Deadlock Melee and Parry Guide: Light, Heavy and Parry Timing

Every Deadlock hero can fight up close with a light melee, a heavy melee and a parry. Melee helps you farm, finishes off fleeing enemies, breaks crates and claims objectives. Parry is the counter, and it creates some of the biggest swing moments in any match.

Light vs. heavy melee

	Light melee	Heavy melee
Input	Tap Q	Hold Q
Speed	Instant, no wind-up	Visible wind-up
Damage	Lower	Much higher
Movement	—	Lunges you forward about half a dash
Cooldown	—	1 s (1.3 s if it misses)
Can be parried?	Yes	Yes, and it’s the classic parry target

Heavy melee can also be charged in the air, so you can jump in and swing as you land.

Things only heavy melee can do

• Claim power-ups
• Claim the Rejuvenator after the Mid Boss dies
• Pick up soul bags dropped by dead heroes
• Break tough crates

Other melee interactions

• Sinner’s Sacrifice only reacts to melee, and hits you back for 80 damage on every strike.
• Meleeing a Soul Urn carrier makes them drop the urn.
• Meleeing someone who’s mantling slows them by 80%, fading to 20% over 2 seconds.

How melee damage scales

Each hero has their own light and heavy melee damage values, which grow with boons. On top of that:

• Melee gets 50% of your weapon damage bonuses.
• Melee is reduced by the target’s bullet resist.
• Melee triggers most weapon-damage item effects, but not bullet-only effects like Toxic Bullets or Metal Skin.
• Melee-specific items include Melee Lifesteal (800), Melee Charge (1,600) and Crushing Fists (6,400).

Melee for farming

Killing a trooper with melee gives you all of its souls immediately, with no soul orb to shoot and nothing for the enemy to deny. In lane, finishing troopers with melee is one of the safest ways to farm.

Parry

Press F to parry.

• The animation lasts 1 second, and it catches attacks during the first 0.75 seconds.
• Success: the attacker is stunned for 2.75 seconds and takes +25% damage from all sources for that time. Debuff resist doesn’t shorten this stun. After a successful parry you’re locked out of acting for 0.3 seconds.
• Cooldown: parry goes on cooldown as soon as you use it. A successful parry against a hero refunds it instantly. Whiffing, or parrying troopers and Guardians, leaves it on cooldown.

What you can parry

• Enemy heroes’ melee attacks, which is the main use
• Troopers’ and Guardians’ melee (no cooldown refund)

Bullets and most abilities can’t be parried.

Winning the melee mind game

Melee fights come down to reading each other’s timing:

1. Don’t open with a heavy melee on someone facing you. The wind-up is easy to see, and a parry stuns you for 2.75 seconds.
2. Use light melee to finish low-health targets. It’s instant and much harder to react to.
3. Bait the parry. Walk up as if to heavy melee, wait, then strike once they’ve parried thin air and their parry is on cooldown.
4. Heavy melee targets who can’t parry: anyone stunned, slowed, distracted, or with their back to you.
5. Only parry what you can see coming. Parrying on reflex leaves you open to the exact attack you were trying to stop.

Practise it

In the sandbox:

1. Practise light-melee last hits on troopers.
2. Learn your hero’s heavy melee range by lunging at a wall.
3. With a friend, take turns throwing heavy melees and parrying them until you can recognise the wind-up straight away.

Next: Abilities and ability points →