Mastering Spirit Investment Thresholds in Deadlock: Strategies and Key Insights

This video is a cut-down version of a class Poshy gave on Deslam Academy, a community founded by Desi for players

who want to improve at Deadlock. To watch the entire class and take part in upcoming ones, sign up with the link

below using code Poshy10 at checkout. To get into spirit investment threshold, let's just start very basic. What makes

spirit investment threshold so strong? Two, are there any downsides to rushing the spirit investment threshold? And

then, the most OP heroes. So, these are the three questions that I kind of want to start our analysis into the spirit

investment threshold. So, first, like what makes the spirit investment threshold so strong? Now, I'll write

some answers down. So, Froggy says flat damage increase. Uh downside Joe Bone says downside is many heroes like Ven

are squishy for the first five to six minutes. Froggy says less sustain. Uh scaling for certain abilities like Ven's

life and Viper venom go crazy in lane. The nature of spirits, like to use spirit on most characters, well, there

isn't a character in Deadlock that like increases I think gun damage. Well, there actually might This might be a

self-expose. I think there might be a hero that increases their base gun damage off of spirit. I just don't know

the exact hero. But anyways, 99% of heroes in Deadlock, their spirit goes directly to their abilities. So, yeah,

Talon. Yeah, yeah, Talon. Talon's it. So, 99% of heroes in Deadlock, their spirit goes to abilities. And abilities

naturally are bursty. Like, sure, there's some abilities like, I don't know, Viper slide that you can actively

use over and over and over and there's no limit to the cool down. But in general, are bursty. Like, cool downs

are bursty. You throw Warden flask, you wait, that's burst. So, the idea of spirit, no matter the way you look at

it, is just for burst. How I like to think of it is like spirit are like mages in League of Legends, if you guys

have ever played that game. Historically, they didn't really scale the best compared to ADCs. I need to

clarify this. I hate League of Legends. Some mages or most mages. So, what this means is the spirit builds almost always

fall off as the game goes on. So, what we can say then, guys, about spirit and spirit in general is spirit builds are

builds that inherently are strong in the early to mid game. Obviously, if you're a 100k souls by 30 minutes, then they're

strong late. But, assuming even net worth, this is true. So, what I want for you guys to take away then from this

kind of um idea is this point here. This is what you can apply in your games. So, when you are playing a hero that invests

quite heavily in the spirit investment category, please make sure you are playing the game high activity {slash}

more than you would in the early to mid where your impact is higher. Whenever you see someone in a hero that

conventionally does spirit builds, you should be thinking about the fact that these heroes are going to be playing

more high activity in the early to mid game. This is a very important takeaway in my opinion for spirit investment

thresholds just in general. Yeah, Vic Victor's like the only exception. Victor's like like weird. For a hybrid

build, if I would want to pivot from spirit to gun, when is the best time to do so? So, I want I want you to try to

answer that question actually. I try to hit my spike then check team comp like 15 minutes in. Is that too late? So,

what you're saying is like, okay, I'm building spirit as Viper, then I check my team comp 15 minutes in to see if I

need to pivot from spirit to gun. I don't think that's too late. No. I think I think it's fine to pivot your build

because most builds what they do in Deadlock is they rush their investment threshold. So, as Viper, you're going to

rush your spirit, you're going to rush your gun, you're going to rush your health. And then by around that time,

that should be about 15 minutes into the game. And then from there, you can analyze like what's going on with your

team, what each person is building and whatnot, what does your team need more, and then you pivot from there. I mean,

spirit Viper and gun Viper are two completely different ways to play the character, but I would say that I would

say that gun pivot always is usually better if you can play it well, though. If you're like a spirit Viper main and

you can't play gun, stick stick with spirit, you know, for most cases and only pivot to gun when you need to.

Siego spirit plus gun, no green investment on Wraith a lot, but is that just to improve your PvE or are you

trying to be active? So, yes, that is true. I go my spirit and then I go my gun investment, but what's important to

understand is I'm playing respective to my spikes. So, the reason that I do that is because I'm forced to. First, I need

Cult to Sacrifice by eight minutes. So, when we think of the time between one to like like one to eight minutes, I can

hit like in my spirit like maybe here, and then I can hit my gun like here. And then when we think about the efficiency

of okay, we say let's say we go spirit investment, then Cult to Sacrifice, then green investment, then gun investment.

Like in context of efficiency, this can be a little awkward, right? So, let's say we're getting our spirit investment.

Let's say we get our Cult to Sacrifice to get it by eight minutes cuz we have to get it by eight minutes usually on

Wraith. And then like let's say we want to pivot to our green to like get health and then gun investment. Do you see how

like doing something like this instead where you just go straight gun to green after getting Cultist is easier because

you can just take your 1600 away from hitting your gun spike. Now, I don't want you guys really to think like this

every single game. It is actually valid to go the green investment then the gun investment if you need. Like for

example, what I did in one scrim yesterday is I actually did exactly this. But the green investment, I built

some debuff remover because there was a haze that had selling hex on the enemy team. So, I needed a debuff remover for

that. What's the normal timing for spirit spike? Isn't it pre-eight minutes? Yes. Usually Usually before

eight minutes, you're going to get your spirit spike. All right, we're done with this part. So, now the second

part that I want to talk about is are there any downsides to rushing the spirit investment threshold? So, what

you guys said is that you're squishy for the first five to six minutes. Well, let me write up this follow-up question.

What items can help the downsides to rushing spirit investment thresholds? Does anyone know? We said we're squishy

for the first five to six minutes and that we have less sustain. So, are there any items that we can build in the

pursuit of getting spirit investment threshold that would give us more health, maybe give us regen, maybe give

us some kind of sustain? Yeah, and these items are really really really important to understand because essentially, think

about it for a second. If you can find items in Deadlock that are really good for your character that kind of give you

some kind of sustain, that give you health, that give you something that you're missing, then there is no

downside really to rushing the 4.8k spirit investment threshold. And I have a specific example with this note here

that I wrote down for myself. So, uh Daltwit said mystic regen. Yeah, so mystic regen, usually people don't buy

mystic regen alone. They usually build it into radiant regen, which is a very common item on like Shiv, Geist, Yamato.

Improve spirit. Yeah, improve spirit's a really good one. VRS gives bonus health, suppressor, rusted depending on lane.

Suppressor, we'll just say suppressor cuz rusted The thing with rusted is usually uh this is going to be another

thing. Usually when you're rushing your 4.8k spirit spike, rarely do builds ever have 800s in the pursuit of rushing the

4.8k spirit spike because you're eventually going to have to sell those items because you're going to be slot

locked. The most common combination you see with items to rush your 4.8k spirit spike are like 1600, 3200, or three sets

of 1600s. So, for example, on Wraith here, you can see that this build we rushed three 1600 purples. And then I

mean, we can probably look at say Lady Geist build as well. Right here, this one. So, Deathy, he builds the radiant

regen and then the Bolvar's Shredder. The extra charge is for his lifesteal, but let's assume he didn't have that.

have the 3200 and the 1600 combo. It's a very common combo. And you can even see the combo too on Geist with like the

kinetic dash, weighted shots, or the fleetfoot berserker. And then uh yeah, doesn't Coldfront Coldfront give resist?

Yeah. So, you guys are missing like an item or two here, but when you think about it, guys, aren't these items kind

of like the main 1600s people are rushing in lane for their spirit spike? Don't get me wrong. There There's some

more, but for a lot of builds, aren't these like in all the builds, you know? That That's kind of what I want you guys

to observe here. These items are being built in the pursuit of this 4.8k spirit spike because they help mitigate the

downsides of rushing the spirit investment threshold. Now, there's some more that I want to bring up. This item

here, Torment Pulse. So, Torment Pulse, guys, gives you 100 base bonus health. On the old patch, I was talking with

Arctic, my old teammate, on a BWC, and we were like trying to figure out like the difference between Okay, like let's

say you rush Torment Pulse and you rush Torment Pulse Coldfront or like Torment Pulse extra spirit, extra charge. Or

Torment Pulse extra spirit, improve spirit. One of these two. We compared doing this to rushing your green spike

on the old green spike with the percent, and Torment Pulse literally gave about as much health as rushing your green

investment spike on Shiv. So, really, the only difference would be like, okay, if you rush your green investment, you

get 100 more health, but if you rush your spirit investment, you're getting 38 spirit power and the same amount of

health basically by like the difference of 100. So, Torment Pulse is a really really really good item as well. Torment

Pulse, you're starting to see people as well even build Decay, which gives 65 bonus health and spirit power. So, it's

like a mini Torment Pulse in that sense. It gives a little less health, but it gives some spirit power. Let me write

down some of the things. Provides health, provides HP, provides resist, provides resist, provides HP, provides

HP, provides regen, provides regen. All right, the TLDR on what you can do to kind of think about your builds when

you're making a build in Deadlock is try to think of items in builds that help mitigate the downsides of rushing

whatever investment threshold you're trying to rush. So, maybe if you're trying to rush gun investment, look for

items that maybe give you health or something like that. If you're you're trying to rush spirit, look for items

that give you health. and these are some of those big items that will help you out with the HP on spirit. So, the last

thing we're going to talk about before we get to these questions is we're going to kind of finish up this part here with

the first thing that we talked about. What makes spirit investment threshold so strong? So, the flat damage increase

in the scaling abilities in lane. So, what I want you guys to do when you're rushing your spirit investment threshold

is this is kind of a continuation of the second part here a little bit, but one, I don't want you guys to get lost in the

idea of rushing the 4.8k spirit spike and nothing else. I know maybe some of you guys in the audience right now might

just rush your 4.8k spirit spike every game. Like for example, you might look at this Wraith build that I have, and

you might not even buy like any greens or anything like that. You might just go straight like left to right in your lane

and die. But, doing things like, you know, sprint boots is all the way over here in the right side of build. If you

buy sprint boots just alone, you're going to get 75 health, and you're going to get out of combat regen. Now, I think

this is very like not done that much by a lot of players like just building like a single green to give yourself a little

bit of HP. I think too many people get too focused on the spikes themselves and don't value the first tier investment

threshold. So, what I kind of want to write down for advice to you guys is to be comfortable with building greens

alongside the pursuit of your spirit {slash} gun spikes. That's a really good item. Yeah, exactly. And it does three

things. Like it does so many things, and this is why I love this item so much. It gives regen, it gives sprint speed, and

it's a green. So, it gives you health. Now, 75 health might not be that significant in the grand scope of

everything, but when you look at this item, extra health, this is about I would say 30 40% of extra health value,

which is not bad at all. Like it's still really really really good. And even building extra health, like I don't like

this item because fortitude's kind of bad right now. And you think about the value of the heal creep, right? Well,

what Metro says in his green spike rush, like the value of having more health when it comes to the heal creep, it's

true. Like when you have that little extra health, you are going to get healed more from the heal creep. He does

have a point, so be comfortable with building greens alongside the pursuit of your spirit gun spikes. Regen, health,

etc. Heal right, sprint boots. All right. How good is heal bane for spirit characters? Do you think it's a must buy

for the health on kill? Now, I think heal bane is not necessarily a must buy. So, back in the day when there were four

lanes and that, you know, you could only build four of each item, and you had to fill like the actual slots of the item,

not through souls, but slots. So, basically, heal bane was kind of built on a lot of different heroes. Yamato

would always buy heal bane, regardless of enemy comp. Shiv would always buy heal bane. All these heroes would

basically buy heal bane every single game for the exact reason of what you're saying, for the health on kill. So,

there is value in building heal bane for the health on kill. However, I think given that now there's so many more

items to purchase, now there's so many different items in the game, you shouldn't really look to build heal bane

on every single spirit character. Now, on heroes like Shiv or Yamato where when you get a kill in a team fight, like

let's say you execute, executing people as Shiv is normal. Getting kills as Shiv is normal in team fights. So, heal bane

kind of works for him. Or Yamato where you're ulted and you kill someone in your ult and it extends your ult. Heal

bane kind of works in synergy with how Yamato works. I would really only build a heal bane for that reason, and if you

need anti-heal. I wouldn't really think like, "Oh, I'm going to get a heal bane for the heal on kill." Now, maybe in the

future it comes and comes out that, "Oh, this heal on kill on heal bane is like insane value, and mathematically you

must build it every game, or you're going to be at a significant disadvantage in every single team

fight." Maybe it just comes and announces that, right? But as of right now, I feel like that's not the case,

and I feel like that you should really only be building it for those two reasons. To be honest, though, I'll say

as a third point really quick. Let's say you're going for some kind of combo where like, "Okay, every hero I'm buying

fortitude on, and I just need a 1600 to finish my green investment spike." Realistically, it's probably one of the

better options. Like it's like A that A tier for like green investment 1600 spike choices. What do you say What do

you say about heal bane on Victor? I would say that yeah, you're going to build heal bane on Victor sometimes

because you need the anti-heal. If you're playing Victor and you're versing a Kelvin, like of course you should buy

heal bane there. It's not like a must buy in every game where you must buy heal bane on Victor. From

what I understand about Victor's acts is Victor is a hero that is pretty not picky, but it's very hard to itemize

because you're so limited on slots, and there are so many items that you need as Victor. So, maybe in a game you won't

have the luxury to build heal bane. But yeah, I mean it's not bad sometimes. All right. If you guys want to ask me

questions about certain characters you guys play that maybe you have some advice on like what other items you

could try experimenting with or anything like that, we can. But like I said at the beginning, this class is mostly to

help you guys out. Like I'm here to answer your questions and help you guys like with whatever comes to your spirit

investment threshold.