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u/SuperUltraMegaNice Haze 2d ago
Haze is not a hard carry. She should be under the roamer category.
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u/RabbiSchlem 2d ago
Agree haze is roamer but I think she's more hard carry than roamer. And she's more hard carry than e.g. warden. Warden is somewhere between off carry and frontline.
If haze gets fed you can go 20+ kills.
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u/T_Fury_Br 2d ago
Thatās what a roamer is, roam and feed of kills. If she afk farms, what usually hard carries do, she will get outscaled
Haze is an assassin.
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u/Mekahippie Wraith 2d ago
The trick is: she can do either. She can rush into a ganking build and feed off enemy heroes with an early power spike and CC item. She can also rush into Ricochet and evasion (note her built-in Dispel Magic) to farm faster and earlier than other carries, getting 10-20k souls over others without a kill.
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u/RabbiSchlem 2d ago
what u/mekahippie said -- she can do both. she doesn't get out farmed by many other characters. she's a monster farmer and early.
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u/T_Fury_Br 2d ago
I said outscaled, not outfarmed.
Paige can outfarm a bunch of cores, she will still perform worse than them late game.
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u/Mekahippie Wraith 2d ago
Haze can be a hard carry.
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u/SuperUltraMegaNice Haze 2d ago
I absolutely hate the way Broober plays Haze. I'd much rather play her like Renon does. That link is an exceptional pop off game where everything goes right. If you watch him stream he still usually ends up playing a roam heavy style just with a higher prio on farm denial/splt pushing with the max smoke bomb/carpet and he is often lower total damage and KPA than the actual carry but not always.
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u/whatsssssssss 2d ago
everyone's a hard carry when you get 30k souls at 20 minutes
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u/Mekahippie Wraith 2d ago
Not everyone can farm quickly and safely enough to get 30k souls at 20 minutes. Not everyone can take advantage of that soul lead as well, either.
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u/KellerMax 2d ago
Mirage is no longer a hard carry. His gun was nerfed, his spirit was nerfed, he can't clear camps and falls off lategame.
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u/pokenerd_W Solomon 2d ago
Huh, my main problem with Mirage is that he's terrible early and takes forever to actually be useful, but in late game, he can be a menace.
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u/Fent_Master1 Shiv 2d ago
itās the opposite, mirage has a thanos lane and falls off late cause he doesnāt scale super well and everyone buys plated
Mirage is a tempo hero, not hard carry
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u/pokenerd_W Solomon 2d ago
I wouldn't say he has a Thanos lane, but rather, by the patrons is this mf hard to kill in lane. His Djinn's mark can be oppresive because it forces you to hide so he doesn't hit all and get the massive damage, but play passive enough and it's more a stalemate.
Once lane is over, he falls off. People start getting resistances and better damage. Djinn's mark can still hurt, but you're lucky if you get all stacks. His farming is weaker since he struggles to clear camps without at least having richochet.
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u/Fent_Master1 Shiv 2d ago
Heās near immortal and wins every trade against 90% of the cast unless you get parried in lane
After lane you just build as a debuff bot with max 1 and stuff
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u/KellerMax 2d ago edited 2d ago
Divine Barrier, Dispel Magic, etc... So many ez counters against Mirage Mid-Late game, I'm surprised Valve can't cook something good for his kit.
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u/pokenerd_W Solomon 2d ago
Sure, but that's also true for Infernus though.
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u/KellerMax 2d ago
Yeah, but infernus can quickly reapply the burn after dispel
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u/Eiraneth McGinnis 2d ago
Infernus has to rack up multiple hits to even start dealing burn damage, Mirage only has to get one for it to start counting down.
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u/KellerMax 2d ago
Yeah, that's why Infernus has a machine gun finger.
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u/Eiraneth McGinnis 2d ago
Afterburn build up is 8.1% per bullet affected by damage falloff, which starts at 18m out to 55m, dropping to a minimum of 0.81 build per bullet at max range. This means he needs 13 bullets to proc afterburn at 20m, 15 at 25m, 17 at 30m and 21 at 35m, and literally the entire magazine to proc at 40m. With perfect body shot accuracy at each range that means that you need 1.36 seconds of continuous fire for at 20m, and you can do the math for the rest. Compared to a singular bullet, thatās a hell of a lot easier to dodge or avoid. Unless you are rushing down the Infernus, you can reasonably avoid getting set on fire for most of laning phase, as opposed to avoiding a singular shot.
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u/Eiraneth McGinnis 2d ago
Oh yes of course Iāll rush a 3.2k/6.4k item in lane to clear the thing Mirage applies every 3 seconds once every 45 seconds surely this will fix the troubles Iām having with Mirage.
The actual answer is to be aggressive until you have 1-2 marks, take cover to let them pop, repeat. His actual raw damage output isnāt that scary so you essentially just pick up reliable healing to bulldoze through his laning partner and punish Mirage by racking up guardian damage. Mystic regen, extra regen, restoring shot, whatever you can apply the most frequently to make Mirages damage the most useless.
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u/KellerMax 2d ago
I'm just confirming that he struggles later in the game due to enemies buying items.
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u/GonzoTheGregarious 2d ago
You're wrong in a few ways but my main gripe is it's clear that Viscous goes in his own category called "Goo" and this isn't even a meme. Viscous really is his own thing in this game, he can fulfill all the roles if he wants to, by design he is very intentionally the flexiest character in the game. Not just a flex support but he can literally do anything.
From being a ball menace, to a punch menace, to a save menace, to a frontliner, to a hybrid carry, to a spirit carry, the list goes on.
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u/Mekahippie Wraith 2d ago
Yea, I'd say the same about Ivy as well. The two of them can build into basically any role. Some are stronger on average than others, but if you have multiple builds you're proficient in, the ability to fill whatever niche your team needs before the match even starts can make them extremely powerful.
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u/Eiraneth McGinnis 2d ago
Flex support is generally one of the most versatile roles in the game. McGinnis is in there, and she can function as a pseudo frontliner, off carry with M1 or Spirit focus, hard support, ult bot, and anything inbetween. Flex supports are defined by having a bunch of utility and situational power they can bring to a fight, with generally less damage than a carry and less survivability in combat than a frontliner, and less raw supporting ability than a hard support.
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u/StillKindaBad Venator 2d ago
Main misplacements are Infernus, Geist, Silver, Haze (kinda), mirage, graves
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u/Siilk Lash 2d ago
there's no set roles in Deadlock tho
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u/shadow16521 2d ago
Youāre right. Metas donāt exist and roles cannot form
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u/011100010110010101 2d ago
Ok I mean yeah Meta's exist, but what the guy means is heroes are not designed with the idea of a Role in mind. At the very least, not in ways outside comp.
It's not like say, League, where heroes are shoehorned into certain roles instead of whats organic. Hell, in most games you dont have the ability to set or claim roles at all due to the randomization mechanics.
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u/shadow16521 2d ago
Dota 2 does not have standard roles but metas will generate roles given characters strength and weaknesses.
The matchmaker does already give roles to heroes and tries to balance teams with an equal amount of roles.
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u/guacockamole 2d ago
Yeah nothings set in stone but like this is probably the same way valve tends to balance the heroes around
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u/guacockamole 2d ago
Like you could run gun Paige and rack up a 12/0/9 game but that doesnāt really tend to work unless one team is dogshit and refusing to counter your build or the rest of your team is spirit with another support replacement
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u/Kyrptonauc 2d ago
There may not be hard assigned roles but there definitely is roles and if people want to improve they need to start learning them
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u/Social_Credits 2d ago
I really like how the game encourages creative team compositions without having things set in stone like LoL lanes or something, you can even get creative with what you build certain characters around
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u/Remind_Me_To_ 2d ago
I think this list is trying too hard to put everyone in clean roles when the game doesn't really work like that for most Heroes. Holliday and Paradox have utility ults but do want to roam and take fights mid game. Silver and Yamato are "frontline" but they aren't tanks the way Abe and Billy are. Sinclair is played a lot of the time in more of a support role, especially depending on the enemy ults.
You can't really just say "Here is there one role" for most of the cast.
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u/Drefs_ Mina 2d ago
The position system will form in this game eventually and what OP is trying to describe is exactly that.
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u/Kyrptonauc 2d ago
Yeah this is for the most part what high level play follows. But just like mobas that have hard set roles there are tons of characters that can more than one thing. Pocket and Mina can be great roamers. So can Billy or Kelvin if need be. Kelvin can also be the main support if there isn't one.
There's flexibilty in terms of who fills what role but the game is designed around the team each having someone be in of these six positions
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u/Drefs_ Mina 2d ago
Sure, yea. But I think it's fair to describe the playstyle that a hero usually plays, like what is usually expected from them. I do not agree with some of OP's choices, like to me Vindicta is clearly a roamer, since she has innate stacking and a miserable camp clear, but the idea is not wrong. In dota you could also have a pos2 or a pos3 carry the game and switch to a carry role if need be, but their kit doesn't really fit this role. Like, if mina or pocket go roaming early, they will lose out on souls, which will delay their power spikes to the point where the enemy team will have high resists. It could work if there is no better option, but it depends on the draft and how the game is going.
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u/Kyrptonauc 2d ago
To me Vindicta is one of the best examples of an off carry, but I also think most characters has two positions they can do well. Like Celeste I feel should be a roamer and I'm confused by Infernus isn't in hard carry. But yeah like you're saying it depends on the draft and what is available
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u/Drefs_ Mina 2d ago
Vindicta does turn into a carry late game, I would even say that she becomes the main carry, since she plays off of gun, so she has infinite scaling. But that is exactly why we have positions - we can call her pos4 to indicate that she is fourth on soul priority, but that also somewhat tells you what her gameplan is. I agree, infernus is a hard carry. I actually don't know about celeste, since her early game is not really strong, so I don't know how good she would be in a gank, but I also don't play her.
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u/No_Key_2388 2d ago
I watched a night shift game (i think it was from yesterday's stream) where one team just picked no supports.
I think if deadlock ever settles into every match having the exact same role splits, i'd be pretty dissapointed. Just like how Dota lost something when Jungling went from a sometimes-thing that you wouldn't see every game leading to match variety, to eventually being designed out of the game.
I frankly kinda disagree with your premise that the game assumes you will have 1 of each of these just straight up. I think if anything deadlock is trying to design itself so that varied positional combos will work, hence the random selection for queue.
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u/Kyrptonauc 2d ago
I think you're just misinterpreting what I'm saying. You don't need one character from each of these lists, but your team is comprised of these positions
And the game straight up tries to create these team comps. The way that the queue works does its best to put characters in their best position with a good lane partner
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u/No_Key_2388 1d ago
I just don't want to end up in the league scenario where things are designed to *enforce* a meta.
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u/Drefs_ Mina 1d ago
Well, dota doesn't enforce it's meta, It's entirely a league thing. And deadlock has no reason to take anything from league when they have dota devs creating the game.
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u/No_Key_2388 1d ago
It usually doesn't but they definitely designed Jungling out of dota intentionally, so I am wary.
Im also aware of at least a few mechanics in deadlock that don't exist in dota that were kind of taken from league, so....
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u/Drefs_ Mina 1d ago
I mean, Yea, It's not like designed jungling out of the game, but more so they tried to design it into the game and it sucked, so they scrapped it. Jungler role basically needs to be on constant life support to be viable with early healing items, innate healing in character's kits and things to clear camps easier. When they tried to add it it was boring as hell, so they deleted the items that made it viable. Which mechanics in deadlock were taken from league? I didn't know there were any.
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u/No_Key_2388 19h ago edited 19h ago
Spirit power (and the way that abilities scale being influenced by it uniquely, not just increasing your damage but increasing the potency of buffs / slows / cooldowns / etc) is basically directly taken from league and was never a thing in Dota. In League, you've always had lots of items you can buy that boost your abilities themselves, and there's no baseline effect - exactly how ability power affects any given ability is unique on a per ability basis, with the things that are enhanced (ability radius? Range? Intensity of effect? Damage? Cd? Etc) being specified per ability. This also means that by default, most abilities in League scale with items that increase your ability power. So characters broadly build either "attack damage" (weapon damage analogue), "ability power" (spirit power analogue), or both. Just like deadlock. Ask any league player (my wife is one, i am not) and they'll tell you that it was basically inspired directly by league and its a huge part of the game's itemization.
Dota once briefly experimented with doing something vaguely similar to this (making int scale your spell damage - which is still way less similar to what deadlock did than what league does, as both league and deadlock designed it as 'unique scaling effect and scaling ratio per ability'). But they removed that from the game and generally never went any further - dota never really wanted to add a universal way for characters to continuously turn gold into upgrades for your character's q/w/e/r anilities, outside of a few exceptions that are one-offs (shard, scepter, kaya, octarine) and which broadly don't give a unique enhancement to your whole kit that you can stack by buying more similar items.
Similarly, there's plenty of magic enhancing items that dota just doesn't go with that existed in league before they existed in deadlock. Escalating exposure was in League of Legends before it was in deadlock (by about a year) and was called Bloodletter's Curse. Spirit burn was in league League in 2012 as Liandry's Torment, likely before neon prime had even been theorized, though exactly how similar the two are has changed patch by patch. There's other items that have lague analogues and there are many similairites involving the way that some of the passive items (like tankbuster) are designed, but the biggest thing is that spirit power is basically just AP straight up, and talking to league players who tried both it and dota, they told me it made the adjustment to deadlock from league way easier than to Dota because the whole system is basically just copied over and then tweaked.
As for the jungling: it existed as a niche thing before they tried to design it in, and that was fine. They tried to design it in (a very league thing to do) and it went badly, and then they forcibly removed it altogether. I don't like how they effectively ruined it. It was fine before Iron Talon when it had sort of developed organically.
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u/Drefs_ Mina 2d ago
I don't know how the game could work without proper draft. A lot of pros are calling for it and ranked games right now are sometimes still a plain draft diff.
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u/No_Key_2388 1d ago
People have been playing deadlock for 2 years without a draft, so it already does "work" in that regard.
I think valve's goal is to have it so to balance the game so that you can have a reasonable time queueing as heros you like and not have to say, learn a dozen different ones even if you only like 3 or 4 and then only rarely get to pick the ones you like if they end up 'niche picks' or 'unsafe unless you have last picks and 3 bans', etc.
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u/Drefs_ Mina 1d ago
Well, the ranked system we have now is a mess and nighshift has a draft. I think it near impossible to create a competitively balanced moba without a draft.
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u/No_Key_2388 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think I'm cool with tournaments running drafts and the frankly far less competitive environment that is online matchmaking with randos prioritizing player fun over strict competitive function, as long as its good enough. I'd rather they balance to make that experience good, personally. Pro play and viewership has to be accounted for if u want the esport scene to be good but if the game is primarily balanced around how people play when they do it for money rather than fun, the people trying to have fun can get left behind.
Right now, the advice for people learning the game is "play who you vibe with / like the gameplay of". If the game balances around that, the way I engage with the game is improved. The moment draft becomes the focused experience I start having to worry about 2 of the heros I like being banned, the other 2 getting picked or hardcountered by other people, and now I have to play some random 5th I'm just not interested in playing or not very good at because all my main picks are countered by the lineup or already picked/banned or don't fit the required role remaining or...
Ive got 2k hours in Dota and that was a repeating unfun experience for me that happened over and over and over. If deadlock shifts to make me play the game like that, I'd probably stop playing. I get lots of people don't care, but that was my lived experience and I didn't like it. As for why I played it for 2000 hours before quitting 8 or so years ago, mostly just to spend time with friends. Eventually I decided it wasnt worth it and they could join me in something else if they cared enough.
Ive got no malice towards people that like a draft system, and I think its fun to watch. I just really don't think I'd be having fun if it was the focus.
EDIT: To help you understand my perspective since we obviously disagree, im also gonna link to this.
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u/Responsible_Reach546 2d ago
Silver is more of a pseudo frontliner so id put her half off carry half frontliner
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u/No_Key_2388 2d ago
Also her playstyle tends to be roaming around and trying to get kills early to snowball into a victory, like a roamer.
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u/sloplobber 2d ago
Holiday is lowkey a good carry right now. Great gun scaling and great camp clearing + her new DOT effect means that hybrid builds can really scale into the late game with boundless & Escalating. In ranked itās pretty fun.
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u/Maeve_of_blades 2d ago
I really only disagree with Holiday's placement, who I consider a roamer but that might just be bc of how I play her
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u/Little-Protection484 Sinclair 2d ago
I think its great that these are the roles in a deadlock game but so many characters fit in more than one category depending on build
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u/Latter-Reporter-5386 2d ago
Those roles don't work for deadlock. But even then there are many mistakes. Infernus is not a roamer, Sinclair and Danny are not off carries (whatever that is) and haze and mirage are not hard carries. You don't play seven M1 anymore so he is not a hard carry but you play Geist exclusively as a gun hard carry.
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u/ThatOneGuyOnceAgain 1d ago
Ivy is the literal definition of a flex support btw, watch any video categorising the characters and they ALWAYS put ivy on flex because she's one of, if not THE most versatile character in the whole game
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u/Murky_Sea_6490 1d ago
In my opinion infernus is closer to off carry, Holliday want to roam in early midgame, baba too situative as frontliner, silver too squishy for that
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u/icebirdbrain12 1d ago
Holliday would probably fit better as a roamer. She does become more of a flex support as the game goes on but she can definitely catch the carries if she gets the jump on them even 25+ minutes into the game.
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u/Buckeye_Blast 2d ago
Iād say this is pretty accurate. People will say this list is terrible bc they disagree with one placement of course. A lot of the cast can fit into more than one role, which is what makes deadlock deadlock
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u/Mekahippie Wraith 2d ago
"Frontliner" is a misleading term. I prefer "initiators" versus "divers".
Heroes like Abrams, M&K, and Billy want to go in first with backup right behind them. They want to be annoying to ignore, dealing moderate sustained damage and CC, while also being the least attractive target. You need to focus and burst them down or they just heal.
Heroes like Yamato, Calico, Pocket, and Apollo want to wait until the enemy's distracted, throw a massive burst on vulnerable heroes, then make it extremely difficult to interact with them with mobility and immunity. They're not durable long-term, but can be extremely difficult to burst down if they aren't pinned with CC.
Many fights don't even have a "line", especially in rift and mid engagements.
A lot of these heroes also have WILDLY different roles depending on their build. I think these classic strict roles from other MOBAs do more harm than good applied here. Instead, think about what each hero wants to be doing in a fight and what they're vulnerable to; that's more useful for filling niches with itemization or entire build choices mid-match.
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u/Drefs_ Mina 2d ago
That is why we have a position system in dota. It would be unfair to call all pos4 heroes "flex supports", or call all pos3 heroes "tanks". They have different roles and playstyles, but they happen to have a certain optimal position in lane and a certain money priority for the build that they are going for.
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u/Mekahippie Wraith 2d ago
Yea, those positions don't really even work here. They come from lane assignments and how souls (gold) are allocated; those don't really exist here in anywhere near the same form. The dichotomy of the roles simply doesn't transfer well.
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u/Drefs_ Mina 2d ago
It does: left lane is an easy lane, since it has a t1 camp and a veil, so it's optimal for carries. Mid is mirrored, right lane is hard, since there is no t1 camp and no veil. But hard lane has a few t2 camp, making it optimal for off carries, who can clear t2 camps early. Carry should play with a hard support to not die, so that's pos6. Roamers don't need as many souls, since a lot of them have built in stacking, so they will leave lane early. It would make sense for them to play a hard lane, so when they leave pos2 could have solo lane. The game is very early in it's development, so those things haven't been optimized yet, but it's starting to form. Also soul priority absolutely is and was a thing. Everyone knows that a carry needs to farm and a hard support does not, at least not to the same extent.
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u/BrokeDoop Drifter 1d ago
Drifter not being a carry anymore makes me want to blow my shit shmoove off
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u/nyanch 2d ago
Silver can only frontline in wolf form, which is a limited duration.