Best Calico build in Deadlock

Calico, one of the newest heroes in Deadlock, is a sly, quick, and challenging hero focused on moment-to-moment combat.

She does a mixture of spirit, bullet, and melee damage, making her potential build much more complicated. So, to ease your troubles mastering Calico, here is our build for this fantastic new Deadlock character.

Calico’s abilities in Deadlock

Like all other heroes in Deadlock, Calico sports three regular abilities and a powerful Ultimate. Her spells are the following:

• Gloom Bombs: Calico throws a cluster of violet and violent grenades at a targeted location, which explode after a delay, dealing spirit damage.
• Leaping Slash: Calico dashes in the direction she’s facing and slashes enemies around her at the end, dealing light melee damage. She also heals if the slash hits at least one enemy.
• Ava: Calico transforms into her trusty pet, Ava, gaining movement speed and becoming hidden on the minimap. While transformed, she cannot cast spells or attack.
• Ultimate – Return to Shadows: Calico turns into a shadow, becoming invulnerable, gaining movement speed, and dealing damage around her. After a duration, she turns back to normal and does damage in an area again.

This mysterious figure sports a strange wrist-gun with a solid rate of fire but a wide bullet spread, causing her to lose effectiveness at range. She is thus best geared for getting up close and personal with enemies, slashing and shooting them relentlessly. With her mixture of various damage types, Calico can be quite unpredictable and difficult to counter, and we should see that reflected in her overall build.

The best build for Calico in Deadlock

Early game

As Calico deals mixed damage, you should look to bring everything up to speed so her kit can become effective as soon as possible. However, I would still advise you to focus on bumping melee damage up, especially since her second ability, Leaping Slash, will become a vital part of your build down the line.

Items such as Monster Rounds, Mystic Shot, and Cold Front should do well to grant you overall damage output, while Melee Lifesteal and Spirit Strike will significantly bump up your Leaping Slash, allowing you to tackle enemies from close range. If in need of defenses and sustain, Extra Health, Armors, Soul Shredder Bullets, and Enduring Spirit are all viable options.

In these early stages, it’s best if you unlock all three abilities as soon as possible, focusing on granting your first available ability point to upgrade Gloom Bombs as the extra damage, combined with the spirit bonuses from the items above, will tremendously help you with farming and allow you to keep a distance against particularly powerful opponents. If you’re just starting out with Calico, think of the Gloom Bombs as her version of Lady Geist‘s Essence Bomb.

Mid game

Moving on into the mid-game, Calico should continue upgrading her overall output, with a particular focus on the melee damage side of things to make Leaping Slash the spell it is meant to be. Lifestrike thus becomes a crucial component, granting you extra healing with Leaping Slash while also bumping up its overall damage.

During this part of the game, you should also look into upgrading Spirit Strike to a Spirit Snatch, granting you even more melee-oriented buffs while also giving you more overall spirit damage output. Torment Pulse and Healbane are also great options, especially the latter, as it provides you with healing each time you kill an enemy hero. This much sustain and life restoration can turn you nigh unkillable, so make sure you grab it as soon as possible.

Healing Booster, Kinetic Dash, Armors if you haven’t got them already, and Healing Rite are also good early-to-mid-game options if you need them.

By this time, you should have unlocked your Ultimate, so place your ability point into reducing its cooldown by an amazing 30 seconds before switching the upgrades to Leaping Slash at least to level two. Then, focus on maxing out the Bombs. Also put a point into Ava, which will significantly increase her duration.

Late game

As things start heating up and you enter the late game, you will have accrued a ton of souls to be spent on some quite fantastic items. Divine’s Kevlar and Superiror Cooldown will provide you with massive spirit bonuses and great cooldown reduction, while the former will make each press of the Ultimate a true nightmare for the enemies. Mystic Slow works amazingly to further cripple enemies in tandem with Lifestrike, while Leech would round-off your lifesteal itemization path. If that’s not enough, Mystic Reverb and Spiritual Overflow are also good options, while the Improved Armors would greatly increase your defenses. Against heavy stuns and AOE CC spells, you should also consider grabbing Unstoppable to help you fight your enemies without having to worry about getting pinned down.

In terms of spells, you will have bumped up the Gloom Bombs and the Leaping Slash to max, which is when you should max out your Ultimate and focus on leveling up Ava last. That ability level pathing, paired with the items above, should have earned you a victory by the time you even finished the build off, though you’re more than likely to win anyway if the enemies let you purchase all of the items above.