Early access VALORANT footage shows Deadlock’s ultimate isn’t as broken as it looks

With a name like Annihilation, the ultimate ability for newest VALORANT agent Deadlock comes across as broken already. But while the Nanowire Accelerator-powered ability that cocoons an enemy agent and pulls them towards almost certain death sounds busted, it’s not as bad as it first seems.

Annihilation fires a pulse of nanowires that captures the first contacted enemy, cocooning them and pulling them along a wire toward a kill spot. Players caught in the ability can be freed by teammates that can shoot open the cocoon, but obviously, this means that in a 1v1 scenario, getting caught by Annihilation means the round is certainly over.

But the footage that’s appeared so far from players with early access shows that Annihilation isn’t that broken, with several creators showing off how dodgeable the ability can be. It can be fired off a singular wall, with the end section expanding to a large sphere upon contacting with a wall or surface after the first bounce. But the ability is cast like Sova’s ultimate with a slightly smaller circle, and like a Sova ultimate, you can dodge it.

A couple different videos of the ultimate being used show players just simply sidestepping the Annihilation tube. Again drawing comparison to the Sova ultimate, while the Annihilation diameter appears a tiny bit smaller, there’s less time to dodge. As for tips on how to counter Deadlock and Annihilation, if a teammate of yours gets trapped, avoid instinctually shooting to free them, as Deadlock or one of her allies is likely going to swing now that you’re a man down.

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But as one creator above pointed out, Deadlock players will start to trend towards firing the ability at the feet of opponents, much like a Raze ultimate, so that the big Annihilation pulse becomes impossible to dodge. Still, unlike her other abilities, Annihilation can’t linger for too long. Like the Sova and Raze ultimates, there’s a chance it can be rendered useless if it completely misses.