Deadlock Wraith Guide: Build, Abilities & Skill Order

🎯 The core idea

Wraith turns gunfire into cards. Every bullet that lands builds Card Trick charges, and the cards add bonus damage, resist shred, slows or healing on top of your gun. Max Card Trick first, farm into Tesla Bullets and a 4.8k spirit spike, keep Project Mind for escapes, and save Telekinesis to cancel the enemy's most dangerous ultimate or to isolate one squishy target.

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

What Wraith does in a match

Wraith is a duelist who mixes gun and spirit damage. Her weapon, The Rake, is a fast-firing medium-range gun: the deadlock.wiki hero page lists 52 rounds, 10.6 bullets per second and about 60 DPS at base, with falloff starting at 18m. She starts at 730 health and gains 1.1 spirit power per boon. On her own the gun is nothing special. What makes her dangerous is that her bullets feed Card Trick, and her other two abilities make that gun shoot faster or move her out of trouble.

The source for the ability basics is Bleuo's five-minute Wraith guide from March 2026. That video predates the June 30 global ultimate change, the September 16 balance patch and the September 29 City Never Sleeps map rework, so every number and item below was re-checked against the wiki in October 2026, and the build was refreshed for the current patch. No October 2026 patch has touched Wraith so far: the October 5 and October 14 notes on the wiki change other heroes and Radiant Regeneration, nothing in her kit.

How to play Wraith, in one line: she is weak in lane, strong in 1v1s from the mid game on, and she takes objectives fast once Tesla Bullets is online.

Wraith Card Trick: how cards work

Card Trick is your main damage tool and the reason the hero works. Cards don't recharge over time. You earn them by landing weapon or melee damage, and the wiki gives the exact charge per hit:

Hits on troopers and other NPCs count at 35% effectiveness, so farming builds cards slowly and hero fights build them fast. Each card does 45 base damage (spirit scaling x0.55) and flies at the enemy or the point under your crosshair. There is a 0.6s gap between throws. Alt-cast throws your cards in the opposite order, starting with the first card you drew.

The suit decides the bonus. The wiki numbers after the September 16, 2026 patch:

Cards come from a shuffled 8-card stack with two of each suit, so you never go long without a Spade or a Heart. Jokers sit outside that stack with an 11% chance per card, which rises to 20% at the third upgrade. A Heart that hits several heroes heals for 50% extra per additional target, and Hearts on non-hero units heal half.

Correction to the video: Bleuo's on-screen card shows the Heart healing for 75. The wiki puts it at 60 now, with spirit scaling cut to 0.5, after the September 16 patch. The same patch lowered Diamond from -8% to -7% resist shred.

Wraith ability upgrades for Card Trick: the first point adds two charges, the second adds +40 damage and better spirit scaling, and the third improves every suit and raises the Joker chance.

Project Mind: the escape button

Project Mind teleports Wraith to a target spot up to 25m away. It has a 46s cooldown and a 0.8s channel before you vanish, and enemies can interrupt that channel. Treat it as a planned exit, not a panic button you press while a Shiv or Abrams is already on top of you.

free The best uses are repositioning to high ground before a fight and leaving a fight the moment it turns. Bleuo also uses it to go in when he wants to: teleport behind a target that thinks it is safe, then dump cards.

Upgrades (1 / 2 / 5 points):

• +15m cast range, for 40m total.
• A 300-health barrier for 5 seconds after a successful teleport (it scales with spirit power). It only triggers if the teleport goes through.
• -32s cooldown, taking it from 46s down to 14s.

Slowing Hex, and anything else that silences movement abilities, shuts Project Mind off. Keep that in mind when the enemy buys it.

Full Auto: fire rate and unlimited ammo

Full Auto is a 5-second buff: +20% fire rate and 2 bonus spirit damage per bullet (x0.045 spirit scaling, raised from 0.03 on September 16). It has a 45s cooldown. More bullets per second means more card charge per second, so Full Auto speeds up Card Trick as well as your gun.

Upgrades (1 / 2 / 5 points):

• -20s cooldown, down to 25s.
• +10% fire rate and +3s duration.
• Unlimited ammo and better scaling on the spirit damage per bullet. Since March 2026, activating the third upgrade during a reload also finishes that reload instantly.

Bleuo's point about the third upgrade is the useful one: with unlimited ammo you can hold the trigger on a walker or a guardian and stack cards the whole time. That makes it the upgrade that turns Wraith into a split-pusher.

Wraith Telekinesis: picking who dies first

Telekinesis is her ultimate. You lift an enemy hero within 10m for a 1.25s channel (they are stunned while lifted), then slam them toward the spot you aim at, up to 13m away. The slam deals 100 spirit damage (x1 scaling) and for 2.25s the target is slowed by 32% and can't use stamina or movement-based items and abilities.

Correction to the video: Bleuo describes the slam as blocking abilities in general. The wiki says it only blocks stamina and movement-based items and abilities (the same list as Slowing Hex), so a lifted enemy can still shoot back or use most damage abilities once they land.

Upgrades (1 / 2 / 5 points):

• +100 damage.
• -45s cooldown.
• +1.5s debuff duration and +6m throw and cast range.

The base cooldown is now 150s. The June 30, 2026 global ultimate change raised it from 130s and cut the second upgrade from -50s to -45s, so with the second upgrade you are at 105s. Bleuo's video was recorded before that change.

Two tricks from the wiki notes: the throw follows an arc, so aiming at the top of a wall, an edge or a corner above the target can send them much further than 13m. And Indomitable cleanses the stun, so check whether your target owns it before you commit.

Wraith skill order

Bleuo's unlock order is Card Trick, then Project Mind, then Full Auto, with Telekinesis as soon as it is available. That order still holds: Card Trick is your damage in lane, and Project Mind is the one tool that saves you from an early gank.

For upgrades, max Card Trick first. The first point's two extra charges matter immediately, and the third point's Joker chance is your biggest damage jump. After that, the video leaves it to play style:

Take Full Auto early if you plan to farm side lanes and take walkers alone. Take Project Mind upgrades if the enemy team has a lot of catch and stuns.

Wraith early game items

Every item below was checked against its deadlock.wiki page. Costs are the standard (non-Street Brawl) prices.

After that, aim for the 4.8k spirit spike. The Items page explains it: once you own 4,800 souls of one item category, you get a big jump in that category's bonus (spirit goes from +19 to +38 spirit power). Bleuo's options to get there are Mystic Burst (800), Extra Charge (800, one more card charge), and upgrading Extra Spirit into Improved Spirit (1,600 total). A faster route he mentions is Compress Cooldown (1,600, +18% cooldown reduction) imbued on Card Trick, which gets you to 4,800 with just Quicksilver Reload and Improved Spirit. The order doesn't matter much. The spike does.

One caveat on Compress Cooldown: the wiki notes that cooldown reduction only partly helps Card Trick. A 25% reduction gives about 20% faster card generation, and the 0.6s gap between throws doesn't shrink at all.

Wraith build for City Never Sleeps: mid and late game

This is the best Wraith build path from the video, re-checked against current item stats. It still works after the September 29 update, because the map rework and the October patches didn't change any of these items. What changed are a few numbers, noted below.

Two numbers changed since the video. On September 16, Mercurial Magnum's base bullet damage bonus dropped from 25% to 20% and its spirit scaling from 0.49 to 0.38. Leech went the other way, with lifesteal raised from 25% to 28%. Neither change knocks them out of the build, but Mercurial Magnum is a smaller spike than it was in March.

Capacitor and Telekinesis stack their effects: both stop movement items, so a Capacitor shot right after the slam keeps a target pinned for longer.

What a current Wraith build looks like in October 2026

Only one post-update video with real Wraith commentary turned up when this guide was written: M1-Demo's "This Wraith Build Annihilates Everyone" from October 8, 2026, played on the new map. It is a full match, not a guide, but the purchases on screen line up with the build above. He buys Swift Striker early, goes Tesla Bullets with Ricochet for farming, picks up Capacitor late (the frame above is its shop tooltip), and talks through Silencer, Spellbreaker, Spiritual Overflow and Indomitable as answers to the enemy team.

His reasoning for Capacitor is worth keeping: when the enemy has a lot of movement, an active that removes it wins chases. The video description links an in-game build (ID 245681). That is his, not something this guide checked item by item.

skip Copying a full build blindly. Bleuo and M1-Demo both say the last three or four slots depend on the enemy team.

Wraith laning: weak but not passive

Wraith is weak in lane. Her cards build slowly on troopers, and her escape is on a 46s cooldown. That doesn't mean AFK farming. Bleuo's advice holds:

• free Poke with your cards and help your lane partner when they fight. An early kill makes your mid game much stronger.
• Melee is a card shortcut. A heavy melee gives 21.25% of a card and a light melee 8.5%, against 3.4% for a bodyshot, so a melee trade on an enemy hero refills cards fast.
• free Take the bridge buff. The wiki confirms Powerups (bridge buffs) still spawn on the bridges at 5:00 and every 5 minutes after on the new map. You claim them with a heavy melee. Bleuo's point is that many players ignore them, so they are often free.
• skip Early ganks. Wraith is clumsy before her items and early kills are worth less than staying in lane and farming.

Wraith laning on the City Never Sleeps map follows the same rules. The lanes and objectives moved in the September 29 rework, but nothing in her kit changed with it.

Mid game: side lanes, Tesla Bullets and walkers

grind Once the lane phase ends, play a side lane and farm until Tesla Bullets is done. That is the item that makes your farm fast: each shock can jump to four nearby enemies, which clears trooper waves and camps.

Then push. Shove waves into enemy walkers and take their jungle camps. Wraith wins most 1v1s by this point, so a single player who comes to stop you is usually a free kill. If two or three come, Project Mind out.

The video's best Wraith tip for this phase: if a fight starts far away, don't rotate. You won't arrive in time. Hit the walker in front of you instead, then cross the map and do it again on the other side. Defending works the same way. If you have cards stacked and Telekinesis ready, an enemy pushing your walker alone can die very quickly.

Teamfights and the late game

Late game Wraith deals a lot of card damage and is hard to kill thanks to Leech and Heart cards. In teamfights:

1. Stand slightly behind your team or at an off angle and shoot whatever is in front of you to stack cards.
2. When your cards are full, pick a squishy target and go in.
3. Use Telekinesis to cancel enemy ultimates. Bleuo names Rem, Lash, Mina and Mo & Krill as the ones to watch, because lifting the caster stuns them mid-ultimate.

Telekinesis also works as a throw: lift a carry out of their team's healing and slam them toward yours. The arc trick from the ability section (aiming high at a wall or edge) can send them a long way.

setup Before a big objective fight, have cards stacked and Full Auto ready. Wraith takes guardians, walkers and the Mid-Boss quickly. In the frame above, Wraith stacks cards by shooting the Mid-Boss.

Wraith counter: how to beat her

Most of what counters Wraith comes from her own wiki interactions:

• Indomitable cleanses the next stun, which covers Telekinesis. If the enemy Wraith only has one way to start a fight, this takes it away.
• Slowing Hex and other silences on movement abilities shut off Project Mind, and the 0.8s Project Mind channel can be interrupted. Most Wraith deaths come from catching her before she teleports.
• Plated Armor can block on-hit effects from bullets, and the wiki lists Card Trick's on-shot effect among them.
• Healing reduction (Healbane and Toxic Bullets both apply -35% incoming healing) cuts Heart card healing, and debuff resist shortens Club slows and the Telekinesis debuff.
• Silencer, the item M1-Demo buys in the frame above, cuts the target's spirit damage by 25%, and its bullets build up to a silence.
• CC in general. Bleuo calls Wraith susceptible to CC, and her Project Mind and Full Auto cooldowns are long. Bait them first, then commit.

Playing as Wraith into these items: buy Dispel Magic or Debuff Reducer early against heavy CC. Think about Spellbreaker if most of their burst is spirit damage.

How this guide was fact-checked

• From deadlock.wiki (October 2026): Wraith's base stats, every ability number and upgrade, card charge per hit, the 8-card stack and Joker odds, Wraith's full update history (September 16, August 12, June 30 and March 2026 changes), the October 5 and October 14 patch notes (no Wraith changes), item costs and effects for every item named here, the investment bonus table behind the 4.8k spike, and the bridge buff (Powerup) timing.
• From Bleuo's March 2026 video: the ability explanations, unlock and upgrade order, item path and the laning, mid game and teamfight advice. Ability fundamentals still hold, so they were kept.
• From M1-Demo's October 8, 2026 video: the post-update purchases shown on screen (Swift Striker, Tesla Bullets, Ricochet, Silencer, Capacitor) and the items he talks through. No numbers were taken from it.
• Corrections made: Heart card heal is 60 (x0.5), not the 75 shown in the video. Diamond is -7%, not -8%. The Telekinesis cooldown is 150s with a -45s second upgrade, not the pre-June values. Telekinesis blocks movement abilities and stamina, not all abilities. Mercurial Magnum was nerfed and Leech buffed on September 16. The video's gameplay is on the old map, while the bridge buff timing was confirmed for the current map.

What this guide doesn't answer

• A Deadlock Wraith tier placement. The wiki doesn't rank heroes, and the tier lists online contradict each other week to week. This guide sticks to what was verified.
• Matchup-by-matchup advice for the October heroes (Rat King, Baba, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Violet, Nurse Harrow). They are too new for a tested Wraith plan.
• Street Brawl. Wraith has no special ability changes there, but item drafts work differently. The Enhanced and Corrupted item values on the wiki are Street Brawl only and aren't used here.
• Exact routes on the City Never Sleeps map. See a map or farming guide for camp locations and rotations.