How Deadlock's Dynamo Echoes Dota 2's Enigma

In Deadlock's earlier days, Dynamo’s Quantum Entanglement gave you bonus fire rate and reloaded your weapon. You could teleport in, come out shooting faster, and actually deal some decent weapon damage. Pretty funny for a hero who could also heal his teammates and suck half the enemy team into a black hole.

Those bonuses were removed in March 2026, but Dynamo still has a habit of finding ways to do more damage than his kit initially suggests.

For Dota 2 players, the obvious comparison is Enigma. Black Hole and Dynamo's Singularity both pull enemies into a very bad place. There's even a weird lore connection: Enigma might be a sentient collapsed star, while Dynamo is a professor who got turned into a dying one. Apparently that's a good way to end up with this particular ultimate.

Enigma is annoying long before Black Hole

Anyone who's laned against Enigma knows how irritating a few Eidolons can get, especially when the player has halfway decent micro.

In 7.41f, Enigma is predominantly a position-three offlaner. High-MMR Enigma builds favour maxing Demonic Summoning first, with Malefice usually following. Eidolons help secure last hits, harass heroes, farm camps, and pressure towers. Keep them attacking, and they multiply, so those little summons can become a real problem if you leave them alone.

Malefice makes the lane worse. Its repeated stuns give the Eidolons and Enigma's lane partner more chances to hit someone who's already dealing with a pile of summons. Those little things do some nasty harassment.

And if Enigma has a rough lane, it can still retreat into the jungle and farm. Popular high-MMR builds start with Drum of Endurance and Tranquil Boots, then progress toward Blink Dagger, Aghanim's Shard, and BKB. The Shard is particularly annoying: every Malefice stun spawns another Eidolon next to its target, although those smaller Eidolons can't multiply.

You can kill the summons and slow it down, but Enigma has plenty to do while Black Hole is on cooldown.

Dynamo can just build to hit you harder

Kinetic Pulse is one of the cool things about Dynamo. It's a wave of Spirit damage, roughly Deadlock's equivalent of magic damage, that travels along the ground and knocks people into the air. You can farm with it, interrupt someone, or set up a teammate. Build around it, and the damage gets pretty ridiculous, too.

The first upgrade adds another charge. Later upgrades slow enemies, reduce their bullet resistance, and eventually add 135 damage and 20 meters of range. That takes Pulse from a 16-metre wave to 36 meters before range items. Spirit Power makes it hit harder, and Ability Range items can stretch it farther forward, though not wider.

You can add Mystic Reverb for delayed damage and a slow, or Echo Shard to restore a Pulse charge. That's a lot of damage and knock-ups from a hero who still has a heal and a way to teleport his teammates out of trouble. His gun is still there, too.

Enigma gets a lot out of its summons and Malefice, but Dynamo's wave-clear spell can also give him the opening for Singularity. And Spirit Power making Pulse hurt more improves his Rejuvenating Aurora healing, too. It's a nice bonus when you've spent all that money trying to hit people harder.

A support, depending on how you build him

Buying damage items doesn't suddenly make Dynamo a lousy support.

Dota has plenty of supports that scale, but the economy makes a difference. Enigma is mainly an offlane hero in 7.41f, so it gets to farm its own Blink and BKB. Try doing that from a traditional position-five support role, and there's a much harder question about whose farm you're taking.

Deadlock has its own economic tradeoffs, but you don't have the same position-one-through-five structure. Nearby teammates share Trooper Souls regardless of who lands the kill, and the lowest-earning players get some catch-up income after the laning phase. You still need to farm; you're just working within a different system.

Leveling abilities feels different, too. Deadlock's upgrades cost one, two, and five ability points, with some of the bigger upgrades feeling more like Dota talents than another level of a spell. Max out Rejuvenating Aurora, for instance, and Dynamo can keep healing himself and nearby teammates while moving and casting other abilities.

Quantum Entanglement is even wilder. Dynamo briefly becomes untargetable, teleports a short distance, restores stamina, and can bring teammates with him. Fully upgraded, it reduces non-ultimate debuff durations by 50% and replenishes a charge of charged abilities. That can give Dynamo another Kinetic Pulse. It's pretty funny that the spell you use to get someone out of trouble can also reload the one you're using to beat people up.

There is a catch: maxing Pulse early delays those stronger healing and teleport upgrades. But a damage-focused Dynamo still has his basic saves, and a Dynamo leaning into team utility can still get plenty from Spirit items. You have some real choices about how to play him without losing the things that made you pick him.

The Black Hole

Then there's the ability that is hard to ignore.

Enigma can Blink into position, place Midnight Pulse for extra damage over time, and channel Black Hole. Black Hole already hurts, especially with Aghanim's Scepter, but putting Midnight Pulse down first costs a moment you might not have. Sometimes the best play is to catch someone immediately.

Dynamo has a different problem. Kinetic Pulse can knock somebody up long enough to create an opening, and Quantum Entanglement can help him close the distance. But Enigma places Black Hole at a target location. Singularity forms around Dynamo himself. Getting his own body into the right spot is part of the cast.

That means his way in might be the same ability he needed to get out. Pulse's knock-up is brief, too, so landing it and then teleporting forward doesn't guarantee a Singularity.

Say two enemies come out of a doorway. Pulse catches one while the other double-jumps over it. Dynamo could Entangle forward and try for Singularity, hoping his team is close enough to follow up. Or the second hero might be ready with Unstoppable, which resists Singularity's control without preventing its damage. Now Dynamo is in the middle of the enemy team, channeling his ultimate with Entanglement on cooldown. Not a great place to be if the catch goes badly.

It's a different defensive problem from Enigma's Black Hole, which pierces BKB's debuff immunity. And either hero can waste a fantastic-looking ultimate if the right enemies aren't caught or the team isn't ready to do anything with it.

You don't need all five (or six in the case of Deadlock). Two important heroes might be enough to win the fight, and sometimes waiting for a bigger opportunity means missing the one you had.

Dynamo can spend the rest of the game farming and dealing damage with Pulse, healing allies, or teleporting somebody out of trouble, then still be the hero who starts the fight. If he uses Entanglement to get the perfect angle for Singularity, he'd better make it count. He just spent one of his best ways to save somebody.