Deathy's Hero Difficulty Tierlist (FOR BEGINNERS)

Hero Difficulty Guide for Beginners

The video sorts Deadlock heroes by how approachable they are for new players—not by strength or an exact ranking. The categories reflect what each hero asks of a player: straightforward abilities, good aim, good movement, practice, or a high level of mastery.

The main advice is to choose a hero you enjoy, even if they’re considered difficult. A hero that fits your preferred play style matters more than picking the easiest or strongest option. The tiers are broad guidance, and a challenging hero may take 10–30 games to feel comfortable.

Beginner-Friendly

• Abrams: A forgiving frontline hero with healing, regeneration, and two stuns—good for learning the fundamentals.
• Drifter: A straightforward close-range assassin. His mark-and-teleport combo rewards finding isolated targets, though beginners may need to learn when to enter the enemy jungle.
• Graves: Requires very little aiming; her auto-aim weapon and simple abilities make her accessible.
• Kelvin: Has an easy-to-understand kit: a damaging and healing grenade, a mobility path, a slowing beam, and a team-isolating dome. The main learning point is when to use the dome.
• McGinnis: Her turrets and ultimate can provide value without advanced mechanics. Her wall and healing placement take more practice.
• Mo & Krill: Durable and forgiving, with almost no shooting required. Their grab disables an enemy while they deal damage.
• Rem: A mechanically forgiving support with healing and utility for teammates. Her sleep ability and helpers require more judgment.
• Seven: Farms well and has easy-to-use abilities. His ultimate can be especially effective in lower-ranked fights and around objectives.
• Warden: A straightforward, durable damage dealer with a flask, shield, cage, and area-damage ultimate.
• Rat King: Considered beginner-friendly at the time of recording, with simple abilities and an easy-to-understand ultimate.

Beginner-Friendly, but Aim Matters

• Infernus: Accessible overall, but needs to land shots to trigger Afterburn. His dash can be particularly effective against opponents who don’t use vertical movement.
• Lady Geist: Her kit is forgiving, and she’s durable, but gun-focused builds benefit from good aim. Spirit builds may be easier initially, though the creator considers them less effective at higher levels.
• Haze: Has a simple kit for players who enjoy shooting, but her damage depends heavily on landing shots and headshots. Her ultimate is the more forgiving part of her kit.
• Grey Talon: A sniper-style hero whose arrows, snare, and other abilities require accuracy. His stamina makes him somewhat more forgiving when escaping than Vindicta.
• Vindicta: Strong at range and able to showcase precise aim, but very squishy and vulnerable if enemies reach her.
• Wraith: Deals substantial damage and farms well, but her low durability makes aim and positioning important.

Good Movement Required

• Celeste: Her air control and low gravity are central to her play style. The creator recommends her for players who already enjoy movement-heavy games.
• Lash: A good choice for players willing to learn movement. His grapple enables dramatic mobility, while good movement helps him reset and make the most of fights.
• Mina: Very squishy and reliant on bat form to dodge and reposition. Learning what to evade is essential.

Requires Some Practice

• Bebop: His abilities combo around hooking enemies into close range. Knowing when a hook is beneficial—and avoiding ineffective bomb-focused play—takes experience.
• Billy: A more demanding frontline brawler than Abrams because his kit revolves around heavy melee attacks and managing the periods when his buff is active.
• Calico: A glass-cannon assassin who benefits from good game sense and choosing the right time and place to get picks. For her inconsistent Gloom Bombs, try aiming lower.
• Dynamo: His stomp and healing are fairly easy to use, but Quantum Entanglement is difficult for beginners because it requires knowing which enemy abilities to dodge.
• Ivy: Her tether, invulnerability ability, and flying ultimate have situational uses. Knowing when to activate them is the main challenge.
• Mirage: His kit is fairly direct, but new players may not understand where his damage comes from. His map-wide teleport can also be difficult to use effectively.
• Paige: A supportive option whose spells can be hard to land without setup. Kelvin is presented as the easier support for beginners.
• Victor: His abilities can damage him, so beginners need to learn his limits. He can become very powerful later in a match, especially in lower-level games.

Difficult or Specialist Heroes

• Apollo — Difficult: Requires timing and knowledge of what Reposte can counter. His ultimate also needs good timing and accuracy.
• Silver — Difficult: Has human and wolf forms. Her human-form skill shots must deal enough damage to enable her transformation; once transformed, she can overwhelm opponents who don’t know how to respond.
• Venator — Difficult: His kit is simple in concept, but he is slow and lacks much escape or sustain. His grenade, shotgun, trap, and crossbow all have a learning curve.
• Viscous — Difficult: Has useful movement techniques and a teammate-saving invulnerability cube. His ultimate was considered less central at the time, making him less specialist-dependent than before.
• Vyper — Difficult: Needs close-range damage and good sliding movement. Her area petrification ultimate is harder to use effectively.
• Yamato — Difficult: Her abilities aren’t necessarily hard to land, but she requires good judgment about how far to commit, when to chase, and when to use her ultimate.
• Doorman — Specialist: The portal system and ability combinations demand deep hero knowledge and coordination with teammates.
• Holiday — Specialist: Her barrels, headshot-triggered ability, jump pads, and lasso demand aim, movement, and skill-shot accuracy.
• Paradox — Specialist: Her bomb, time wall, charged shot, and position swap are strongest when combined; coordinating the full kit is challenging.
• Pocket — Specialist: Very mobile and difficult to master, with abilities that demand precise timing. An ultimate-focused approach can still provide some value.
• Shiv — Specialist: His distinctive right-click movement is central to his effectiveness, and he must choose fights in areas that suit his dash.
• Sinclair — Specialist: His ultimate steals another hero’s ultimate, so using it well requires knowing what many other heroes’ abilities do.

Key Takeaways

• Pick for fun and preferred play style, not just difficulty or the current meta.
• If you want an easy starting point, try the beginner-friendly group. For aiming or movement challenges, choose heroes in those specific categories.
• “Difficult” isn’t a precise comparison between heroes. The tiers are meant to help beginners find a good fit, not settle which hero is hardest.
• Newer heroes were generally left unrated because there wasn’t enough experience with them; Rat King was the exception.

Gamers and Sources Mentioned

• Deathy: Presenter
• Crayon: Mentioned in a discussion about Kelvin
• Gary, also called Isaacs: Mentioned while discussing Silver
• Game and character comparisons: Overwatch (Moira, Ana, and Reaper), Dota (Invoker and Enigma), Counter-Strike surf, Team Fortress 2, Titanfall, and Valve’s Portal.