Deadlock Expert Tier List - Explanations for Every Hero

Shiv

Shiv seems to be an unnerfable hero as his has managed to survive another harsh nerf to his Slice and Dice and yet manages to still be a premier bruiser. Especially in the Urn fights, an enraged Shiv can easily cull through any teamfight and excels as a frontliner currently.

Billy

Billy has gotten many buffs in the form of having 15% more health and having all his melee items buffed as well. With the buffs to Spirit Snatch and Alchemical Fire, a strong Chain Gang in an urn fight is a great initiation tool. Especially with the 5AP Unstoppable upgrade which allows Billy to punch the urn with no downside. Billy is slightly a bit worse then the current meta heroes who can do a similar job with more ease.

Vyper

Vyper is a very volatile hero that can easily be the worst or the best and right now, Vyper is currently the best gun carry in the game. With her unique synergy with Split Shot and the amount of raw damage she can output, is quite overwhelming. Split Shot allows for mass area coverage and has enough AoE to mow down all characters.

Drifter

Drifter has been seeing much more viability as the item meta truly favors him and his spirit build with Rend does an absurd amount of damage. As a natural buyer of Trophy Collector and Veil Walker, it supports his roaming style and allows him to maintain equal networth compared to slower carries. Even with low mastery, Drifter still offers large utility with Eternal Night by blinding their frontliners and carries.

Paradox

Paradox maintains her spot with her strength with Echo Shard and Pulse Grenade but not much of her gameplay has evolved. Paradox also struggles terribly with strong roaming gankers and fliers like Pocket or Calico and even Vindicta. The urn and the rift are also a bit more sporadic and spread out leading to less efficiency with her burst build.

Doorman

The utility and annoyance of The Doorman should never be underestimated. While Doorway has maintained its utility as a get out of jail free card for any situation, Call Bell allows for a strong laning presence and team fighting spell. The skill floor of The Doorman has been steadily rising as well, as the bell spamming build is extremely easy to use making him much more viable to more people.

Sinclair

Not much has changed with Sinclair, but Vexing Bolt has gained some much larger splash damage, leading to much more consistent damage overall. Rabbit Hex is also an excellent tool in Urn fights as well. Still an overall, solid hero but requires some mastery in order to stealing powerful ults such as Kelvin and Seven or Lash.

Silver

Silver has mostly stayed the same, she is still extremely powerful. Entangling Bola / Tail Whack still is one of the strongest CC's in the game and being able to shut off stamina in any form deserves a high rating in the meta.

Abrams

Even with the massive nerfs to Abrams gun, as long as Abrams maintains his displacement power with Shoulder Charge and natural durability, he will forever have a mainstay in any team as a solid and mobile front liner.

Venator

Venator has also maintained his position as a solid carry as well. The utility of Consecrating Grenade is not to be underestimated, but personally lacks some of the more consistent AoE damage that the other more prevalent heroes have currently. Venator might struggle to maintain to scale throughout the game as the meta develops further.

Infernus

Infernus has been gaining a lot of traction as a strong lane bully and an even stronger brawler. While his more traditional carry build has been lacking, his brawling build with max Flame Dash and Concussive Combustion has been seeing much more traction. Flame Dash allows for really fast jungle farming and strong mid-game presence as it also maintains Afterburn on players and jungle camps alike. Concussive Combustion has been massively underrated as the large AoE stun stops all channeled ults like Dynamo's Singularity while also stopping fliers like Vindicta.

Celeste

Celeste has become much more difficult to play and do well in. With an even further reduction to her Health and mobility, Celeste has felt like much more effort to get decent returns. Celeste also has a very weak laning stage and has a hard time against Mirage and Pocket. However, Celeste still offers a very unique and powerful way of damage with Light Eater and Shining Wonder. Being unable to group due to Shining Wonder is extremely proficient and allows for very explosive and fast kills.

Lash

The Lash is back as Death Slam excels in the large open areas that the Urn is fighting upon. Just being able to displace enemies and his standard Ground Strike combo is enough to turn the tides on any fight as well as his natural mobility leading to fast escapes and even faster ganks.

Vindicta

Vindicta is a surprise breakout in the tierlist and in my games, as she has strong counters against the majority of the meta heroes and surprisingly does well in most games with Tankbuster on Stake.

Stake itself, is a super good answer to most of the cast as it stops high mobility heroes like Pocket and stops strong frontliners like Shiv and Abrams alike.

Rem

Rem has slowly fallen out of favor due to the strong presence of Pocket and Spirit Burn alike. Along with the minor rework to his Lil Helpers, his midgame presence has diminished enough to not be meta. Deadlock's meta has become faster, which disallows Rem to scale as hard as he usually does and Rem has a very hard time against large swaths of burst damage from Tankbuster.

Calico

Most of the assassin characters seem to have issues in general due to the Health upgrades that everyone has gotten. Calico is no exception as she now requires more rotations of her spells in order to find any kills and relies on teammates much more to make up for the damage.

Grey Talon

Grey Talon has finally got some real buffs to his Rain of Arrows and with the strength of Spirit Snare, he has finally come back into revelency. Grey Talon is excellent as a counter-measure to all the current channeling ability meta, as Charged Shot and Spirit Snare can both cancel and kill through, such as McGinnis's Heavy Barrage or Seven's Storm Cloud.

Haze

Haze had a bunch of issues in the previous patch that got resolved with her new buffs to Sleep Dagger and the item meta favoring her. The buffs to Sleep Dagger resolves her ramping issue with Fixation allowing for even faster kills especially with Bullet Dance. The Echo Shard combination with Sleep Dagger also does a huge swath of burst damage that when combined with her invisibility allows for extremely easy pick-offs. However, Haze still maintains her scaling issues towards the late-game and struggles in teamfights herself, which means she loses out hard when not ahead.

Wraith

Wraith is a fairly solid carry as an early Ricochet allows her to scale and have a high impact in Urn fights. With the very recent changes to the Urn location, split pushing is once again allowed giving Wraith enough time to scale. She also got a recent buff to her items such as Spiritual Overflow and Mercurial Magnum which helps immensely.

Yamato

Yamato has a really strong laning phase and has gotten significant buffs to Flying Slash which allows her to buy items such as Spirit Strike and Melee Lifesteal. But I find that she has a very difficult time during the mid and late game, as she lacks the damage to kill through certain characters and lacks the mobility to even catch up once Flying Slash is used. Even Shadow Transformation feels a bit lacking as its innate defenses are not enough to handle through more meta attacks such as Pulse Grenade and Ira Domini.

Lady Geist

Lady Geist has been seeing more play as Soul Exchange and her natural tankiness is one of the only ways to heal through Pocket's Affliction. While slow in both speed and farming power, Lady Geist offers some consistent power through Life Drain and Essence Bomb. Although she will struggle throughout the laning phase and the midgame as she requires mandatory items such as Radiant Regeneration in order to truly come online.

Apollo

Apollo has received a couple of buffs, but still feels fairly underwhelming. But he has carved out a strong niche due to his reworked Riposte. Riposte now allows for a great way to counter-engage any channeled spell like Seven's Storm Cloud or McGinnis's Heavy Barrage, its also excellent against the fliers to cancel out things like Vindicta's Flight.

Mo & Krill

Mo And Krill has returned to being the best baseline and solid anti-carry character in the game. While lacking in strong burst damage, he makes up for it through strong durability and great scaling throughout the game. And as always Combo is never to be underestimated against any threats against your team. Mo and Krill has some excellent vectors of scaling as his 5AP talents are extremely powerful and his innate Health stacking through Combo is one of the best forms of scaling in the game.

Paige

Paige got some strong buffs to her Bookwyrm and has maintained her status as an extremely solid backline mage/support. Because her static gameplay has not changed, it is both bad for expert players as there is not much to innovate, while good for new players as it is extremely simple and straightforward to learn, which leads to a sense of feast or famine in most games.

Warden

Warden feels really bad in the current meta, as he lacks the explosive power and tankiness to exist in fights. His biggest weakness is his inability to do large area damage as Last Stand simply is too weak compared to every other hero and forces him to commit hard in fights.

Holliday

All of the assassin characters feel out of place as well, as finding singular kills is much harder with the new buffs to Spirit Shielding and Weapon Shielding. And simply do not have the long staying power that is so revelent right now, Holliday is no exception to this as once she runs out of Powder Keg's she simply runs out of power and falls over.

Bebop

Bebop has gone to the wayside as his gun has been massively nerfed and his new meta build for building around Hyper Beam feels a bit lacking. Hyper Beam in itself is too easy to counter and Bebop can easily be killed through while casting. Bebop also simply lacks other forms of area damage and dies much too quickly when gone on.

Mina

Mina has finally been dethroned as the queen of Deadlock and both the meta and the nerfs to Nox Nostra is simply too much for her. She no longer has the power to kill through some of the stronger characters and gets kited way too easily for her to maintain her power in large teamfights. The Urn fight itself, simply does not favor her as there is enough cover to dodge her bats and gets split very easily among the deathball of players.

Victor

Victor is a bit underwhelming in today's meta as he doesn't offer as much tankiness or damage while having too little range to deal with farther or more mobile threats. Victor also requires too much item investment like Infuser or Ethereal Shift to truly come online, which can make him feel very slow and weak while he is on your team. Pocket and Decay can also just ruin anything that the Victor wants to do.

Seven

Seven, feels very similar to Victor as they are both too slow for the current meta and offers too little for the time and investment they both require to shine. Seven also lacks the mobility and utility that other characters have to offer, while requiring too many core items before the rift or mid-boss fights.

Graves

Graves has returned to being the queen of the D-tiers as her gameplay and character is too unique and slow for the current meta. Everything about Graves feels once again lacking as Grasping Hands got nerfed yet again and Graves cannot stand in the small cast range. Graves also cannot farm very quickly and requires too many AP and items to do less then most character at the same networth. Overall, this character requires the most effort to do the least in the game.

Kelvin

This entire meta feels like it was constructed to defeat Kelvin. The best heroes in the game have excellent ways to deal with Kelvin's healing such as Pocket's Affliction or Mirage's Fire Scarabs or Viscous's The Cube.

Even the items are against Kelvin with the high burst damage of Tankbuster and rampant Spirit Burn's being bought every game. And the game itself is leaning away from large scale teamfights from the Urn/Rift and Mid-boss.

Dynamo

Very similar to Kelvin, Dynamo suffers from the same issues of lacking large scale teamfights and suffering from the large healing reduction meta skills. Its even worse for Dynamo as he is also a slow farmer and fighter and low range and requires mass AP and items.

McGinnis

McGinnis just feels really bad and lacks almost everything thats positive in the current meta. Another strong healer that gets dissipated by the healing reduction, while also requiring way too much farm and too little scaling as well. Her lack of range and speeds, leads her to being once against kited by everyone in the cast while her turrets gets quickly outscaled and dealt with by mass damage or any AoE spell. Even her strongest build with Heavy Barrage gets cutdown hard by Apollo's Riposte or Haze's Sleep Dagger.