Top Picks in Deadlock: Must-Have Items

While Deadlock can look like a shooter on the surface, it’s still a MOBA at heart, and as a result, items play an important role in how each hero is built. There are 117 items currently in Deadlock which are further broken down into three distinct categories: Weapon, Vitality, and Spirit.

The best items to use in Deadlock are ones that can build around almost any hero, are unique enough in what they offer that they’re usually worth some form of consideration, or will save a player’s life when they would have no chance otherwise.

15 Improved Cooldown/Superior Cooldown

Machine-Gunning Skills Is Surprisingly Fun

Improved Cooldown is a 1250 item that gives the player a 16% cooldown reduction. For heroes that are heavily reliant on their skills to deal damage, like Grey Talon, this item is a godsend for both their damage and ability to scale throughout the game. However, tanky characters like Dynamo can also get plenty of use out of this item since it not only gives them access to their heavily disruptive skills more often, but it also gives more health regen as well.

Later in the game, Improved Cooldown can be built into Superior Cooldown, giving it more late game use for any builds that need more cooldown reduction. In effect, this enables crazy builds like Gray Talon throwing out 35 ults in 30 minutes.

14 Healing Rite

Beloved Early Game Healing Item

On paper, Healing Rite looks like a boring item to take. It’s just an active that heals the player over time, and if the player is attacked by an enemy, the healing stops.

The point of taking this item is for the increased early sustain it offers. This healing doesn’t stop when the player is struck by a minion, and for moments where the player wants to go back and buy items anyway, Healing Rite will heal back a large chunk of their life while they buy items at the midshop and return to lane. When used at the right time, the player can continue farming minions and shop while healing back to full HP.

Later in the game, when Healing Rite has been outscaled and doesn’t offer as much healing as mid-game heroes may need, Healing Rite can be sold for a few souls and be used to buy a better late-game item.

The Perfect Item For Early Game Survival

On the note of powerful early-game items, Extra Regen is one of the best items for helping players survive the early game. It compliments practically every single hero early on by giving them more ammo, more health regen, and extra HP. The extra regen and health are useful for more sustain, allowing players to farm their lane longer before needing to head back for healing. Extra bullets are underrated by beginners in Deadlock, but having more shots means players can confirm more last hits and land more denials.

Overall, with all of these benefits in mind, Extra Regen gives its user all the tools they’ll need to get far ahead in their lane and smoothly transition into a mid-game threat.

12 Active Reload

Timely Weapon Buff For More Damage

Active Reload is an item that shines regardless of a player’s skill level in Deadlock. For new players, this item provides a more lenient way to learn how to weave their gunplay into lane farming, skill usage, and early game poking.

For skilled players on a weapon-based build like Lady Geist’s weapon build, Seven’s Power Surge, or Wraith’s Full Auto, Active Reload gives them a powerful buff to use when they need a weapon with twice the magazine size, a higher fire rate, and life steal. For these builds, choosing the right time to Active Reload is just as important as timing the active reload itself, since it’s only available every 17 seconds and the buffs need to be used at the same time as another damage-boosting skill.

11 High Velocity Mag

Strong Early Game Damage And Durability Bump

It’s hard to find anything wrong with High Velocity Mag. It gives players a bullet shield, more weapon damage, and it increases bullet travel speed. While the last point is the weakest of the buffs, this item is a great place to start for players in need of both a little more survivability against opponents relying on weapon damage, and for players looking for a good increase in damage early on.

Later in the game, High Velocity Mag helps build into Headhunter, another powerful item that any weapon build will appreciate having in their inventory, as long as the player is confident in landing headshots. Regardless, being able to build into a strong mid-game item is another good reason to get High Velocity Mag.

Related

How Does Spirit Power Work in Deadlock

You may think Spirit Power only increases your ability damage, but there’s a lot more to it. Here’s a breakdown of how Spirit Power works in Deadlock.

10 Mystic Burst/Improved Burst

Every Spirit Build’s First Friend

Early on, Spirit builds need a fast and easy spike in their damage, and Mystic Burst is the perfect item for the job. It gives some Weapon damage, more Spirit damage, and a Spirit Shield health for more survivability. The biggest allure to using this weapon, though, is if an ability deals 80 damage or more, Mystic Burst adds an additional 35 damage to it. This additional damage is a welcome early spike in offense, because it gives ability-focused heroes a more dangerous poke and more damage to efficiently farm with.

Later in the game, Mystic Burst can be built into Improved Burst, which has the same effect as Mystic Burst, but much stronger and with better scaling for late game fights.

9 Debuff Remover

Underrated Life Saver Against CC

There are some skills in deadlock, like Bebop’s Sticky Bomb or Mo & Krill’s Sand Blast, which need to have an answer built against them ahead of time, especially if an opponent is centering their entire build around that one skill. Debuff Remover is the perfect example of a silver bullet for those builds, stopping problematic crowd control effects before the enemy can run away with the game.

Examples of what Debuff Remover stops include the following:

• Bebop’s Sticky Bomb
• Warden’s Binding Word
• Seven’s Static Charge
• Knockdown’s effects before it stuns
• Slows
• Silences
• Immobilizes
• Disarms

8 Soul Shredder Bullets/Bullet Resist Shredder

Weapon Damage For Everyone!

Besides the obvious stat increases from these two items, their biggest strengthis how they exist in a category that’s separate from the one that builds will usually focus on. For example, Spirit builds will easily fill out the four Spirit slots in their build, but now, if they want to have a fifth additional Spirit item, they’ll either need to unlock a flex slot or purchase Soul Shredder Bullets. Soul Shredder Bullets are in the weapon slot category and will further increase a Spirit build’s damage as long as the player is capable of landing shots with their main weapon.

With that in mind, Soul Shredder Bullets are best used in Spirit builds and Bullet Resist Shredder is best used in Weapon builds. Soul Shredder Bullets will increase the player’s Spirit damage by applying a spirit damage amp with each hit from their main weapon. In comparison, weapon builds will still use skills that add CC effects because it makes it easier to land shots. Now, with Bullet Resist Shredder, those same skills will also add more weapon damage with each successful hit.

7 Rapid Recharge

More Firepower In One Item

Rapid Recharge gives skills with charges an additional two charges, faster cooldowns, and faster casting between charges. For Heroes like Kelvin, Viscous, and Gray Talon, Rapid Recharge provides a good spike in their damage, giving them more tools to dominate fights with and rewarding them for constantly using their abilities.

6 Slowing Hex

Make Escape An Impossibility

After the 10-minute mark, ganks will become more common as heroes spread out to roam and farm neutral camps. To make sure enemies are robbed of their escape options, players can build Slowing Hex, which disables all movement skills and slows other movement options like dashes and activated item-based movement.

Slowing Hex is extremely useful even when it’s not used by a Spirit-based hero, since these builds will be able to use their hero’s skills to silence enemies, then follow up with a string of precisely aimed shots to secure the kill.

5 Mystic Reverb

Massive Damage Spike For That Late Game Push

A strong end game item, Mystic Reverb is a massive spike in damage for Spirit builds that have a powerful single target skill. It’s best used with heroes like Gray Talon or Lady Geist, where their powerful skills can now be used for additional AoE damage against additional targets near their original one.

What makes this item so strong is how much damage it can deal if players are fighting near objectives, or more commonly, fighting close to their teammates. After casting a powerful single-target skill, an additional explosion will happen around the target after a 3-second delay. This explosion will get a ton of value when it clips objectives, minions, or groups of enemy heroes for a portion of the original skill’s damage.

4 Kinetic Dash

Free Movement And Additional Survivability

Kinetic Dash is one of the rare Tier 2 items that can hold relevance at almost every point in the game. This item adds more health and health regen, but more importantly, it makes the next Dash-Jump free on a 6-second cooldown. When this free dash is triggered, the player will receive 25% increased fire rate and +5 temporary ammo for the next 8 seconds.

Early on, Kinetic Dash gives the player plenty of mobility to gank other lanes, escape aggressive foes, and clear neutral camps faster than the opponents can. The buffs are fairly useful in the beginning to help farm and apply pressure to enemy heroes better. However, later in the game, Kinetic Dash is useful for escaping bad situations, or pursuing enemy heroes when they are desperately trying to escape.

3 Bullet Lifesteal/Spirit Lifesteal

Additional Sustain And More Durability For Any Build

The two lifesteal items, Bullet Lifesteal and Spirit Lifesteal, are important for every build because they’re such powerful tools for additional sustain and overall durability. These two items will heal the player for a small portion of the damage they deal. They’re easily affordable at 1250 souls, and in lane, heroes with these items can now negate some of the poke damage they’ve received by just farming minions. Between the two, Bullet Lifesteal is a little better, since it offers more healing as long as the player is constantly rattling off shots, but Spirit Lifesteal is still good, since abilities can hit for large chunks of damage or have multiple charges to heal with.

In the late game, if players are still in need of more lifesteal, they could also build into Leech, which also offers a stronger effect than both of these items along with several useful stat increases.

2 Unstoppable

An Easy Out Of Every Problem

There’s a small timing component, but Unstoppable is a powerful item in any hero’s build. In effect, it allows heroes to ignore CC for a short period of time. This item can also be activated when a hero is channeling their abilities.

In fights, Unstoppable is used to make sure important abilities are successfully cast without any form of interruption getting in the way. Seven’s Storm Cloud is the perfect example of this, since CC abilities like Wraith’s Telekinesis or the Knockdown item can interrupt his ultimate. Once Seven enters his ultimate, and before he’s hit with any CC, Seven can activate Unstoppable to make sure his Storm Cloud goes off no matter what.

1 Superior Stamina

More Movement, More Power

Superior Stamina is ahead of every other item because it can fit in almost any build. Additional Stamina gives heroes more mobility options and it has universal applications in every aspect of Deadlock. More stamina gives players more escape options, more ways to approach enemies, more ways to efficiently move between camps, and additional survivabilty in a fight by being a harder target to hit. Once players have practiced all their movement options, additional stamina will also help them move between lanes for ganks faster, and return to lane faster as well.

Against some heroes like Warden, Superior Stamina can help players counter hero abilities by just making their skills inconsistent or harder to land.

Finally, Superior Stamina is fairly easy to slot into any build. The early-game version of this item, Extra Stamina, gives one additional bar of stamina, faster stamina recovery, and additional weapon damage. Taking Extra Stamina early gives players better laning options, and the potential to build into Superior Stamina later makes this item even better for any player.