With Valve opening the floodgates for players to test their new MOBA-shooter Deadlock, many popular streamers, including Shroud, are totally hooked—and it’s all thanks to its unique hero abilities and map approach.
Deadlock quickly became one of the most played games on Steam just a few days after Valve allowed players to invite their friends to participate in the playtest. Shroud’s among the players who hopped on the bandwagon, already deeming Deadlock the “best third-person shooter” after just a few hours of playing. Now in an Aug. 28 stream, the former Counter-Strike pro dubbed Kelvin’s Ice Path the “coolest thing” in any video game.
“You’re making like a terrain under your feet. It’s fucking cool as shit,” Shroud declared, with his party members quickly agreeing with the streamer in unison. Like every Deadlock hero, Kelvin offers three abilities and an ultimate. Ice Path is the hero’s second, creating a floating trail of ice for you and your team to walk over. The cherry on top is the movement bonus and slow resistance you receive while running over the path.
This lets you not only lets you aggro your Deadlock lanes but also helps initiate fights quickly in other lanes. You can track targets down with your Arctic Beam (Kelvin’s third ability) or left click while being incredibly hard to aim for the enemy heroes.
Considering you can move in any direction during Ice Path’s eight seconds, you can reach high ground comfortably. Once you invest two skill points, it reduces the cooldown by 16 seconds (and now refreshes in 20 seconds).
It’s no surprise Shroud, whose long been famed for his shooting skills, would love to get into difficult to reach positions for better angles and surprise attacks—a flanking play he repeated several times across his lengthy Deadlock stream.
The devs have been introducing many tweaks for characters’ kits in Deadlock because the game’s in early development. If the Ice Path becomes a nuisance, expect nerfs for the ability—especially the very generous cooldown.
