The Vitality category in Deadlock is all about staying alive: bonus health, regeneration, damage resistance, movement speed and lifesteal. If you keep dying first in fights or never reach the brawl in one piece, the fix is almost always smarter green-item purchases. Below we break down the key picks by tier and explain when to buy each.

Why the Vitality category matters

Vitality items don't raise your damage directly, but they almost always pay off: a few extra seconds of life in a team fight let you land your ultimate, finish a target or wait for backup. Health in Deadlock scales together with healing and lifesteal, so even a flat HP pool amplifies every heal you receive. The universal rule: if enemies are shredding you with bullets, buy bullet resistance; if abilities are deleting you, buy spirit resistance.

Early tiers: health and mobility

Extra Health is the most basic tier-one pick: a cheap boost to maximum health that suits almost any hero early on. Sprint Boots grant out-of-combat move speed, helping you rotate between lanes faster, grab the urn and escape losing skirmishes. These two often form the opening buy for melee characters and tanks who need to survive until their power spikes online.

Don't overload your build with only cheap items — as you bank souls, it pays to upgrade them into pricier versions, freeing slots for higher-tier gear.

Mid game: armor and lifesteal

Bullet Armor and Spirit Armor are the two pillars of mid-game survivability. They cut incoming bullet and ability damage respectively, and you should buy them reactively based on the enemy lineup. Against a team of gunners, prioritize Bullet Armor; against casters, Spirit Armor. Leech adds lifesteal from damage dealt to heroes, turning your gun and abilities into a steady source of healing — it shines on heroes who deal high, consistent damage in fights.

Healing Booster amplifies all of your healing and regen, pairing perfectly with Leech and self-heal abilities. Watch out for counter-items: an enemy Healbane reduces your lifesteal, so don't rely on lifesteal alone against a team stacking anti-heal.

Late game: Metal Skin and Colossus

Metal Skin is an active item that briefly makes you nearly immune to bullet and ability damage. It's a hard counter to burst combos and the perfect tool to survive focus fire during an engage. Colossus is an expensive top-tier item: it grants a large health pool, bullet resistance, slows nearby enemies and briefly enlarges your model, turning your hero into a walking wall. Together these two cap off a tank or bruiser build, making you the threat the enemy must kill first — and the one who survives the attempt.

Bottom line: build Vitality reactively. Start with cheap health and speed, add the right armor type and lifesteal against the enemy comp mid-game, then cap your build with actives and top-tier items in the late game. A balanced survivability buy is almost always more valuable than one extra damage item.