Mastering Side Lane Strategy in Deadlock Against Stronger Opponents

In Deadlock, it's quite difficult to side lane against heroes that are stronger than you. In this game here, I

did drop a nuclear bomb. As you can see me, E6 lobby, nuclear bomb, but the game was actually pretty tough. At a point, I

was sidelaning against a wraith that had 2k more souls than me, that beats me in a 1 v one, that had better spikes than

me. And what we're going to do today is kind of dive deep into a certain thing that I did side laning against a wraith

in a 1v one that actually led me to winning this game. So, if you enjoyed the video, make sure to drop a like. If

you didn't like the video, make sure to tell me why. And let's not waste any more time and just kind of get right

into this whole entire situation. One of the most important things to do in any game of Deadlock is to identify your

role within the team comp. Roles are pretty broad. There's no list of, oh, here's all the rules in Deadlock. It's

more so of your job. So, when I look at this game here, I'm the seven. So, as you can see, this is me right here, and

we're looking at the Emmy Wraith. Right now, if we look at me as seven, and we look at all of our heroes, Abrams is a

hero that likes to fight early in the mid. McInness is often times played as support. Sinclair is like this tempo

early to midame hero. Victor is a late game scaler, but can also tempo in the midame. And Shiv is a early to midame

tempo hero as well. So my role within this team comp because I'm playing seven and because of the heroes that exist

within my team comp, our role within this team comp is late game carry. Very common thing in seven, you know, to play

it as a late game win condition. Wraith's role within our team comp. So if we go through the heroes, Mo and Crow

is a pick hero. Lash is an early to midame tempo hero. Dynamo is kind of a support hero, but can play early to mid

game. And we have these three heroes. So Wraith can be played as a lateg game scaler or tempoer. Mirage can be played

as a lateg game scaler or tempoer. Warding can be played as a lateg game scaler or tempoer. So what we say about

Wraith's role within her team comp is Wraith's role within her team comp can be a late game carry, but there are

heroes that exist that can also play for that. For example, Warden or Mirage. So she can play kitten or she can play

Thanos. So Wraith's role is pretty broad in this sense. So why does role matter? Well, role in Deadlock usually

associates with how you're going to play the game. If you're playing a support hero in Deadlock, you're going to look

to support your allies. If you're playing an early to midame tempo hero, you're going to play in the early to mid

game. If you're playing a late game scaler, you're probably going to focus on farming for most of the game. So, the

goals and objective of seven, given his role within the team comp, is to play safe and scale in most situations. And

this is very, very, very situational. This is not the fine rule. This is not like some kind of divine law. This is a

very situational statement, but for the most part, we can assume that seven being in the situation is going to play

safe to scale in most situations. Now, Wraith's role is a little complicated in a way. So, the goals and objective of

Wraith given her role within the team comp is first what we need to identify is there's a bit of a net worth

disparity going on. So, she has 14k souls while all of her other heroes have about 2k souls or more or less than her.

So, because of that, she can play to tempo and fight in this current situation as she is strong or she can

play as a late game scaler because she's raved. And what I mean by tempo, by the way, I've been saying this word quite a

bit in the video so far, is to fight more within the early to mid game. So, that's what I mean with tempo. So, she

can play the fight early to mid or she can play the late game scale. It's not as one-dimensional as seen in this case.

So what are we supposed to do in this situation? This Wraith has more souls. She can play the fight. She can play the

scale. What are we supposed to do in this situation here where we are siding against Wraith? Well, what we need to do

is we need to analyze the situation even further. First, we need to look at the matchup. Now, what I say here is I say

we need to identify that we are weaker and that Wraith beats seven in a 1 v one. Now, this knowledge is very

difficult to kind of obtain if you're new to the deadlock, but if you have a lot of hours like me, it's very easy to

identify these kind of things. And what I kind of did here for you guys is I kind of broke down my reasoning as to

why Wraith is better than seven in a 1v one. So, the first reason is her ability spikes are stronger right now. So, this

is Wraith's um ability point order, which matters a lot. You should be checking this a lot during your games.

And this is my ability point order. So if we kind of look, Wraith has uh three points in her cards, max level card.

Level two card is 50 damage. Max card is 50% card summon rate uh rate and she also has level two full auto. Level two

full auto is a five flat damage per bullet. Now if we look at my abilities is seven. I have two points ball max

power search surge. Two points ball. I mean I only get one charge my ball which Wraith gets on her level one. So it's

really not anything that different. And I guess I also get a movement speed slow on my ball. Cool. and fry power surge.

Um, I get the minus 15% spirit resist for eight seconds and plus 12 shock damage with improved spirit scaling. So

clearly clearly if you look at these abilities and you look at where Wraith is at and where I'm at, just given our

ability spikes, our ability point upgrades, her ability point upgrades are much stronger at this state of the game

than mine. And they're much more suited for 1v ones. And the reason for that is flat damage for the most part. Wraith

has more flat damage ability point upgrades than I do. One thing I would like to know is these things are always

changing throughout the game and they're very situational based on the hero. So maybe at one point in the early to mid

game, Wraith is actually weaker than seven. Maybe at one point in the late game, Wraith is stronger. These things

can vary and are very volatile and they're not very uh concrete. You need to pay very close attention to how

people are putting their points into their abilities, what they got, what hero they're playing, all that good

jazz. Another thing we need to look at to identify why Wraith is stronger than me in this current moment is her

investment spikes. So, as you guys may have known from the Deathy and Metro controversy, there's these things about

4.8K investment spikes. When you hit these spikes, you get a massive boost in power, whether it's spirit, gun, or

metro's favorite green. So, as we can see here, I kind of drew a red line a little bit where the 4.8k investment

spike lies. And Wraith has her spirit and gun 4.8K AK investment, while I only have my gun and no spirit investment.

What this kind of means is Wraith is better spiked in her investments than I am at this point in the game, which

makes her stronger. So, when we compound this with this ability spike, she also has the investment spikes. It's kind of

becoming much more clear that Wraith is better spike than I am right now and stronger. Depending on your knowledge of

the game, guys, you can easily kind of predict when these heroes are going to hit their certain spikes. So, for

example, I have a very popular wraith build. It's Osis Wraith. And what Osis does is Osis rushes his 4.8k spirit

investment and then he rushes his 4.8K gun investment. So, we know that in the first like 10 minutes of the game,

Wraith is going to be spiked through gun and spirit. But if we look at seven, seven hits his gun spike quite early,

but hits his spirit spike quite later on in the build, not as early as Wraith. So what I recommend is kind of this kind of

like a side advice. I recommend for you to kind of look at all the builds for all the heroes, learn what top players

and just people in general are doing on these heroes and try to kind of predict like, okay, oh, Wraith is going to have

her spirit spike very early on into the game. I need to be careful. or maybe in seven in this case, seven's Osa's build,

which is a very popular seven build, he doesn't hit his 4.8k spirit spike until later. So against sevens, generally I

should keep a close eye on when they're hitting their investment spike for spirit. The third thing to identify as

to why Wraith is stronger than seven is quite literally in a 1v one, Wraith has advantage because Wraith ultimate

counters seven ultimate. So telekinesis when you go hold them or whatever wraith says if seven storm clouds during her

telekinesis the storm cloud will get cancelceled or if seven ultimates uses storm cloud wraith can cancel with

telekinesis and telekinesis is a very strong 1v one ability which will get into my next point but the situational

matchup for seven and wraith is much more favored for wraith than it is seven and my last point guys I mean Valve kind

of spells it out for us here wraith fundamentally as a hero is is a better dueler. I know this is kind of like LAR.

Well, sometimes they lie and it's not representative. I mean, guys, Valve literally says Wraith is a duelist. Any

any Valerant players out there, duelist and isolator? Seven is Ariads are not denial. Wraith fundamentally is just a

better dueler. So, like she's going to have advantage. One thing I should add really quick here, this is assuming that

we're both alone. If I have a hero with me, I won't be as scared, right? But if I'm alone, which this situation we're

assuming that I'm alone, I need to be under my walk. Okay, so what are we supposed to do then if Wraith is going

to kill us in a sideelane 1v one? If she's stronger, she's more spiked, her alt counters my alt, like it's

impossible for me to walk up. If I were to do what I do here in this little screenshot where it says bad, I will

die. You see this little peo like the death? Look, I would be dead. But if I can somehow get myself positioned under

my walker, you see how I'm all happy? It's because the walker will give me protection. Not only will the walker

like attack the wraith if she tries walking up, but it'll also provide me with 15% bull resist and spear resist.

So, I kind of want me to be under the walkers against Wraith. How How are we going to do this? What a normal player

would do in this situation. You see this? This is before, right? So, the wave would crash the middle for each

side. So, our wave would be in middle, Wraith's wave would be in middle. Wraith would clear the wave while we center our

walker. So, neutral wave state, enemy shuff's wave. The wave will move to my walker and I'm under my walker safe. I

clear the wave and then we reset back to neutral state. So, then the next wave comes the middle. The problem with this

guys, the reason it's so bad is because of what I say here. Remember, there is risk of dying when the wave is in the

middle. So when we're when we're in this neutral state here and the wave is in the middle, this is a very like risky

position because if we have to walk up to clear any of these minions, Wraith can just kill us. So let's go back to

what I said. Remember, there's risk of dying when the wave is in the middle. We have to walk past our walker into the

middle of the lane where we are not protected by our walker. So you may not get punished for doing this in like

initiate or whatever, but in the higher ranks, the wraith will punish you every single time. So now what the Eternis 10

player would do, this is after enlightenment as you can see. Enlightened enlightenment neutral wave

state wave is in the middle. Enemy shoves the wave. So Wraith clears the creeps. The wave moves to your walker.

And now this is where things get a little different. This is where enlightenment begins. So instead of

clearing the wave, we hold the wave. Hold the wave. What the heck? Why would you ever do that? So, we hold the wave

and then the next wave arrives because this wave is going to block these minions from moving forward because

there's this wave right here. So, the our minions are going to fight this wave and then as a result, the next wave will

be closer to our walker. Now, we can clear the double wave and potentially freeze your wave as in the these two

minions here to deny creeps, forcing the wraith to walk up under the walker, the safety of our walker. If Wraith walks up

to this wave, she is entering an area in which she has disadvantage close to your walker, making this unfavorable for her

as it was unfavorable for you to walk up to the center of the lane. And as you can see here, this is you after

enlightenment. And then we reset back to neutral. Right? So essentially what we are doing is we are using wave

manipulation, curse technique, wave manipulation to create a situation in which you are in favorable space in an

unfavorable matchup forcing the wraith into unfavorable space. That is enlightenment. And what I have for you

guys is an example, an in-game example. And we're actually going to look at the game all the way back up here where I

did this. How did I how did I do it in this game? Let's let's get right into that, shall we? So, lo and behold, here

I am. Maharaga, exactly at the time that we had in the screenshot, 12:26. Here, Wraith is in the center lane. We know we

can't walk up. So, we let her push the wave into us. Here comes the wave. And as me seven, I'm running these boxes

while I'm waiting for this wave to come in. So, I see this wave and I of course identify the situation. And as you can

see here, I cleared one creep and I walk to take these boxes. And as we can see here, these minions are not moving

forward because they're killing the uh the wave. And now this wave instead of it instead of it being all the way over

here in the center of the lane, it is closer to my walker. And now I'm clearing it under the safety of my

walker. And you can see this the happens again. So we'll speed up here. Wraith clears the wave. I see the wave coming

in. I'm running some boxes letting this wave come in. And I don't clear the wave or anything.

I'm just running the boxes. >> Under attack. >> And I actually do something here that I

didn't put in the white board, but I let one of these creeps die so I can have vision if Wraith is here or not. So this

creep right here that walks up, I let this guy die. And because no soul orb deny appears, I instantly go to clear

the wave to know I'm in safety. And now this wave here is close to my walker. It's down in the center of the lane and

I am in a favorable situation. So guys, I appreciate you sticking through this video. I hope that what you learned

today will help you climb the ranks in Deadlock and become Omega Thanos. So if you like what you saw, drop a like. If

you didn't like it, put a comment calling me a fat poo poo head. And yeah, guys, I hope you enjoyed the video. Make

sure to subscribe for more content like this. And I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your day. Bye-bye

everyone, and I'll see you in the next video. Happy New Year's.