My MOBA experience is in League and of course that game has it's own dedicated jungler. This game doesn't and doesn't seem to let you start the game jungling either. I've been so curious to check out all the haunts in the city but I never feel like there is a time that makes sense to do it.

So... how does this work? When do you go through the city and who should be doing it? What is the etiquette for even being that person?

So I play venator a lot, and I find that I have an issue in endgame where I have an excess of souls and never know what to buy. Or more accurately I never know what to sell. I always think "Okay this is what I want to buy next" but then I go to buy it and realize I got no more slots and don't know what will damage my kit the least to remove. I also wonder if I should just keep some tier 2s and 3s or if its almost always worth it to replace it with tier 4s since I have enough souls.

Today I decided to play some Deadlock, and it worked earlier this morning. Then suddenly, it would do this weird thing when I had my mods installed. It would zoom in, and I wouldn't be able to zoom out. So I uninstalled it, and it worked, so I played a few games. Then when I tried to play again later in the day, my Deadlock suddenly got REALLY laggy when I opened the game. I uninstalled and reinstalled multiple times and even used Spooky's config for additional help, but it was no use. Though I must say, I have a pretty janky laptop; Deadlock has worked fine in the past nevertheless. Also, my other games work just fine; it's just Deadlock that's lagging like hell. I really want to be able to play games again, so please give me any tips. I downloaded this game a week ago, and I'm really enjoying it so far.

edit: as soon as i posted this, deadlock suddenly decided to work just fine LMAO.

I’ve been getting into Deadlock recently. It’s a lot of fun and requires some brain power, unlike most hero shooters I’ve played. But after the first day of playing on Ubuntu, I started freezing or stuttering, and my ping climbs to 2000 and goes back down. It’s just unplayable. This goes on for like 20 seconds until it goes back to normal.
I’ve tried a VPN I saw was suggested. I played native, then with Proton GE, and I think it might be an ISP issue. Does anyone know of any way to fix this?

Also ignore the shit gameplay I'm learning drifter

i got comms restricted for 7 days and i didnt even say anything i didnt even say stupid all i did was respond to our ratking who was farming all game and didnt help in any team fights then at the later part of the game he was on vc blaming people and kept calling them fucking stupid and other shit like that and generally being hostile and mean i reported him and just said something like your never active all you do is press s and never frontline on the frontline character cuz thats where i want my frontliner to be in the back and some shit like that i dont remeber i was generally saying that because he was too anoying and kept complaing after throwing the game, and for some reason i got comms restricted ?
i dont think what i said is even mean/bad
here is match id if yall wanna check it out: 119030383
btw thats like my second game on solomon fun character weird controls for the pawns

Congrats Valve, this game is addicting

Maybe it's because I've been playing ranked only for so long that I've just forgotten what it's actually like, but coming back to Standard mode it just feels like a mixing pot of incompetence at the moment. TOO much of a mixing pot at that, which is a clear matchmaking problem.

I played 3 Standard matches in a row today and I significantly out performed my teammates (and often the enemies). So much so that I took the time to add up all my teammates objective damage across those games because each time a match ended I couldn't believe my eyes and sure enough, across FIFTEEN different teammates in those THREE matches, they averaged 1.6k objective damage. Across those same 3 matches, I averaged 16.3k. That's just objective damage alone, not factoring kills deaths and souls, which in most cases I overperformed in all as well.

I share that to show that me over performing is concerning. And it's not even about winning or losing. In those standard matches (from even the first moments in lane) you can feel a difference in the skill level of everyone in the lobby. You start to notice that enemy structures have only been falling because you yourself were there to take them. Urns, rifts, and buffs are WITHOUT FAIL taken by the enemy team (or begrudgingly yourself) even when you call them out or ping them 10x for those nearby. And even when you micro manage, players still don't know what they're doing in order to execute what in your experience has become a standard of gameplay thanks to ranked.

Yes Standard is casual, yes most people are there to try new heroes and get them to 15 wins (as I am), and I will never complain about teammates in that regard on Standard. My issue is just with the matchmaking. There is a major micro-macro difference between an Oracle player (for example) trying to learn new heroes, and an Initiate player trying to learn new heroes + the fundamentals of the game on top of that. Matching them together wouldn't be fair right? In no world should the two be together in a solo queuing standard match. Even worse if it's 5 initiates and 1 Oracle on a team and the other team is more competently balanced. Leave that potluck style mm for street brawl. We need a better system that allows players a more casual environment to practice at THEIR evolving skill level, not with just anyone and everyone that is "close enough" for shortening queue times. Now that I finally understand all the base fundamentals/mechanics of the game, I shouldnt be playing with AND against players that very clearly don't, unless I'm queued with one.

I'm not here to entertain any of the stereotypically cliche reddit slights and the "duhhh thats what standard is for" or "you think you're better?". This is just feedback on how to improve matchmaking for standard to create a BALANCED gap between casual/enjoyable and rewarding gameplay. Cheers.

I wanted to take a look at the winrates of Violet and Danny, but saw something so surprising that I got sidetracked. Since when is Graves 58% WR material in top 10% rank??? Afaik that means Oracle and above. I'm used to seeing Graves having giant winrate numbers in Brick, but this is new. And it's a sample of almost 600 games, so it's not particularly tiny either.

I’m gonna find something new somewhere……

The best items for flat damage for gun and spirit right now are ones that reduce resists. It is not uncommon to see all of the gun damage bullet resist reduction on 1 or 2 heros, and most of the spirit + escalating.

There are 8 fully upgraded (5 if you dismiss disarm, and Alchemical fire which are not really built for that stat) items in the game that reduce bullet resist, and it is not uncommon for a single hero to build 3 or more of them. I'm not really counting the first three on this list because they aren't built intending to abuse the reduction, but it does contribute to the problem. What sparked this was just seeing how utterly helpless it is to build against philosophically and this is reflected in higher build winrates. Because of this prevalance, you are instead building items that give resistances as a side to increasing your own lethality, basically only building enough to be neutral after reductions, and building other items to avoid damage altogether.

1. Disarming hex - 13% reduction
2. Alchemical fire - 7.55% reduction
3. Crushing fists - 5% per application, 30% total
4. Stalker - 6% reduction
5. Hollow Point - 10% reduction
6. Hunter's Aura - 10%-20% reduction
7. Crippling Headshot - 16% reduction (and spirit resist)
8. Bullet Resist Shredder - 10%

Just this last game, the enemy team built all 5 relevant bullet resist reduction, which are Bullet Resist Shredder, Hunter's Aura, Hollow Point, and Crippling Headshot, which totals to ~51% bullet resist reduction after the diminishing formulas.

These items overall, on top of the stats they give, essentially outpace any resistances you devote to building. Bullet Resistances as a 3200 item is reduced completely to the negatives, even with the +15% at below 50% health. Devoted resistance items often don't give any stats at all apart from what you are building, so enemy reduction items for bullets outpace not only your souls, but also investment because your green investment is weaker than gun investment after going even, as well as the passive stats from those reduction items. Your only option is to try to negate the reduction to 0 as best as you can with damage items that give passive resist stats, while building items to negate overall damage. This is demonstrated by both

• A) The effective winrates of these reduction items

• B) The effective winrates of the described "bonus stat being resistances" items like Berserker, Heroic aura, Fleetwork, Berserker, Battle Vest, Indomitable, and the "overall reduction" items that have stats to overall reduce damage outside of resistances, like Plated Armor, Inhibitor, Juggernaut, and even items like Suppressor and in a notably unique case, Disarming Hex despite having no changes whatsoever jumping nearly 10% in winrate since before the major patch, and even Cheat Death where instead of mitigating damage you get periods of guaranteed damage output (albeit reduced) before dying.

This exact same principle is applying to spirit as well, with the spirit reduction items

• Spirit Rend/Shredder - 8%-15% reduction
• Crippling Headshot - 16% reduction
• Spirit Snatch - 12% steal
• Focus Lens - 9% reduction and 35% amp
• Escalating Exposure - 8% reduction and anywhere from 0% - 54% amp
• Spirit Sap - 9% reduction, builds into both previously mentioned items (Relevant but not stackable in this form

All of which sporting very high winrates, especially because both Spirit Snatch and Escalating Exposure qualifying in the next category of "gives resists as a bonus stat while increasing output". It's worth noting that because of this, both the winning and losing teams build them, so their winrate % is lower than you'd expect. Tankbuster gets an honorable mention here as a reliable damage source with bypasses spirit resistance, which also has the same winrate reduction being built by both teams with a pick rate of 35% for a total of 48% winrate.

And just like bullet resistance, the best items to build for it are ones that generally reduce damage overall or have major other factors they are built for with resistance as a side bonus like Witchmail, Ethereal Shift, Silencer, Spellbreaker, Blood Tribute, Greater Expansion, Scourge, Infuser, Arctic Blast, etc etc etc. All of which are items that HAVE spirit resist but are not devoted to it. Repeated items from previous categories will not be listed.

Even in the example of the previous game, four of these were still built, which totals ~38% reduction with the diminishing returns formula + the amp from Escalating exposure.

So just in this game alone, the items that outpace resistance building total 38% Spirit resist reduction and 51% Bullet resist reduction, negating over 6400 in stats.

All of this is while devoted resistance/survivability items are kinda left in the dust, with the exception of Bullet and Spirit Resilience while, despite not even fully mitigating it, mitigate it the most with a single 3200 purchase. Which, while most of these items can be argued to have winrate reduction due to playrates, generally these are one sided with the exception of Spirit Resilience.

It is worth noting that item winrates/pickrates as a stat is skewed because of how the stat is collected: By the item being in a build at the end of a game. While this can skew some of the stats slightly, it does accommodate for purchasing them at all, and the pattern is so super consistent that it outweighs this skew entirely.

We took a step too far nerfing these "ubiquitous" survivability options. They were nerfed because of their consistent pickrate, but ubiquitous is what makes them picked so highly. Tech counter items have a lower pickrate, and so are seen less and judged less, but weren't necessarily weaker.

All of the "reduction" items have only had love tap nerfs or even just had straight buffs, so they've been allowed to supplant everything else in the meta as the unreasonably most effective. The May 22 2026 patch notably buffed most of these currently problematic items, and this patch for most of the items in question is also the last patch they were adjusted. This is the same patch that nerfed the "ubiquitous survivability items" (But also introduced the shielding items). The items that were buffed in this patch that are in these problematic examples that have not been changed since (Or was buffed more since) are:

• Witchmail
• Hunter's Aura
• Bullet Resist Shredder
• Spellbreaker
• Juggernaut
• Indomitable
• Infuser
• Battle Vest
• Spirit Snatch
• Arctic Blast
• Focus Lens
• Scourge
• Crushing Fists
• Escalating Resilience
• Heroic Aura
• Crippling Headshot
• Alchemical Fire
• Disarming Hex

This sole patch is almost entirely responsible for this mess.

TL:DR, Resistance reduction items outperform both in investment and in cost for reduction the pure survivability alternatives. This is reflected in their winrate entirely, and multiple of these items are built in succession in the same build to create utterly gigantic stat reduction items that can't reasonably be built against, so the meta has resorted to building offensively to kill enemies using them first, with those items having bonus resistances as extra stats to reduce the damage gained from reduction to 0 as much as possible (But usually doesn't go into resistance positive). Survivability items all time low winrate, damage bypass in either direction at all time high winrate. May 22 2026 patch is mostly responsible.

I only play a couple games a week. Even when almost only winning I can never rank up without making this game my full time job

His ult is on way too low of a cooldown to have this much impact in a teamfight, it's an entirely free "I win" button because even IF you manage to hit the tight window to cancel it, he gets the entire cooldown back, there's no punishing it, if he has his ult up, he's winning a teamfight.

Not only that but, how are you actually supposed to deal with him? he has innate gun reflect that combos with plated and return fire, meaning he can become incredibly tanky towards gun heroes, but then his max 3 also allows him to negate burst entirely so your only chance to deal with him is sustained spirit damage (which he can counter build into), which, without draft, just means you're fucked 9/10 times.

Hey! So Deadlock was my very first shooter games, and I just climbed from Initiate 1 to Mystic 1.

Apollo is my main, and I absolutely love him. (FYI, I started playing after Apollo got hit with a big nerf.) My aim is pretty bad, so gun-heavy heroes are a no-go for me.

But Apollo’s gun is terrible anyway, so you have to fight with your abilities, right? And on top of that, he’s got three movement skills to bail me out when I mess up!

I’m completely hooked on playing Apollo. (Slowing Hex can shut Apollo down, but anyone buying it to counter an Apollo in Initiate is 100% a smurf lol XD)

TL;DR: Pick a hero you love, go get a kill first, learn to land your abilities, never ignore your lane, take Walkers and push objectives, check the map often, and be nice to your team, Follow a popular build as-is until you understand how items work.

<Here Tips for people who know absolutely nothing about shooter games(like me)>

- Tip 1 : Pick a character you're fond of first, and you'll grow attached to the game.
Anyone who recommends Apollo to a beginner is probably a psycho.

But I picked Apollo of my own free will. Why? Because his tail swaying as he walks is just too cute! That mattered a lot to an otaku playing their first shooter games. After picking Apollo, I had fun just watching him walk around, and since I ended up playing for so long, I naturally got the hang of the game.

- Tip 2 : Get a kill first.
It's okay to die. Feel the rush of taking down an enemy hero. I can tell you all day, but you won't really feel it until you've done it yourself. Even if you end up with 10 deaths, I want you to have at least a 1 in front of them in the kills column. (When I started, I was recommended Ivy, and I couldn't get a single kill with her. It just wasn't fun back then.) Even if you feed and lose the match, if you get a taste of pushing the enemy around, you'll get hooked on PvP games.

+ That said, I'm not telling you to run all the way up to the enemy Guardian during the laning phase and die there. Got it?

- Tip 3 : It's a shooter, but bullets aren't everything!
That's especially true in Deadlock. There are countless ways to hurt your opponents besides bullets. Personally, I got hooked on Deadlock because there are so many heroes who can deal damage with things other than a gun. Once you get a little used to your ability ranges, you'll be able to land them on your opponents! (Tip 4 : Start by learning to hit your enemies with your abilities!)

<Here Tips for Deadlock beginners>

- Tip 1: Never ignore your lane.
In low elo, just managing your lane well can hand you the win. That's why Graves has such a great win rate in low elo. Even if a teamfight breaks out on the other side of the map, stop the enemy troopers from reaching your Walker first, then go join the fight.

- Tip 2: Surprisingly, Walkers are worth more than kills.
If it's before the 20-minute mark and you see 5 enemies in Yellow, split off on your own and go take down a Walker in Blue or Green. That's a huge win. Even after 20 minutes, if you die alone but take a Walker down in exchange, that's still a great trade. (But if you're Dynamo or Abrams, don't do that. They might kill you and go for Mid Boss... though I doubt anyone in low elo makes that call. Just push the Walker.)

Our goal is the objectives.

Especially if you're a gun carry, push objectives when it's time to push objectives.
And if you're not a gun carry, push objectives anyway. Sadly, in low elo, if I don't push, nobody does. Push objectives and you win.

- Tip 3: Look at the map.
The map tells you everything, especially where your team can see the enemies. In a 40-minute game, it feels like I spend about 25 minutes looking at the map. That's how valuable the information you get from it is.

You can see whether your team needs help, whether an enemy is being chased and it's time to go in for the kill, and which lanes are going well or badly. Then you can head to a losing lane and push it back in your favor, or go join a fight that seems to be breaking out. (Low elo is especially chaotic and people don't check the map, so if you read the map and even call out orders over voice chat, you'll have a real edge.)

- Tip 4 : The team with the better vibes wins.

Never make the team atmosphere toxic! just be nice! I've never won a game where a teammate was cursing at everyone, especially in low elo. This is a team game, and teamwork matters. But there's no way people who don't get along can cooperate, right? Just make requests politely and respond politely. Or crack a few jokes and make it a fun game for everyone.

- Tip 5 : (beginners only)Use a build from the Popular builds list, and don't change the item order.
It takes time to get familiar with item descriptions, and that's one thing you just can't rush! If you can't yet work out how items synergize with each other, you're usually better off buying someone else's build exactly as written instead of changing it on a whim.
How to pick a build: The popular builds list has some joke builds mixed in. If a build is obviously a support build but has damage items, or it's obviously a Spirit hero running Gun items, skip it. (But if it looks fun, just go for it, haha.)

I used a translator for this post, so some parts might sound a bit awkward. I hope this helps! If I got anything wrong, please let me know. :D

Title says it all.

Hi, I've really been trying to get into deadlock. However, the thing holding me back is performance. Specifically, when I join an online match (or really any game where the map is larger than the sandbox map) my frames become absolutely horrible, averaging around 4 to 9 FPS. Also notably, this issue occurs when I am facing the larger end of the map, which makes me think that the game is rendering the entire map, despite most of it being out of view. (Culling issue? I know deadlock is still in prerelease, so I don't blame valve if they haven't developed culling for deadlock yet.)

A few things to note also:

- I play on a laptop, which I admit, isn't super good when it comes to gaming in general. Most newer games require me to play them at bare-minimum graphics. (Please don't just say "get a new PC" and move on, unfortunately that is not an option for me currently.) My computer is a Lenovo 82XF, and runs on a 13th Gen Intel Core.

- I've messed around with the video settings in deadlock, ontop of installing mods to help. Specifcally, I've tried "Potato Lock", "dacooderr's Qol Lite," and "OptiLock FPS configs." Some of this also required "Universal Mod Manager." I admit, with these mods, I did not know of to configure them, so I just downloaded them.

- My video.txt file in deadlocks cfg file is gone. I don't know where it went or how it vanished, but it's gone. I tried getting it back by checking the file integrity through steam, plus also reinstalling deadlock in various ways (including a full uninstall.)

Please know that whatever advice you give, I do not know much about computers, so please bare with me if you choose to help. Thank you again everyone!

I main Holliday. I'll usually average 7 kills by 20 minutes with a low deathcount. I'll roam to every lane and help with a kill. Usually we have a decent lead around the 20 minute count. I'm always shotcalling and calling out where I'm moving. If someone runs the urn, I'll usually intercept with a lasso.

I feel like by mid game I fall off incredibly hard. It's like there's this point where there are no objectives up, everyone's farming and my ult is gathering dust while I look for a pick.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong but I'm stuck at mystic III and I've recognized this consistent pattern.

Any advice is appreciated.

does anyone else experience glitchy camera that doesn't allow u to see anything when using his ult inside, i always struggle ulting inside a building, there are no height controls to his ult so it makes it very difficult to see where you're going sometimes