McGinnis 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
• A 66-round magazine plus Mini Turret Mini Turret 20m Range18s Cooldown Places a small automated turret that fires spirit damage at nearby enemies for a limited lifetime. Damage 24 DPS per turret with 100 turret health (deadlock.one). Defensive Turrets act as a tripwire and a damage sponge; 1 +10 turret DPS, +10m attack range. 2 +25% turret fire rate, +12s turret lifetime. gives her sustained fire and turret pressure in lane.

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 Spectral Wall unlock (level 1 priority): Her defining tool is online immediately.

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
• 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. Strategic

• 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

• 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
• Holliday's bullets are among the fastest in the game and you have little mobility, so you will not dodge their gun; the answer is the item that changes what their bullets do rather than where you stand. Plated Armor Plated Armor 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPassive +1s Cooldown +30% Deflection Percent +50% On-Hit Prevention Percent +130 Bonus Health deflects bullets outright and — the part most players miss — strips their on-hit build-ups, which is the only clean answer to Silencer Silencer 6,400 souls Tier 4WeaponPassive +12% Spirit Resist -25% Spirit Damage Reduction +2.5s Silence Duration +6s Debuff Duration +10s Immunity Duration , Toxic Bullets Toxic Bullets 3,200 souls Tier 3WeaponPassive -40% Incoming Healing and Inhibitor Inhibitor 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPassive +150 Bonus Health +5s Debuff Duration -30% Damage Penalty +10% Weapon Damage -40% Incoming Healing stacks landing on you. If 6,400 is too far away, Battle Vest Battle Vest 1,600 souls Tier 2ArmorPassive +18% Bullet Resist +3 Out of Combat Regen +65% Life Threshold +22% Weapon Damage +7% Fire Rate at +18% Bullet Resist is the efficient Tier II step and Bullet Resilience Bullet Resilience 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorPassive +35% Bullet Resist +5 Out of Combat Regen at +30% (with a further +15% below half health) the Tier III one. Strong evidence

• 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
• Your trades against Holliday changed on 09-16-2026: dashes and light melees no longer pause gun cycle time. Your damage output and your repositioning are no longer competing for the same seconds, which is the single biggest gain for a long-cycle weapon in this patch. Practically, that means you can now dodge the opening of their burst and keep your cycle running, so the correct trade against a burst hero is no longer stand-and-shoot — it is move-and-shoot, and it costs you nothing to do it. Documented
• 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

• 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. Documented
• 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. Strategic
• You are a strong laner, so know where the income actually goes. Trooper souls are split among players within roughly 45m of the orb or 30m of the killer, and two players nearby take 54% each rather than 50% — a duo lane is slightly net-positive for the team and clearly negative for you individually. If you are winning the lane against Holliday, holding the wave alone at range from your partner is worth real souls per minute. Treat the exact distances as community-sourced. Uncertain

• 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. 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. Documented

• Against Holliday's knockups, Debuff Reducer Debuff Reducer 1,600 souls Tier 2ArmorPassive +25% Debuff Resist +90 Bonus Health 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. 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
• 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. Strong evidence

• 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

• The instinct here is to buy Dispel Magic Dispel Magic 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorInstantCast +45s Cooldown +10% Spirit Resist +3s Buff Duration +250 Heal Amount 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 Indomitable 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPassive +55s Cooldown +10s Duration +10% Bullet Resist +10% Spirit Resist +20s Cooldown On Apply +2 Out of Combat Regen Builds from Reactive Barrier , which cleanses the next Hard CC with no input from you). Documented
• 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. Documented
• 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. Documented