McGinnis vs Yamato

Do

• Plan for Divine Barrier Divine Barrier 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorPress +55s Cooldown +0.2s Cast Delay +1.5 Out of Combat Regen +6s Buff Duration +600 Barrier +10% Ability Range +10% Radius Builds from Guardian Ward — know which tier it sits in so you are not improvising at the shop.
• Know what Shadow Transformation looks like. It is the cooldown this lane revolves around.

Avoid

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

Do

• 730 max health and no barrier anywhere in the kit
• Sister's Lament does around 63 DPS, so she loses pure gun trades badly
• 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

• Power Slash charged from behind cover pokes for 145 with a 32% slow at T1, from further away than her gun hits hard
• Crimson Slash's heal on hero hit lets her win extended trades without buying sustain

Do

• Their first real spike is Flying Slash T1 (-18s cooldown) — 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 Yamato on their spike timing when you could take the same fight ten minutes later on yours.

Do

• Watch for Flying Slash. Hold a displacement or Knockup (Viscous's Puddle Punch Puddle Punch 40m Range24s Cooldown Materialises a fist at a chosen point up to a long distance away, punching everyone in a small area upward. Crowd Control Knockup on everyone in the 4m radius plus a -24% movement slow for 3s Damage 20 damage base plus about 0.6x melee scaling; Mobility Grants Viscous and allies increased air control when caught in it 1 +1 charge and +20 damage 2 +1.5m radius and +60% lifesteal 5 -14s cooldown and deals Heavy Melee damage , Venator's Gutshot Gutshot 10m Range23s Cooldown A point-blank shotgun burst within about 10m that shoves everyone hit backwards. Crowd Control knockback on everyone hit; Damage 60 base (about 0.7x weapon scaling) plus 30 bonus (about 0.8x scaling) when… Mobility none for Venator himself 1 +25 damage 2 -10s cooldown (23s base) and +0.4s stun duration 5 after a wall stun, Venator's next heavy melee becomes blessed , Wraith's Telekinesis Telekinesis 10m Range2.3s Duration150s Cooldown Lifts one enemy hero into the air, holding them helpless for a couple of seconds, then slams them toward a location Wraith chooses. Crowd Control stunned during the 1.25s channel, then the target is airborne and unable to… Damage 100 spirit base (about 1.0x spirit scaling); Mobility none for Wraith — she channels for 1.25s while aiming the throw 1 +100 damage 2 -45s cooldown (150s base down to 105s) 5 +1.5s debuff duration and +6m throw and cast range ) for the moment she lands — she arrives committed and at melee range with no follow-up escape before T3
• Never spend CC into Shadow Transformation — she is status immune. Hold Binding Word Binding Word 15m Range34s Cooldown Curses a targeted enemy hero. Crowd Control 1.75s immobilise (T2 adds +0.75s, so up to 2.5s) if the target fails the… Damage 110 (about 2.44x spirit scaling) when it lands Defensive Rooting a diver in place is a strong self-peel 1 Warden deals +20% bullet damage to trapped heroes for 5s 2 +0.75s immobilise duration 5 -14s cooldown (34s base) and silences the target until they escape or are immobilised , Petrifying Bola Petrifying Bola 115s Cooldown Throws an explosive bola. Crowd Control 2.2s petrify on a direct hit (T3 adds +1s, up to 3.2s); Damage 50 area damage (about 0.74x spirit scaling); Defensive Petrifying an incoming diver removes them from the fight for over two… 1 +49.5 petrify damage 2 -20s cooldown 5 +1s petrify duration and petrifies all enemies in the area, not just direct hits , Telekinesis and Puddle Punch for the moment it expires

Avoid

• Spending your own escape before Shadow Transformation is on cooldown.

• Flying Slash Ability 2

  Not lockdown, but it makes disengaging cost more than it should: -40% movement slow for 2.5s on the target.

  • Hold a displacement or Knockup (Viscous's Puddle Punch, Venator's Gutshot, Wraith's Telekinesis) for the moment she lands — she arrives committed and at melee range with no follow-up escape before T3
  • It needs a target: standing behind a teammate or outside 23m means she has no entry at all
  • The -40% slow lasts 2.5s, so a dash or a Stamina jump immediately on arrival is better than trying to run out of it
• Power Slash Ability 1

  Nothing to respect until the upgrade lands, and then T1 adds a 32% movement slow for 3s.

  • The charge is loud, long (1.4s) and visible — break line of sight or change elevation during it and the whole channel is wasted
  • Do not trade bullets into a charging Yamato: she has 60% Bullet Resist for the duration, so Spirit Damage or simply disengaging is strictly better
  • It is a directional projectile at 22-30m; strafing perpendicular to her facing at release avoids it
• Crimson Slash Ability 3

  Sticking power rather than damage: -30% fire rate for 4s is a heavy offensive debuff.

  • Spread your formation — the heal is gated on hitting heroes, so denying her contact with anyone denies her sustain entirely
  • Anti-heal (Healbane Healbane 1,600 souls Tier 2ArmorPassive +8s Duration +7 Spirit Power -35% Incoming Healing , Toxic Bullets Toxic Bullets 3,200 souls Tier 3WeaponPassive -40% Incoming Healing , Venator's Consecrating Grenade Consecrating Grenade 25s Cooldown Lobs a grenade that bounces once or twice before detonating in a roughly 4.5m area. Damage 35 impact (about 1.0x weapon scaling) plus roughly 10 burn DPS (about 1.6x… 1 -5s cooldown (25s base) 2 +1.5m radius and +1s burn duration 5 an additional 20% healing reduction on top of the base 30%, and grants extra charges , Vindicta's T1 Crow) directly attacks her only sustain source and is very efficient against her
  • It is a frontal cone at 13m radius; stepping behind or to the side of her avoids it
• Shadow Transformation Ultimate

  Her all-in. It makes her untouchable through the transformation, resets her combo, and then lets her chain kills — each kill extending the window further.

  • Do not spend CC into it. She is immune to negative status effects for the whole duration, so a Binding Word, a Petrify or a Snap Trap thrown at a transformed Yamato is a wasted cooldown
  • Disengage and wait it out. The base duration is only 5s (8s at T3) and the cooldown is 130-160s — walking away costs you nothing and costs her the ultimate
  • Deny kills above all else: each hero kill heals her 15% max health and extends the transformation by 2s, so pulling a low teammate out of reach ends the ultimate sooner

1. 1 Shadow Transformation

   Shadow Transformation first — it is the only thing making her survivable. Force it early with a fake commit, disengage, and then fight her in the 130-160 seconds it is down, when she has only her 730 health

2. 2 Flying Slash

   Flying Slash second: it is her only engage and, pre-T3, her only movement tool. Baiting it out on a durable frontliner strands her for 18-36 seconds

3. 3 Power Slash

   Power Slash third: make her commit the 1.4s channel behind cover where the release hits nothing, then punish the 8-12s cooldown

• 730 max health and no barrier — she dies instantly if caught outside her ultimate Strong evidence
• Weak weapon (about 63 DPS); almost all her damage is on cooldowns Strong evidence
• Power Slash's 1.4s channel and Flying Slash's committed landing are both heavily telegraphed Strong evidence
• Yamato threatens you two ways at once — a combo that kills and a disable that makes the combo land — and the three big defensive actives are deliberately orthogonal, so you have to decide which half you are answering. Metal Skin Metal Skin 3,200 souls Tier 3ArmorInstantCast +24s Cooldown +5s Duration +12% Bullet Resist -20% Dash Distance +20% Gravity Scale blocks Bullet Damage and no statuses; Unstoppable Unstoppable 6,400 souls Tier 4ArmorInstantCast +60s Cooldown +5.5s Duration +125 Bonus Health +25% Debuff Resist Builds from Debuff Reducer blocks statuses and no damage; Ethereal Shift Ethereal Shift 6,400 souls Tier 4TechInstantCast +37s Cooldown +4s Duration +5s Buff Duration +30% Spirit Resist +20 Spirit Power blocks everything but takes you out of the fight and cancels your own channels. Buying two is the honest answer if you have the souls; buying the wrong one is the same as buying nothing. Strong evidence
• You out-lane Yamato 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
• You fight at mid range and Yamato has to reach close range, but they have the movement to do it — which means the matchup is not a range advantage, it is a cooldown one. Their gap-closer is the only thing bridging the band, so track it rather than tracking their health. With it up you are in their range and should behave accordingly; with it down you are in a range they cannot reach and every second of that window is free. Strategic
• 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 Yamato is one anti-heal, one shred, and damage after that. Strong evidence

• Flying Slash reaches 23-31m and lands with a -40% slow for 2.5s, which means once she picks you there is no walking away from Power Slash and Crimson Slash Strong evidence
• Power Slash at T3 does up to roughly 295 Spirit Damage from 30m while she holds 60% Bullet Resist during the charge, so trading bullets into it loses Strong evidence
• Crimson Slash strips -30% of your fire rate for 4s while healing her 55 + 6% of her max health, so diving her carry is both punished and self-sustaining Strong evidence
• Shadow Transformation makes her immune to negative status effects — your Binding Word, Petrifying Bola, Snap Trap or Knockup simply does not apply for 5-8 seconds Strong evidence
• Each kill during Shadow Transformation heals her 15% max health and adds 2 seconds, so a chained pick can keep the ultimate running through an entire fight Strong evidence
• During the ultimate her abilities cast 60% faster, which removes Power Slash's charge tell entirely Strong evidence

• Never spend CC into Shadow Transformation — she is status immune. Hold Binding Word, Petrifying Bola, Telekinesis and Puddle Punch for the moment it expires Strong evidence
• Disengage for the 5-8s ultimate duration; the cooldown is 130-160s and walking away costs you nothing while costing her everything Strong evidence
• Deny kills during the ultimate: every hero kill is +2s and a 15% max health heal, so pulling a low teammate to safety (or Cubing them) shortens the window Strong evidence
• Break line of sight or change elevation during the 1.4s Power Slash channel — outside her ultimate that tell is long and reliable Strong evidence
• Save a displacement for the instant Flying Slash lands; pre-T3 she has no exit, so punishing the landing rather than the approach is what kills her Strong evidence
• Buy anti-heal — Crimson Slash's hero-hit heal is her only sustain, and Healbane or Venator's Consecrating Grenade removes most of it Strong evidence
• Bring Spirit Damage: her Crimson Slash fire-rate debuff and Power Slash's 60% Bullet Resist both punish weapon damage specifically Strong evidence
• Yamato kills you with Spirit Damage, so match the mitigation to the channel. Ethereal Shift removes you from the game entirely for 4 seconds — untargetable and invincible — but you cannot act, you drift at 2.5 m/s, and it cancels your own channels; 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 instead caps a single spirit hit above 175 damage by 65%, which suits a one-big-cast threat. Ethereal Shift's known hole is aura-type damage, which keeps ticking through it, so check whether their damage is a cast or a field before you spend 6,400. Strong evidence

• The moment Flying Slash lands, before T3 — she is at melee range, committed, and has no escape Strong evidence
• The 1.4s Power Slash channel outside of her ultimate: she is stationary and the release is directional and dodgeable Strong evidence
• The instant Shadow Transformation expires: her abilities are on cooldown, her resists drop and she is a 730 HP hero standing in your team Strong evidence
• Any fight beyond 30m — her weapon is only about 63 DPS and Power Slash tops out at 30m even at T3 Strong evidence
• The 130-160s window whenever Shadow Transformation is down, in which she has no immunity, no reset and no second chance on a failed dive Strong evidence
• Your trades against Yamato 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

• Yamato closes distance on a cooldown and you have no exit, so in the 0-6 minute window your Guardian is your escape item. Fight with it behind you and inside its range, not beside you: their gap-close has to end somewhere, and ending it inside 116 DPS of Guardian fire is the only punish you own before you have items. The moment the Guardian falls at around 6:00, that safety disappears and the matchup gets materially worse — plan your first defensive purchase for that timing. Strategic
• You have real objective damage, which makes the Guardian your win condition in this lane rather than Yamato'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
• 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 Yamato, 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
• If you are behind and planning to fight Yamato on the Rift point because of the comeback bubble, recheck the number. As of 09-16-2026 the behind-team resist bonus inside the 35m radius is no longer a flat 35% — it is 10% + 1% per minute, capping at 40% only at 30:00, which is roughly 20% at the first Rift. Twenty percent does not turn a losing fight against burst into a winning one. The reduced capture time (floor 6 seconds) is the part of the comeback package that is still worth playing for. Documented

• You have peel and Yamato is the dive threat, so your job in the fight is not damage — it is being in range of whoever they are jumping on. Position between their entry point and your squishiest teammate and hold your peel tool for the moment they commit, not for the moment they appear. Strategic

• Yamato has to lead you and you are too slow to make that hard by strafing, so buy the miss with geometry instead of movement. A corner, a pillar or a doorway edge means the projectile has to be in flight before you are visible — travel time works against them the moment the sight line is short-lived. Hold positions where your exposure is measured in fractions of a second per peek, and never cross an open space on a straight line at a constant speed, which is the one input their weapon is designed to punish. Strategic

• Yamato 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, T3) builds up through gunfire, and spirit-applied (Healbane, T2) lands off Spirit Damage. Buy the one that matches how you actually deal damage, or it will never apply. Documented
• Yamato dives, and you do not have an exit in your kit. This is the clearest item priority in the matchup: buy a movement or escape active before you buy your next damage item. A damage item does not help you if the fight starts with you already dead. Strong evidence
• Do not assume Yamato 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
• Divine Barrier (vitality T4) — Buy on supports to cleanse a focused ally's debuffs and shield them through a burst window from across the fight. In this game that means Yamato's Flying Slash. Documented
• Slowing Hex Slowing Hex 1,600 souls Tier 2TechPress +29s Cooldown +3.5s Duration +0.1s Cast Delay +16% Move Speed -26% Dash Distance (spirit T2) — Buy it when an enemy repeatedly uses a movement ability or item to dash, blink or fly out of your kill window. Relevant here because of Yamato. Documented
• 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 (spirit T4) — Yamato is where this lineup’s gap closers and escapes comes from. Buy to set up team wipes against scattered, mobile enemies — it groups them and takes away their escapes at once. Documented

• The reflex buy against a hero who keeps deleting you is Metal Skin, and against Yamato it does nothing. Metal Skin is bullet-damage immunity only — Spirit Damage, abilities and every status effect pass straight through it, and you pay −1.5 m/s move speed and −20% dash distance for the privilege. The three big defensive actives are deliberately orthogonal: Metal Skin stops bullets, Unstoppable stops statuses, Ethereal Shift stops everything but disables you. Yamato is a spirit threat, so it is the last two you are choosing between. Documented
• The losing pattern against Yamato 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 Yamato 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