Damage

Damage reduces health, although barriers and other defenses can absorb or mitigate it. Deadlock distinguishes weapon, spirit and pure damage. An ability’s damage type is not necessarily the same as the stat from which it scales.

Weapon and melee damage

Base bullet damage is hero-specific and grows with boons. Percentage Weapon Damage increases the base; flat Weapon Damage is added afterward and does not itself gain that percentage bonus. Falloff, resistance and critical modifiers still apply to the flat bonus. The source gives:

Final bullet damage = [(base damage × damage multiplier) + flat bonus] × falloff × resistances × critical multiplier.

Target Bullet Resist and the attacker’s Bullet Resist Reduction combine multiplicatively. Increased Bullet Damage is a debuff applied at the end of the calculation and also amplifies flat bonuses. Most weapon-scaling abilities use bonus Weapon Damage from items and shop investment; Paradox’s Kinetic Carbine instead uses base burst damage and therefore grows with boons.

Melee is weapon damage and scales at 50% of the Weapon Damage stat. Effects triggered by “weapon damage” include melee, but effects specifying bullets differ: Metal Skin and Toxic Bullets do not apply to melee, while Slowing Bullets and Weighted Shots do. Bullet Resist and Melee Resist both affect melee; the source notes Venator’s innate Spirit-scaled Bullet Resist as an apparent exception.

For spreadshots each pellet is normally calculated separately. Drifter, Grey Talon’s Rain of Arrows and Split Shot instead deal the same bullet damage to a target regardless of pellets hit. Paige’s shots pierce targets until hitting a map surface, cannot deal headshot bonus damage but can trigger headshot items. The Doorman’s shots also pierce and can headshot, but deal half damage after the first enemy.

Falloff reduces damage linearly from 100% to 10% across a hero’s falloff range. The target health-bar dot indicates the fraction: red 10–20%, orange 20–35%, yellow 35–75%, and transparent 75–100%.

Critical damage

Troopers, neutrals, Lane Guardians and heroes have weak points that normally take 1.65 times bullet damage. The source states crit multiplier = 1 + [(0.65 + crit bonus scale) × crit resist]. Deadman Danny, Graves, Paige, Viscous’s alternate fire and Yamato’s alternate fire cannot deal critical damage; Paige can still trigger headshot items. Certain abilities use their own bonus in place of the standard 65%.

Pure damage and executes

Pure damage is neither weapon, spirit nor melee damage and is not mitigated by ordinary Damage Resistance. It appears as white numbers and a gray bar in the damage report. Some white-number effects are post-mitigation amplifications: the underlying damage has already been reduced. An execute immediately kills a qualifying target, ignoring barriers and damage reduction; most require a health threshold.

Pure damage does not trigger Mystic Reverb or contribute to its calculation. It was introduced in the Six New Heroes update; the affected effects previously dealt spirit damage while bypassing resistance, with different interactions. Armor Piercer bullets and Tankbuster’s proc bypass weapon and spirit resistance respectively but are not pure damage. Plated Armor mitigates pure damage applied by bullets, including Ira Domini and Siphon Bullets.

Source tables

The following tables preserve the source’s data and restrictions. The wiki table has a template error in Solomon’s execute threshold. The October 30 official update states that Develop Queen executes heroes below 100 health plus 5 per boon at base, with Tier 2 adding 150 to that threshold. The malformed wiki cell remains below for traceability.

Critical bonus scale

Ability critical bonus

Weapon-scaling abilities

Execute thresholds

Pure damage abilities

Pure damage items

Pure damage mitigation abilities

Pure damage mitigation items

Weapon Damage sources

Troopers, Guardians, Haunts, Base Turrets and Midboss deal weapon damage with their attacks. Weapon item investment provides an automatic category bonus:

Items with a listed Weapon Damage bonus:

Monster Rounds adds 25% against NPCs. Berserker adds 7% per stack from sustained damage; Intensifying Magazine reaches 45% after continuous fire. Opening Rounds adds 25% against targets above 50% health; Ballistic Enchantment adds 20% per stack when the imbued ability hits; Golden Goose Egg can grant permanent Weapon Damage. Headshot Booster adds 45 flat weapon damage on headshots; Headhunter adds 75 with boon scaling ×4; Lucky Shot has a 25% chance per bullet to deal 100% additional bonus Weapon Damage.

Sources and editorial notes

Adapted from Deadlock Wiki contributors; checked 2026-11-01. Source-derived text and factual tables are adapted under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. Game content may be subject to separate rights.

• Damage
• Weapon Damage
• Pure Damage
• Damage resistance reference
• October 30, 2026 update on Steam

Editorial coverage note: The source displays a template error in Solomon’s execute threshold; it is reproduced as such.