Deadlock’s ultimate ability has the potential to secure rounds in VALORANT, but it could also fail you in a way you didn’t think was possible—and players want that to change.
When using her Annihilation ultimate, Deadlock launches nanowires at an enemy and traps them in a moving cocoon. During this time, the captured VALORANT player is helpless and must be freed before it’s too late. Players can shoot the cocoon to rescue their captured teammate, or else the victim will die once they reach the end of the nanowire path. In other words, this ult can lock up rounds if it catches the last enemy alive since there’s no one left to save them from the cocoon.
However, as seen in the clip from an April 21 Reddit thread, there are rare instances where the player in the cocoon is freed without any help from teammates. In the clip, players are mindblown when they witness Yoru seemingly tearing himself free from Deadlock’s ultimate before shooting down his captor. This, unfortunately, cost the Deadlock player a round they should’ve easily won after using the ult. After all, most players would’ve assumed the round was over as soon as that last enemy was caught in the cocoon.
Players explained this occasionally happens due to “weird geometry” interactions with the ultimate. “If Deadlock’s Ult crosses somewhere unreachable, it stops and begins breaking. In this clip, it bounced off of some geometry on the back wall that players normally can’t reach,” a player commented. This not only catches many players off guard but also leads to inconsistencies when using the ult, to the point where one player admits they’re scared of using it in “complex territories.”
As a simple way to fix Deadlock’s ult, players suggest the cocoon should kill (rather than free) anyone trapped inside it after a given amount of time, even if it doesn’t reach the end of the path. In that way, Deadlock players would no longer lose rounds due to weird geometry, making it more reliable to use than it currently is. It just doesn’t really make sense for players to be freed from the cocoon unless their teammates break it down by shooting at it, and this suggestion would solve that issue.
Deadlock’s other abilities have received buffs in the past, but she could always use another one like this to make her a little stronger.
