Rem Guide: Build, Abilities & Tips (City Never Sleeps)

🎯 The core idea

Rem is a support who wins games by being everywhere at once: Tag Along keeps him alive on an ally's shoulder, Lil Helpers farm crates, Sinner's Sacrifices and lanes for the whole team, and Naptime sleeps a whole fight through walls. This Rem guide gives you the current numbers after the June 30 and September 29, 2026 updates, a refreshed skill order and a Rem build by game phase.

• free costs nothing
• cheap small cost
• setup needs preparation
• grind pays off slowly
• skip the thing to stop doing

What Rem does for a team in City Never Sleeps

Rem is a small, slippery support hero who joined Deadlock on January 26, 2026 as the first winner of the community hero vote. His kit does three jobs: heal and protect allies (Tag Along, the hero-follow mode of Lil Helpers), generate souls for the team (helpers on crates, Sinner's Sacrifices and troopers) and start fights with one of the strongest area crowd-control ultimates in the game (Naptime).

He is fragile on paper. The wiki lists 680 base health, a 13-round magazine and a gun called Long Night that the tooltip calls burst fire but which actually fires like a rapid-fire weapon, with a subtle homing pull toward your crosshair. Rem also has a -20% crit bonus scale, so his headshots hit a little softer than most heroes'.

His innate is what keeps him alive: crouch (CTRL by default) while walking into a vent and Rem drops into the tunnel network. Tunnels give a 70% move speed boost, but you can't enter while in combat (taking or dealing damage in the last 4 seconds) or while carrying the Soul Urn. Learn the vent entrances on the reworked City Never Sleeps map early; they are your rotation and escape routes for the whole game.

Pillow Toss: poke, knockback and cooldown refunds

free Pillow Toss throws Rem's pillow for 75 spirit damage with a 1.6x spirit scaling, heavy knockback, and a 36% fading slow for 3 seconds. The wiki lists a 25s cooldown and a 5m impact radius. That 1.6x scaling is why spirit-heavy Rem players can chunk health bars with it.

Landing the pillow refunds cooldown, but two details in the video are out of date. The video says a hit takes 4 seconds off every other ability; the wiki puts the refund at 5 seconds (raised on February 2, 2026) and says it only affects Tag Along and Naptime, not Lil Helpers. So the old advice still holds in a slightly different form: throw the pillow when Tag Along or Naptime is on cooldown, not when both are ready.

The knockback is also your self-peel. When a melee hero dives you, toss the pillow into them point-blank and walk away, or use it to push someone off a ledge. Pillow Toss also briefly stops Rem's fall when cast in the air.

Tag Along: healing and invulnerable rotations

free Tag Along jumps Rem onto an ally up to 23m away. Both of you receive a burst heal of 15% of missing health (plus 0.03 per spirit power), then 42 health per second for 2 seconds. While he naps, Rem is untargetable and immune to damage, and only a stun from an ultimate, the ally dying or the 5.5s timer running out knocks him off. The base cooldown is 40s.

The most useful tricks with it:

• Hop between allies. Pressing the ability again hops to another teammate, which resets the duration. Since May 22, 2026 the burst heal also applies to every ally you hop to (once per ally), so a hop chain across a full team fight heals everyone.
• Your items fire on your host. Self-cast items used while napping target your ally instead, so Healing Rite or Guardian Ward cast from Tag Along go straight to the teammate you sit on.
• Stay on long enough for the regen. The burst lands on arrival, but the 2-second heal over time only ticks while you stay attached. Hopping early cuts your total healing.
• Jump to a trooper. Rem can Tag Along onto a trooper that a Lil Helper is following, which is your emergency escape when no hero is nearby.

skip Don't Tag Along while holding the Soul Urn: casting it makes Rem drop the Urn. Also note that Slowing Hex disables Tag Along, and ejecting early costs one stamina bar.

The June 30, 2026 update cut Tag Along's heal-per-second spirit scaling from 0.66 to 0.4, so a pure-spirit Rem heals less per second than older guides suggest.

Lil Helpers: the ability that farms for your team

grind Lil Helpers is the part of Rem's kit that decides games, and the part most players underuse. You signal a helper to a target and it goes to work on its own; you can keep moving, and you can even cast it during Tag Along. The wiki gives it a 45m cast range, so the video's "no range" remark really means the helper keeps working once it's out, wherever you go.

What a helper can do:

• Follow an ally hero: 12% spirit resist and a fading +3m/s move speed boost for 8 seconds. Good right before a spirit-heavy enemy ult lands.
• Follow a trooper: the trooper is fully healed on cast, then gets +30% damage and resists and 8 health per second for 50 seconds. If no allied hero is nearby, souls from that trooper's kills are split across your team.
• Break crates and collect their souls (there is a short delay, so a fast enemy can still steal them).
• Run a Sinner's Sacrifice, grab a Bridge Buff, or buy from a Curiosity Shop (see the next section).

Helpers can't be damaged or killed. After following someone a helper naps for about 15 seconds before it can be used again, and each helper has its own cooldown. One more catch from the wiki: troopers carrying a helper give the enemy +20% souls when killed, so don't buff a trooper that is about to walk into a losing fight.

Maxed, you still end up with four helpers, as the video says, but the route there changed: every tier now adds exactly one helper instead of Tier 3 adding two.

Sinner's Sacrifice, Bridge Buffs and shops with helpers

setup Helpers turn map objectives into free souls if you send them early:

• Sinner's Sacrifice: machines first spawn at 8 minutes. A helper always secures the full jackpot, as if the last hit were a heavy melee. It waits until the final lights flash to take the last hit, and it gets scared off if an enemy hits the machine, so send it to a machine the enemy is unlikely to contest. The September 29, 2026 City Never Sleeps update gave Sinner's Sacrifices variable bonus timings and added spirit resist, ability range, bullet resist and move speed to the permanent buffs they and Buff Containers can drop.
• Bridge Buffs: these spawn on the bridges at 5 minutes and every 5 minutes after, and normally need a heavy melee. A helper can claim one from 45m away, which often beats the enemy to it.
• Curiosity Shops: a helper can buy the items in your queue from a Curiosity Shop without you walking there, and no line of sight is needed. Rem is the only hero who can buy from the enemy team's Curiosity Shops this way (base shops excluded).

On golden statues: the video sends helpers to them for their buffs. Since the September 29 update those are called Buff Containers. The wiki's ability text lists boxes, Sinner's Sacrifices, allies and troopers and doesn't mention Buff Containers separately, so treat helper statue farming as the video's claim rather than a confirmed mechanic on the new map.

Naptime: putting a whole team fight to sleep

setup Naptime is a 1.9-second channel in which Rem floats with his pillow and casts his gaze forward in a 19m radius. Unlike almost anything else in Deadlock, it passes through walls and floors. Enemies in the gaze are slowed by 20%, have reduced dash distance and can't use movement abilities. When the channel ends they fall asleep for 4 seconds, then wake up and take 120 spirit damage (1.6x scaling, the same as Pillow Toss).

How to use it well:

• Cast it from cover. Because it pierces walls, you can sleep a team fighting at the Mid-Boss from the floor below or from inside a tunnel exit.
• Your team must hold fire on the sleepers. The wiki lists a sleep damage threshold (100 plus 3.1x spirit power), so focusing one sleeper wakes them. Use the 4 seconds to reposition, line up abilities on one target and take objectives.
• Protect the channel. If you're interrupted, the cooldown is only halved, not refunded. Since May 22, 2026 the base ultimate gives 30% damage resist while channeling.

The cooldown is now 200s, up from 175s, after the global ultimate-cooldown nerf on June 30, 2026, which also moved the ultimate unlock from level 6 to 7. Plan fights around it.

What changed since the video was recorded

The source video by Daniway was uploaded on February 1, 2026, a week after Rem launched. The ability fundamentals still hold, but every upgrade screen it shows has since been changed. The wiki's update history is the reference here, and it overrides the video:

• Pillow Toss refund: 5 seconds, not 4, and only for Tag Along and Naptime. Tier 2 now also adds +2m radius, and Tier 3 is now +100 damage and +1 charge (the video shows +90 damage).
• Lil Helpers: the video's Tier 2 (+8% spirit resist and move speed) and Tier 3 (+2 helpers) are gone. Since June 30, 2026, each tier adds one helper; the base spirit resist on allies dropped from 15% to 12%.
• Naptime Tier 2: the video says Tier 2 grants unstoppable. Since March 6, 2026 that moved to Tier 3, and Tier 2 is now +3m radius and more sleep duration.
• Naptime Tier 3: the video says -40s. It is -55s today, and the base cooldown is 200s.
• Tag Along: faster jumps, burst heal on every hop, but weaker spirit scaling on the heal over time.
• The map: the September 29, 2026 City Never Sleeps rework rebuilt the map, renamed neutrals to Haunts, added Tough Crates and Steam Vents and renamed golden statues to Buff Containers. Learn the new tunnel and vent routes again.

The wiki lists no Rem changes in the October 2026 patches, apart from the September 16 Lil Helpers bug fix and the new targeting UI for instant cast mode.

Rem skill order and ability upgrades

free The video's priority logic still works with the current Rem ability upgrades: an early cooldown point for lane sustain, then max Lil Helpers as fast as possible, because every helper point is now a whole extra helper. Here is the refreshed order:

If you build heavy spirit, the video's advice still applies: upgrade Pillow Toss before Tag Along, since the pillow is your damage and Tag Along's heal scales worse with spirit since June 30.

Best Rem build in Deadlock (October 2026)

cheap The video deliberately doesn't give a fixed build and recommends the in-game build browser. Its principle is the right one for any Rem support build: buy items that add cooldown, size or duration to your abilities rather than raw damage. The table below is a current build assembled from that advice. Prices and stats come from each item's wiki page as of October 2026.

Two notes from the wiki's interaction lists: Echo Shard doesn't reset Lil Helpers, and Ability Duration items don't extend the 50-second trooper-follow duration. Ability Range items don't increase the helper cast range either. Spend those slots on Tag Along and Naptime instead.

If the enemy team is gun-heavy and diving you, buy defense earlier. Superior Duration's bullet resist and a barrier item come before more spirit power.

Rem laning and early-game helper routes

grind In lane, Rem plays to his ally's strengths. Poke with Pillow Toss, heal with Tag Along when your partner trades, and keep your helpers working all the time:

• 0 to 5 minutes: send helpers to crates near your lane, or put one on your melee trooper to push the wave (the video recommends the melee trooper because it's already the sturdiest). Remember the +20% enemy soul bonus on helper troopers.
• 5 minutes: send a helper to a Bridge Buff. With 45m of cast range, it usually gets there first.
• 8 minutes: Sinner's Sacrifices spawn. Send helpers to uncontested machines and, after shoving a wave, take rooms with two machines. The wiki counts 15 machines across 11 locations on the current map.

Rem's early gun is decent (around 62 DPS listed on the wiki), so last-hit with it and save the pillow for trades. If your lane is losing, put an early point into Pillow Toss for the cooldown, as the skill order table suggests.

Teamfights, tunnels and Tag Along hop chains

setup In a team fight Rem's job is to be impossible to pin down and to keep allies alive:

• Open with Naptime from behind a wall or floor while your team is in position. Have them line up damage on one sleeper rather than spreading shots that wake everyone.
• Stay attached with Tag Along, hopping to whoever is taking focus. Every hop is a burst heal and resets your timer.
• Put Lil Helpers on allies right before enemy spirit damage lands for the spirit resist and speed.
• When the fight ends, crouch into the nearest vent to reset or rotate with the 70% tunnel speed boost. The City Never Sleeps map also added Steam Vents on the surface, which give invisibility and regen while you stand on them. Don't confuse them with the crawl vents only Rem and a few other heroes can use.

The Unstable Rift, which replaced the old King of the Hill objective in June, reveals everyone inside its zone on the minimap. A Naptime through the floor is one of the safest ways to win a Rift fight.

Rem counter: how to beat him

If you're facing Rem, or want to know what punishes you as Rem, these counters are backed by wiki mechanics:

• Anti-heal. Healbane (spirit damage) and Toxic Bullets (gun) both apply -35% incoming healing and cut into Tag Along and helper healing.
• Slowing Hex disables Tag Along on its target, which shuts off Rem's main escape and heal.
• Catch him before he naps. Rem has only 680 base health and is untargetable once attached. Burst him while he's walking between allies or channeling Naptime without Tier 3, and the ultimate's cooldown is only halved on interrupt.
• Unstoppable gives immunity to Sleep. Note that Dispel Magic can't be used while slept, so pop protection before the channel ends.
• Spread out so one 19m gaze can't catch your whole team, and remember barrier health doesn't count toward waking up, so barriers on sleepers buy time without waking them.
• Hit the Sinner's Sacrifice his helper is working on: it scares the helper off. Killing troopers that carry a helper gives your team +20% souls.

How this guide was fact-checked

The source is Daniway's video "The ONLY GUIDE You Need to MASTER REM | Deadlock Hero Guide" (uploaded February 1, 2026). A search on October 19, 2026 found no Rem guide video newer than the September 29, 2026 map rework (the newest guide-style result, Piggy's "Rem 101", is from September 15), so the video was used for ability fundamentals and playstyle only. Ability descriptions, tactics and screenshots come from it.

All numbers were checked against deadlock.wiki: the Rem page (ability values, upgrade tiers, interaction notes), the Rem update history, the update pages for June 30, September 16, September 29 and October 14, 2026, and the pages for Sinner's Sacrifice, Powerups (Bridge Buffs), Buff Containers, Tunnels and every item in the build table. Where the wiki and the video disagree, the wiki wins. Corrections made: the Pillow Toss refund (5s, Tag Along and Naptime only, not 4s on all abilities), the Pillow Toss Tier 3 damage (+100, not +90), the Lil Helpers tiers (one helper per tier), Naptime Tier 2 and Tier 3 (unstoppable moved to Tier 3, -55s rather than -40s), the Naptime cooldown (200s), the Lil Helpers cast range (45m) and Improved Cooldown's new name (Compress Cooldown). The claim that helpers collect golden statue buffs is credited to the video, because the wiki doesn't confirm it for the renamed Buff Containers. The build table is our own assembly from current item data, not the video's.

What this guide doesn't answer

• Rem's place in the hero tier list: rankings shift with every patch and have their own tier list guide.
• Exact gun DPS breakpoints and spirit damage math: they depend on boons and items; the wiki's Rem page has the scaling numbers.
• Matchups against the six new City Never Sleeps heroes: Nurse Harrow, Rat King, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Baba and Violet are too new for settled matchup advice.
• Corrupted items: they were added on September 29 and are not part of this build.
• Street Brawl Rem: the item draft mode plays differently and isn't covered here.
• Whether helpers can open Tough Crates or fight Haunts: the wiki doesn't document either, so we didn't guess.