What we learned from Deadlock Fight Night #29

Another week of Deadlock Fight Night is in the books as #29 brought us another incredible slew of matches. To recap the action, here’s a quick look at some key takeaways and what we learned from DFN this week, including a brand-new video breakdown of all the action.

Deadlock Fight Night #29 Recap! | Breaking Down a WILD NA Comeback and a New Midrange Meta!

Team Fighting > Global Presence

In the first map of the NA money match between Hydra Nation and Valhalla, the two teams took completely different approaches to the game, with Hydra Nation’s superior team fighting composition eventually taking over in the late game.

Hydra Nation vs Valhalla map 1 statistics (courtesy of Deadlock Fight Night)

Valhalla played great through the early and mid game with this comp, getting consistent value from League’s Grey Talon and their plethora of crowd control options. At around the 20-25 minute mark, Valhalla had nearly a 20k Soul lead and looked to close the game out heading into the late game. But, this is where superior macro play, patience, and a team fighting composition can make all the difference.

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In the following 10 minutes of play, Hydra Nation began rallying after a couple of back-to-back multikills where they brought 4+ team members, and ended up taking a 43k Soul lead by the 35-minute mark. That is a swing of about 60k Souls in 10 minutes, showing us for arguably the first time how potent the comeback mechanics in Deadlock can be with a proper late-game composition.

If Valhalla could have maintained their identity heading into the late game and been a bit less aggressive, perhaps this one could have gone differently. But, credit to Hydra Nation for staying together, buckling down, and winning a very tough and crucial first map in the series.

The meta continues to evolve

Hero picks and bans from DFN #29 (courtesy of Deadlock Fight Night)

The Deadlock Fight Night production crew gave us a great look at the hero picks and bans for this week’s action, with a clear grouping of ~10 heroes clearly claiming the top spots.

Taking a look at this, the biggest standouts are the six bans of Viscous and the seven picks of Infernus. This signals the perceived importance of the counterplay that Viscous provides and how much investment is going into midrange and up-close heroes. The only long-range hero with comparable priority was Mirage.

However, don’t let some of these pick/ban priorities fool you, as there are still very effective ways to win on less-picked heroes, as we saw Bebop and Seven play key roles in Abrahams’ money match series win in EU. Grey Talon also had a positive showing this week in the NA money match.

This trend will be an interesting one to monitor as teams continue to adapt and find effective counterplays for these top heroes and sort out which “off-meta” heroes they can find value in.

That’s all we’ve got for this week’s recap here at The Game Haus. But, we have a very exciting new Deadlock YouTube channel that we have just launched called Dead Unlocked! Be sure to check it out and stay tuned for more Deadlock news and updates here on the site and over on the new channel.

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