Deadlock Sandbox and practice routines that work

How to use the Sandbox, bots and console to check your DPS, drill parries and last hits, plus a 20-minute routine to run before you queue.

Where to practise in Deadlock

Deadlock has four places to practise: the Atrium in your Hideout for quick checks, Sandbox Mode for real drills, Bot Match for match flow, and Explore NYC for learning routes on the full map. Most players only ever use the Atrium, which is why their practice doesn't carry over into matches.

The Atrium is fine for seeing what an ability does. It has one friendly and one enemy dummy, a jump pad, a rope and a red-buttoned machine you melee to toggle fast cooldowns and infinite stamina. For anything you want to get better at, walk into the Teleporter at the back and load the full Sandbox.

How to open the Sandbox

Pick Sandbox Mode from the Play menu (the Play Terminal in the Hideout), or take the Teleporter at the back of the Atrium. The Teleporter inside the Sandbox sends you back.

You spawn next to a Curiosity Shop in an area that heals you, but you can buy items anywhere on the Sandbox map, so there's no walking back to test a new build.

What's on the Sandbox map

Each area is built for a different drill. The garden on the left has an allied and an enemy Lane Guardian, an enemy Walker, and troopers that spawn behind each Guardian and fight each other, which makes it your last-hit and soul orb lane. The range on the right has allied and enemy test dummies next to a shooting range, plus one dummy that runs back and forth behind the truck. Close by are a Cosmic Veil, a Rope, a Jump Pad, two Powerups, a Rejuvenator and a pair of Teleporters.

The gym has a dummy that throws melee at you, the only reliable way to practise parry timing outside a match. The storage room holds a neutral camp with small, medium and large neutrals for testing clear speed. Since the City Never Sleeps update (September 29, 2026) the map also has the new objectives, and crates and neutrals first spawn at 5 seconds instead of 30.

Sandbox settings worth knowing

The settings panel is split into My Hero Tools, Game Rules and Bot Basics. These are the buttons that matter for practice:

1. 01Use Level Up or Max Level to test a hero at the level you actually play them at, not at level one.
2. 02Press All Upgrades to unlock every ability upgrade when you're testing a late-game combo.
3. 03Use Half Health and Full Health to reset between tests so every run starts the same.
4. 04Turn on No Death while drilling, then turn it off before you judge whether a fight is winnable.
5. 05No Cooldown sets cooldowns to 1 second, not zero, so ability chains that need instant recasts still won't work.
6. 06Use Speed- to slow the game down while you learn a timing, like a parry cue or a dash-jump.
7. 07Spawn a hero with +As Enemy wherever your crosshair points, then press Make Mimic so it copies your movement. Turn it on and strafe, and you have a moving target that dodges the way players do.
8. 08Press Clear Follow when you're done with Mimic or Puppet, or the bot keeps copying you.

Console commands for practice

Turn on the developer console in the game settings, then press F7 to open it. The Sandbox buttons are console commands underneath: Reset Hero runs resetme, Max Level runs givelevelupgold 35, Half Health runs healthpct 50, and the speed buttons run host_timescale_dec, host_timescale 1.0 and host_timescale_inc.

Cheat commands don't work in normal matches. In a Custom Match you can enable them with sv_cheats true. The ones worth remembering:

1. 01hud_damagemeter true shows your current DPS next to your crosshair.
2. 02citadel_spawn_nearby_neutrals respawns the camp you just cleared.
3. 03trooper_kill_all clears the lane so you can reset a wave test.
4. 04citadel_enable_fast_cooldowns gives every ability a 2-second cooldown, and citadel_disable_fast_cooldowns turns it off.
5. 05bot_kick_all removes every bot, dummies included, so you'll have to respawn them.
6. 06If your hero won't move after you go back to the Hideout from puppet mode, type bot_puppet 0 or restart the game. It's a known bug.

How to run a DPS check

A DPS check only means something if you change one thing at a time. Pick the hero, set the level you'd normally be at when you buy the item, stand at a fixed distance from a static enemy dummy and empty a full magazine. Note the number, buy the item, reset to full health and do exactly the same thing again.

Run each version three or four times. One extra headshot or one missed bullet swings a single run more than most Tier II items do. Then check the Damage Report, which breaks your damage down by source and shows how much resistances absorbed, to see whether the gain came from the item or from luck.

Test at the distance you really fight at, because every gun loses damage at range. A shotgun that wins at 5m tells you nothing about a lane where you trade from 20m.

Turn No Reload and No Cooldown off before you test sustained damage. Reloads and cooldowns are part of your real DPS, and the Sandbox hides them if you let it.

A 20-minute practice routine

Run this before your first match of the day. Each block trains something you'll use in the first ten minutes of a game.

1. 015 minutes on the moving dummy behind the truck, aiming for the head the whole time. Track it, don't flick.
2. 025 minutes in the garden last-hitting troopers and shooting every soul orb. Then let the enemy troopers die and practise denying.
3. 033 minutes in the gym parrying the melee dummy. Start slowed down and finish at normal speed.
4. 044 minutes of movement: dash-jumps, slide into dash, Rope and Jump Pad routes. Count your stamina pips and try to finish each route with one left.
5. 053 minutes on your hero's main combo against a static dummy, with cooldowns on normal so you learn the real rhythm.

Bot matches and Explore NYC

Bot Match comes in Easy, Medium and Hard, for Standard and Street Brawl, solo or co-op. Use it to learn a new hero's match rhythm: when your first item lands, when your ultimate comes online, how fast you clear a wave. Don't read much into your farm, though. Bots earn souls passively and can buy from anywhere on the map, and not every hero has bot AI, so some heroes only show up when a player picks them.

Explore NYC puts you on the real map with nobody else around. Learn the zipline routes, where the jump pads take you and how long a rotation from one lane to another actually takes. When you're the one arriving late to a fight, knowing the route by heart is worth more than any aim drill.

Mistakes that waste practice time

1. 01Practise with the rules you play with. Infinite stamina teaches you movement routes that don't exist in a match.
2. 02Write down one question before you start a test, like "does this item speed up my wave clear?", and stop when you have the answer.
3. 03Re-test your numbers after a big patch. Item values change often, and last month's breakpoint might be gone.
4. 04Finish every session with one bot match or one real match so the drill gets used while it's fresh.