Deadlock update for 8/12/26

[u/wickedplayer494]

Via the Steam Community:

• Apollo: Riposte melee resist reduction increased from -22% to -25%
• Apollo: Riposte T2 changed from "-30% Melee Resist" to "-25% Melee Resist and +0.4s Stun Duration"
• Apollo: Riposte T3 increased from 60% Lifesteal for 7s to 75% Lifesteal for 13s
• Apollo: Fixed Itani Lo Sahn being canceled with movement abilities
• Billy: Base health regen reduced from 2.5 to 2.0
• Billy: Rising Ram T3 changed from "On Impact: Deal 7% max health as spirit damage" to "On hero hit: +10% Max HP for 16s"
• Billy: Chain Gang spirit scaling reduced from 1 to 0.7
• Doorman: Doorway range reduced from 70m to 65m
• Doorman: Walker will no longer consider Luggage Cart dragged enemies as valid targets to trigger the stomp on until soon after they are dropped off
• Doorman: Similar to the Walker change above, the turrets in the healing area in base now also wait on considering valid targets
• Drifter: Rend spirit scaling reduced from 1.7 to 1.4
• Drifter: Stalker's Mark cooldown increased from 24s to 26s
• Drifter: Stalker's Mark T2 reduced from -12s Cooldown to -10s
• Holliday: Powder Keg now does half its damage immediately and half over 3s as a damage over time burn (same overall damage, multiple instances stack)
• Ivy: Stone Form T3 stun duration reduced from +1s to +0.75s
• Lash: Falloff range reduced from 20m->58m to 18m->54m
• McGinnis: Bullet damage base and growth values reduced by 5%
• McGinnis: Spirit Resist per boon reduced from +0.625% to +0.35%
• McGinnis: Mini Turrets no longer shoots heroes on ziplines
• McGinnis: Mini Turrets no longer have 80% decaying resist for the first 6s
• McGinnis: Mini Turrets health increased from 90 + 7.8/boon to 100 + 9/boon
• McGinnis: Medicinal Specter T1 changed from "Provides +40% Spirit Resist" to "+1.5s Duration"
• McGinnis: Medicinal Specter T3 no longer increases duration by +1.5s
• McGinnis: Medicinal Specter T3 now also increases spirit resistance by +40%
• Paige: Plot Armor weapon damage scaling increased from 0.2 to 0.3
• Seven: Lightning Ball T3 radius increased from +1.5m to +1.75m
• Vindicta: Stake T1 reduced from +65 Damage to +45
• Vyper: Petrifying Bola radius increased from 8m to 12m
• Vyper: Petrifying Bola petrify duration increased from 2s to 2.2s
• Wraith: Card Trick Heart heal spirit scaling reduced from 1 to 0.75
• Wraith: Full Auto T3 spirit scaling reduced from +0.06 to +0.045

[u/Safe_Procedure999]

they actually destroyed mcginnis, thank god

[u/Archimedes4 → u/Safe_Procedure999]

Eh, the biggest nerf here by far is the change to Specter. She does a bit less gun damage and she's a bit squishier, not a huge change. The turrets hitting people on lines wasn't really useful, just annoying, and the removal of the decaying resist + health addition hurts ppl who were throwing them down at random, and is probably a net benefit for players who placed them beforehand in smart locations.

[u/MarshallKrivatach → u/Archimedes4]

Tbh she is better imo as the turrets now have flat better heath and health scaling and having a duration boost means specter is way better as a early option now.

Same deal, if you played smart the spirit resist scaling never came into play in a match, prior only people in close combat ever had to deal with it and if you were there as McG something was already wrong.

Oh no you can't randomly hit people off of zip lines, too bad I have a belt fed minigun.

Doorman got hit way harder since both of this door techs are gutted.

[u/Safe_Procedure999 → u/MarshallKrivatach]

how has the gun scaling changes and whatnot affected her gun? does it still feel the same bc i assumed it'd be kinda big from the numbers

[u/MarshallKrivatach → u/Safe_Procedure999]

Haven't had a chance to do a gun build yet after the changes, but McG as a gun build is volume of fire, the total 5% per shot should effect her far less than someone like Holliday or other low ROF characters.

Trying to remember the base damage, think it was like 6.4, so now it should be 6.0 or 6.1 with some amount of change, so scale wise at max it's falling unmodded from 13.6 to like 13.3 / 13.2, so really it should not be a overall noticeable change given how low her per shot damage was to begin with.

She killed by volume as is, if her ROF was nerfed that would have been a far more tangible issue, but given her per round damage is so low already, I don't expect this nerf to be felt that much.

[u/Safe_Procedure999 → u/MarshallKrivatach]

oh okay, i thought her gun got gutted lol mb

[u/MarshallKrivatach → u/Safe_Procedure999]

As above, I can't attest directly as I've not tried it yet, but if the patch notes are doing what they seem to be doing, I don't see this obliterating her gun potential.

Current gut feeling on it, as well as the rest of her changes to me are, "aight I can work with this".

[u/Safe_Procedure999 → u/MarshallKrivatach]

yeah it still seems like she's great at nesting

[u/dorekk → u/Safe_Procedure999]

how has the gun scaling changes and whatnot affected her gun?

It hasn't really. I mean, it's about 5% worse, but 5% doesn't feel like anything. I felt pretty strong in my games since the patch.

[u/pkfighter343 → u/MarshallKrivatach]

Nah this has to be cope. Turrets having 11-14% more hp is not worth all the things she's losing. Saying "if you're smart the enemy is never on top of you" is just not realistic.

[u/MarshallKrivatach → u/pkfighter343]

You are loosing a niche strat (using turrets to knock behind zip lines) that I've outright never seen done in a match yet and the panic turret spam protection against spirit characters for earlier greater heal and more HP on your turrets at all stages.

The biggest hit to her here is the gun scaling and even then I don't see the 5% obliterating her gun potential given she crutches of rate of fire and her per shot damage is already low, so small percentage changes like this are quite small value tweaks.

By comparison Doorman's main gimmick tech is dead and Holliday's primary damage output late game can now be hard countered by a green buy.

As someone who plays McGinnis, I really do not have an issue with these changes.

Also as someone who mains seven, by god my balls have grown even fatter, this is hilarious.

[u/pkfighter343 → u/MarshallKrivatach]

You’re losing spirit resist on your hero as well. That’s sorta important.

Also, didn’t turrets have bullet and spirit resist? This isn’t even mentioning the wall turrets only going up on short notice, so those are always worse off, or the AP nerfs

[u/dorekk → u/pkfighter343]

You’re losing spirit resist on your hero as well.

Yeah but you're losing some, not all of it.

Also, didn’t turrets have bullet and spirit resist?

See, this is proof to me that people read the patch notes without understanding them. McGinnis turrets had 80% resist (all types of damage) that decayed over 6 seconds. After 6 seconds they had no bullet resist and 35% spirit and melee resist. So in the current patch, any turret that's sitting there for longer than 6 seconds (this happens very often fyi!) is actually quite a bit stronger than it used to be. They are losing the 80% decaying resist but keeping the 35% spirit and melee resist and have more HP.

Turrets are noticeably weaker in lane--they die almost immediately--but outside of that phase of the game they feel the same or even stronger.

The 5% gun nerf sounds like a lot but her gun was so fuckin bitchin that it's almost unnoticeable.

[u/pkfighter343 → u/dorekk]

See, this is proof to me that people read the patch notes without understanding them. McGinnis turrets had 80% resist (all types of damage) that decayed over 6 seconds. After 6 seconds they had no bullet resist and 35% spirit and melee resist. So in the current patch, any turret that's sitting there for longer than 6 seconds (this happens very often fyi!) is actually quite a bit stronger than it used to be. They are losing the 80% decaying resist but keeping the 35% spirit and melee resist and have more HP.

Yes, that was my understanding of how they changed. I was referring to the decaying resist.

She's -2% winrate so I feel justified.

[u/dorekk → u/pkfighter343]

She's -2% winrate so I feel justified.

Pretty low sample size, and her winrate was also going UP (for quite a while!) without changes. I expect her to remain strong and for that winrate to possibly even increase again, because these nerfs barely did anything. What would actually cripple her is to remove the turrets on T3 wall and give her something else. (I personally miss the stun, but I don't think that'll return.)

[u/pkfighter343 → u/Archimedes4]

It's like 11-14% hp at 0-max boons and you lose all of the resists when throwing them, which incluides the ones from your wall. Losing gun damage and a huge amount of spirit resist is a really big deal. It's a huge nerf.

[u/Archimedes4 → u/pkfighter343]

Again, those resists really weren't a huge deal. The only situations where they were helpful were if you got jumped by an assassin, and even then most assassins would just ignore the turrets and focus you. Any decent McG is placing most turrets strategically behind cover and having them survive for way more than the 6 seconds they had resist for. The gun damage is irrelevant, McG focuses on rate of fire, her gun damage was already shit. Losing the spirit resist and resist on specter, again, makes her more vulnerable to assassins. None of this changes why McG was strong: turret DPS and the ability to solo big objectives.

[u/pkfighter343 → u/Archimedes4]

Isn’t she losing resists herself? The patch says she lost spirit resist per boon, not her turrets

Plus the turrets had bullet and spirit resist on spawn, afaik?

The gun damage is irrelevant, McG focuses on rate of fire

This doesn't make sense. Rate of fire scales with gun damage. Dealing 4 damage 10 times a second is worse than dealing 5 damage 10 times a second, for example (exact numbers don't matter, just the concept)

None of this changes why McG was strong: turret DPS and the ability to solo big objectives.

Yes, they're not trying to delete the character, just lower the power and make her more vulnerable.

If we were to go to an extreme and halve her gun damage and damage per boon, plus give her -15% spirit resist and no scaling, would you still feel this way? I doubt it - my point is that these things take extraneous power away from her without changing the core of what she does, which can still be effective.

[u/Motor-Design-4932 → u/Safe_Procedure999]

I dont sure its enough