# Deadlock Nurse Harrow Guide: Build, Abilities & Tips
> A launch guide to Nurse Harrow, Deadlock's first left-click healer: what Leech Therapy, Wretched Vapors, Healing Needles and Lurking Terrors do with wiki-checked numbers, plus the support item build, skill order, laning plan and counters.
- **Game:** Deadlock
- **Category:** Hero Guides
- **Author:** ItzMaze (https://guides-factory.com/authors/itzmaze)
- **Difficulty:** Intermediate
- **Reading time:** 19 min
- **Published:** 2026-10-22
- **Updated:** 2026-10-22
- **Tags:** Healing, Hero Guide, item-builds, nurse-harrow
- **Adapted from:** [Deadlock FINALLY Has An M1 Healer! - New Hero "Nurse Harrow" Guide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3BWgsQrxeQ)
- **Canonical URL:** https://guides-factory.com/guides/deadlock-nurse-harrow-guide
---
## 🎯 The core idea
> Nurse Harrow is Deadlock's first left-click healer: Healing Needles turns her pistol into a syringe gun that heals allies, Wretched Vapors delays all damage on a target for a few seconds, and Lurking Terrors fears a whole team. Her lane is one of the weakest in the game, so play safe, collect leeches patiently, and scale into a late-game support whose healing needs anti-heal to stop.
- free costs nothing
- cheap small cost
- setup needs preparation
- grind pays off slowly
- skip the thing to stop doing
## Who Nurse Harrow is and her base stats
Nurse Harrow is the newest Deadlock hero, added on October 20, 2026 as the sixth and last hero-vote pick of the City Never Sleeps update. If you are looking for a Deadlock healer, she is the purest one so far, and this Deadlock new hero guide covers her launch kit as of October 22, 2026. The only patch since release (an undocumented October 21 fix) made Warden's Last Stand immune to her ultimate's fear; nothing else about her has changed yet.
Her gun, Code Blue, is weak on purpose. The deadlock.wiki page lists 14.9 bullet damage at 2.63 bullets per second for **39.1 DPS**, 11 ammo, a 1.9 s reload, 508 m/s bullet velocity, falloff from 20 m to 58 m and a **-40% crit bonus scale**, so headshots are worth much less than on most heroes. AndrewChicken's tooltip shows the DPS reaching about 74 at max boons. She has 730 health, 6.8 m/s move speed, 3 stamina and **0 base health regen**: every point of damage you take early stays until you heal it, which is why the rest of her kit revolves around leeches.
The short version of her role: she is a backline support who shoots her own team. Her damage comes mostly from leeches and her ultimate, and her value comes from keeping a carry alive. If you are new to Deadlock itself, read the [Deadlock beginner guide](/guides/deadlock-beginner-guide) first, because Harrow punishes bad positioning harder than most heroes.
## Leech Therapy: what the jar of leeches does
setup Leech Therapy throws a jar that releases leeches in a 6.5 m radius. They latch onto enemies and deal spirit damage over time (23 DPS, x0.19 spirit scaling, on a 30 s cooldown). When a leech finishes feeding it drops off and crawls back toward you. Walking over it heals you for the health it drained and permanently gives you **0.6 health regen and 5% fire rate per leech**, up to 10 stacks.
Details from the wiki that matter in real games:
- Leeches can attach to troopers and haunts, but **only leeches that fed on heroes can be picked up**. Throwing the jar at a neutral camp deals damage but gives no stacks.
- If the enemy hero dies with a leech on them, you can still collect it even though it did not finish feeding.
- Collectable leeches are visible to you from across the map and through walls as a red leech icon.
- Leeches from the jar disappear after 8 s if they never attach. Leeches waiting for pickup last **3 minutes**, matching the roughly 3-minute estimate in the video.
- Leech crawl range starts at 8 m and grows with boons, so early on you have to walk close to them. Late in the game they crawl to you from far away.
- Enemies cannot shoot leeches off themselves or destroy them on the ground.
The upgrades: tier 1 makes leeches drain the enemy's stamina and give it to you on pickup. Tier 2 cuts the cooldown by 10 s and adds +4 spirit power per leech. Tier 3 adds +1 m radius, +0.3 spirit scaling and **+8 max stacks** (18 total). The video says tier 2 brings the cooldown "from 30 down to 10". The wiki lists a -10 s reduction, so the real cooldown after tier 2 is **20 s**, not 10.
## Leech stacks: regen, fire rate and the death penalty
grind Leech stacks are Harrow's whole scaling plan. The per-leech regen grows with boons: the video's max-level tooltip shows **5.15 health regen per leech**, so 10 stacks is over 50 HP per second of regen and 18 stacks is far more. Ten stacks also means +50% fire rate, which speeds up both your normal gun and your healing syringes. With leech tier 2 you also get +40 spirit power at 10 stacks.
The catch is that you lose 25% of your stacks every time you die. The wiki gives the exact table, which rounds in your favour at low counts:
| Leech stacks when you die | Leeches lost |
| --- | --- |
| 1 to 5 | 1 |
| 6 to 10 | 2 |
| 11 to 13 | 3 |
| 14 to 18 | 4 |
skip Chasing a leech under an enemy guardian. A leech you pick up and then die with is gone immediately, so a greedy pickup can cost you two leeches instead of gaining one.
## Buff drain: the mechanic only Harrow has
free While leeches feed, they eat away at the duration of **every** buff on the enemy, at 0.65 s of buff duration per second of feeding per the wiki. AndrewChicken shows this on Spiritual Overflow and on Seven's Power Surge: both expire much faster than normal. No other hero has this.
In practice, aim the jar at whoever just activated a big self-buff: an item active, an ultimate buff or a damage amp. You will not delete the buff outright, but you shorten the window where that enemy is at full strength while your team trades.
## Wretched Vapors: rush first, crash later
setup Wretched Vapors targets yourself or an ally (13 m cast range, 40 s cooldown). For 4 s, the **Specter Rush** speeds up every action by 25%: shooting, reloading, moving, jumping, dashing and cast animations. All incoming damage is deferred as "specters" instead of hitting your health. Then the **Specter Crash** lasts another 4 s: actions slow by 20%, and any specters still left deal their stored damage **plus 30%**.
The key line in the tooltip is that **incoming healing removes specters first**. If someone heals the target during the rush or crash, the deferred damage never lands. Wretched Vapors on its own is a gamble. Paired with Healing Needles, it makes an ally nearly unkillable for a few seconds.
Wiki-listed interactions to know:
- The speed change works like a time warp, similar to Paradox's Kinetic Carbine (see the [Paradox guide](/guides/deadlock-paradox-guide)). Cooldowns, buff durations and channel times are not sped up.
- **Ethereal Shift does not block the crash damage.** Metro Deadlock tests this on video and dies through it. Other invulnerability, such as Pocket's Enchanter's Satchel, does block it.
- Debuff resist does not shorten the crash.
Upgrades: tier 1 gives -15 s cooldown and +7 m cast range, which fixes the ability's biggest weakness. Tier 2 gives +1 s duration and +20% healing effectiveness during both rush and crash. Tier 3 gives +15% rush speed (40% total before spirit power, which makes it scale higher) and dispels non-ultimate debuffs on cast, so it doubles as a cleanse for you or a teammate.
## Healing Needles: the left-click heal
free Healing Needles loads your gun with a full clip of syringes that heal allies: **25 heal per shot** (x0.2 spirit scaling), +15% on headshots. Each charge equals one magazine, so ammo items directly increase healing per charge. AndrewChicken shows Titanic Magazine raising the clip to 22 syringes. Reloading spends a charge, recasting puts the needles away, and unused syringes go back as a partial charge. You need at least one full charge to swap in.
While needles are out, you cannot damage enemies. Metro Deadlock frames this as the balance point: you alternate between shooting enemies to recharge and shooting allies to heal. The video also shows the aim is more forgiving than the normal gun, and a short jingle plays when your target reaches full HP.
Upgrades:
| Tier | Upgrade |
| --- | --- |
| 1 | +1 max charge |
| 2 | +20 heal per shot, and shots restore 0.6 stamina |
| 3 | +0.4 spirit scaling; shots extend non-ultimate buff durations by 6%, up to their max duration |
The video describes tier 3 as going "from 0.2 to 0.4" scaling. The wiki lists it as +0.4 on top of the base 0.2, so the total is 0.6 (three times the base). That matches the video's own "triples" remark. The tier 3 buff extension is the hidden strength: AndrewChicken doubles a teammate's Wretched Vapors rush to about 10 s by repeatedly shooting them during it.
## Recharging needles and the item interactions
cheap Needle charges do not have a normal cooldown. You earn them by landing hits on enemies, and the wiki counts **hits, not damage**:
| Hit type (on heroes) | Charge per hit | Hits per full charge |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Headshot | 2.52% | 40 |
| Body shot | 1.26% | 80 |
| Spirit damage instance | 1.26% | 80 |
| Light melee | 7.56% | 14 |
| Heavy melee | 15.12% | 7 |
Hits on troopers and neutrals are only 35% as effective, and an AoE spell counts as one hit no matter how many heroes it touches. Each collected leech also trickles in charge passively (the wiki lists 0.15% of a charge per second per leech at base). **Correction:** the video advises against cooldown reduction for this ability, but the wiki states that charge gain *is* increased by Ability Cooldown, so cooldown items do help here.
Nurse Harrow items that interact with the syringes (wiki unless marked):
- **Ricochet**: syringes bounce to nearby allies for 50% of the base heal (never back to Harrow). This is what makes her an area healer late.
- **Split Shot**: multiple syringes, but each ally is healed only once per shot.
- **Armor Piercer**: syringes pierce and fully heal every ally in the line.
- **Burst Fire, Restorative Shot, Escalating Resilience, Spiritual Overflow, Headhunter**: all proc when you shoot allies. AndrewChicken tested Headhunter and saw it go on cooldown without adding any healing, so treat it as wasted for now.
- **Recharging Rush and Quicksilver Reload**: the video shows both giving you more syringes to fire.
- **Active Reload**: per the wiki, it lets you swap back to your gun sooner after putting the needles away. The video found it does not help the healing itself.
- **Fleetfoot**: the video shows its slide ammo does not apply to syringes. skip
With a heavy spirit setup, the video reaches **165 healing per shot**, with four shots healing about 600.
## Lurking Terrors: the fear ultimate
setup Lurking Terrors is a channel: Harrow opens her bag and deals **60 DPS** (x0.3 spirit scaling) to enemies in a 35 m area in front of her for 7 s. The tooltip also lists a 30% move speed and fire rate reduction. Enemies **looking at her** build terror for 1.3 s and cannot use stamina or movement abilities. At max terror they are feared for 2.2 s, **+0.1 s per leech** you have collected. Feared enemies cannot shoot or cast and can only walk away. Enemies facing away take 50% damage unless already feared. The base cooldown is a long **200 s**.
Upgrades: tier 1 gives -50 s cooldown. Tier 2 adds another -20% enemy move speed and fire rate (50% total in the tooltip) and +30 DPS. Tier 3 adds +3 s channel time (10 s total), +0.5 spirit scaling and **immunity to damage while channeling**. With 18 leeches the fear lasts 4 s, and AndrewChicken pushes it to 5.12 s with Superior Duration.
skip Lightning Scroll on this ultimate. The video shows its stun proc landing in the middle of the fear, so it adds almost nothing.
Damage immunity is not crowd-control immunity. A stun or knockdown still cancels the channel, and Unstoppable suppresses the fear. Debuff resist shortens the fear, and since October 21 Warden's Last Stand is immune to it (see the [Warden guide](/guides/deadlock-warden-guide)).
## Nurse Harrow abilities upgrade order
AndrewChicken's current order for a healing build, with his reasoning:
1. Healing Needles tier 1 and tier 2 early. The flat +20 heal per shot is a big early spike because it is large relative to early health pools.
2. Wretched Vapors tier 1 for the cooldown and range.
3. Lurking Terrors tier 1 and tier 2 for the cooldown and +30 DPS.
4. Max Healing Needles (tier 3).
5. Max Lurking Terrors (tier 3).
6. The rest of Leech Therapy or Wretched Vapors, depending on the game.
He says the last step is still open: if you are collecting lots of leeches, max Leech Therapy next; if leeches keep getting away, max Wretched Vapors instead. Metro Deadlock leans the other way for an aggressive build: two early points in Leech Therapy for the shorter cooldown, then max leeches and the ultimate. Two days after release, no order is settled. Treat both as starting points, not tested fact.
## Nurse Harrow build: items by phase
This is the support build AndrewChicken shows in the video, read item by item from the in-game build panel:
| Phase | Items | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Early | Golden Goose Egg, Extra Regen, Extended Magazine, Extra Charge, Mystic Expansion, Extra Spirit | Income, the regen she lacks, bigger syringe clips, an extra needle charge |
| Early to mid core | Improved Spirit, Rapid Recharge, Healing Booster, Enchanter's Emblem, Titanic Magazine, Recharging Rush, Compress Cooldown | Spirit power for heal scaling, more charges, more ammo per charge |
| Big spikes | Healing Tempo, Ricochet, Boundless Spirit | Ricochet turns single-target heals into team heals; Healing Tempo and Boundless Spirit amplify everything |
| Mid game options | Opening Rounds, Slowing Hex, Knockdown, Disarming Hex, Silence Wave, Decay | Pick by matchup: peel, disables or your own anti-heal |
| Late | Transcendent Cooldown, Divine Barrier, Healbane, Sprint Boots, Trophy Collector | Ultimate uptime, a cleanse and shield for a carry, more anti-heal |
The video swaps the order of the big three freely, sometimes buying Boundless Spirit first and using Golden Goose Egg income to reach Ricochet. Its damage penalty barely matters on Harrow, because healing is not damage. Trophy Collector is an option because she farms poorly.
Two alternatives the video floats without endorsing: an ultimate build (cooldown, spirit power, duration, Diviner's Kevlar), and a gun build around Blood Tribute plus Berserker. Her leech regen can outheal Blood Tribute's 50 HP per second drain late. A full spirit-nuke build is not recommended, because leeches alone do too little damage.
## Nurse Harrow laning: play for survival
grind AndrewChicken calls her early game one of the weakest in Deadlock: low gun damage, no poke beyond leeches, and no regen. The tips for lane:
- **Throw leeches near your own guardian.** Let the enemy walk up, land the jar, and by the time leeches drop off they are on your side of the lane. If an enemy carries a leech back behind their guardian, let it go.
- **Do not force pickups.** Early crawl range is short, and dying with a fresh leech deletes it.
- **Skip leeches on neutrals for stacks**; they never give pickups, only damage.
- **Shoot troopers and boxes for income**, and buy Extra Regen early. Metro Deadlock also notes the default build includes it because you cannot heal in lane.
- **Bad matchups:** the video names [Deadman Danny](/guides/deadlock-deadman-danny-guide) as a very hard lane. Airborne targets are hard too, because leeches are grounded and rarely latch onto heroes in the air.
Once you reach Healing Booster and a few core items, the boons from that spend also increase leech regen and crawl range, and collecting leeches gets much easier.
## Teamfights: pocketing a carry
setup In fights, your job is to keep your best fighter alive. The pattern from both videos: your carry goes in, you put Wretched Vapors on them, then keep shooting them with Healing Needles. Your healing clears the deferred specters before the crash, and the tier 3 needles extend the rush itself. Metro Deadlock calls it the best pocket tool in the game. It suits carries who dive in and need a few seconds of safety, such as [Shiv](/guides/deadlock-shiv-guide) or [Seven](/guides/deadlock-seven-guide).
Use Lurking Terrors when enemies dive onto you or your carry, not to start fights from range. They have to face you to build terror, and her turning is limited while channeling. With Ricochet, stay behind your front line so syringes bounce between grouped allies. Pick up leeches after fights, not during them.
Some Nurse Harrow tips from both videos: Heroic Aura can work because tier 3 needles extend its buff on teammates. Wretched Vapors tier 3 is a free debuff cleanse for an ally hit by a stun item. Divine Barrier is worth it mainly against long-cooldown anti-heal such as Decay.
## Nurse Harrow counters: how to beat her
cheap The main Nurse Harrow counters, from the video and the wiki:
- **Anti-heal.** Healbane, Decay and Crippling Headshot cut her output. AndrewChicken says it is basically mandatory, and the in-game killstreak voice line literally tells the enemy team to buy Healbane.
- **Focus her first.** She has no regen early, weak damage and no escape ability. Every death costs her 25% of her leech stacks, so repeated picks stunt her scaling.
- **Stun the channel.** Lurking Terrors is interrupted by stuns and knockdowns even with tier 3 damage immunity. Unstoppable ignores the fear, Warden's Last Stand is immune to it, and debuff resist shortens it.
- **Look away from the ultimate.** Facing away halves its damage and stops terror buildup. Walk out of the 35 m cone.
- **Burst the target after the rush.** A Wretched Vapors target takes deferred damage +30% once the rush ends. Ethereal Shift will not save them, so keep damage on them while Harrow is busy.
- **Deny leeches.** Retreat behind your guardian with a leech attached so she cannot collect it safely.
- **Fly.** Leeches rarely latch onto airborne heroes, which makes [Vindicta](/guides/deadlock-vindicta-guide) during Flight a hard target for her jar.
## How this guide was fact-checked
- **Wiki (deadlock.wiki, Nurse Harrow page, checked October 22, 2026):** base stats, all four abilities' base values and upgrades, leech pickup rules, despawn timers, the death-loss table, needle charge rates, item interactions (Ricochet, Split Shot, Armor Piercer, Active Reload, proc items) and Wretched Vapors interactions. There is no separate abilities subpage. The update history lists only her October 20 release. The undocumented October 21 change (Warden's Last Stand ignores her fear) comes from the wiki's Updates page.
- **Corrections to the primary video:** Leech Therapy tier 2 cooldown is 20 s, not 10 s. Healing Needles tier 3 brings scaling to 0.6, not 0.4. Cooldown reduction *does* speed up needle charges per the wiki. Per-leech needle charge is 0.15% per second at base per the wiki, not the 15% stated aloud. The wiki says Active Reload speeds up swapping back to the gun, which the video did not observe.
- **Video-only (shown on screen, not on the wiki):** max-level DPS of about 74, 5.15 regen per leech at max boons, 165 healing per shot in a heavy spirit setup, Headhunter giving no bonus heal, Fleetfoot not working, the Lightning Scroll redundancy, the item build, the skill order and the laning advice. The primary source is AndrewChicken's guide (October 21, 2026). Metro Deadlock's quick start guide (October 20, 2026) was used to cross-check abilities and for two frames.
## What this guide doesn't answer
- **Win rates and tier placement:** she is two days old, and there is no meaningful data yet.
- **A settled skill order or "best" build:** both creators say they are still experimenting. Expect this to change within a week or two.
- **Balance changes after October 22, 2026:** a hero this strong at healing is likely to be adjusted, so check the cooldowns against the wiki after any patch.
- **Street Brawl specifics:** the wiki says she has no special Street Brawl ability changes. Item draft weights are outside this guide.
- **Lore and voice lines:** covered on the wiki's Nurse Harrow lore page, not here.
---
## FAQ
### What is the best Nurse Harrow build in Deadlock?
The launch support build shown by AndrewChicken goes Golden Goose Egg, Extra Regen, Extended Magazine, Extra Charge, Mystic Expansion and Extra Spirit early, then Improved Spirit, Rapid Recharge, Healing Booster, Titanic Magazine, Recharging Rush and Compress Cooldown, spiking with Healing Tempo, Ricochet and Boundless Spirit. Ammo, spirit power and healing amplification all raise her healing per charge, and Ricochet turns single-target heals into team heals.
### How does Nurse Harrow heal allies?
Her third ability, Healing Needles, loads her gun with syringes that heal allies for 25 per shot (x0.2 spirit scaling, +15% on headshots). Each charge is one magazine. Charges come back by landing hits on enemies (40 headshots or 80 body shots per charge) and slowly from collected leeches. While the needles are out she cannot damage enemies.
### What happens when Nurse Harrow dies with leech stacks?
She loses 25% of her leech stacks on death: 1 leech at 1-5 stacks, 2 at 6-10, 3 at 11-13 and 4 at 14-18. Each leech gives 0.6 health regen (more with boons) and 5% fire rate, so dying repeatedly stunts her scaling. A leech you just picked up is also lost if you die.
### How do you counter Nurse Harrow?
Buy anti-heal such as Healbane or Decay, focus her early when she has no regen and no escape, and stun or knock her down during Lurking Terrors, because damage immunity from the tier 3 upgrade does not stop crowd control. Look away from her ultimate to halve its damage and avoid fear buildup, and keep shooting a Wretched Vapors target after the rush ends, since Ethereal Shift does not block the crash damage.
### What is the Nurse Harrow skill order?
AndrewChicken's launch order takes Healing Needles tier 1 and 2 first for the flat +20 heal per shot, then Wretched Vapors tier 1, Lurking Terrors tier 1 and 2, then maxes Healing Needles and Lurking Terrors before finishing Leech Therapy or Wretched Vapors. Metro Deadlock prefers early Leech Therapy points and maxing leeches plus the ultimate for a more aggressive style. She is new, so neither order is settled.