Calico

Calico lobs a handful of bombs that scatter and blow up after a short fuse, dealing Spirit Damage in the area they land. Targets caught by more than one bomb take heavily reduced damage from the extras.

Purpose: Her wave clear, her camp clear and her opening chip damage. The diminishing-returns rule on overlapping bombs means she has to spread them across a group rather than stacking them on one target.

Damage

45 base Spirit Damage per bomb (deadlock.one); enemies hit by multiple bombs take 65% reduced damage on subsequent hits. Tier 3 adds +3 grenades.

Defensive

Can be thrown behind her while retreating to deter a chase through a choke.

How to play against it

• The bombs have a visible scatter and a fuse delay — simply walking out of the cluster before detonation avoids nearly all of it
• The 65% overlap reduction means bunching up is actually less punishing than it looks; the real cost is the free wave clear she gets
• Contest her Haunt camps Haunts Neutral camps Lanes and Districts across the map Haunts replace the old neutral camps. They are not a reskin: each type behaves differently, and the health bar now shows a camp's soul value and how hard it is, so you can decide whether a camp is worth your time before you start shooting. Three eye colours mark the tier — teal for tier I, yellow for tier II, red for tier III. Souls 41/68/181 souls tier I / II / III a creep +0.44 / +0.73 / +1.95 a minute ; her farming lead is largely built on Gloom Bombs clearing camps instantly

Interactions

• Tier 3's +3 grenades is her farming spike — it makes camps and waves disappear in one cast
• The 65% reduction on overlapping hits means she gains far more value against a spread group than a single target
• Tier 2 applies a melee-resist reduction, which chains directly into Leaping Slash's Melee Damage

Calico lunges forward and then sweeps everything around her with a melee slash. Connecting with at least one hero returns a small amount of health.

Purpose: Her gap-closer, her in-fight sustain and her combo damage. The Tier 3 cooldown refund is what lets her chain it as a mobility tool rather than a once-per-fight commitment.

Damage

10 impact damage + 40 heal scaling per Spirit Power at base (deadlock.one); Tier 3 adds +10 damage and +90 impact damage.

Mobility

A committed forward dash — good for closing, mediocre for escaping since it only goes one direction.

Defensive

Heals on hero hit (+25 at Tier 1), giving her a reason to stay in a fight one beat longer.

How to play against it

• It is a fixed-direction dash with no tracking — sidestepping breaks it and denies her the heal entirely
• Deny the hero hit and she gets no health back; the heal only triggers on heroes, not troopers
• Once she has dashed in, she is at close range with no CC of her own — that is the moment to Stun her

Interactions

• Tier 3's +50% cooldown refund makes it repeatable, effectively giving her a second dash in extended fights
• Gloom Bombs T2's melee-resist reduction stacks directly into this ability's Melee Damage
• Tier 2's bonus gold on kill is an economy upgrade, not a combat one — it accelerates an already fast farmer

Calico dissolves into shadow and takes the form of Ava, gaining movement speed that builds the longer she stays in the form and disappearing from the enemy minimap. She cannot attack or cast abilities while transformed, and taking hero damage resets the accumulated speed and briefly locks the form out.

Purpose: Pure map mobility and information denial. It is how she reaches a fight, leaves a lost one, or rotates to an unwarded camp without showing up on the map — it is not a combat ability.

Mobility

Ramping bonus move speed (up to +45% more at Tier 2) and concealment from the minimap.

Defensive

Escape only through raw speed; she is still a targetable, killable body while in the form.

How to play against it

• Land a single hero shot on her in Ava form — it resets the speed ramp and puts the form on cooldown, which is usually enough to catch her
• Ward the jungle routes rather than watching the minimap; minimap concealment is the whole point of the ability and vision defeats it
• If you catch her mid-Ava, she cannot shoot or cast back until she drops the form — collapse immediately
• Track her farming pattern; she uses Ava to reach camps, so contesting her camp rotation denies the form's main purpose

Interactions

• Hitting her with hero damage resets the ramping speed bonus and puts the form on a brief cooldown — a single connecting shot ruins a rotation
• She cannot shoot or cast during Ava, so a Calico in this form is temporarily a non-combatant if you can catch her
• Hidden on the minimap is not true invisibility — she is fully visible to anyone actually looking at her
• Tier 3's outgoing damage amp makes a pre-fight Ava transformation into a burst enabler rather than just a rotation tool

Calico instantly vanishes into shadow, becoming untargetable and gaining movement speed, damaging enemies around her as she goes. After roughly three seconds she reappears, dealing Spirit Damage again.

Purpose: Simultaneously her burst combo and her escape. It is the ability that lets her dive a backline, take the kill, and leave without ever being a valid target during the dangerous part.

Damage

150 base Spirit Damage per hit (deadlock.one), applied on both entry and exit; Tier 2 adds +75.

Mobility

Bonus move speed during the untargetable phase, which she uses to reposition entirely during the ~3s window.

Defensive

Full untargetability for the duration — it can be used purely to survive a committed burst or to escape a lost fight.

How to play against it

• Do not spend a burst combo or a single-target ultimate while she is phased — she is untargetable, not merely hidden, and everything you throw is wasted
• Predict the reappearance point instead of chasing the disappearance point; she gets bonus move speed but only about 3 seconds of travel
• Pre-place area denial (Dynamo's Singularity, McGinnis turrets, Mo & Krill's burrow) on the likely exit rather than trying to react to it
• Force her to use it as an escape earlier in the fight; the same cooldown is both her dive and her survival, and a Calico without it is a 1-durability hero with no CC

Interactions

• Because she is untargetable rather than invisible, it dodges projectiles, lock-on effects and single-target ultimates outright
• Used offensively it reads as a dive; used defensively it reads as an escape — the same cooldown does both, which is why forcing it early is so valuable
• Tier 3 adds a large heal (+450) and a cooldown refund, turning it into a full reset button (an older Dexerto write-up describes a full cooldown reset plus damage amp at max rank, which conflicts with the current deadlock.io listing — treat the exact T3 wording as needing re-verification)
• Deadlock.io lists a 115s base cooldown, dropping 20s at Tier 1