Mastering Deadlock: Key Strategies to Dominate Map Control and Teamplay

Being a good player in Deadlock can be summarized in one sentence. Be in the right place at the right time. This is

easier said than done. There's 12 heroes, lanes, guardians, walkers, jungle camps,

sinner sacrifice machines, mid boss earned, flex shrines, a lot to worry about. But if you find yourself getting

lost on what should be your next objective, where to go, what to do, or if you keep getting caught out from

doing the wrong thing, I want you to think about the three things that you can do on the map at any given time, and

which will benefit your game state the most. I'll go into a lot more detail on these, but you should always be thinking

about three things. One, progressing the game towards its natural end. Things like taking guardians, walkers, mid

boss. Two, being efficient and getting farmed, shoving lanes, quickly taking jungle camps, doing box runs, and three,

disrupting your enemy's game plan through things like ganking, looking for pickoffs, setting up team fights, or

invading their jungle. Let's break down your general early game objectives. Don't rotate out of your lane before 5

minutes. The time you spend walking to another lane is time you've thrown your own lane partner out to the walls. If

you fail to get a kill, or even if you do get a kill, you're missing out on a huge amount of wave farm and allowing

the enemy team to pressure your tower. On the flip side, if you spot your enemy making this mistake, one of them dips

out of the lane to gank too early, you should absolutely punish by pushing the wave and pressuring the solo laner. If

your wave is under their guardian, you've got a little bit of wiggle room to play with. If you can take the

guardian early, you've opened up your future options as to where you can position, farm, and rotate. Just before

the 10-minute mark, while the lane phase is still happening, you have a key opportunity to invade the enemy jungle.

This is better done on characters who can take camps fast and have good mobility. You want to be disrupting

enemy heroes early game farming patterns, efficiently increasing your own net worth to maintain an early lead.

Just make sure you push the wave in your own lane before you go looking to steal any jungle camps. Otherwise, your

guardian might suffer unnecessary damage. Pretty much every play in Deadlock should be proceeded by pushing

waves. Having pushed waves protects your own guardians and walkers from being attacked and instead puts pressure on

the enemies to drop what they're doing and be forced to play on the defense. The minion waves alone can do massive

damage to objectives. And it only takes one extra player on top of two waves to single-handedly take a walker. On this

note, don't let waves start attacking your walkers freely. If you're in base and you have to make a decision between

joining a team fight or stopping a walker split push, you should usually defend the walker. Winning a fight means

less than keeping your walker alive. Another big advantage to having pushed lanes is information. When waves are far

up on the enemy side of the map, creeps won't be able to spot heroes in the lane. If you want to move more

discreetly across the map, shoving a wave and then sneaking off is a viable way to deny the enemy team valuable info

on your location. This works both ways, too. You'll see when enemies are defending waves at their guardian or

walker and can use this opportunity to safely steal enemy jungle or punish enemies out of position with no backup.

One more big advantage of push waves is that it gives you the opportunity to subvert enemies macro play decisions. If

the enemy team commits to one side of the map to defend mid boss or earn, you can sneakily take guardians, walkers,

base guardians, or even a very high-risisk shrine. If you're forcing a few of their players to defend creep

waves, it means there's less enemies to contest an objective elsewhere. This leads to the next big goal with your

macro play. Do not die. Rotate to blue. What the [ __ ] I know this sounds like really obvious, but there's a lot of

value in not showing up to your own funeral. If your team's already lost, you're not obligated to show up. Be

quick and decisive. If you're not going to make it to a team fight fast enough to make an impact, take advantage of

space on the map elsewhere. I'll talk a bit more about judging when to fight later. But remember, even if your team

wipes, you can still create game impact by split pushing a different lane or stealing jungle that would otherwise be

taken by the enemy. Dead players do not have presence on the map. They can't farm. They can't rotate to gank. They

can't take objectives. They're useless. So, do not die. Except for the few rare heroic situations where you can trade a

flex slot unlock for single death or something. Another important decision you'll have to make in every game is

when to go for mid boss. And sometimes when in a losing game, is it worth going for a steal? We are doing mid boss. Yo,

can we get the Ivy stun in there? Ivy. Hello. Mid boss requires a bit of setup. So, as a rule, you should never go for a

mid boss if the entire enemy team is alive and your objectives are being pushed. GG's. Don't even consider it.

It's also risky to go for mid boss when the enemy team is at a net worth lead or have strong abilities that guarantee a

rejuvenator seal or if you don't have sufficient firepower to kill mid boss in a fast amount of time. So, now you know

when to not do mid boss. Let's look at making the inverse true. Your perfect circumstances is that the

game has progressed to about 20 minutes onwards when the death timers start to actually give you wide windows of

opportunities and you do enough damage to actually kill mid boss before the enemy can amount to a counterattack.

What if you're playing from behind? When should you go for a steal? You should probably have some kind of capability of

actually achieving the steal. So, this could be like a basic ability that can knock heroes away from the rejuvenator

crystal. Think Bbop uppercut or viscous puddle punch. You could have a wide AoE stun like seven or certain items such as

warp stone or unstoppable. You probably shouldn't go for a steal if the enemy has an ability that basically guarantees

securing the crystal. And lastly, consider the game state that you'll be leaving your teammates in. If you're a

high impact team fighter like Dynamo or Lash, it's probably better for you to stay alive and wait for your team so you

can win the next fight rather than staggering your death. Instead of riskily going for a mid- boss steel, you

might be able to yoink a flex slot by belining to a walker. In the mid to late game, you might find

it difficult to initiate good fights or find easy targets. It's important to understand enemies decision-m in neutral

game states when there's no obvious objectives. Watch the enemy side of the map for disappearing neutral camps to

determine where the enemy could be. And also consider what threats the enemy team could be responding to. Is there a

double stacked creep wave about to go deep into enemy territory? Could be an opportunity to catch out a hyper carry

who's just seeing dollar signs. Is their jungle entirely empty? Be careful. You could be next if you're out of position.

I don't want you to get flamed by bunga perma team fighting apes on your team. So, let's chat about how to know if a

fight is worth showing up to. First up, can you make it in time? Not every fight is decisive, and some fights can be

messy and drawn out, which allows for a wider range of rotations to rock up and have an impact. Don't show up to fights

that are going to be over by the time you arrive. Secondly, is the fight going to secure

an important objective? Will it lead to a guardian, a walker, a mid boss? In the lower ranks, there's usually a lot of

fights that are being taken for no reason and for very little profit. So often, it can be more efficient to just

focus on farming or split pushing. Last of all, and maybe most importantly, is this a late game fight that's going to

decide the outcome of the match? Whether you like it or not, sometimes your team will just full send as five people down

a lane into less than favorable conditions. If they all die without you, you can't win a 1v6. Sometimes the best

move is to just give in to the ape train and run it down with the team. At least if you lose, you're not going to be

flamed for not being there. Hope you've learned something. Leave a like and sub if you enjoyed the video, and let me

know in the comments if there's something you really want to see me cover next. Thank you.