Deadlock – Yamato Build Guide (Adaptation of X Build)

Guide to Yamato Build

By Yasuomato

Build

Item Order

Skill Order

• Skill unlock 1-3-2-4
• Skill level up 3 1 1 1 4 2 2 4 3 x x x x x. If solo laning put 1st point into 3
• Play more passive in duo lanes and more aggressive in solo lanes
• Once Power attack is maxed you can begin jungling / splitting
• Once you have everything in early/.mid tier join all team fights that are convenient, split push, and jungle only when its convenient

Abilities

Power Attack [Skill 1]

• Scaling is amazing on this, 2x your spirit power
• Good for trading as it provides 60% bullet resistence. Will be out traded by Spirit Damage
• Rank 2 movement slow helps you close the distance
• Rank 5 Damage is insane by end game. Bread and Butter for fights

Flying Strike [Skill 2]

• Scales at 0.7 x Spirit Damage
• Rank 1 gives you a slow so great for engaging or following up. 
• Rank 2 cast range increase gives you a lot of distance to hook onto enemies

Crimson Slash [Skill 3]

• Scaling is not great 0.4 x Spirit
• Healing is 1.1 x Spirit Power scaling, fairly solid. Heals increase as you get more Spirit Damage (duh)
• Initial Slow from Rank 1 helps to stick to enemy
• At Rank 2 it becomes very strong for trading

Shadow Transformation [Skill 4]

• Ult can be used to empower yourself for fights or to survive fights that have gone sour (as I often do)
• Great for unsuspected tower dives
• The timer is shorter than you think
• Once you get refresher, you need to learn the muscle memory to pop refresher when your ult ends
• If enemy team is CC heavy you will want to pop this before you get locked down.

Playstyle

Foreword

Contrary to the belief of most players, Yamato is an excellent skirmisher throughout the game and is not solely a split pusher. She is an excellent ganker and can roam the map fairly well.

I included 2 different item build paths. One focusing on Skill Damage and team fighting, the other focusing on Split Pushing and ignoring the team.

• It is important that you take a nuanced approach to understanding when to pick which build. 9 times out of 10 you want to take the Skill Damage build. Cases where you take the Split Pushing build instead are:
• Your team is far behind and you believe they will not be able to teamfight.
• Your team can match theirs in lanes without you there but are unable to take towers (Guardians, Walkers, etc).
• In either scenario make sure you let the team know you are going to split push. Or don’t. I’m not your dad.

Early Game

Yamato is fairly weak and heavily item dependent. Your goal should be farming soul essence from lane & camps + denying enemy soul essence. Luckily, her basic attack has a nice concerted spread so it makes it easy to both confirm and deny.

You can go for some poke with your Power Attack [Skill 1] since at 1 point it provides Gain +60% Bullet Resist While channeling. To do this you want to either flank on the sides of the lane just out of line of sight, hit them with Power Attack and then run OR use cover to push and clear minions, then go for a Power Attack from the ground or in mid air since it hangs you in the air as you do it.

Yamato can start to go for trades once she has some lifesteal. In our case we build Spirit Lifesteal as our 3rd item. When going in for attacks ensure you incorporate light and heavy melee attacks and mix them up with your Power Attack. If you are too obvious with your melee – in high elo people will parry you and kill you.

Once you acquire Crimson Slash [Skill 3], Yamato can efficiently start trades since you heal on Hero Hit: 70 (Spirit Power Scaling x 1.1). After getting Spirit Burst and Close Quarters Yamato has a deceptively strong Melee.

The ideal trade combo would be Power Attack then Melee (light or heavy) > Crimson Slash > Dash away. If they are low you can often finish them off with her Basic Attack.

Mid Game

Your mid game should focus around winning lane and then converting that into macro (i.e. ganking other lanes to help them take guardians/walkers, getting map objectives such as Urn, cleaning monster camps).

Continue to follow the build order left to right. Torment Pulse is a fantastic pick and can really power spike Yamato. If you are doing well in soul essence economy then you can grab TP prior to KD. Make sure you are proc-ing and using KD.

At this stage you are either in a solid spot / ahead OR you are behind and have quite a few deaths on you. You must make a decision to commit to the rest of the build or go for a split push setup (see mentions of split push in the foreword).

Ganking

Yamato is excellent at ganking lanes due to her ability Flying Strike [Skill 2]. A common noob trap is using the 2 ability at the start of a gank. Flying strike does provide a Movement Slow of 30%. But if possible it is far better to save Flying Strike for after the enemy you are ganking tries to run. I often walk up to the enemy player > full charge Power Attack > Heavy or Light Melee > Crimson Slash > Basic Attacks and/or more Heavy or Light Melee > [Enemy uses mobility option to try and run] > Flying Strike > Power Attack or Basic Attack or Melee. Again be careful on melees if you start seeing parries.

Late Game

Early Teamfights

Yamato can sustain a decent amount in fights if cycling abilities and melee properly. But she is still quite squishy. It is important to teamfight when your ult is up. If you must teamfight without your ult then do not over commit since Yamato does not have good escape tools.

Late Game Teamfights

Towards the late game Yamato will tend to draw out the enemy team’s crowd control abilities. This is because she can not use ult when stunned. While in your ult your abilities are refreshed and are 60% faster, your weapon has infinite ammo, and you gain damage resistance and immunity to negative status effects. You are also unable to die in this mode.

So if you are facing a CC heavy team it can be a decent idea to ult earlier than you normally would in a fight. You can also save it as an “Oh Shit” button.