Heya and welcome to my crazy 'lil guide about Deande, friend!

I am a young player who has spent way too much time playing stealth assassins, and as an assassin player Deande was the only obvious choice for me to main in Battleborn.
I have leveled Deande to level 15 and finished her lore challenges, which means I am proudly running around in my Dark Ops skin by now.

I am currently sitting on a 72.1% winrate on Deande; 44 wins in 61 multiplayer matches - most of them soloqueue, a few of them in duo or trio-queue with friends.

My KDA is at around 4.33 - 565 kills, 465 assists, 238 deaths.

Proof:










All those stats are obviously taken from the time where I'm writing this guide. I might or might not update them in the future.

I will for sure try to keep this guide updated when changes, buffs or nerfs happen to Deande.

One very important thing to understand with Deande is that you will most likely NOT end up as the highest damage in your team, no matter how good you are. You are just way more focussed on putting pressure on their backline Battleborn than on hitting minions with AoE. If there was a stat for damage dealt to heroes it would be a bit easier to judge how well one has done in a match - but there isn't, so for now we just ignore the damage stat at the end of game screen.

Bio

Before Deande spearheaded the Jennerit rebellion, she was the Spymaster of the Jennerit Imperium, and one of Rendain's closest advisors. Swift, stealthy, and exceptionally lethal, Deande is one of the deadliest assassins the Imperium has ever produced.

Characteristics

• Stealth
  
• Assassin
  
• Advanced

Passive
The Element of Surprise

For 3 seconds after uncloaking, all of Deande’s skills and attacks deal 25% additional damage

Weapon

Tessurium War Fans

Deande’s primary melee combo strings a series of rapid melee strikes, while her secondary attack hurls her fans at foes for ranged damage.





Abilities


Holotwin

Cloaks Deande and deploys a decoy (20% health, 25% damage) to fight in her stead for 8 seconds. Upon death or expiry, the decoy explodes for 200 damage.






Burst Dash

Deande charges forward, dealing 200 damage and pushing back enemies. Hit enemies are weakened, lowering their attack damage by 30%.






Blink Storm

Ultimate - Upon activation, Deande unleashes a flurry of 10 strikes directly ahead of her, stunning up to 5 enemies and dealing 50 damage per hit.





Lore Challenges

• Kill 500 enemies with The Element of Surprise
  
• Stealth with less than 20% health, 30 times
  
• Deal 10,000 damage to Rendain
  
• Deal 60,000 damage with Blink Storm
  
• Play 5 matches on the same team as Ambra

Your playstyles with Deande don't change all too much over the different modes.
The goal with Deande is always to find the enemies' backline or high priority targets and to disable or shut them down completely.

Take note that even though you are an assassin you are not as bursty as you might expect.


It's always best to find enemies that have weak or no escapes at all, but sometimes it is absolutely necessary to pressure enemies that will get away.


Examples for high priority targets:

• Miko
  
• Marquis
  
• Miko
  
• Thorn
  
• Did I mention Miko?
  
• Pretty sure Miko should be on this list

Overall you could say that all classic ranged carries and supports are the ones you should take care of. Supports > Ranged Carries unless the carries are ahead or very skilled and pressuring your team heavily.



Enemies you should avoid fighting directly unless you are ahead:

• Montana
  
• Kelvin
  
• Galilea
  
• El Dragón
  
• Attikus
  
• Boldur
  
• Rath
  
• Phoebe

It is definitely not impossible to beat the mentioned characters, but beating up a tank as Deande is more than just difficult. Also it is very difficult to fight Brawlers in direct 1-on-1 combat - unless ahead. It will require you to hit the enemies head and to dodge their CC using your Holotwin ability though.



The best way to brawl in a 1-on-1 Situation:

It is best to not use your stealth to get close to an enemy. If possible try to go behind them while being visible, when behind them either use a quick Burst Dash (if they are in front of a wall or anything - we don't want our prey flying off to safety!) to apply "weakness". "Weakness" reduces the damage dealt by the target by 30% for a few seconds. This way they have no chance of fighting back on their own. The second possible choice (and the one you might have to use more often) is to go into stealth right behind them. You then just pop right out of the stealth again - this will cause your clone to spawn right next to the target and it will also make your clones' attacks amplified by your passive!

Making use of your passive wisely is what will seperate you from other Deandes.


The best way to brawl in a Teamfight

You want to use your Holotwin as soon as the teamfight breaks out. You then try to stick to the high priority targets - try to knock them into your team or seperate them using your Burst Dash.
You will then want to just Melee them. If they use an escape move or get enough range between you and them try to finish them off throwing your Tessurim War Fans. The other choice you can make is to use your Ultimate Ability - Blink Storm. Take note that it is not useful to amplify the ult with your Passive, since the charge-up time of the ult will take roughly 2 of the 3 seconds. You also waste a lot of damage potential when using your Ultimate Ability. It's mostly used to stun people for your team to follow up on some easy kills.


The best ways to utilize your Abilities


With Deande you have multiple ways to utilize her Abilities. Making the right decisions on how to use her abilities in certain situations is the key to play well with her.

This here list will give you the most common ways to fully utilize her Abilities.

Tessurim War Fans:

Your melee combo after popping out of stealth is your #1 damage source.
If you can't find a way in to pick an easy target off just throw your Fans at the enemy using your [RMB].
To fully utilize the throw it is important to throw the first one slightly to the left, the second one slightly to the right and the last throw should also be either of the sides - further to the sides the further you are away from your target.
It is important to understand to never interrupt a combo, be it a throwing combo or a melee combo. The time it takes from one animation to the other drops your damage output by a lot. Always try to get 4 Melee hits or 3 Range hits out before switching it up!

Holotwin:

The ability has a very high cooldown, so make sure to use it wisely!
There are multiple ways to work with the Holotwin, the most common ones being:

• Turning a 1-on-1 into a 2-on-1, confusing the enemy, amplifying your damage output and getting some extra burst when the enemy finishes off the clone by accident.
  
• Dodging enemies skills, for example Rath's Shockwave.
  
• Juking enemies to get away e.g. jumping off a ledge and dashing back on.
  
• Getting close to unsuspecting, low-HP enemies.

If you use your Stealth to get close to enemies be wary of Thumper Turrets and other Slow/CC Sources. Your Healthpool isn't great, so a Slow will most likely get you killed when any enemies are near after you finished the job.

Burst Dash

With Burst Dash I personally had the hardest time utilizing it. The knockback makes it a bit of an iffy move in most situations, since it can give your opponent an easy way out if used incorrectly.
For the beginning it is best to only use it to:

• Knock enemies into your team
  
• Knock enemies against the wall so you can easily follow up
  
• Knock enemies that you don't want too close away from you, making way for your escape

When you are more experienced you can try to utilize it more for some extra burst after popping out of stealth (the damage is great when amplified).
Also you can use it for duels with other Brawlers and to finish off enemies with a quick Burst - care to not misjudge your damage here, it may save them!

Blink Storm

Blink Storm is in a weird spot in Deande's kit. Whilst it does give a stun and a fair amount of damage if used on a single target it does require you to hold still to charge it up (which takes roughly 2 seconds). In this time you are very vulnerable. The charge-up can also be interrupted by enemy CC, leaving you dead in most situations. Also enemies can run out of the range of your ult fairly easily - all these points make it more of a niche ability. I often found myself just stunning a solo Miko that was trying to follow up on his team - or that was trying to run away, so my team could finish either the enemies themselves or Miko directly off without worrying about his healing.
The big strength of this ability is definitely the stun, not so much the damage it provides.
You should almost at all times try to hit a single enemy Battleborn to get some proper burst together with the stun.
It is also useful to stun 3 or more Battleborn, that requires your team to read the situation and all-out follow up on it, though.
I will repeat what I said earlier - don't waste your passive on the ult, the charge-up time takes too long to make it worthwhile.

As for Helix Choices on Deande I will share my thoughts and mention what I would use in PvP/PvE and why.

LEVEL 1

For PvP the probably only choice is Double Trouble, as it does give you more possibilities to gapclose, juke and escape.
For PvE either Wonder Twins (for Solo the better choice) or Ground Zero (better for Groups) will do.

LEVEL 2

A nobrainer. All Safeties Off for more damage output from your clone. Although I didn't find having more Health on your clone useless (unexperienced players believe it's the real you and are longer distracted) at the end All Safeties Off just gives you more DPS potential to finish off 1-on-1 enemies which makes you doing your job easier.

LEVEL 3

Here it's the first real choice for PvP. Fan Appreciation is your go-to choice if you have a hard time finding a way in - it makes you apply more pressure from range.
Uppercut is the go-to choice against enemies that have to be CC-locked - e.g. Galilea, Miko - or enemies that need to be interrupted in their core skills - e.g. Rath, ISIC.
Whilst Uppercut is insanely good to keep enemies locked until they die it does in-fact drop your DPS, so it is not your must-have choice at all situations. If you are fairly new to Deande I would strongly encourage you to pick it on all occasions though.
Leechsteel is your niche-choice; and still by no means a bad one! If you find your ways in but take some punishment from enemy ranged characters or their turrets often it will help you a ton to keep you on the map instead of backporting. Less backports equals more pressure on the enemies - so there is that.

LEVEL 4

Until you have Deande's Lore Legendary Drain Dash is your go-to choice here. The extra lifesteal helps to keep you on the map and helps you brawling enemy melees more often.
As soon as you have Deande's Item Calculated Risk is what you want. It will make you do 150 bonus damage on your burst dash (not including the amplify here) - as a trade-off you lose all your shield when using it. Since your Item will keep your shields refreshing most of the times this will flat out give you more burst. If you fail your E often though - stay with Drain Dash

LEVEL 5

Here either Silent Strike or Roguelike are viable choices. Choose Silent Strike if your enemies get away a bit too often, otherwise take Roguelike as it will help you melt through the enemies from the back, seeing how it stacks with her passive. Beast of Momentum just isn't good enough to waste a slow or extra damage by picking it. It is only 10% movement speed and also only for 5 seconds. This will only on the rarest occasions help you to get away after getting a quick kill - even after taking minion kills into account.

LEVEL 6

Here we have another difficult choice. As soon as you have her Lore Item I would promote taking Burst Brawler for some extra burst - stacking up with Calculated Risk. If your enemies are unexperienced Ire's Echo is what you want to have. It gives your clone some extra burst when dying and will slow them so they won't get away after they realized they f*cked up. Escape Plan is a very viable choice also - especially if you find yourself running away using your Holotwin more often than you personally would like.

LEVEL 7

My choice here is Fan o' War. Having a flat-out +18% melee damage on every occasion helps just so much! The Culling does almost never help you and will have you deal flat out less damage in the end. If teammates' reducing enemy damage output would count as a weaken it "could" possibly be an interesting choice. This isn't clear whatsoever, though, so at the end just stay on the safe side and pick Fan o' War. (Thank you to Torva for bringing this up!)

LEVEL 8

Deadly Reach is my go-to here. It makes it a lot easier to land the Burst Dash to cause devastating damage. I also don't find myself using it often enough to justify taking cooldown reduction.

LEVEL 9

Here you should test out Improved Holographics and Deft Hands. Having 7 seconds extra on your Holotwin decoy is just not worthwhile. It will almost never live long enough. When you are going for a Burst Dash build with the Lore Item Deft Hands is probably your pick of choice here.
Other than that having less cooldown on Holotwin is obviously amazing to be more slippery and dangerous. Experiment and tell me your results!


LEVEL 10

I usually pick Doppelgangüp here. Gathering Storm is a nice idea, but unless you are running in a 5-man team you will almost never need 10 less seconds of cooldown on a ult that is as situational as Blink Storm.

Loadouts for Deande are pretty straight-forward.
Anything that helps you melt through the opponent's Healthbars faster or to keep up with the enemy will help.









If you don't have the Fan of the Retreat yet, you will definitely want an Attackspeed Item in your build.
Adding to that:

• Attack Damage
  
• Critical Hit Damage
  
• Cooldown Reduction
  
• Movespeed
  
• Shield Penetration
  
• Sprint Speed

are all good choices.

For Capture Maps you want some cheap white or green-rarity items, while it is okay to have up to two legendaries and a purple/blue item in Incursion, Meltdown or Missions.

Here I would also encourage you to experiment and share your loadouts and ideas in the comment section below!

If you are still here with me I want to tell you

THANK YOU!

This is in fact my very first Guide on anything, ever - and you were here to read the whole thing!
Feel free to leave feedback, constructive criticism or questions in the Comments-Section below.
If you enjoyed reading my guide and learned something new feel free to leave a rating!

If you have any other questions you can also send me a friend-request and I will try to help you the best way possible!

English is not my first language, so if you find any obvious mistakes.. I apologize!

Thank you to all my friends who were playing with me when I was experimenting with various Deande builds!


Have a nice day everyone and keep being awesome,

iycriS