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InDeadlock, Lady Geist used to spend most of her time mixing with high society. But when old age caught up to her, she summoned, trapped, and made a deal (on her terms of course) with a demon for eternal youth. The catch is that she’d have to drain the life force of other living beings and feed the demon in order for her to keep her youth. With the demon growing stronger and hungrier by the day, Lady Geist now looks for a way out of the deal, and helping the Patrons seems like the perfect opportunity for her.
There are two predominant ways to build Lady Geist: Weapon damage or Essence Bomb. Weapon damage will focus on using her pistol, headshots, and overall good aim to out-duel opponents. In that build, your abilities will slow down your opponents and take some of the burden off of your aim. In comparison, Essence Bomb will focus on her spirit damage and different ways to make her first skill deal more damage. Her pistol in that build is more for decent incidental damage.
This guide will go over both builds, but focus heavily on her Essence Bomb build since it tends to be the stronger of the two and better for beginners to learn the game on.
- Low cooldowns
- No mobility skill
- High damage
- Abilities cost health
- Flexible build options to get around enemy resistances
- Fragile early game
- Can be surprisingly tanky in the end game
- Aim and movement are extremely important for this character
- Perfect for destroying objectives and split pushing
Amazing 1v1 Duelist
Sticking enemies with the equivalent of aHaloplasma grenade is deeply satisfying
Lady Geist is a damaged-focused hero who uses her HP to cast her spells. In-game, this translates to her abilities having a small HP cost but in exchange, her skills have high damage and low cooldowns. If her HP ever gets too low, she can use Life Drain to steal health from a target enemy. Essence Bomb is a powerful skill that can cover a large area, quickly clear waves and jungle camps, and deal a surprising amount of burst damage to enemies. To further increase her damage, she can use Malice to apply a slow and a damage amp to any target it hits, including objectives. This skill is what makes Lady Geist incredible at destroying objectives as well as a good 1v1 Duelist.
Her ult, Soul Exchange, is what brings her 1v1 ability far above other heroes. This skill allows her to swap her life bar with her opponents, and at T3, it provides her with a fire rate increase and spirit armor. However, its range is extremely limited, so a good foundation ofhow movement works in Deadlockwill make Soul Exchange a powerful offensive tool. Without that foundation, Soul Exchange will be a defensive tool in case you get jumped by one player, or if you’re losing a duel.
Level Up Tiers
Essence Bomb
Sacrificesome of your healthto launch a bomb that deals damage after a brief arm time. Self-damage type is Spirit and can be mitigated.
Life Drain
Creates a tether that drains enemy health over time and heals you.
Target must be in line of sight and within max range to drain.
You can shoot and use other abilities during the drain, but your movement speed is reduced by half.
Malice
Sacrifice some of your health to launch blood shards that apply a stack of Malice.
Each stack slows the victim and increases the damage they take from you. The slow effect decreases over time.
Soul Exchange
Swaps health levels with an enemy target. THere is a minimum health percentage taht enemies can be brougth down to and a minimum amount of health received based on victim’s current health.
Deadlock Lady Geist Essence Bomb Build Guide
Skill Leveling Order
Both builds will want to unlock Essence Bomb first.Its ability to clear waves and poke enemies is invaluable in the early laning phases. As a result, you’ll want to put at least 3AP to get Essence Bomb up to T2 for its extra damage. Once you’ve reached that point, the two builds will then start to diverge from each other.
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Unlock Malice and upgrade Essence Bomb (T1)
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Life Drain (T2) or Soul Exchange (T2)
Essence Bomb builds willwant to purchase Essence Bomb T3 immediatelyand proceed to clear as many minions as possible with it. After that, you’ll want to put 1 point into Malice, Life Drain, and Soul Exchange in that order before focusing on getting Malice to T3.
From there, your choice of which skill to upgrade next will vary based on what exactly you’re fighting. If you’re fighting heroes that want to get into your face often or extremely tanky enemies like Mo & Krill, Yamato, Bebop, or Dynamo, you’ll want to get Soul Exchange T2 before getting Life Drain T2. From there,T3 Soul Exchange should be taken if you’re fighting a team that relies heavily on ability power.
In comparison, if you’re fighting heroes that want to use their high mobility to stay away from you like Vindicta, Ivy, Haze, and Grey Talon, you’ll get more value from upgrading Life Drain to T2 and T3. After that, end on Soul Exchange T2 and T3.
End Game
In the early game, Mystic Burst, Extra Stamina, and Restorative Shot should provide all the damage and early-game sustain you need to stay in your lane and farm souls. Headshot Booster or Monster Rounds will help you farm faster, and Mystic Reach allows you to harass with Life Drain from a longer range.
Once you reach the midgame, Spirit Lifesteal is perfect for giving you life back while also capitalizing on your high spirit damage.Improved Cooldown, Mystic Vulnerability, and Soul Shredder Bullets are used to improve the damage of Essence Bomb, while Berserker is used to improve your weapon damage, which in turn will also improve your Spirit Damage thanks to Soul Shredder. Healbane is used to counteract enemies who are building Healing Reduction against you while alsogiving you more healingfor killing players with Essence Bomb. Mystic Slow is a powerful tool since it works well with Life Drain and Malice in the late game for slowing down enemies and making them easier for your team to hunt down. Kinetic Dash and Warpstone are both used for unexpected, stamina-efficient, and fast gap closing. Finally, Leech is used if you need more sustain during large team fights.
If you still have money and flex slots available to you, Escalating Exposure is used to increase the damage of Life Drain. Mystic Reverb synergizes incredibly well with Essence bomb, and Boundless Spirit is used for an overall increase in damage.
For your late-game items, Superior Cooldown, and Improved Burst are used to further improve your Essence Bomb damage.
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Soul Exchange (T3)
Similar to Essence Bomb builds,Pistol builds want to focus early into Essence Bomb for its wave clear and poking.However, once you reach T2 Essence Bomb, these builds want to invest heavily into Life Drain next. This is done to help you win 1v1s, give you even more sustain in lane, and make your squishy opponents helpless as you hammer bullets into their skulls.
After that, you’ll want to put one Ability Point into Soul Exchange and Malice.These two T1 upgrades are just to lower Lady Geist’s cooldowns so she can increase her overall damagemore often with Malice and provide an emergency backup plan in Soul Exchange when she needs it.
Afterward, put the last point for a T3 Essence Bomb. so you can farm even faster and clear neutral camps easily in the late game.
If you have the space and Souls:
Early on, Essence Bomb paired with Mystic Burst will help farm the wave, and while you may be able to deal some incidental damage against the enemy hero,Headshot Booster and High-velocity Mag will allow your pistol to farm and pressure your opponent.Good ammo management is extremely important here since you don’t want to waste ammo on a few headshots andmiss denials/confirms as a result.
Once you reach the midgame, Berserker will be your main damage spike since it’ll increase your damage by 5% each time you take damage. Since this also counts Lady Geist’s abilities, you’ll be able to keep the buff going for a long period of time and build stacks each time you use Essence Bomb and Malice. Kinetic Dash gives you flexibility in your movement, while Suppressor and Bullet Resist Shredder make Life Drain an amazing tool to increase your weapon damage in a duel. Healing Booster and Healbane are used to give you more sustain and counterbuild against healing reduction items.
In the late game, Frenzy and Improved Burst will allow Lady Geist to shred through enemies with her pistol. At this point, since this build has gotten most of its large damage spikes already, you’ll want to invest in Improved Bullet Armor and Improved Spirit Armor in order to give yourself more tankiness in team fights
Finally, if you have any space and souls left and still need an additional push for damage, Spiritual Overflow and Boundless Exposure will give you two final spikes in damage, while Escalating Exposure will continue buffing Life Drain so it can deal more damage.
How To Play Lady Geist
Essence Bomb Build
Early on, Essence Bomb is great for wave clearing and incidental poke damage. Use this to farm minions and save ammo where you can for confirms or denials. In the early laning phase, this build struggles with overly aggressive opponents that have nothing better to do than to dump ammo into you and your already strained health pool. For situations like that, play conservatively until you have Soul Drain and a few items with built-in lifesteal. Once you have those, you can be far more aggressive with your pokes and wave clear.
If you’re having trouble aiming Essenece Bomb, keep in mind that the Bomb will usually land a little bit above the cursor, so aim lower than you’d expect.
Additionally, once you get to T3 Essence Bomb, start clearing neutral camps, pushing waves, and split pushing lanes with the extra DoT effect. Aim the bomb toward any point where the enemy minions are gathered up and you should be able to clear it in a single cast of Essence Bomb.
When you’ve pushed up to a Guardian or another objective,hit the objective with Malice as often as possible. Each Malice cast adds a 15% damage increase from all sources against that target. T3 Malice is also amazing for team fights since the 9 blood shards will cover a wide area and are capable of tagging multiple enemies, and the 15% damage increase can very easily swing a fight in your favor. Just be careful not to get caught out on your own too often during this time since you don’t have too many movement skills, so 1v2 situations can be a little hard to navigate.
During a team fight,throw Essence Bomb into the thickest group of enemies, then immediately throw Malice before it explodes.This will make the most of the 15% increased damage window and ensure that your Essence Bomb benefits from that buff. If anyone decides to jump you during this time hoping for an easy kill, make them regret their life choices by swapping your life totals before you get killed. Hopefully, a teammate can back you up during this time, help you finish off the wounded enemy, and then you both can focus down anyone else close to you.
Pistol Build
Builds that focus on Lady Geist’s pistoltrade the easy wave clear in the Essence Bomb build for better 1v1 potential.The addition of High Velocity Mag and Headshot Booster means you’ll have a similar early game to the Essence Bomb build, but your pistol will hit much harder and you’re going to get Life Drain much earlier for better sustain. Ammo management becomes more important because you’ll be relying on your gun for denials, confirms, and bullying your opponent with headshots.
Later on, when you get a stronger Life Drain and build stronger weapon damage through Berserker, Bullet Resist Shredder, and ultimately, Headhunter, your pistol damage will become extraordinarily high if you can land headshots. At that point, you can comfortably pick 1v1 fights against your lane opponent, and push another lane from your team if you know it’s just you and one other opponent in the lane.
During team fights (especially late in the game), you’ll want to act more like an assassin.Use Warpstone or good movement/positioning to find the enemy team’s squishy heroes, silence them with Life Drain, and then land headshots until they’re sent back to the respawn screen.If at any time you are about to die, find the nearest, healthiest enemy and swap life totals with them through Soul Exchange, and continue fighting. Again, strong movement fundamentals are highly encouraged here to get out of bad positions, and get close enough to enemies to Soul Exchange them or to keep up with enemies when they panic under Life Drain and burn all of their stamina in an attempt to escape from you.
