Quick Links
As far as heroes inDeadlockgo,Kelvinis an interesting one. He glides around the battlefield, chucking ice grenades at his enemies while healing his allies to cause chaos. That doesn’t mean he always plays from a distance though. When cornered, he can create a frozen dome that enemies can’t escape. To make matters worse, he also gets a couple of buffs when he’s inside the dome!
While his abilities are impressive, casting them randomly whenever available won’t help you win with this hero. You’ll need to understand the correct item build, ability order, and overall playstyle to truly master Kelvin inDeadlock. That’s where this guide comes in!
Deadlock Kelvin Overview & Ability Details
Kelvin is a well-rounded hero inDeadlockwith a versatile skill set. He can play both as a support, prioritizinghealing his allies with his abilities, or become a late-game menace dishing out insane amounts of damage with the right items. The flexibility in how you can build him depending on your team composition and enemy matchup makes him an excellent hero to add to your hero pool.
Upgrades
Frost Grenade (1)
Throw a grenade that explodes in a cloud of freezing ice, damaging and slowing enemies.
Ice Path (2)
Kelvin creates a floating trail of ice and snow that gives movement bonuses to him and his allies. Kelvin gains 60% slow resistance for the duration. Enemies can also walk on the floating trail.
Arctic Beam (3)
Shoot freezing cold energy out in front of you, damaging targets and building up movement and fire rate slow against them the longer you sustain the beam on them. You have reduced movement speed while using Arctic Beam. The beam may also claim Souls.
Frozen Shelter (4)
Kelvin freezes the surrounding air, creating an impenetrable dome around himself. While in the dome, allies rapidly regenerate health and enemies are slowed.
When using Ice Path, you’re able to hold Left Shift to glide up, and Ctrl to glide down.
Kelvin Build Guide in Deadlock
InDeadlock, Kelvin specializes in disrupting his foes, blocking their escape, and forcing them to brawl while buffing himself and his allies. His toolkit revolves around using his abilities to slow down both his opponents' movement speed and their fire rate. This build guide prioritizes buffing up his first spell to farm up a storm and build big items to make himself the strongest hero on the map.
Here’s our recommended ability build order and item progression for Kelvin:
Kelvin Ability Build in Deadlock
Arctic Beam is usually the first ability you’ll want to unlock for Kelvin. Since it allows you to secure last hits and damage your foes, it offers excellent value at level one. You’ll naturally want to unlock Frost Grenade next as another way to harass your foes. Unlock Ice Path next to give yourself an easy way to escape if you get in a tricky situation. Finally, unlock Frozen Shelter as soon as it’s available.
When it comes to investing your APs, you’ll want to dump all of them into Frost Grenade until you get it to the maximum level. You’ll want to unlock the third upgrade before ending the laning phase since it will speed up your farming speed exponentially. After that, upgrade Frozen Shelter to level two and put 1 AP into Ice Path before upgrading Frozen Shelter to max level. Invest another two AP into Ice Path to get it to the second level and max out your Arctic Beam ability before unlocking the third upgrade for Ice Path.
Kelvin Item Progression in Deadlock
With this build, your main goal is tostock up on itemsthat give you Spirit Power and beef up your Frost Grenade. Kelvin is a pretty strong hero in the early game. With the item build that we’ve laid out here, you’ll also be able to scale him well into the late game, with Kelvin becoming extremely tanky and dealing massive damage with his abilities.
Here are the items you want to build on Kelvin throughout the game:
Early Game
The first item we recommend picking up for Kelvin is Extra Regen. The bonus health regen it provides, along with extra health and ammo, makes it an excellent first pick-up for the hero. Get Close Quarters next; even though this item won’t do much for you during the lane, once you unlock your ultimate, it becomes an absolute must-buy for Kelvin.
After that, you’ll want to go with a couple of purple Spirit items: Extra Charge, Extra Spirit, and Mystic Burst. These three items are essential for Kelvin and will be useful at all stages of the game. Extra Charge gives you a bonus charge for your Frost Grenade, while Mystic Burst and Extra Spirit bothadd some extra Spirit Power.Mystic Shot is the next item you’ll want to get, and pair it up with Soul Shredder Bullets to deal bonus Spirit Damage and gain some Spirit Lifesteal.
Mid-Game
For the mid-game, the two main items you’ll want to pick up are Improved Cooldown and Warp Stone. With Improved Cooldown, your abilities will cool down more quickly, while Warp Stone allows you to get in a good position to get off a strong Frozen Shelter use. After that, you’ll want to pick between Bullet Armor and Spirit Armor. Return Fire is a good situational item that you may choose to pick up at this point as well. It reflects some of the damage your enemies deal to you back at them, making it a decent item inside your ultimate.
After that, you’ll want to go for a couple of expensive items. Point Blank, Rapid Recharge, and Improved Burst are standard items to build on the hero. Alchemical Fire is an active item that most heroes don’t want to build. However, Kelvin’s unique ultimate makes himone of the best heroesto utilize its active element.
Casting the active of the ability creates a damaging area. Now, most heroes can just run away from this. However, when you use it inside your Frozen Shelter, your opponent will have no choice but to take extra damage from it.
When standing in it, Alchemical Fire also increases your weapon damage by 50%.
Late Game
When getting into the late-game phase inDeadlock, you’ll want to go with Surge of Power and bind it to your Frost Grenade. With this item, Frost Grenade willdo enough damageto wipe out almost half of your opponent’s health. Torment Pulse also works great with Kelvin, and it’s a good item to go for after Surge of Power. Upgrade Improved Cooldown to Superior Cooldown, buy Improved Spirit, and go for Crippling Headshot next.
Follow it up with Spiritual Overflow for some extra Spirit Power. Mystic Reverb and Boundless Spirit are also amazing on Kelvin. Like before, you’ll want to imbue your Frost Grenade with Mystic Reverb to bump up its damage.
At this point, the Extra Regen that you bought during the laning phase isn’t going to do anything for you. You can sell it and pick up Leech instead if you’ve got extra Souls to spare.
Finally, upgrade your Armor item from the mid-game and go with Unstoppable if you’re having trouble playing around your opponent’s Crowd Control abilities. Debuff Remover also works well in certain matchups.
Sell Mystic Shot and Soul Shredder Bullets when you’re buying Crippling Headshot and Spiritual Overflow.
How to Play Kelvin in Deadlock
If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that the item progression that we laid out will requirea lot of Soulsto fill up your inventory. Thankfully, with this build, by the time you get out of the laning phase, you’ll be clearing neutral camps with a single Frost Grenade. This makes Kelvin extremely efficient at farming and racking up tons of Souls to get all his important items.
When you get to the lane as Kelvin, prioritize farming Troopers over killing enemy heroes. You have a lot of harass potential with your Frost Grenade and Arctic Beam, but you’ll want to coordinate with your allies if you want to secure a kill instead of spamming them anytime they come off cooldown.
Against heroes like Bebop, verify you don’t get hooked. You’ll always want to position yourself behind your Troopers and focus on securing the last hits to get your hands on early-game items.
Once you unlock Frozen Shelter, you hit a massive power spike. The healing from this ability is enough to negate the damage from the Tower Guardian, allowing you to go for aggressive dives when you have it available.
After the laning phase, don’t waste time actively looking for kills. Instead, run from one neutral camp to the next, clearing them up quickly with your Frost Grenade. Once you have your core items, you’re ready to take on the enemy team head-on. At that point, you’ll want to group up with your team and start pushing toward the objectives.
You’ll need tounlock all the Flex Slotsif you want to push Kelvin’s Spirit Power to the max.
Kelvin is a prettybeginner-friendly hero inDeadlockthat doesn’t take too much effort to learn because of how strong he gets with the right items. Feel free to try out the build we laid out and let us know how it worked for you.
