Support at a Pro Level - a deep dive

One of my favourite and most successful heroes in Dota is Warlock. For those who don't know, it's a guy that stands in the backline, has one big "teamfight reset" button and then spends most of his time channeling an AoE slow, making sure that the enemies don't escape from his teammates.

He can't press anything else during the channeling, or the spell will be interrupted and in most cases doing nothing but channeling is the most effective thing he can do. Given a 16-second channel time, Warlock is a hero who can be played somewhat effectively with an APM of four.

It is definitely an exaggeration, but I really wanted to highlight how uncomfortable the first several hours of Deadlock were for me, someone who was used to a slower, more methodical pace of Dota. Suddenly the enemies could be behind you, below you, above you and you needed to track their movements, while constantly and consistently reacting. It's not like I never played shooters, I just never preferred them, so the whole experience was quite disorienting.

Yet, I kept going. I am not sure whether it was the natural Dota-player stubbornness or the impeccable character designs that kept pulling me in, but there is something about Deadlock that simply works. And after getting over the initial overwhelmedness that comes naturally when playing an IceFrog game, I gravitated towards the same role I gravitated towards in Dota — the Support.

What is a support in Deadlock

As with any complex game, learning from the best is usually the way to go. It might take a while to replicate the movement and aim of high level players, but a big part of Deadlock is understanding the meta, the itemization and the playstyles.

Now, looking at what's happening at the highest level of competitive play right now, the roles in Deadlock are still not as defined as they are in Dota. From our initial observations of the professional scene, teams in the Deadlock Night Shift EU and Deadlock Night Shift NA tournaments do try to funnel most of their Souls into one or two characters, the typical late game "carries"; they also usually have several tanky brawlers, who mostly farm dangerous camps and outpush lanes; and most teams opt to have exactly one utility healer, be it Rem, Ivy, Kelvin or Paige.

Looking at post-game stats, it is clear that the playstyle of these supports revolves primarily around healing: they are frequently at the bottom of the table when it comes to damage dealt, but not because their heroes can't deal damage, but because they play in a way that maximizes their ability to continuously provide heals and utility. So far, it doesn't look that different from what you'd get from some supports in Dota.

Yet there are some key differences. There is no dewarding in Deadlock and no resources spent on consumables. The lane souls are also shared, hence the massive resources disparity between the "cores" and the "supports" is largely absent for the first ten minutes of the game.

There are no smoke ganks and no high fatality rate reveal plays. Instead of spending time to ward, stack and reveal smokes, supports in Deadlock are almost always primed to contribute to a play.

But the biggest difference, at least in my opinion, is in how itemization works in Deadlock. Not only do supports in Deadlock spend less time and no resources on map admin, not only do they generally get a lot more resources to work with in the first place, but they also tend to naturally become a lot less squishy.

Know your greens

This might change in the future, as the game is ever-evolving and is still very much a work in progress, but for now all Healing and Support items in the game are the Green items and as such also give you HP. Want to heal your teammates? You get a bit tankier. Want to be able to provide a debuff-dispelling barrier? Get even tankier yourself. Want to be able to get to your teammates faster with extra Stamina and Sprint Speed? Guess what, you get tankier once again.

For someone used to Dota's "survival horror" squishy support playstyle, this feels quite refreshing and, honestly, a bit broken and unfair. I get to fulfill all my healing and utility duties, while also being an off-tank. Or at the very least not dying to random AoE effects.

Don't get me wrong, Supports are not full Tanks and good positioning is still key. You will be a priority target for the enemy team in a lot of cases. There is a reason the Damage numbers are so low for support players in the Night Shift — they don't overextend unnecessarily and don't play greedy. Still, making positioning mistakes as a Support in Deadlock is a lot less punishing: they can survive for much longer than a focused down Support in Dota.

Overpowered Oversynergy

There is another interesting thing Deadlock does for its Supports. Once again, subject to change, but an observation worth noting nonetheless: all healing, support Green items also give you Ability Range. Which, in Deadlock terms, means both extra Ability Cast Range and extra Ability AoE.

Guardian Ward, the game's save item that provides teammates with a Barrier, gives Ability Range. Healing Nova, the game's Mekansm-like Burst AoE Heal, does the same.

My personal favorite, the Rescue Beam, is a save item that allows you to physically pull a teammate out of a dangerous position, while healing them. It is the best "please stop being an idiot" button you can use on your teammates across all Dota-likes. And guess what? Rescue Beam also gives ABILITY RANGE.

As a support in Dota who is constantly tempted by a feelsgood Cast Range-increasing Aether Lens, but who knows that a saving Glimmer Cape is the correct choice, this seems completely unfair and broken. You get all the good stuff while getting all the fun stuff?!

All of the above stacking Ability Range doesn't just translate to better QoL, where you get to use your save items without getting out of position yourself. When building full Heal, your Hero will become quite tanky and will have massive AoE and range on all the items and abilities as a byproduct; as a side-benefit.

That means your skillshot AoE Crowd Control abilities will land better and catch more heroes. Hence your non-healing teamfight contributions become more powerful and consistent and you start to really feel how strongly you impact the fight outcomes. It is a very pleasant feeling and achieving it is a bit more straightforward than it is in Dota.

Selling point

Personally, this is what is selling Deadlock to me right now and it is selling the game hard. Whereas current Dota philosophy says that Aether Lens can no longer build into Octarine Core, because the game's balance is on a knife's edge and getting both Cast Range and Cooldown Reduction in one item is a bit too powerful, Deadlock just says: "screw it, these things in tandem make a lot of sense and synergise well, let's slap them together".

Of course it might change in the future, once the game's balance becomes more of a priority. And naturally Dota is simply a much more mature game that is expected to prioritise the balanced fun of competitive integrity over crazy fun of the casual variety.

But perhaps this crazy straightforward fun is why I find myself Supporting in Deadlock more and more frequently and why I sometimes find it more enjoyable than supporting in Dota. Despite my continuous struggle to hit anything more than five meters away and my sub-50% Dash-Jump win rate.

Dota is a world-renowned restaurant and while fine dining is great, there is etiquette that must be strictly adhered to by both the patrons and the staff. Decorum must be maintained and there is even a proper, correct order to utensil utilisation.

Deadlock just lets you go ham on a good fucking burger.