Kelvin vs Ivy

Do

• Plan for Arctic Blast Arctic Blast 6,400 souls Tier 4TechInstantCast +24s Cooldown +0.6s Spread Duration: +48% Move Speed +4s Slow Duration +10% Spirit Resist +1s Freeze Duration Builds from Cold Front — know which tier it sits in so you are not improvising at the shop.
• Know what Stone Form looks like. It is the cooldown this lane revolves around.

Avoid

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

Do

• Solo she only gets half the Kudzu Connection Kudzu Connection 16m Range12s Duration37s Cooldown Forms a link with a nearby ally, granting both of them fire rate, bullet lifesteal and replicated healing, and removing the movement penalty while shooting. Damage no direct damage; about +10% fire rate, +15% bullet lifesteal and 35%… Mobility removes the move-speed penalty while shooting, which is effectively a large… Defensive the bullet lifesteal and replicated healing are her main sustain for both… 1 about +8% fire rate and +8% bullet lifesteal 2 -37s cooldown (37s to 0s), so the connection is always active bonuses before tier 3, so her power is partner-dependent
• Low burst — she cannot punish a mistake quickly, only grind
• Frost Grenade Frost Grenade 30s Cooldown Lobs a grenade that bursts into a freezing cloud, healing allies caught in it while dealing spirit damage and cutting enemy movement speed. Crowd Control movement slow on enemies; Damage about 60 spirit at base, with a matching heal of about 60; Defensive the primary heal in his kit outside the ultimate, and the stamina freeze… 1 +30 damage and +30 heal 2 about -10s cooldown and freezes enemy stamina regeneration 5 +2m radius with improved spirit scaling heals his lane partner and chips the enemy in one throw, which wins attrition lanes outright

Avoid

• Entangling Thorns Entangling Thorns 4s Duration32s Cooldown Summons a patch of choking thorns that damages and slows every enemy inside its radius. Crowd Control movement slow; tier 3 upgrades the effect to an immobilize Damage about 40 damage per second at base spirit power (deadlock.one) Defensive dropped at her own feet it discourages a melee chase 1 +2m radius and improved spirit scaling on the DPS 2 immobilizes enemies in the patch clears the wave and denies the orb area at the same time
• Kudzu Connection's fire rate and bullet Lifesteal make her duo lane trades favourable and self-sustaining

Do

• Their first real spike is ult unlock — respect it from that point, not before.
• Your spike is ult unlock: Frozen Shelter immediately gives his team a defensive cooldown for objective fights

Avoid

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

Do

• Watch for Air Drop. Damage her before she casts — taking damage briefly disables the ability, so constant chip pressure denies it outright
• Buy 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 for Air Drop — it drops her and the carried ally out of the sky and cancels the delivery entirely

Avoid

• Spending your own escape before Stone Form is on cooldown.

• Air Drop Ultimate

  A delivery tool — it puts a teammate on top of a backline, over a wall, or safely out of a collapsing fight, and then buffs them for the fight that follows.

  • Damage her before she casts — taking damage briefly disables the ability, so constant chip pressure denies it outright
  • Knockdown hits her and the carried ally out of the sky, cancelling the whole delivery
  • Watch the sky when she is off-screen: the drop is telegraphed by the flight path, so spread out and deny the landing angle
• Stone Form Ability 3

  Closing the distance and taking your options in the same press: area Stun on landing.

  • Do not keep shooting a hero in Stone Form — she is impervious and you are wasting a magazine; disengage and reset instead
  • The landing radius is only about 5.75m, so simply stepping back out of it denies the Stun entirely
  • 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 the landing Stun irrelevant
• Entangling Thorns Ability 1

  Sticking power rather than damage: movement slow.

  • It is a static circle with a visible model — leave the radius rather than trading inside it
  • Before tier 3 it is only a slow; push through it rather than retreating, since walking backwards through the patch takes the most ticks
  • Dispel Magic Dispel Magic 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorInstantCast +45s Cooldown +10% Spirit Resist +3s Buff Duration +250 Heal Amount clears the slow, and the tier-3 immobilize, in one press
• Kudzu Connection Ability 2

  The mechanical core of her support identity — it makes one chosen ally meaningfully stronger for the whole fight and gives Ivy the gun uptime she otherwise lacks.

  • Break the pair's line of sight — forcing them around separate corners cuts the buff before tier 3
  • Focus the linked ally, not Ivy: killing the buffed target removes most of the value and Ivy's own bonus halves
  • Anti-heal (Napalm Napalm 20m Range25s Cooldown Sprays a burning mixture in front of him that deals spirit damage, slows whoever it touches, and leaves them coated in napalm that keeps burning. Crowd Control movement slow on everyone hit Damage about 40 spirit at base plus the napalm coating over time (deadlock.one) Mobility none directly, though the slow effectively closes distance 1 +20% lifesteal 2 applies about +17% Damage Taken and -33% Healing to affected targets tier 3, Decay Decay 3,200 souls Tier 3TechPress +30s Cooldown +12s Duration +0.1s Cast Delay +8 Spirit Power -55% Incoming Healing +65 Bonus Health , Cursed Relic Cursed Relic 6,400 souls Tier 4TechPress +55s Cooldown +3.25s Duration +0.1s Cast Delay -25% Damage Penalty ) is disproportionately effective because the Lifesteal and replicated healing are the link's main payoff

1. 1 Stone Form

   Stone Form first — it is her only reliable defensive cooldown. Show a burst threat, make her use it, then engage on the landing when she has no invulnerability and no heal

2. 2 Air Drop

   Air Drop next: force it defensively as an extraction rather than letting her use it as an engage. An Air Drop spent pulling an ally out of a losing fight is an Air Drop that is not landing on your backline

3. 3 Entangling Thorns

   Entangling Thorns third — make her place it on the wave or on a durable frontliner so the tier-3 immobilize is not available for your carry

• Very low burst; she cannot convert a short window into a kill on her own Strong evidence
• Air Drop is disabled briefly after she takes damage, so it is a proactive tool and not a panic button Strong evidence
• Her value is heavily tied to having a competent linked ally and a correct target for the drop Strong evidence
• Neither of you deletes the other, so this matchup is decided by multipliers rather than damage. Resists stack multiplicatively, which means your fourth resist item buys much less percentage than your first; shred is subtracted from the total afterward, which means it is worth more the tankier they get; and healing reduction stacks multiplicatively too, so a second anti-heal source on top of a first is worth far less than the first. The efficient build against Ivy is one anti-heal, one shred, and damage after that. Strong evidence

• Air Drop delivers a burst hero directly on top of your backline from a vertical angle your cover does not protect against, with a barrier and a damage buff attached Strong evidence
• Air Drop tier 3 silences on the drop, which ends a channelled ultimate the instant she lands on you Strong evidence
• Entangling Thorns tier 3 immobilizes you in place while her gun and her linked ally's gun pour into you Strong evidence
• Kudzu Connection means the ally you are fighting is permanently stronger than their base kit — you are effectively fighting a buffed carry, not a normal one Strong evidence
• Stone Form eats your entire burst window while healing her, then stuns you when it ends Strong evidence
• Ivy can Silence, which means your escape is only real if it is already active. Pre-empt rather than react: if you are walking into a position where the Silence lands, your defensive cooldown should be spent getting out of that position, not saved for after. Strong evidence

• Buy Knockdown for Air Drop — it drops her and the carried ally out of the sky and cancels the delivery entirely Strong evidence
• Apply constant chip damage: taking damage briefly disables Air Drop, so pressured Ivy simply cannot cast her ult Strong evidence
• Stop shooting during Stone Form (she is impervious) and instead back out of the roughly 5.75m landing radius so the Stun whiffs Strong evidence
• Break the Kudzu Connection pair's line of sight before tier 3 by forcing them around separate corners, and focus the buffed ally rather than Ivy Strong evidence
• Stack anti-heal — Napalm tier 3, Decay or Cursed Relic — because the bullet Lifesteal, replicated healing and Stone Form heal are her whole sustain package Strong evidence
• Spread out on objectives so Entangling Thorns cannot hit multiple people and Air Drop has no clustered landing target Strong evidence
• Against Ivy the item that changes the matchup is Slowing Hex Slowing Hex 1,600 souls Tier 2TechPress +29s Cooldown +3.5s Duration +0.1s Cast Delay +16% Move Speed -26% Dash Distance , 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
• You want the five-person fight and Ivy only takes it on their terms, which makes Vortex Web Vortex Web 6,400 souls Tier 4TechPress +42s Cooldown +4s Duration +0.2s Cast Delay +0.5s Tether Duration +28% Move Speed -36% Dash Distance +8% Ability Range +8% Radius Builds from Slowing Hex the item that closes the argument. It is a 12m vacuum plus a full Slowing Hex effect, so it both drags them into your fight and silences the movement abilities they would use to leave it. That is a team-fight tool, not a duel tool — buy it if your win condition is the grouped fight, and skip it if your win condition is picking them off alone. Strong evidence

• Whenever she has recently taken damage — Air Drop is locked out, so she has no flight and no escape Strong evidence
• The entire Stone Form duration if you disengage instead of shooting: she is immobile and you get a free reposition Strong evidence
• Mid-flight during Air Drop — she and her passenger are a slow, visible, committed target for Knockdown or sustained gunfire Strong evidence
• Her 2.44s reload on a 33-round magazine is one of the longer reloads in the group Strong evidence
• Any fight where her linked ally has died — she drops to half Kudzu Connection value and has almost no independent kill pressure Strong evidence
• Being stunned by Ivy 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
• Your bullets are slow and Ivy is fast enough to make that matter. Lead into where their movement is constrained rather than where they are — the closer the fight, the less your bullet speed costs you. Strategic

• Your escape route is vertical and the 09-16-2026 patch aimed at exactly that: slows now affect air drag at 35% of their value, where previously they mostly did not bite in the air. Going airborne to break Ivy's slow no longer restores your full movement — you carry a fraction of it into the air with you, at the moment you are also a stationary silhouette. The slow cut of ~20% partly offsets it, but the net is that air-escaping a slow is worse this patch than last. Documented

• Ivy 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. Documented

• Fights against Ivy recur on the objective clock — the Rift every 7 minutes from about 11:00, the Urn every 5 from 10:00 — which means the question is not whether your ultimate is strong but whether it is up for the next one. Ultimate Cooldown Reduction is a new stat introduced on 09-16-2026, first appearing on Diviner's Kevlar Diviner's Kevlar 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPassive +40s Cooldown +40 Spirit Power +1000 Barrier +20s Buff Duration +15% Ability Duration +10% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction at +10%. Against a team-fight hero, buying into a recurring ultimate is a different and often better purchase than buying into a bigger one. Documented

• Your habit of taking the fight vertical to reset spacing against Ivy is weaker on 09-16-2026 than it was. Slows now apply to air drag at 35% of their value, so the air is no longer a slow-free zone, and 2026 has been a steady closing of exactly these loopholes — wall jumping costs 25% stamina regeneration for 5 seconds, and knockups came under debuff reduction in May. Going up is still correct against their ground CC; it is no longer a way to ignore their slows. Documented
• Fight Ivy 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
• Ivy wins by choosing where the fight happens. Take your position before the zoning goes down, not after — once the area is committed you are fighting on their terms, and walking in to contest it is exactly the mistake the kit is built to farm. Strategic

• Ivy heals through damage, so healing reduction is not optional here — but pick the right application route. Anti-heal arrives two ways: bullet-applied (Toxic Bullets Toxic Bullets 3,200 souls Tier 3WeaponPassive -40% Incoming Healing , T3) builds up through gunfire, and spirit-applied (Healbane Healbane 1,600 souls Tier 2ArmorPassive +8s Duration +7 Spirit Power -35% Incoming Healing , T2) lands off Spirit Damage. Buy the one that matches how you actually deal damage, or it will never apply. Documented
• Ivy 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
• Do not assume Ivy shrugs off your anti-heal by going immune. Unstoppable explicitly does not suppress healing reduction — if you have the debuff on them before they pop it, they are still healing at the reduced rate through the whole window. Documented
• Your escape is a big part of why you survive fights, and Ivy can turn it off. Debuff Resist shortens the lockout, and a cleanse removes it outright — one of the two is worth a slot specifically because of this hero. Strategic
• Arctic Blast (spirit T4) — Ivy's Air Drop is what you are buying against here. Buy to lock down a mobile enemy team or to peel a dive off your backline — slowed targets cannot regenerate stamina. Documented
• Debuff Reducer Debuff Reducer 1,600 souls Tier 2ArmorPassive +25% Debuff Resist +90 Bonus Health (vitality T2) — Ivy creates that through Ivy's Stone Form. The standard early buy when the enemy team chains crowd control; it is also the component for Spellbreaker Spellbreaker 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPassive +9s Cooldown +18% Spirit Resist +25% Debuff Resist +175 Damage Threshold +65% Spirit Damage Reduction +90 Bonus Health Builds from Debuff Reducer and Unstoppable. Documented
• Cold Front Cold Front 1,600 souls Tier 2TechInstantCast +25s Cooldown +4s Duration +0.6s Spread Duration: +48% Move Speed +6% Spirit Resist (spirit T2) — Ivy's Air Drop — that is the gap closers and escapes this answers. Buy when you need an area slow to catch runners or peel a dive; it upgrades into Arctic Blast. Documented

• Your damage arrives over time and Ivy converts damage dealt into health, which makes the natural instinct — stay in the fight, keep the pressure on — the exact thing that loses it. Their sustain scales with how many targets are in front of them and how long the fight runs; yours does not scale at all. Either break contact and force them to re-approach on a cooldown, or bring healing reduction so the long fight stops being their format. Strategic
• The Unstable Rift capture point is a 20m circle on a bridge, capture only progresses when no enemy is inside it, and everyone standing in it is revealed on the minimap. That is a purpose-built trap for Ivy. The mistake is treating the circle as the objective: you do not need to stand in it, you need them not to. Contest from outside the radius, deny with a single body at the edge, and let their Area Damage land on empty bridge. Strategic