really easily and all be very very strong for those laning phases. But as

the game goes on, you probably want to sell them because their effects aren't as strong as other items. So that's what

the second row is for. We're all choosing to ignore the plated armor magically appeared. Got it. Got it. The

second row is items that are more about buying the I want that thing to stop killing me as fast and I don't want to

buy active items to help with it. Spirit resilience and bullet resilience are just good items that help you deal with

these things. 30% spirit resist, 30% bullet resist, and when you drop below 40% health, you get an extra 22% of one

or the other. If the enemy team is like five spirit heroes, buying spirit resilience is almost always a good idea.

30% flat resistance on top of the 22% when you get low just makes you much, much harder to kill. Same applies for

the other side of things. If the enemy team is building all orange stuff, just buy bullet resilience. You'll be better

off. Spellbreaker is another item that builds off of debuff remover, which is good at keeping debuffs off of you and

also giving you just a bunch of spirit resist. But the most important thing is the next instance of high spirit damage

you take is significantly reduced. So the next bit of damage you take that's 175 damage or higher gets reduced by

75%. You know Bbop bomb, lash slam, pocket suitcase, even arctic blast, calico

bombs, calico alt, all these big bursts of spirit damage that'll hit you. This just reduces them by 75%.

It's only up every 9 seconds, so it'll only save you from certain big hits. It's mostly an anti- like Bbop/lash item

where like they have these very targeted single hits of big damage that they're going to hit you with that this will

really help with, but it can help against other heroes as well. Witch mail is a pretty powerful anti-spirit item

that when you take hits of heavy spirit damage, which is only 75 to be honest, you just randomly get 4 seconds of cool

down reduction. This passive triggers only every x amount of time. I believe at the moment it's at 1 second, which is

crazy fast by the way. So in fights where you're just eating lots of spirit damage, your cool downs will just keep

coming back and coming back and coming back. If you're going against a team that's like four, five, even six spirit

players, spirit resilience and witch mail together make you n unkillable and make it so that you just have lots of

cool downs coming back over and over and over again. Plated armor is that doubling down of anti-bullet synergy.

You gain a chance to deflect incoming bullets, preventing all weapon damage and all on hit effects, right? So you

have a 30% chance to deflect and just reduce damage entirely in the first place and a 50% chance to just negate on

hit effects. This is really good for characters who are using stuff like toxic bullets and building those up.

This is good for characters like Viper who build up their poison over time. Uh Hayes who builds up fixation stacks,

Mina who builds up love bites on you. All sorts of different effects from bullet heroes. Plated armor is really

really good at stopping them. It's also just a pretty good anti-bullet item because it just means that there's just

a chance their bullets don't do anything to you. Plus, it gives you the flat bonus health. Plus, it gives you the

6,400 bonus vitality investment, which if you don't even have another vitality item,

gets you past your 4.8k mark and gives you that 500 bonus health on top of whatever stats the item gives you. Don't

forget about that stuff. Investment still matters when buying all of these items. The item is really good and it's

a really good anti-gun item. it's worth looking into, but a lot of the time just flat bullet resist will do the job

better and earlier to make you die less. However, if the games get longer and longer and longer, plated armor is

really worth a look. That's counterbuilding. It's kind of complicated, as I'm sure you figured out

from listening to this. However, knowing that you these are the general items to look for and that there are bunches of

items that just say active on them and a lot of the active items are the I want this thing to stop doing this thing is a

really good place to start when you're looking for items to help deal with the enemy team. Most of green is all about

being defensive in the first place. So, looking through the green items and reading them and learning what they all

do is also not the good way to start. Counterbuilding is not an exact science because the fact that this game is 6v6

with no repeat heroes in either team means that the odds of you running into the exact same six heroes every single

game is really, really low. So, you just kind of have to learn what items are good for stopping what heroes and move

from there. But either way, thanks for hanging and watching. I hope you all enjoyed this video. Hope this has been a

helpful and informative video. And I hope to catch you in the next