Mastering Roaming and Ganking Strategies in Deadlock: Wave Mechanics & Execution

Knowing when to roam is one of the hardest things to learn in all of Deadlock. Roam at the wrong time and

you're down souls from the wave and your lane partner is getting dove. Roam at the right time, you end up getting a

kill worth about 7 to 800 souls and you lose nothing. The difference between a good roam and a bad roam comes down to

understanding one thing and that being waves. My name is Pasha Pop. I've played Deadlock competitively for over two

years now and have ranked one on North American leaderboards several times and in today's video we're going to break

down the science behind roaming and ganking in Deadlock. The wave mechanics, the timing, the math, and how to

actually execute it. Before we get into the nitty-gritty about roaming, I need to explain to you how in my opinion

waves are the heartbeat of Deadlock. Waves in Deadlock are groups of minions that start from your base on the zip

line, drop in the lane, and move towards enemy structures. Every wave that spawns in Deadlock provides three things:

souls, pressure, and information. And here's why these three things matter. First, waves are one of the most

efficient sources of souls in Deadlock. Each trooper is worth 116 plus 1.16 souls per minute of game time. There are

four troopers per wave, so if we estimate our game time to be about five minutes, you end up getting a whole

entire wave worth about 487.2 souls. These waves are spawning every 30 seconds in the game and if you miss one,

they're gone forever. They're not jungle camps in the context of they're there permanently forever until you clear

them. When you lose a wave, it's gone forever. Souls are your XP and gold in MOBA terms in Deadlock. They give you

boons which are basically your modern-day levels in Deadlock and they let you buy items. When you lose a wave

or some kind of source of souls, you lose everything. You don't just lose the ability to buy items, you lose your

power as a hero. Second important point about waves, waves push into structures. When you shove a wave in Deadlock, the

wave will march to the enemy guardian, and then the enemy walker, enemy base guardians, enemy shrine, and then

finally at the end, the enemy patron. If the enemy does not clear their wave, their structures will face inevitable

damage. And in Deadlock, losing structures is pivotal. You lose gold, they get a flex slot, you lose map

control, you lose so many things with losing your structures on the map. So, what we can say is that the enemy has an

incentive to clear the waves to defend their structures. And the last point, waves give vision and map control. Your

troopers extend the reach of your zipline, and the farther your zipline goes, the more control of the map that

you have. Troopers also give you vision of the enemy. So, let's say an enemy hero walks past a wave, your troopers

will have vision of that, and you'll be able to detect any oncoming threats that are trying to run past your wave, right?

Now that you understand how waves are the heartbeat of Deadlock, let's look at how now we can use waves to project

where the enemy will be on the map. The key insight that makes roaming work and your roaming consistent is the idea that

waves are a point of interest, a POI, for the enemy. Because waves are so valuable, the enemies must show up to

catch them. They lose the souls and their structures take damage if they neglect these waves. This means every

time the wave spawns, you know where the enemy's going to be at, and they're going to be at the wave, right? Another

thing to think about is when a wave crashes into a guardian, someone has to be there. They can't just ignore the 500

or 600 or 700 souls that you get from the wave based on game time and the damage that their structure takes. It is

simply not ignorable to any extent. Now, the stakes of taking a guardian are very low, right? The enemy doesn't lose that

much when they lose their guardian. However, losing a walker means the enemy's going to get a massive soul

boost of 4,000 souls to unlock a flex slot and way more map control than what the guardian provided, right? So, when a

wave is on an enemy walker, the stakes are so much more higher and they are quite literally forced to respond to

that wave on their walker. The risk, however, to playing any wave that is attacking a objective is that you're

under their objective, right? So, if you accidentally take the approach with the guardian or the walker, wherever you're

at, right? Incorrectly and do the ganking correctly, you could just get one shot by the walker stomp. However,

everything that we discussed here is the foundation of every gank in a MOBA. You simply know where the enemy now needs to

be at to an extent with waves and structures. Now, you can use this to set up ganks for yourself easier. But, that

is not the only thing we have to discuss here about waves. The next topic I want to discuss are wave timers, that being

your roam window. If you've ever played League of Legends or Dota, you've probably heard of the word roam timer

and Deadlock has the exact same concept. Understanding it is what separates players who roam effectively to players

who roam poorly. Now, there are two timers that you need to think about after you clear or shove your wave. The

first timer being enemy wave clear time. From the moment your wave crashes into the enemies side of the lane on their

guardian or their walker, the enemy has to clear it, as we stated prior. This is your first window. A full four trooper

wave can take from five to 10 seconds to clear depending on your hero. The reason that this timer is important is that

this timer is basically the amount of time that you have to begin or start your roam because while the enemy is

clearing the troopers, they are unable to do anything, right? They're stuck there clearing the troopers while

perhaps you're taking the vent to another lane to begin your roam. The next timer is timer number two, next

wave arrival. After both waves are cleared, you can expect the next wave to come soon. In the early game, 0 to 20

minutes, waves spawn every 30 seconds. After 20 minutes, the waves now respawn every 25 seconds. And after 35 minutes,

the waves respawn every 20 seconds. So, your total roam window in the early game is essentially the first timer, the

enemy clear wave time, plus the next wave arrival time. And obviously, you can extend your roam a little past both

of these timers, as long as you understand the implication of the fact that you're going to lose priority, that

means control of the wave, if you don't show up back in the lane when the next wave has arrived. And why is it a

concern to lose priority in your lane? Well, assuming you're still roaming, it could mean that the laner in which you

left gets dived. It could mean that they roam. It could mean that they steal your camps, senders, invade your jungle,

right? There's a lot of implications with giving the enemy free wave shove. And also, maybe they have the wave shove

to kill you on your way back from the roam, right? The next thing we'll be talking about, now that we understand

wave timers, is how to properly set up the roam. The most standard way of ganking in Deadlock is what I like to

call the crash and roam. The approach is simple, and we kind of talked about this a little briefly when we talked about

wave timers. You clear the wave as fast as possible. Your surviving troopers crash into the enemy guardian, and then

you leave for your roam while the enemy has to deal with your troopers under their guardian. The faster you can clear

your wave, the sooner that your timer will begin. And you will have the standard 25-35 second timer that we

talked about a little prior. Obviously, once again, there's heroes or certain methods of clearing the wave that will

make it quicker or slower, depending, right? You punch the wave, you use abilities in the wave, it'll go by much

quicker than if you're page left clicking the wave, right? Another important thing to roaming in Deadlock

is reading the wave states in the other lanes, especially if you're in mid lane, which we'll talk about later as to why

that's important. Before you go for any gank in Deadlock, you should heavily consider the wave state in the lanes

that you're considering the gank. For example, if the enemy is pushed up towards your allies, objectives, walker,

structure, whatever, right? It's good because the enemy laner is overextended and far from their walker, far from

their guardian, far from whatever, right? Very easy gank. Now, let's say our wave is pushed up to the enemy

walker or enemy guardian, this is still gankable but riskier with a higher reward. The reason that this is riskier

is because you're diving next to their structures. The reason that this is more rewarding is because the wave is under

their structure. So, if you manage to kill them while the wave is under their walker or guardian or whatever, right?

They will lose the wave because it's going to dive to the structure, right? And if waves are in the middle, this is

very standard, nothing really special going on there. You just need to consider the enemy heroes. For example,

if wave is in the middle and they have a wraith, there's probably no chance you're going to kill them if their

guardian is up. If their guardian is gone, perhaps it's possible, right? Now that we talked about how to set up the

gank, let's talk about how to execute the gank. When we think about executing the gank, we need to look at it through

two perspectives, the ganker, you, the person rotating, and the lane ally, the person that is receiving the gank, the

ally, you know, the hero that's there to help you, assuming that there's someone there, right? When any hero is ganking

in Dead Lock, there are four things. You can think of it as a ganker's checklist that you need to consider. First, who am

I ganking? Am I ganking Paige, a hero with no mobility? Am I ganking Wraith with teleport? Am I ganking Shiv with

infinite shotgun movement? Who am I ganking and what are the implications of that? Second, how am I going to engage?

What is the catalyst for the gank? What do I have in my kit as the ganker to guarantee damage or some kind of kill?

Third, what's my angle? Am I coming from behind the enemy? Am I coming from high ground? Am I going to sit in a veil and

wait for them to walk up? Am I going to have my teammate bait them to walk up in the lane? How am I actually going to get

an angle on the enemy? And fourth, what is their HP? What's their resources? Do they have alts? Do they have health? Are

they missing stamina? Did they burn an important cool down, right? Do a full checklist of their resources. Now,

that's it for the ganker. Let's think about the allies role when it comes to the gank. If you're someone receiving a

gank in a lane, your job is to follow up with the gank, obviously, and help cut off their escape if possible. You need

to think about what you have in your kit. If you happen to be playing a hero like Abrams and you're receiving a gank,

use your shoulder charge to follow up on whatever CC, if your ganker does have CC, to ensure, you know, chain CC'ing

the enemy so that you can lock them down for longer and get more guaranteed damage off. If you aren't a hero that

has CC, and let's say you're playing something like Infernos without ultimate, your job is just primarily

focus on dealing damage with whatever setup your ganker has. You know, maybe your ganker's Abrams, he pins them to a

wall, you Catalyst Flame Dash burn them as Infernos and he dies. And you should actively be communicating with your

ganker to see if perhaps you need to do something for him in order to make the gank successful. Like, for example, some

gankers will need their ally hero to walk up a little bit in the lane to bait the enemy when the ganker is in

position, right? So, the enemy gets baited, walks forward, and dies. Let's talk about some hero specific examples

in the context of ganking. Let's say your ganking is Warden as this hero, you want to try to bait out enemy stamina by

throwing out chemical flasks, perhaps fighting them a little bit to make them stam away. And then, as soon as they

have burned whatever movement abilities or stamina that they have, you throw your binding word on them, locking them

down, guaranteeing it because they're out of movement resources, setting up the gank perfectly. Hayes is pretty

simple. You go invis, pop your sleep dagger, enemy's asleep, sets up the gank perfectly fine. Where a lot of people

will go wrong with ganking as Hayes is they will wake up the enemy before your hero is in position for the gank. So,

make sure you coordinate with your ally when you're ganking as Hayes so that they can get into position ASAP while

they're sleeping. Abrams is a pretty simple one that we've talked about quite a bit. As Abrams, usually you need like

Phantom Strike or Warp Zone, but assuming that you don't have these items, you usually want to approach the

gank from the behind. That being facing the enemy's back with the enemy facing away from you so that you can get a nice

shoulder pin off into your ally into a wall stunning them setting up the gank perfectly. Now, I do want to talk a

little bit about the contrary, like the hero that you are ganking, right? So, for example, classic example, Wraith.

Wraith is a very difficult hero to gank because of her Project Mind, you know, her teleport. When that's maxed, it gets

to a 12-second cooldown. So, how are you supposed to gank this Wraith? There's two ways that you can approach the

ganking of Wraith with her teleport available. The first way you can approach it is baiting out her teleport.

So, let's say you want to gank Wraith, right? And you have an allied Infernus laying against her. Perhaps one thing

that you could do as the ganker is communicate to the allied Infernus to force the enemy Wraith to teleport away

so you can come gank. Maybe the Infernus flame dashes out her, maybe the Infernus fights her, whatever the Infernus can do

if he even can, he can bait out the teleport for you so you can make the gank possible as it's not possible if

she has teleport. Another approach is itemization. So, we can buy items like Silence Wave, Slowing Hex, Curse to

prevent the Wraith from teleporting giving us a window to lock her down with our CC whether we're playing Abrams,

Warden, you know, Hayes and effectively hopefully killing her before her teleport becomes available with whatever

item we use to silence that movement spell. Now, we talked about how to execute the roam, the timers, when to

roam, all that good jazz. Let's talk about when you don't want to roam. Not every moment in Deadlock is a roam

opportunity. It is important to identify when exactly in the game it is a bad time to roam. The first indicator of

when it's a bad time to roam is when the enemy wave is pushing into you. If the enemy wave is about to crash on your

side, you need to catch up. Leaving now means you lose the whole entire enemy wave, risking your walker, your

guardian, or whatever, and you don't have a crashed wave on the enemy side, giving you that roam timer, right? As we

talked about prior. The second indicator is, let's say, the enemy is full HP under their walker. Unless you have a

very coordinated plan on how to kill this guy, or you're super far ahead, you're most likely not going to be able

to gank a guy full HP under his walker. Don't get me wrong, it's still really possible, you just need to think about

the situation much more deeper. It's not free. Third indicator, if the enemy can see your rotation, the gank most likely

will not be good because the enemy will call that out, and the gank will be predictable. The fourth indicator is, if

you have a really good feeling that your lane partner will get dove. If you think that's the case, most likely you

shouldn't probably roam because your guy is going to die 2 v 1, unless he is extremely confident in his own

capability to hold down the lane, right? So, you need to think deeply about your lane match-up, your match-up, your

heroes, and the implications of that when it comes to roaming. And the last indicator is if you don't have a plan.

If you have no idea why you're roaming, if you don't know how you're going to roam, if you don't know where you're

roaming, most likely you shouldn't do it because your roams need to be thought ahead. One of the most important things

when it comes to roaming, as we mentioned, is the timers, which is basically dictated by how quickly you

can do this roam, right? And then essence, movement, which is the next thing that we'll be talking about. About

movement, guys, so roam is only as good as how quickly you can execute it, right? You have certain windows that you

need to play within, and if you spend too much of your time, you know, moving around like a slug around the map, right

guys? You're not going to be able to execute on the roam as effectively as other players, right? So, there's four

movement techs that I want to talk about when it comes to roaming. They're not specifically techs, they're kind of just

ideas, I suppose, and some of them are techs, but first being vents. The vents in Deadlock are scattered across the

whole entire map, and they allow heroes from lanes to roam to other lanes. They're specifically placed and designed

in that way. So, if you don't know where every vent in Deadlock is, and you want to roam, that is a massive problem. You

need to familiarize yourself with all the vents locations on the map, and the best way to go about doing that is to go

explore in YC. Perhaps you hop in a custom with some friends, explore the map. However you want to go about it,

you need to memorize all of these vents locations, period. Another important movement fundamental to consider when

you're ganking are zip lines, and specifically the movement tech that you can do on zip lines. You can crouch off

of the zip lines and dash to give yourself a bunch of momentum off the zip line and fly across the map. So, if

you're ever considering on, you know, maybe going from mid to left side, you should start with the zip line to dash

off the zip line to have that huge velocity boost. The third roaming movement fundamental are teleporters.

These are scattered across the whole entire map, and in my opinion, they're only really applicable if you're ganking

from a side lane to another side lane. You know, if you're trying to gang from left lane to right lane, you can use the

teleporters to get to whatever side you're trying to go to. People often times don't think that these side lanes

are connected to one another, but indeed they are. The teleporters are very heavily under utilized from what I have

seen in the countless bot reviews that I have done in Deadlock. And the last movement idea to consider when you're

roaming and ganking are movement fundamentals and movement techs, which all of them apply, right? Sliding after

dashes, wall bouncing for free momentum, edge boosting, mantle slide, all that great stuff. I talked more about this in

my how to move like a pro Deadlock video. And there's obviously a lot of other fantastic resources out there on

YouTube. Highly recommend for you to become really good at movement if you plan on roaming. And the way that I

recommend for people to get better at movement when I'm coaching is I simply recommend hopping the explore NYC for a

few days, practice movement, practice what you see in videos, practice some cool tech you saw some streamer do, and

just keep going and going and going. And after a few days, hopefully a few weeks, you should just be better at movement.

That's what I at least did anecdotally. Now, so we've talked about movement, there's one last important thing that

I'd like to talk about when it comes down to roaming. And that is the idea of the mid lane being the best lane to roam

from in Deadlock. And this is in part why top teams put their roamer, their holiday, their be a popular role,

whatever, in the mid lane. If you didn't know, mid lane is the shortest lane in Deadlock, and the distance between the

mid guardians is shorter than the distance in the side lane. And that means that your wave has to travel less

of a distance to the enemy guardian, meaning that you can start your roam quicker because the wave crashes faster,

right? In mid lane, your wave will arrive to the lane before any of the waves arrive to the side lanes. That

means that by the time you start your roam, people are still playing for wave priority in the other lanes, which is

perfect. You know what I mean? People are center, and prio's only beginning to shape out, and the waves won't be fully

cleared by the time that you get to the lane you're trying to roam to. Because mid lane is the center of the map, you

have equal access to each side of the map, meaning that you can gank left, you can gank right without any difference,

essentially, right? You have vents that go both sides, it's no problem. Now, because mid lane is so threatening to

roam from, there's this idea behind roaming, which people haven't quite incorporated yet, which is a big thing

in League of Legends. When you just are not on vision, right? So, by not showing on vision in mid lane and roaming and

potentially going for a gank, that creates a lot of chaos in the enemy team comms, right? And you can even do this

from a side lane, right? Just fake roam. This is an idea that if you're able to explore it yourself enough could make

you a very, very strong roaming player in the current deadlock meta or player pool, whatever you want to call it, I

guess. So, by simply getting wave prio in mid lane and threatening a roam, you can threaten both side lanes and force

both side laners to back up because they don't know which lane's going to get ganked, right? The ganker could either

go left, could go right. It's just infinite pressure for your side lanes if you fake this gank from mid lane. Now,

let's put everything together and let's do the whole roam flowchart from step one to step six. Step one, shove your

wave. Kill the enemy wave and let your troopers push into the enemy guardian. Your roam timer starts at that moment.

Step two, look at the map. Which lanes are gankable? Are the enemies pushed up? Are they low HP? Do your allies have CC

to follow up? What's the status of all the other lanes and their cool downs and their health? Step three, check your

kit. How are you going to do the gank? Do you have CC? Do you have enough HP? Do you have your abilities off cool

down, right? What do you have in your kits to make the gank work? Step four, move to where you're trying to gank. Use

the teleporters, use the zip line movement, use vents, use movement tech to get wherever you're trying to go as

quick as possible. Step five, execute. Engage from the angle in which you planned in step three. Combo your

abilities with the allies abilities. Most of this is kind of done in step three, like when you're thinking about

your kit and planning it out. This is just the execution part and remembering what you planned in step three. And now

step six, get out, right? Don't spend too long in the roam. Go, do your thing. Now I need to go back. You can shove the

wave if you want before you leave. Just keep in mind, you might three-way split that. That might be bad, right?

Depending on what your team wants or what the vibes are like, but get out, finish your gank, don't stay there too

long. Enough talk about the roaming. I want to roam over and highlight the support that you guys have shown the

channel which have allowed me and the go editor GoRepLyte, to continue making these videos. Thank you all so much for

the YouTube memberships and Death Realm Academy sign-ups. If you aren't familiar with Death Realm Academy, that is an

academy ran by me and the beloved Deffy. We do ward review raffles, master classes of heroes, support coaching,

performance coaching. We have so many coaches and so many resources. We even have a dashboard, guys. So, if you're

interested in checking out Death Realm Academy, which I highly recommend for you to, click the link in the

description and use code Poshy10 for 10% off your first month. Thank you all for the support once again, and let's get

back right into the video. Some quick extra tips before we conclude. You always, while you're ganking, want to be

monitoring the HP bars of your allies and the enemies during your gank, right? The enemies being one HP could be the

condition for the gank, and the enemies being full HP could be the condition on not to gank, right? Communication, when

you are ganking, is massive. And if you're not communicating with your other lanes, or the lane that you're leaving,

or whatever, right? The gank most likely won't go well. It is one of the most important things in all of Dead Realm to

have your active gankers, or your roamers, or whatever you want to call them, communicating with your team their

intentions and what they want to do. Make sure, as you're ganking and roaming, you're grabbing boxes as you're

doing these ganks, as often times they are in like the way of your gank. Like, as you're roaming from mid lane to left

lane, there's a bunch of boxes on the way. You might as well just kind of grab some as you're going. Don't go too out

of your way, but get the ones that are convenient, right? Don't force the ganks. If you think it's a bad gank and

it doesn't look good, there's no need to overforce it, right? Now, in the context of limit testing, I highly recommend for

you to overforce the gank so that you can kind of just understand where the limits are of heroes, like Holiday

Paradox, roaming heroes, right? But, if you already understand your limits very well, do not force when you think it's

really bad. And because you now have all this knowledge of ganking and roaming, you should make an active effort for

your team when you notice that your laner or perhaps another laner is roaming, right? If you can give your

team that information that, "Hey, my laner's actually roaming. You guys need to be careful." That would save

potentially one of your lanes from just going out berserk, right? And losing the lane and losing their guardian, maybe

game loss from that, right? So guys, roaming is a pretty complicated thing, but it is one of the most impactful

things that you can do in Deadlock. And a lot of times when I'm coaching people is something that they lack. And all

heroes can do this. Even if you're not on holiday, Vindicator can do this, Abrams, Moe. All heroes in Deadlock can

roam. It's just a matter of how you execute the roam, who you're roaming with, who you're roaming to, and all

that good jazz. So guys, if you enjoyed the video, make sure to like, subscribe, comment your thoughts, all that great

jazz. More Deadlock content coming soon. And if you want to learn one of the most important strategies when it comes to

generating souls in Pro Play, click this video on your screen.