Shiv

Shiv throws a knife that damages and bleeds the target. Every additional knife adds a stack and refreshes the debuff timer, so the bleed damage climbs the longer he keeps hitting.

Purpose: Shiv's ranged chip and his execute setup. Stacked bleed is what drops a target under the Killing Blow threshold from outside dash range.

Damage

32 impact damage + 10 bleed DPS per knife stack over a 5s debuff; +7 bleed DPS at 5 AP. 2 charges at base, 16s cooldown with 2s between charges (mobalytics 2026)

Crowd control

Applies a movement slow with the bleed; at full Rage the slow on bleeding targets is 35% (mobalytics 2026)

How to play against it

• Any cleanse or debuff-removal item wipes the whole stack, not one knife — use it once he has built 3-4 stacks, not on the first
• Break line of sight to deny stack refreshes; the debuff falls off in 5s (7s at 1 AP) once he cannot re-hit you
• Because he has no native anti-heal, a single healer or a Restorative/Extra Regen Extra Regen 800 souls Tier 1ArmorPassive +2.5 Health Regen +1.5 Out of Combat Regen purchase fully negates bleed chip between fights
• The knives are projectiles at short-to-mid range — strafe and use cover rather than trading at the edge of his shotgun falloff

Interactions

• Stacks refresh rather than expire independently, so continuous pressure keeps the full bleed alive indefinitely
• Shiv has NO native healing reduction — the bleed is raw damage over time and is fully undone by an enemy healer unless Shiv buys anti-heal items himself
• In the 09-16-2026 patch, at full Rage the knives deal current-HP damage on impact instead of ricocheting; since 30 October 2026 that is 4% of current health with 0.015 spirit scaling
• Bleed damage counts toward filling the Rage meter on the Killing Blow passive

Shiv dashes forward, cutting everything along the line he travels. Enemies hit have their spirit resistance reduced, and the debuff can stack with repeated hits.

Purpose: His gap-closer, his escape (forward only) and his damage amplifier. Hitting heroes with it is how he keeps it up in extended fights.

Damage

75 impact damage base, 12m range, 16s cooldown; +50 impact damage at 5 AP (mobalytics 2026; deadlock.one confirms 75 base)

Mobility

A fixed-length 12m forward dash (14m at 2 AP) — the only repositioning tool in his kit

Defensive

Usable to escape, but only along the direction he is already facing, so it commits him to a line

How to play against it

• It is a straight fixed-length line — step perpendicular to his facing, not backwards, and the dash overshoots you
• Time your own displacement or Stun for the dash frames; a Stun landing as he commits leaves him inside your team with no second mobility tool
• Deny the 5 AP cooldown refund by not clustering: each hero he clips through returns 2s to the dash
• Bait it out against a trooper wave — the dash is his only way in and his only way out

Interactions

• 5 AP refunds 2s of cooldown per enemy hero hit (1s for non-heroes, capped at -8s), so diving into a group actually resets it faster than diving one target
• At full Rage an echo of Shiv retraces the dash path after a delay and damages again
• The dash is directional and cannot be redirected mid-flight, so it is both his engage and his commitment

A portion of the damage Shiv takes is not applied immediately; it is queued and dealt to him over the following seconds. Activating the ability erases part of that queued damage outright.

Purpose: This is what lets Shiv survive the initial burst of a dive he loses. It turns a spike of incoming damage into a bar he can partly delete, which is why he can commit into a fight that should kill him.

Damage

No damage dealt. Defers 30% of incoming damage over 6s; activating clears 40% of the deferred pool on a 25s cooldown (mobalytics 2026)

Defensive

His entire defensive layer — effectively an on-demand partial heal for damage he has already taken

How to play against it

• Do not disengage when Shiv 'survives' your burst — the deferred pool is still ticking into him, and continued pressure kills him where backing off gives him a free reset
• Force him to use the active early in a fight; on the base 25s cooldown he cannot clear a second burst
• Burst damage is worse against him than sustained damage. A single spike gets deferred and cleared; steady DPS outpaces both the deferral window and the clear
• Anti-heal items still matter against Shiv because he buys Lifesteal to cover the deferred damage, even though the ability itself is not healing

Interactions

• It defers, it does not negate — if you keep applying pressure, the deferred pool still lands and can kill him
• At full Rage the deferred share rises to 44% (30% base + 14%)
• Combines with Lifesteal items, which Shiv commonly builds because his kit has no native healing at all
• The active clear is the tell: seeing him press it means he has taken a large burst and is at his most committed

Shiv leaps to an enemy hero and instantly kills them if they are below a health threshold; otherwise it deals flat damage. Passively, damaging enemies fills a Rage meter, and at full Rage Shiv deals more damage and his other three abilities gain extra properties.

Purpose: An anti-carry tool: it converts any low-health enemy into a guaranteed kill from 12m away, and at 5 AP it resets on a successful execute so he can chain through a team.

Damage

Instant kill below 18% of the target's health (23% at 2 AP); otherwise 200 damage. 12m range (18m at 1 AP), 145s cooldown (game files, Oct 2026)

Mobility

The leap itself is a 12m-18m targeted gap-close, separate from Slice and Dice

Defensive

None directly, though the 5 AP reset on kill effectively removes the risk of committing

How to play against it

• Track the threshold, not your health bar: above roughly 18% (23% at 2 AP) he only deals 200 damage, so the panic point is much lower than it feels
• A single burst heal that pushes you back over the threshold wastes his 145s ultimate entirely
• Never be the lowest-health hero standing within 18m of a Shiv with ult up; he leaps to the target, so distance is a real defence
• Deny the 5 AP reset chain by not having a second low-health body nearby — the reset only matters if there is another execute target in range
• Hold a Stun or knockdown for the leap; interrupting mid-commit strands him in your team without Slice and Dice if he already spent it

Interactions

• The threshold is percentage-based, so it scales with the enemy's health pool — tanks are not safe from it, they just need to be brought lower first
• 5 AP resets the cooldown on a successful elimination and allows a recast within 12s on a hero kill, which is how a fed Shiv chains three executes in one fight
• Full Rage simultaneously upgrades Serrated Knives, Slice and Dice (echo re-damage) and Bloodletting (44% deferral)
• Any healing that lifts the target back above the threshold turns a guaranteed kill into a 200-damage whiff