# Deadlock Solomon Guide: Build, Abilities & Tips (2026)
> A current guide to Deadlock's chess hero Solomon: what each piece does with wiki-checked numbers, the skill order, spirit, gun and support builds, and the habits that separate good Solomons from frustrated ones.
- **Game:** Deadlock
- **Category:** Hero Guides
- **Author:** ItzMaze (https://guides-factory.com/authors/itzmaze)
- **Difficulty:** Advanced
- **Reading time:** 19 min
- **Published:** 2026-10-19
- **Updated:** 2026-10-19
- **Tags:** Hero Guide, item-builds, laning, solomon
- **Adapted from:** [Struggling With Solomon? Watch This Video. (Deadlock Guide)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcxCa7Aaf8I)
- **Canonical URL:** https://guides-factory.com/guides/deadlock-solomon-guide
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## 🎯 The core idea
> Solomon is Deadlock's chess hero: a long-range spirit caster who parks bishops, a rook pair and a queen on the battlefield and moves them from a safe perch. Rush Setup Bishop tier 2, stack cooldown reduction, play from high ground, recall your pieces the moment a fight ends, and never ignore his gun, which hits hard in every build.
- free costs nothing
- cheap small cost
- setup needs preparation
- grind pays off slowly
- skip the thing to stop doing
## Who Solomon is and why he feels so different
Solomon joined Deadlock on October 9, 2026, as the third hero-vote winner of the City Never Sleeps update. The wiki describes him as a calm strategist who treats the city like a chessboard, and that is exactly how he plays. Instead of walking into fights, you place pieces (bishops, a knight barrier, a pair of rooks and the queen) and then steer them with your alt-fire. In this deadlock solomon guide, "move" always means that alt-fire reposition.
His base kit, per the wiki: 780 health (+40 per level), 6.7 m/s move speed, 2 stamina, and Alekhine's Gun with 8 rounds, 30 damage per bullet, 2 shots per second and a long 20 m to 46 m falloff. The bullets explode in a roughly 1 m radius, which makes the gun far more forgiving than its fire rate suggests. Because right-click moves his pieces, Solomon cannot zoom at all.
His innate passive gives him -25% gravity scale, and he also floats for a few seconds while aiming a piece move. That floatiness is the reason the high-ground advice later in this guide works so well.
This guide is built on AndrewChicken's Solomon video, uploaded October 13, 2026, after the City Never Sleeps map rework and Haunts. One undocumented change landed after it on October 16; it is covered in the Kingside Knight section.
## Setup Bishop: your main damage and farming tool
Setup Bishop (12 s cooldown, 20 m cast range) creates a bishop that stays in place until you recall it. Moving it with alt-fire sends it up to 12 m, deals 70 spirit damage to every enemy it passes through and applies a fading 30% slow. After a short delay the bishop lights up diagonal squares that deal another 25 spirit damage to anyone who steps on them. Each bishop can move again after 3 s.
The detail that trips up new players: the wiki notes the cooldown only starts when the ability ends, meaning when you recall the bishops (or die). A bishop you forgot on the other side of the map is a bishop you cannot use in the next fight.
Solomon ability upgrades for Setup Bishop, from the wiki:
| Tier | Upgrade |
| --- | --- |
| T1 | +5 m move distance, +15% fading slow |
| T2 | +1 bishop; the second one can be cast within 8 s (it auto-casts at your crosshair if you wait) |
| T3 | +1 square range; squares reduce spirit resist by 2.5%, stacking 10 times |
free Square range scales with ability range, which is one reason Greater Expansion shows up in most builds. Bishops deal 50% damage to objectives, so they chip bosses and Walkers rather than melting them.
## Solomon Kingside Knight: barrier, stamina and the October 16 change
Kingside Knight (25 s cooldown, 28 m range) promotes an ally to a knight: they get an 80-point barrier, +1 stamina and slow resist for 7 s. You can then move them up to 13 m with alt-fire, and they are invulnerable while they travel. Cast it on yourself and you become the king instead: double the barrier (160) but no stamina, and a much shorter 7 m move.
The stamina bonus is the underrated part. In the video, a tier 2 knight barrier takes a two-stamina Vindicta to four stamina bars with no items, and the extra bars disappear when the buff ends. That extra dash is often the difference between escaping and dying, or between catching a fleeing enemy and losing them. free Put the barrier on allies more often than on yourself whenever you are not the one in danger.
| Tier | Upgrade |
| --- | --- |
| T1 | -8 s cooldown |
| T2 | +80 barrier, +1 stamina |
| T3 | Targets two allies in a radius; on self, removes debuffs after a move |
The wiki adds a caveat to that tier 3 self-cast: it only cleanses debuffs that are neither ultimates nor stuns, despite the tooltip saying "all debuffs".
**Changed after the video:** the wiki's update history lists an undocumented October 16, 2026 change: moving a self-cast Kingside Knight is now done by pressing the ability key again by default. The video predates this, so if your self-cast king hop doesn't respond to alt-fire the way it does in the footage, re-press the ability key instead. Allied knights are still moved with alt-fire.
## Rook Battery: immobilize, wall reflects and splits
Rook Battery (33 s cooldown) fires a pair of rooks forward that deal 50 spirit damage and immobilize for 1 s. When they hit a wall they reflect straight back the way they came, not at a mirrored angle like Viscous's ball. Re-activating the ability splits the rooks sideways, at a right angle to their path.
That straight-back reflect is the whole trick. Aim at a flat surface behind or beside your target (a pillar is ideal, a jagged corner is not) and the rooks will come back through them. With the split you can bank them around corners: send them down a hallway, then split them into a target standing to the side for a second immobilize.
| Tier | Upgrade |
| --- | --- |
| T1 | On hit: -25% fire rate for 5 s |
| T2 | On hit: 5% current health as damage |
| T3 | +1 wall reflect, -12 s cooldown, +0.5 s immobilize |
The video's math checks out against the wiki: 33 s minus 12 s at tier 3 is 21 s, and Superior Cooldown's 20% brings it to 16.8 s. The video also says the cooldown keeps ticking while the rooks are still bouncing, so you get them back sooner than the number suggests. The wiki doesn't document that, so treat it as the creator's observation.
## Solomon Develop Queen: the checkmate ultimate
Develop Queen (210 s cooldown, 30 m cast range) drops a queen that slams an area for 120 spirit damage 0.75 s after the cast. One second later she releases squares along every straight and diagonal line, dealing the damage again and stunning for 1.25 s. You can move her up to 16 m with alt-fire, twice by default with a 5 s move cooldown, and each landing repeats the full effect. Recall her early to end the ability; like the bishops, her cooldown starts only when she is gone.
| Tier | Upgrade |
| --- | --- |
| T1 | -40 s cooldown |
| T2 | +15% slow; checkmates heroes below 200 health, executing them |
| T3 | +2 moves, +1 square range |
setup The tier 2 checkmate is the reason to rush it. The wiki confirms both the slam and the square wave apply the execute, so the queen gets many chances to finish a target that dips under the threshold. In the video, with Superior Cooldown and tier 1, the in-game tooltip reads 136 s, matching the wiki math (170 s × 0.8). The same tooltip shows a 210-health threshold on the creator's build, so the threshold appears to grow slightly with spirit power.
## Solomon skill order and why cooldown is his best stat
The solomon skill order the video recommends, taken from the YaBoyCJ build it uses:
1. Setup Bishop to tier 2 as early as possible. The second bishop roughly doubles your damage, and every serious Solomon build rushes it.
2. One point in Kingside Knight for the -8 s cooldown.
3. Develop Queen to tier 1 and then tier 2 for the execute.
4. Rook Battery to tier 2, then tier 3 for the extra reflect and the big cooldown cut.
5. Spend the rest on Setup Bishop tier 3, the Queen's extra moves and the Knight's tier 2 as the game allows.
cheap After that, the creator calls ability cooldown reduction the most important stat for bishop damage, and the reason is simple: faster cooldowns mean more redeploys and more passes through enemies. With Superior Cooldown (+20%, 3,200 souls on the wiki) the bishops come back in about 9.6 s instead of 12 s. Add some ability range so the passes are easier to land and some spirit power, and the video shows around 200 damage per bishop pass.
**One correction:** the video says that damage lets you proc Tankbuster "on every single bishop strike". Tankbuster does trigger on abilities dealing more than 165 damage, but the wiki lists a 14 s cooldown on its passive, so it fires on a pass every 14 s, not on every pass.
## Keybinds and quick cast settings to change first
free These solomon tips cost nothing and make the hero noticeably smoother:
- **Add a second alt-fire bind on mouse wheel up.** In Settings, Keybinds, Combat, while your current view is Solomon (so the bind is hero-specific), hover the Zoom/alt-fire row, click the plus icon and scroll up. A scroll then moves your bishops, knight and queen to your crosshair almost instantly, without the placement preview delay. The creator credits this tech to a smaller creator, Rain.
- **Keep right-click bound too.** Holding right-click gives you the placement preview and the floating window, which you need for precise moves, such as lifting a bishop onto a ledge.
- **Set Setup Bishop and Develop Queen to quick cast.** Tapping places the piece instantly at your aim; holding still shows the preview and lets you cancel with right-click. You get instant-cast speed and confirm-cast control in one setting.
## High ground and the float: where Solomon wants to stand
Solomon wants a top-down view. The easiest way to move a piece is to click the floor where you want it to go, and that is far easier from a rooftop or balcony than at street level, where moves misfire or don't happen at all. Treat him like Lash in this one respect: always look for height. Unlike Lash, Solomon wants to stay up there.
His -25% gravity makes climbing easy. Wall jumps and double jumps get him onto most platforms, and holding a piece move keeps him floating for about 3 s in the video, so you can glide between ledges while lining up a move. Stamina Mastery (extra air jump or dash) and, late, Magic Carpet (another -15% gravity scale) stack with this. With a carpet you can essentially create your own high ground mid-fight.
## Solomon laning: what the kit gives you in lane
The video doesn't cover the laning phase in depth, so this section sticks to what the kit and the wiki numbers support. Your gun is the main laning tool. Its falloff only starts at 20 m, and the explosive rounds forgive slightly off-target shots, so you can trade from further back than most heroes. Early weapon items like Long Range only pay out beyond 15 m, which suits that distance.
- Use Rook Battery for trades: an immobilized laner eats free bullets and a bishop pass.
- Self-cast Kingside Knight for a 160 barrier when you're being poked out, then hop back with the king move.
- Recall bishops once a wave is cleared; their cooldown doesn't start until you do.
- By mid-game the video shows Solomon two-tapping lane troopers with a weapon build.
Solomon is fragile at 780 base health, so hold the queen for a kill threat rather than spending a 210 s cooldown on a lane wave.
## Best Solomon build in Deadlock: the spirit hybrid
The most popular way to play him right now is as a spirit nuker with a gun spike. The build shown in the video is YaBoyCJ's "Solomon Hybrid Solved V1.0" (in-game build ID 868430). Community builds can be edited by their authors, so check it in the Build Browser. As the video showed it:
| Phase | Items (from the in-game build) | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Early core | Extra Spirit, Mystic Expansion, Improved Spirit, Opening Rounds, Long Range, Extra Stamina | Spirit power scales both abilities and bullets; range lets you deploy and steer pieces from further away |
| Early-mid | Greater Expansion, Sharpshooter, Enchanter's Emblem, Stamina Mastery | Greater Expansion adds +30% ability range; Sharpshooter adds +60% weapon damage beyond 15 m |
| Mid core | Compress Cooldown into Superior Cooldown, Tankbuster, Boundless Spirit | The cooldown and spirit core that makes bishops spammable |
| Late (optional) | Magic Carpet, plus picks such as Spiritual Overflow, Crippling Headshot, Lightning Scroll, Scourge, Focus Lens, Escalating Exposure | Flexible; buy for the game in front of you |
Opening Rounds (1,600) adds +7 spirit power and +25% weapon damage against enemies above 50% health, and the video notes that spirit power raises Solomon's bullet damage too. The creator considers about 4.8k souls of weapon items (Opening Rounds, Long Range and Sharpshooter) worth buying in every Solomon build because "his gun is crazy strong". Use this as your solomon build city never sleeps baseline: it was the go-to solomon build october 2026 players were copying when the video was recorded.
## Gun Solomon: The Glock's Gambit build
If you'd rather shoot than steer, the creator's gun build "The Glock's Gambit" (build ID 871232) keeps the spirit fundamentals but leans on weapon items. These are the solomon items in its build core, in order:
| Phase | Items |
| --- | --- |
| Build core | Improved Spirit, Opening Rounds, Kinetic Dash, Long Range, Bullet Lifesteal, Sharpshooter, Stamina Mastery, Bullet Resist Shredder, Slowing Hex, Hollow Point, Toxic Bullets, Fortitude |
| Late game (no order) | Glass Cannon, Lucky Shot, Crippling Headshot, Silencer, Inhibitor, Ricochet, Vampiric Burst, Vortex Web |
| Situational | Dispel Magic, Counterspell, Metal Skin, Spirit Resilience |
Kinetic Dash matters here because Solomon only has 8 bullets: a dash-jump grants +6 temporary ammo and +25% fire rate (wiki). Hollow Point's bonus only applies above 65% health, which a long-range hero keeps more often than most. For a solomon late game build, Glass Cannon (+80% weapon damage for -13% max health) is the big damage spike. Even on this build, tier 2 bishops still hit for 167 per pass in the video, and the queen's execute and the rooks' 5% current health damage don't need spirit power at all.
## Support Solomon: Castle Your King
setup The third archetype plays him like Paige: a root, a barrier and a disruptive stun ultimate. The video calls this build a work in progress. It is listed as "Castle Your King (Support Solomon)", build ID 881045:
| Phase | Items |
| --- | --- |
| Early game | Extra Spirit, High-Velocity Rounds, Healing Rite, Grit, Improved Spirit, Opening Rounds, Guardian Ward, Mystic Shot, Spirit Shredder, Rescue Beam, Compress Cooldown, Superior Cooldown |
| Stamina | Stamina Mastery |
| Active items (buy a few) | Slowing Hex, Knockdown, Silence Wave, Disarming Hex, Decay, Divine Barrier, Cursed Relic, Alchemical Fire, Vortex Web, Echo Shard |
| Late utility | Transcendent Cooldown, Boundless Spirit, Spirit Burn, Superior Duration, Greater Expansion, Tankbuster |
Guardian Ward (1,600) adds a second 250-point barrier, and its cooldown halves when cast on someone else. Mystic Shot plus Spirit Shredder is the creator's cheaper alternative to Sharpshooter for reaching your 4.8k weapon spike. Play at the back, hand out barriers and throw pieces at enemies so your damage heroes can finish the kills.
## Farming camps and taking objectives with bishops
free Bishops are excellent at clearing camps: camp monsters barely move, so every pass connects, and the square explosions hit them several times. With cooldown reduction they're back in under 10 s, so the rule is to spam them and recall them immediately when a camp dies. Better still, don't recall them if another camp is nearby. Steer the same bishops into the next room, up onto a ledge and into the room above, and you can clear a whole stretch of jungle with one cast.
At Cinder Sacrifices guarded by Gutter Ghouls or other NPCs, clear the guards with bishops, then leave the bishops in place while you take the sacrifice and put the king barrier on yourself to soak its damage. Anyone who ambushes you walks into live squares and armed bishops. Recall them once you're done.
Late, a spirit-built Solomon chunks the Mid-Boss surprisingly fast in the video because the squares detonate instantly on contact with it, and the creator managed a solo Mid-Boss. Walkers are the next best target for split pushing. Keep the wiki's 50% objective damage on bishops in mind: this works once your build is online, not at minute 10.
## Teamfight combos, Vortex Web and Solomon counters
setup The dream combo: root a target with the rooks somewhere they bounce back through, scroll both bishops through them, and drop the queen on top while they're immobilized. It takes planning, but you're playing the chess guy. Late, Vortex Web (6,400) makes it reliable. It pulls everyone in a small area together and applies Slowing Hex, which also silences their movement abilities, so they can't dash out of your pieces.
skip The trap almost every new Solomon falls into: leaving bishops out after a fight. If the enemy retreats to their Guardian, you got the kill, or the fight moved on, recall immediately. The only reason to keep them out is a long team fight that stays in one spot.
**Solomon counter tips.** If you're playing against him:
- **Flyers** are his worst matchup, according to the video; his pieces live on the ground. As Solomon, Knockdown (3,200, stun after 2 s, longer against airborne targets) is the creator's answer.
- **Slowing Hex** is listed on the wiki as disabling Kingside Knight's move, which shuts down his escape and his ally reposition.
- **Unstoppable and Debuff Reducer** blunt the rook immobilize and the queen stun; the wiki lists both as suppressing or shortening those effects.
- **Dive his perch.** With 780 base health and no mobility beyond the king hop, a Solomon caught on his rooftop has few outs. Bebop's Exploding Uppercut and Viscous's Puddle Punch can even shove his bishops and queen out of position.
## How this guide was fact-checked
- **From the deadlock.wiki Solomon page (October 19, 2026):** base stats, weapon numbers, the innate gravity passive, every ability's cooldown, range, damage, duration and tier upgrade, the note that bishop and queen cooldowns start only when the ability ends, the 50% bishop objective damage, the queen's execute timing, the T3 knight cleanse caveat, and the undocumented October 16 change to self-cast Kingside Knight. The wiki has no separate Solomon/Abilities page; all ability data comes from the main hero page.
- **From individual wiki item pages:** costs and key effects of Superior Cooldown, Transcendent Cooldown, Opening Rounds, Long Range, Sharpshooter, Stamina Mastery, Kinetic Dash, Greater Expansion, Tankbuster, Boundless Spirit, Magic Carpet, Vortex Web, Slowing Hex, Knockdown, Guardian Ward, Hollow Point and Glass Cannon.
- **From the video's own footage:** the keybind and quick cast setup, the float timing, the three build lists and their IDs, the tooltip values (136 s queen cooldown, 210 checkmate threshold on that build), the damage-per-pass figures (about 200 spirit, 167 on the gun build), the Vindicta stamina demo and the Mid-Boss solo.
- **Corrections to the video:** Tankbuster has a 14 s passive cooldown, so it does not fire on every bishop strike; self-cast Kingside Knight moves now use the ability key by default (October 16 change after the video). The claim that Rook Battery's cooldown ticks while the rooks are out is not on the wiki and is attributed to the creator.
## What this guide doesn't answer
- **Where Solomon ranks on a tier list.** He is a week old and rankings move every patch; a separate tier list covers that.
- **Hero-by-hero matchups.** Beyond flyers, there isn't enough data yet on a hero this new.
- **The advanced piece-movement tech from Rain's video.** The creator deliberately left those tricks to Rain's own guide.
- **A full laning playbook.** The source video doesn't cover lane phase, so the laning section sticks to what the kit supports.
- **Exact damage numbers at every spirit power value.** Scaling depends on your items and boons; check the in-game tooltip.
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## FAQ
### What is the best Solomon build in Deadlock?
The most popular build is a spirit hybrid: rush Setup Bishop tier 2, then build Improved Spirit, Greater Expansion, Superior Cooldown, Tankbuster and Boundless Spirit, plus Opening Rounds, Long Range and Sharpshooter for his strong gun. The video uses YaBoyCJ's Solomon Hybrid Solved V1.0 (build ID 868430). Gun (871232) and support (881045) builds also work.
### What is the Solomon skill order in Deadlock?
Take Setup Bishop to tier 2 first for the second bishop, put one point in Kingside Knight for -8s cooldown, then take Develop Queen to tier 2 for the execute on heroes below 200 health. After that, take Rook Battery to tier 3 for an extra wall reflect and -12s cooldown. Spend the remaining points on Bishop tier 3 and extra Queen moves.
### How do you move Solomon's pieces faster?
Add a second Zoom/alt-fire bind on mouse wheel up in Settings, Keybinds, Combat while viewing Solomon. Scrolling then moves bishops, knights and the queen to your crosshair almost instantly. Keep right-click for precise placement and set Setup Bishop and Develop Queen to quick cast. Since October 16, a self-cast Kingside Knight is moved by pressing the ability key again by default.
### What does Solomon's Kingside Knight do?
It promotes an ally to a knight for 7 seconds, giving an 80 barrier and +1 stamina (160 barrier and +2 stamina at tier 2), and lets you move them up to 13 m while invulnerable. Self-cast makes you the king: double barrier, no stamina and a 7 m move. Putting it on allies gives them extra dashes to escape or chase.
### How do you counter Solomon in Deadlock?
Flying heroes are his worst matchup because his pieces work on the ground. Slowing Hex disables Kingside Knight's move, Unstoppable and debuff resist blunt the rook immobilize and queen stun, and diving his high-ground perch works because he has only 780 base health and little mobility. Solomon players answer flyers with Knockdown.