Deadlock has me in an iron grip at the moment, and I owe part of that to my prior experience with Dota 2—see, back when I was a lot less happy (these things might be correlated), I sunk about 2,500 hours into that MOBA hell dimension. I regret just about every single one, but they did stick with me.
As such, I’ve been mightily enjoying Deadlock, because while my aim is bad and I don’t have a lick of schmovement, I do have the paranoid “check the map every 10 seconds” instinct boiled into my bone marrow. Which is why its newest hero, Celeste, is giving me conniptions.
Celeste is the fifth hero released as part of the Old Gods, New Blood update. Over the course of the past month and change, players have been able to vote on the release order of five new heroes: First it was Rem, then Graves, then Silver, then Venator—leaving Celeste and Apollo to fight over second-to-last place.
Let’s get into her kit—Celeste is an agile spirit nuker with abilities geared around blowing up your opponents in style. She starts with a whopping four stamina pips to juke with, and she also floats a little bit, allowing skilled players to air strafe and zip around the map like they’re playing Titanfall.
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Her first ability, Light Eater, hits in a cone and provides two benefits: A bit of spirit lifesteal, and extra spirit damage on Celeste’s weapon attacks for a few seconds after hitting afflicted enemies with it. I’ve seen most people pick this up early, given it allows her to score some meaty trades in the early minutes of the game.
It’s the same with Dazzling Trick, which works a little like Paige’s shield except Celeste can only apply it to herself. It gives the unicorn some extra movement speed and creates a silencing explosion when it’s destroyed, which makes her surprisingly tanky during laning.
The spirit damage from both of these synergises nicely with Radiant Daggers, an AoE that triggers after a few seconds and deals spirit damage to enemies caught in it. The main benefit of this is that it gives Celeste a stacking spirit damage buff if you catch enemy heroes inside, up to a maximum of six stacks. These drop after a bit (unlike Bebop’s bombs or Mina’s Love Bites), but Celeste is still scary when she’s ramped up.
And lastly, the thing that’s giving me flashbacks: Shining Wonder, an orb that bounces between enemy heroes, dealing even more spirit damage, applying a slow, and reducing their dash distance. This thing hurts if you’re poorly positioned, given it can get up to a whopping 18 bounces at its max rank.
I have already been sent hurtling back in time to my Dota 2 days where Lich, whose ult pretty much does the exact same thing, would send his fun bouncing ball of doom to rip through my badly-organised teammates. I thought such horrors were behind me. Alas.
Last to arrive at the Cursed Apple is Apollo—who you can amusingly still vote for—that seems ready to finish off the sextuplet as a melee duelist type.
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