Playing Bebop against Holliday

What should I do right now?

Matchup overview

• Their structural weakness: Zero sustain and low durability — she cannot absorb a committed dive Why this is shown: Holliday's weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Their structural weakness: Damage is entirely aim-gated; a Holliday who is not hitting heads contributes very little Why this is shown: Holliday's weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Their structural weakness: Every one of her tools is telegraphed — a visible barrel, a visible pad, a targeted lasso Why this is shown: Holliday's weaknesses. Strong evidence
• You out-lane Holliday and they out-scale the lane phase, so the whole matchup lives in the first six minutes. The lead you build there has to be spent before Guardians fall and the map turns into grouped objectives — souls banked are not a lead against a hero who is better in the format that follows. Convert into their Guardian, into the Urn at 10:00, or into map control ahead of the first Rift around 11:00, and treat any minute where your advantage is sitting unspent as a minute given back. Why this is shown: Hero laning 3 versus an opponent with laning ≤2 but teamfight 2+; the transition happens around 6:00. Strategic

What they do against you

• Powder Keg knockup into a Crackshot headshot is her kill combo — while airborne you cannot strafe and the headshot is effectively guaranteed Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Spirit Lasso pulls you out of your team and stuns you, and with a Bounce Pad she drags you even further before the stun ends Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Crackshot ignores damage falloff, so distance does not actually protect you from her burst the way it does against other gun heroes Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Bounce Pad tier 3 delivers her whole team onto your backline from above with a landing stun on arrival Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Stacked overlapping barrels in a tight interior create a burn zone that punishes holding a chokepoint at all Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence

How you counter them

• Hold Unstoppable for Spirit Lasso — it is a targeted stun-and-pull and Unstoppable simply negates it Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Shoot Powder Keg barrels to detonate them early, before you are inside the blast, and deny the knockup that sets up Crackshot Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Buy Knockdown for her Bounce Pad launch arcs and for her keg self-launches — she is fully committed in the air with no direction control Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Brawl her inside 10m: her roughly 2.1 shots per second and 10-round magazine lose badly to any SMG hero in close quarters Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Break her sightline immediately after she lands a Crackshot headshot — the bonus is on cooldown and she is a weak pistol hero for those seconds Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Stay grouped so that a lasso pull delivers you into your allies rather than into hers Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Against Holliday the item that changes the matchup is Slowing Hex, and not for the slow. It silences movement abilities and movement items — that is their dash, their blink, their Warp Stone and their Phantom Strike all turned off at once — and raises their gravity to 120% on top. At Tier II Spirit for 1,600 it is the cheapest way to convert a mobility advantage into a stationary target, and you deal the spirit damage needed to apply the follow-up. Why this is shown: Slowing Hex (T2 Spirit, 1,600) slows, applies 120% gravity, and silences movement abilities and movement items. Strong evidence
• You cannot out-move Holliday's gun, so the answer is the item that changes what their bullets do rather than where you stand. Plated Armor deflects bullets outright and — the part most players miss — strips their on-hit build-ups, which is the only clean answer to Silencer, Toxic Bullets and Inhibitor stacks landing on you. If 6,400 is too far away, Battle Vest at +18% Bullet Resist is the efficient Tier II step and Bullet Resilience at +30% (with a further +15% below half health) the Tier III one. Why this is shown: Plated Armor deflects bullets and strips on-hit build-ups; Battle Vest +18% and Bullet Resilience +30% are the T2/T3 stat steps. Strong evidence

Trading

• The few seconds after any Crackshot headshot lands, while the bonus is on its own cooldown Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Her reload — 2.75 seconds with only 10 rounds is a long, frequent dead window Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Mid-air on Bounce Pad or a keg self-launch: she has no directional control and Knockdown ends the flight Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Immediately after Spirit Lasso resolves — the pulled target is now standing next to a low-durability hero with her ult spent Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Any close-quarters brawl she is forced into, where her fire rate and magazine size are her worst stats Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Holliday's pull is the whole matchup. Until it is on cooldown you are playing around it; once it misses you have a window that is worth committing into. Make it the first thing you bait — show a sliver of yourself from behind cover rather than walking a clean line they can lead. Why this is shown: Pull abilities gate the engage; baiting them opens a committed window. Strategic
• Being stunned by Holliday now pauses your reload rather than restarting it, as of 09-16-2026. That quietly changes when it is safe to reload in this matchup: a reload caught by their stun resumes where it left off instead of costing you the whole cycle, so the old rule of never reloading inside their engagement range is too conservative now. The compensating change is that parrying also pauses your reload, so a defensive parry no longer buys you free reload time. Why this is shown: 09-16-2026: being stunned pauses reload instead of restarting it; parrying also pauses reload. Verified

Laning

• What they want in lane: Powder Keg clears the wave quickly and pokes the enemy laner in the same cast Why this is shown: Holliday's laning strengths. Strong evidence
• What they want in lane: Crackshot ignores falloff, so she can harass from ranges where her opponent cannot answer Why this is shown: Holliday's laning strengths. Strong evidence
• What you can take from them in lane: 10-round magazine at roughly 2.1 shots per second means whiffed shots are very expensive Why this is shown: Holliday's laning weaknesses. Strong evidence
• What you can take from them in lane: No self-heal or sustain of any kind — chip damage accumulates on her with nothing to offset it Why this is shown: Holliday's laning weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Your lever: The beam weapon's huge 66-round clip and hitscan behaviour make last-hitting and denying orbs very easy, giving him one of the strongest soul-economy lanes in the game Why this is shown: Bebop's laning strengths. Verified
• You have real objective damage, which makes the Guardian your win condition in this lane rather than Holliday's health bar. Guardian resistance scales from +50% down to −50% across roughly the first twelve minutes since 05-22-2026 — it gets softer, not harder, so the pressure you can apply grows every minute from about 6:00. Guardians also have no ability-damage reduction, so spirit works on them at full value. Older guides claiming Guardians toughen over time are wrong. Why this is shown: 05-22-2026 changed Guardian scaling resist from +75%→−50% to +50%→−50%; Guardians have no ability-damage reduction. Verified
• Holliday will shove the wave into your Guardian to push you off souls, and you are not fast enough to walk around it. The thing to protect is the floating orb — the ground orb drops and cannot be denied, so half your income is safe no matter what they do, and the contest is only ever over the other 50. Position on your Guardian's side of the wave so you are already in range of the floating orbs when they pop, and give up the forward orbs rather than crossing for them. Why this is shown: Each trooper drops one undeniable ground orb and one contestable floating orb; enemy wave-clear versus a low-mobility hero. Strategic
• Around 6:00 the Guardians become realistically contestable and players start leaving lane for neutrals — which for you means the map stops being a 1v1 and Holliday gains the thing they are best at, the opening engagement onto a target with no way out. The last two minutes before that transition are your safest window to build a soul lead. After it, treat any position without a teammate in line of sight as a position they can start a fight in. Why this is shown: Laning transitions to the mid game around 6:00 as Guardians become contestable; enemy initiation 3 against a hero with disengage 0-1. Strategic

Mid game

• Their spike — ult unlock: Spirit Lasso gives her a guaranteed pick and the ability to remove one enemy from a fight entirely Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — Bounce Pad tier 3: The roughly +0.7s landing stun turns her mobility tool into a genuine engage Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — Crackshot tier 2: About +49.5 damage plus a bullet-resist shred makes each headshot a real burst window Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — mid 20-35min: Keg-launch plus Bounce Pad plus lasso is the window where her kidnap plays dictate objective fights Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Your spike — Grapple Arm T2 (roughly 3-5k souls): +30m cast range roughly doubles his hook threat radius and makes lanes and chokes unwalkable Why this is shown: Bebop's power spike timeline. Verified
• Your spike — Exploding Uppercut T3: Hook resets on uppercut hit, enabling chained picks and taking two heroes out of a fight Why this is shown: Bebop's power spike timeline. Verified
• Your objective damage is the lever in this matchup and the Walker timing is where it pays. Walkers sit around 65% damage resistance early and decay toward −65% by minute 18, so the same rotation that accomplishes nothing at 12:00 kills one outright at 17:00. Each Walker your team destroys also unlocks an extra item slot for the whole team, so the take is a build spike for five other people, not just souls. Remember a Walker is invulnerable unless someone is within 22m. Why this is shown: Walker resist decays from ~65% to −65% by minute 18; each Walker grants a team-wide item slot; Walkers are invulnerable with no enemy inside 22m. Strong evidence
• Holliday will be their Urn runner and you are the one who can stop it. The Urn cannot be voluntarily dropped — it comes loose only on melee, a stun, or death — so chip damage and slows do not deny a delivery, your hard CC does. Hold it for the carry rather than spending it on the approach fight, and note the favoured team gets +50% Bullet and Spirit Resist in a 60m bubble while carrying and depositing, which is why trying to burst the runner down usually fails. Why this is shown: Urn cannot be voluntarily dropped, only knocked loose by melee, stun or death; +50% resist aura in 60m for the favoured team. Verified

Teamfights

• Against Holliday's knockups, Debuff Reducer is a live answer where it used to be a dead one: knockup durations were brought under debuff reduction on 05-22-2026, so the +25% from a 1,600 Tier II item genuinely shortens the airborne time. That matters more for you than for most, because you have no exit and the airborne window is when their follow-up lands. Worth pairing with the fact that Knockdown-style effects going the other way still cannot be shortened at all. Why this is shown: 05-22-2026 made knockup durations scale with debuff reduction; Debuff Reducer is T2, 1,600, +25%. Verified
• Holliday brings enough lockdown that stun sequencing matters. Community reporting describes stun diminishing returns of roughly 10% then 30% inside an 8-second window, applying to stuns only and not to silences, slows, disarms or hexes — so their follow-up chain may be shorter than the first one felt. Treat this as unconfirmed, but it is worth knowing before you burn a cleanse on the opening stun. Why this is shown: Stun diminishing returns reported by community sources; not confirmed in official notes. Uncertain

Positioning

• Holliday decides where you stand, not you. The practical rule is to never hold a position whose failure case is being moved — stand so that being yanked or knocked puts you somewhere survivable rather than inside their whole team. Cover at your back is worth more than cover in front. Why this is shown: Displacement kits convert bad positioning into a kill; failure-case positioning mitigates it. Strong evidence
• Fight Holliday under cover — indoors, under walkways, inside stairwells. Taking away the vertical axis removes most of their kit's value before you spend a single item slot on it. Why this is shown: Reasoned from air-mobility kits requiring open vertical space. Strategic
• When you go for their Walker against a team with Holliday peeling, the 22m rule is your positioning constraint: a Walker is invulnerable while no enemy is within 22m, so somebody has to be inside that ring for any of your damage to count. Being that body is a commitment, not a poke. Backdoor protection also gives the Walker 65% damage reduction and 65 HP/s regeneration until your trooper wave arrives, so going without the wave is not a faster take, it is no take at all. Why this is shown: Walkers are invulnerable with no enemy inside 22m; backdoor protection grants 65% damage reduction and 65 HP/s regen. Strong evidence

Build adjustments

• Holliday fights from the air, which is exactly what Knockdown exists for: it applies +100% gravity to an airborne target (raised from +50% in March 2026) and its stun scales with altitude, up to about +1.5s at 30m. The higher they commit, the harder the punish — and Debuff Resist will not shorten that stun for them. Why this is shown: Knockdown airborne gravity and altitude-scaled stun, 6 March 2026 change. Verified
• Against Holliday's crowd control, understand what Debuff Resist actually buys you: it shortens duration, never magnitude. It is excellent against long disables and close to worthless against a short hard slow. Two things it explicitly does not shorten at all are the parry stun and the Knockdown item's stun. Why this is shown: Debuff Resist reduces duration only; parry stun and Knockdown stun are documented exclusions. Verified
• Slowing Hex (spirit T2) — Holliday gives this team real gap closers and escapes. The community-standard answer to escape artists: buy it when an enemy repeatedly dashes, blinks or flies out of your kill window. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-mobility, enemy-air-mobility, enemy-dive, enemy-backline-threat. Verified
• Knockdown (spirit T3) — Holliday gives this team real air mobility. The consensus answer to flying and airborne heroes and to channelled aerial ultimates — buy it whenever an enemy fights from the sky. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-air-mobility, enemy-mobility, enemy-long-range-poke, enemy-backline-threat. Verified
• Phantom Strike (vitality T4) — Holliday gives this team real air mobility. Buy to catch flying or long-range heroes who otherwise never enter your range, and to disarm a gun carry mid-burst. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-air-mobility, enemy-mobility, enemy-backline-threat, enemy-long-range-poke. Verified

Common mistakes

• The instinct here is to buy Dispel Magic as your answer to Holliday and then find it greyed out at the exact moment you need it. Dispel Magic cannot be cast while you are stunned or asleep, and it cannot remove a stun at all — it purges what comes with the stun, not the stun itself. Against Holliday the item you actually want is the pre-cast kind (Unstoppable, which also cannot be activated once you are already stunned) or the automatic kind (Indomitable, which cleanses the next hard CC with no input from you). Why this is shown: Dispel Magic cannot be used while stunned or asleep and cannot purge stuns; Unstoppable has the same activation restriction. Verified
• The losing pattern against Holliday is deciding to leave, walking to the zipline and finding you cannot attach. Any damage from an enemy hero or objective blocks zipline attachment for 3 seconds, and Holliday has the chip range to keep that 3-second timer rolling indefinitely. Break line of sight first, wait out the lockout, then attach — do not walk to the rope while still taking fire. Why this is shown: Zipline attachment is blocked for 3s after taking enemy hero or objective damage; enemy rangedPoke 2+. Verified
• Players buy Dispel Magic for Holliday and then discover it does nothing about Spirit Lasso. Dispel Magic purges non-ultimate negative effects only — anything sourced from an ultimate is outside its scope entirely. Work out which of Holliday's disables come off abilities and which come off the ult before you spend 3,200: the ability-sourced ones are purgeable, the ult is not, and for the ult you need either Unstoppable pre-cast or the discipline not to be there. Why this is shown: Dispel Magic cannot purge ultimate-sourced debuffs; enemy cc 3 with a hard disable tag. Verified

Analyse this against your whole enemy team

A single matchup only tells you part of the story — which enemy to actually focus, and what to buy, depends on the other five. Open the tool with this matchup pre-loaded and add the rest.