During the recent update from November 21, 2024, three new Deadlock items were added to the game, Spirit Snatch, Arcane Surge, and Spellslinger Headshots. A few weeks later, I’ve finally sussed out how these items perform best, and whether they’re viability in the meta will continue.
Arcane Surge
Arcane Surge is a Spirit item requiring the purchase of Kinetic Dash. Arcane Surge reduces your next Dash-Jump cost to a single stamina bar point while also giving you extra Fire Rate and bonus Ammo. In addition, the next ability you cast has bonus range, duration and Spirit Power. This item is generally speaking really good on characters that like to be mobile and skirmish. Characters like Dynamo, Warden, and Viscous really benefit from the range and duration extension during fights.
Generally, if you have an open Spirit Slot, you should consider grabbing Arcane Surge from the Curiosity Shop.
Infernus benefits from the buffs of Arcane Surge as it has significant synergy with Infernus’ flame dash. It increases the width and length of his AoE attack, making him slippery, and more of a threat during fights.
As Abrams already likes to build Kinetic Dash, having the choice to not only upgrade it to Arcane Surge but also move it to his spirit slots is really valuable. The buffs Arcane Surge gives Abrams’ abilities are also significant during fights, making his CC and range that much more potent.
Characters like Seven and Yamato benefit not only on their normal abilities, but particularly benefit on their teamfight-altering ultimates thanks to the bonus range, duration, and Spirit Power provided by Arcane Surge.
All in all there are few characters that shouldn’t build Arcane Surge as it’s a very well rounded item that has more pros than cons, and has a positive impact on your winrate.
Spirit Snatch
Spirit Snatch is the first and only melee-based tier 3 Spirit item. Spirit Snatch builds from Spirit Strike and passively infuses your melee attacks with extra Spirit damage, but also steals Spirit Resistance and Spirit Power from enemy heroes hit with the light or heavy melees. This buff persists for a brief amount of time, requiring users of Spirit Snatch to engage in melee more frequently to keep the buff active.
In all, this is a jack of all trades item that should work on just about anyone who likes to or wants to commit to a melee attack.
With Abrams being the poster child of melee based damage, he massively benefits from Spirit Snatch, and his winrate reflects this, being the highest with the item. Using his unavoidable combo you can almost always guarantee a heavy melee or two, and with this item it hits even harder making it a core item to build on his character.
Bebop’s 1 ability, Exploding Uppercut, acts as an AOE melee attack and can be cast immediately after his pull, making Spirit Snatch a very core buy on Bebop. This item is particularly good when building for his ultimate, Hyper Beam, as it will do bonus damage after you steal Spirit Power and resistance from the enemy.
Characters like Lash and Yamato are able to get off light melees during their combos, allowing them to seamlessly weave Spirit Snatch’s passive into their damage rotations with ease.
While Spirit Snatch won’t always be a priority for Warden and Mo & Krill (As shown by their relatively low positive winrates with the item), these are characters that get up close and personal with enemies and whilst you won’t always be prioritising melee attacks, both can go for them if the situation arises.
Spellslinger Headshots
Spellslinger Headshots is a new weapon item built from Soul Shredder Bullets. This upgrade allows you to stack Spirit Amp by 4% for up to 16 stacks each time you land a headshot. This, on top of the base 8% Spirit Amp you gain when firing on enemies, means that this item has the potential to seriously boost a character’s damage numbers through the roof.
Unfortunately, winrates show that Spellslinger Headshots seems to be the most underwhelming or most misunderstood of the new items added. Key characters such as Grey Talon, Wraith and Pocket that not only build high Spirit but are also highly capable at hitting headshots all have negative winrates with this item.
A quick look at the data actually shows that Soul Shredder Bullets, the component of Spellslinger Headshots, often has a much higher winrate on most characters than Spellslinger Headshots does. This is likely because Spellslinger Headshots boosts the Spirit Power the character already has. In effect, if the player hasn’t built other Spirit items, Spellslinger Headshot won’t do much for them. From what we can see, some players either buy the item too early, and therefore not getting the amplified damage they would later into the game, or win the game before buying it at the appropriate point.
The only two characters with positive winrates on Spellslinger Headshots are Haze, Seven and Ivy. Haze is a character with a very volatile snowball and can actually make use of this item before the game ends. While Seven has just under a 51% winrate, he is a late game scaler and has a gun that makes it very easy to accumulate headshots easily, as does Ivy, allowing Spellslinger Headshots to stack quickly for a massive damage buff during fights.
Overall, the new items added to Deadlock in this update are performing fairly well, with the exception of Spellslinger Headshots. I actually believe that Spellslinger Headshots will gradually become more and more popular, particularly for characters that first build Spirit Power through other items. It would also be amazing if we see additional item upgrades that change categories like Arcane Surge, making item building more complicated, but also more versatile.
Hopefully, Valve’s new and larger, though less frequent Deadlock patches will deliver on this, as well as bring more Deadlock heroes from Hero Labs onto the main stage.
