Calico vs Holliday

Do

• Plan for Slowing Hex Slowing Hex 1,600 souls Tier 2TechPress +29s Cooldown +3.5s Duration +0.1s Cast Delay +16% Move Speed -26% Dash Distance — know which tier it sits in so you are not improvising at the shop.
• Know what Bounce Pad looks like. It is the cooldown this lane revolves around.

Avoid

• Walking to lane on the same path every wave against a hero with Holliday's engage range.

Do

• 10-round magazine at roughly 2.1 shots per second means whiffed shots are very expensive
• No self-heal or sustain of any kind — chip damage accumulates on her with nothing to offset it
• Gloom Bombs Gloom Bombs 14s Cooldown Calico lobs a handful of bombs that scatter and blow up after a short fuse, dealing spirit damage in the area they land. Damage 45 base spirit damage per bomb (deadlock.one); Defensive Can be thrown behind her while retreating to deter a chase through a choke. 1 -3s cooldown (from a 14s base) 2 -6% melee resist on targets hit and +6s duration 5 +3 grenades clears the wave and chips the enemy laner from a safe distance on a short 14s cooldown

Avoid

• Powder Keg clears the wave quickly and pokes the enemy laner in the same cast
• Crackshot ignores falloff, so she can harass from ranges where her opponent cannot answer

Do

• Their first real spike is ult unlock — respect it from that point, not before.
• Your spike is ult unlock: Return to Shadows gives her a dive-and-leave button and turns her from a farmer into a genuine pick threat

Avoid

• Taking an even fight against Holliday on their spike timing when you could take the same fight ten minutes later on yours.

Do

• Watch for Spirit Lasso. Unstoppable Unstoppable 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorInstantCast +60s Cooldown +5.5s Duration +125 Bonus Health +25% Debuff Resist Builds from Debuff Reducer pre-cast makes you immune to the Stun and the pull outright — hold it for her ult if she is on the enemy team
• Hold Unstoppable for Spirit Lasso — it is a targeted Stun-and-pull and Unstoppable simply negates it

Avoid

• Spending your own escape before Bounce Pad is on cooldown.

• Spirit Lasso Ultimate

  The one cooldown worth tracking on its own timer: pull (displacement) plus Stun (Hard CC).

  • Unstoppable pre-cast makes you immune to the Stun and the pull outright — hold it for her ult if she is on the enemy team
  • It is a single-target targeted throw — keep a wall or corner between you and her sightline when her ult is up
  • Ethereal Shift Ethereal Shift 6,400 souls Tier 4TechInstantCast +37s Cooldown +4s Duration +5s Buff Duration +30% Spirit Resist +20 Spirit Power makes you untargetable through the pull window
• Powder Keg Ability 1

  Holliday gets on top of you and then keeps you there — Knockup on detonation, Hard CC that removes the target's ability to strafe.

  • Shoot the barrel to detonate it early on your own terms, before you are in the blast radius
  • The delay is generous — simply walk out of the marked area rather than trading through it
  • If you get knocked up, do not panic-dash on landing; she is waiting for the predictable landing spot for her Crackshot headshot
• Bounce Pad Ability 2

  Nothing to respect until the upgrade lands, and then tier 3 adds about +0.7s Stun to the landing stomp.

  • The pad is a visible placed object with a long lifetime — route around it rather than through it
  • Knockdown Knockdown 3,200 souls Tier 3TechPress +35s Cooldown +0.1s Cast Delay +2s Stun Delay +0.5s Stun Duration +75 Bonus Health +5% Ability Range +5% Radius hits her out of the launch arc; she is fully committed and cannot change direction mid-flight
  • The stomp only triggers once per person per pad, so absorbing it with a durable body neutralizes the AoE for the rest of the fight
• Crackshot Ability 3

  This will not kill you on its own — it makes sure you cannot leave while the rest of Holliday's kit does. A fading movement speed penalty.

  • Strafe unpredictably and keep your head behind cover — a Crackshot that misses the head is just a 19.7 damage pistol shot
  • It is on a cooldown, so after eating one headshot the next several seconds are her weakest window — push in then
  • Fight her in close quarters where she cannot line up a head; her fire rate of about 2.1 per second punishes her badly in a brawl

1. 1 Bounce Pad

   Bounce Pad first — it is her escape, her rotation and (at tier 3) her engage. Force her to place it defensively, then commit while it is on cooldown

2. 2 Powder Keg

   Powder Keg second: make her spend it on the wave or on a durable frontliner, because without the Knockup her Crackshot combo is just a slow pistol shot

3. 3 Spirit Lasso

   Spirit Lasso is best baited by a target holding Unstoppable or Ethereal Shift — the ult goes on full cooldown for zero value

• Zero sustain and low durability — she cannot absorb a committed dive Strong evidence
• Damage is entirely aim-gated; a Holliday who is not hitting heads contributes very little Strong evidence
• Every one of her tools is telegraphed — a visible barrel, a visible pad, a targeted lasso Strong evidence

• Powder Keg Knockup into a Crackshot headshot is her kill combo — while airborne you cannot strafe and the headshot is effectively guaranteed 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 Strong evidence
• Crackshot ignores damage falloff, so distance does not actually protect you from her burst the way it does against other gun heroes Strong evidence
• Bounce Pad tier 3 delivers her whole team onto your backline from above with a landing Stun on arrival Strong evidence
• Stacked overlapping barrels in a tight interior create a burn zone that punishes holding a chokepoint at all Strong evidence
• Your mobility is a real advantage here, and Holliday's slows exist to delete it. Note that Debuff Resist barely helps against short hard slows because it only trims duration — spacing and cover do more than an item will. Strong evidence

• Hold Unstoppable for Spirit Lasso — it is a targeted Stun-and-pull and Unstoppable simply negates it Strong evidence
• Shoot Powder Keg barrels to detonate them early, before you are inside the blast, and deny the Knockup that sets up Crackshot 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 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 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 Strong evidence
• Stay grouped so that a lasso pull delivers you into your allies rather than into hers 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 Warp Stone 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorInstantCast +16s Cooldown +30% Bullet Resist +6s Buff Duration and their Phantom Strike Phantom Strike 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPress +35s Cooldown +0.35s Cast Delay +8 Spirit Power +15% Weapon Damage +40% Move Speed +3s Slow Duration 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. Strong evidence
• Spirit Lasso is one cast aimed at one person and that person is likely you, which changes the shape of the answer. Effective health is the wrong axis — a hero who can pick you out of a fight will simply wait until the number is beatable. Counterspell Counterspell 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorPassive +23s Cooldown +20 Spirit Power +6s Buff Duration +0.8s Spell Parry Duration +50 Bonus Health +5 Spirit Power negates a single ability outright, which against a one-cast threat is a hundred percent mitigation for 3,200, and the read is easier than it sounds because a single-target ultimate has to be aimed at you to work. Strategic

• The few seconds after any Crackshot headshot lands, while the bonus is on its own cooldown Strong evidence
• Her reload — 2.75 seconds with only 10 rounds is a long, frequent dead window Strong evidence
• Mid-air on Bounce Pad or a keg self-launch: she has no directional control and Knockdown ends the flight Strong evidence
• Immediately after Spirit Lasso resolves — the pulled target is now standing next to a low-durability hero with her ult spent Strong evidence
• Any close-quarters brawl she is forced into 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. 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. Documented

• Play this lane looser than the guides say. The 09-16-2026 patch cut nearly all movement slows by about 20% and ground-dash slows by about 10%, so the distance Holliday takes off you per application is meaningfully smaller than it was. With mobility as your main advantage, that shifts the break-even point on walking up: exchanges you used to refuse because one slow meant death are now survivable. Test it early rather than assuming the old spacing. Documented
• You get value from moving around the map and Holliday does not, but the 09-16-2026 patch made that harder to convert early: tunnel breakables Crates Breakable Streets, rooftops and tunnels — about 500 of them Ordinary breakables. Each has a 60% chance to drop souls; a Tough Crate always drops, for double. Souls 23 souls a crate, 60% of the time +2 a minute now spawn and respawn on 5 minutes rather than 3. The off-lane income that used to make a rotation pay for itself is roughly 40% less frequent, so before 6:00 a rotation has to be justified by pressure on Holliday or on the Guardian, not by the breakables you pick up on the way. Documented

• 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. Uncertain

• 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. 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. Strategic
• Being knocked up against Holliday is worse than being slowed because it removes your inputs and, since 09-16-2026, slows now bite in the air at 35% value so even the landing is compromised. Your mobility is your defence, so position with the airborne failure case in mind: stand where being launched leaves you above your own team rather than above theirs, and keep a dash in reserve for the landing rather than spending both on the approach. Strategic

• 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. Documented
• 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. Documented
• Slowing Hex (spirit T2) — Holliday's Spirit Lasso is what you are buying against here. Buy it when an enemy repeatedly uses a movement ability or item to dash, blink or fly out of your kill window. Documented
• Knockdown (spirit T3) — Buy whenever an enemy fights from the sky — it answers flying and airborne heroes and channelled aerial ultimates. What you are answering here: Holliday's Bounce Pad. Documented
• Phantom Strike (vitality T4) — Buy to catch flying or long-range heroes who otherwise never enter your range, and to Disarm a gun carry mid-burst. What you are answering here: Holliday's Bounce Pad. Documented

• Players buy Dispel Magic Dispel Magic 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorInstantCast +45s Cooldown +10% Spirit Resist +3s Buff Duration +250 Heal Amount 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. Documented
• Your instinct is to jump on Holliday's backline the moment you see an opening, and the mistake is not checking what is above you. A Walker's Stomp is 350 damage + 15% of your max health inside 15m with a 2-second Stun on a 7-second cooldown — a 2-second Stun handed to a team with peel is a death. Dive under their Walker only with Unstoppable pre-cast or after the Stomp has just gone off. Strong evidence