Playing Dynamo against Holliday

What should I do right now?

Matchup overview

• Their structural weakness: Zero sustain and low durability — she cannot absorb a committed dive Why this is shown: Holliday's weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Their structural weakness: Damage is entirely aim-gated; a Holliday who is not hitting heads contributes very little Why this is shown: Holliday's weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Their structural weakness: Every one of her tools is telegraphed — a visible barrel, a visible pad, a targeted lasso Why this is shown: Holliday's weaknesses. Strong evidence

What they do against you

• Powder Keg knockup into a Crackshot headshot is her kill combo — while airborne you cannot strafe and the headshot is effectively guaranteed Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Spirit Lasso pulls you out of your team and stuns you, and with a Bounce Pad she drags you even further before the stun ends Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Crackshot ignores damage falloff, so distance does not actually protect you from her burst the way it does against other gun heroes Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Bounce Pad tier 3 delivers her whole team onto your backline from above with a landing stun on arrival Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence
• Stacked overlapping barrels in a tight interior create a burn zone that punishes holding a chokepoint at all Why this is shown: Authored from Holliday's kit. Strong evidence

How you counter them

• Hold Unstoppable for Spirit Lasso — it is a targeted stun-and-pull and Unstoppable simply negates it Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Shoot Powder Keg barrels to detonate them early, before you are inside the blast, and deny the knockup that sets up Crackshot Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Buy Knockdown for her Bounce Pad launch arcs and for her keg self-launches — she is fully committed in the air with no direction control Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Brawl her inside 10m: her roughly 2.1 shots per second and 10-round magazine lose badly to any SMG hero in close quarters Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Break her sightline immediately after she lands a Crackshot headshot — the bonus is on cooldown and she is a weak pistol hero for those seconds Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Stay grouped so that a lasso pull delivers you into your allies rather than into hers Why this is shown: Authored counterplay against Holliday. Strong evidence
• Against Holliday the item that changes the matchup is Slowing Hex, and not for the slow. It silences movement abilities and movement items — that is their dash, their blink, their Warp Stone and their Phantom Strike all turned off at once — and raises their gravity to 120% on top. At Tier II Spirit for 1,600 it is the cheapest way to convert a mobility advantage into a stationary target, and you deal the spirit damage needed to apply the follow-up. Why this is shown: Slowing Hex (T2 Spirit, 1,600) slows, applies 120% gravity, and silences movement abilities and movement items. Strong evidence
• You want the five-person fight and Holliday only takes it on their terms, which makes Vortex Web the item that closes the argument. It is a 12m vacuum plus a full Slowing Hex effect, so it both drags them into your fight and silences the movement abilities they would use to leave it. That is a team-fight tool, not a duel tool — buy it if your win condition is the grouped fight, and skip it if your win condition is picking them off alone. Why this is shown: Vortex Web (T4 Spirit): 12m vacuum plus full Slowing Hex effect, including movement-ability silence. Strong evidence

Trading

• The few seconds after any Crackshot headshot lands, while the bonus is on its own cooldown Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Her reload — 2.75 seconds with only 10 rounds is a long, frequent dead window Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Mid-air on Bounce Pad or a keg self-launch: she has no directional control and Knockdown ends the flight Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Immediately after Spirit Lasso resolves — the pulled target is now standing next to a low-durability hero with her ult spent Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Any close-quarters brawl she is forced into, where her fire rate and magazine size are her worst stats Why this is shown: Holliday's vulnerability windows. Strong evidence
• Holliday's pull is the whole matchup. Until it is on cooldown you are playing around it; once it misses you have a window that is worth committing into. Make it the first thing you bait — show a sliver of yourself from behind cover rather than walking a clean line they can lead. Why this is shown: Pull abilities gate the engage; baiting them opens a committed window. Strategic

Laning

• What they want in lane: Powder Keg clears the wave quickly and pokes the enemy laner in the same cast Why this is shown: Holliday's laning strengths. Strong evidence
• What they want in lane: Crackshot ignores falloff, so she can harass from ranges where her opponent cannot answer Why this is shown: Holliday's laning strengths. Strong evidence
• What you can take from them in lane: 10-round magazine at roughly 2.1 shots per second means whiffed shots are very expensive Why this is shown: Holliday's laning weaknesses. Strong evidence
• What you can take from them in lane: No self-heal or sustain of any kind — chip damage accumulates on her with nothing to offset it Why this is shown: Holliday's laning weaknesses. Strong evidence
• Your lever: Kinetic Pulse is long-range, hits the whole wave and pokes the enemy laner at the same time, giving him safe pressure without stepping forward Why this is shown: Dynamo's laning strengths. Verified

Mid game

• Their spike — ult unlock: Spirit Lasso gives her a guaranteed pick and the ability to remove one enemy from a fight entirely Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — Bounce Pad tier 3: The roughly +0.7s landing stun turns her mobility tool into a genuine engage Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — Crackshot tier 2: About +49.5 damage plus a bullet-resist shred makes each headshot a real burst window Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Their spike — mid 20-35min: Keg-launch plus Bounce Pad plus lasso is the window where her kidnap plays dictate objective fights Why this is shown: Holliday's power spike timeline. Strong evidence
• Your spike — ult unlock: Singularity immediately makes every teamfight and objective contest go through Dynamo Why this is shown: Dynamo's power spike timeline. Verified
• Your spike — Kinetic Pulse T1 (+1 charge): Two charges turn a single poke into a reliable double interrupt for anti-dive and channel breaking Why this is shown: Dynamo's power spike timeline. Verified
• Holliday will be their Urn runner and you are the one who can stop it. The Urn cannot be voluntarily dropped — it comes loose only on melee, a stun, or death — so chip damage and slows do not deny a delivery, your hard CC does. Hold it for the carry rather than spending it on the approach fight, and note the favoured team gets +50% Bullet and Spirit Resist in a 60m bubble while carrying and depositing, which is why trying to burst the runner down usually fails. Why this is shown: Urn cannot be voluntarily dropped, only knocked loose by melee, stun or death; +50% resist aura in 60m for the favoured team. Verified
• Your kit is built around lockdown and that is worth less on the Mid Boss than on Holliday — it carries 35% Debuff Resist as of 03-06-2026, so your disables run roughly two-thirds as long on it. Plan the take around damage and positioning rather than a CC chain, and spend the chain on Holliday if they contest. The payoff is worth the trip: 3,000 souls plus 50 per minute, two permanent buffs each, and a Rejuvenator crystal giving up to three single-use revives that return a player at full health after 3 seconds, for 3 minutes. Why this is shown: Mid Boss has 35% Debuff Resist (03-06-2026); reward is 3,000 souls +50/min, two buffs, and Rejuvenator revive credits. Verified

Teamfights

• Holliday brings enough lockdown that stun sequencing matters. Community reporting describes stun diminishing returns of roughly 10% then 30% inside an 8-second window, applying to stuns only and not to silences, slows, disarms or hexes — so their follow-up chain may be shorter than the first one felt. Treat this as unconfirmed, but it is worth knowing before you burn a cleanse on the opening stun. Why this is shown: Stun diminishing returns reported by community sources; not confirmed in official notes. Uncertain

Positioning

• Holliday decides where you stand, not you. The practical rule is to never hold a position whose failure case is being moved — stand so that being yanked or knocked puts you somewhere survivable rather than inside their whole team. Cover at your back is worth more than cover in front. Why this is shown: Displacement kits convert bad positioning into a kill; failure-case positioning mitigates it. Strong evidence
• Fight Holliday under cover — indoors, under walkways, inside stairwells. Taking away the vertical axis removes most of their kit's value before you spend a single item slot on it. Why this is shown: Reasoned from air-mobility kits requiring open vertical space. Strategic

Build adjustments

• Holliday fights from the air, which is exactly what Knockdown exists for: it applies +100% gravity to an airborne target (raised from +50% in March 2026) and its stun scales with altitude, up to about +1.5s at 30m. The higher they commit, the harder the punish — and Debuff Resist will not shorten that stun for them. Why this is shown: Knockdown airborne gravity and altitude-scaled stun, 6 March 2026 change. Verified
• Against Holliday's crowd control, understand what Debuff Resist actually buys you: it shortens duration, never magnitude. It is excellent against long disables and close to worthless against a short hard slow. Two things it explicitly does not shorten at all are the parry stun and the Knockdown item's stun. Why this is shown: Debuff Resist reduces duration only; parry stun and Knockdown stun are documented exclusions. Verified
• Slowing Hex (spirit T2) — Holliday gives this team real gap closers and escapes. The community-standard answer to escape artists: buy it when an enemy repeatedly dashes, blinks or flies out of your kill window. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-mobility, enemy-air-mobility, enemy-dive, enemy-backline-threat. Verified
• Knockdown (spirit T3) — Holliday gives this team real air mobility. The consensus answer to flying and airborne heroes and to channelled aerial ultimates — buy it whenever an enemy fights from the sky. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-air-mobility, enemy-mobility, enemy-long-range-poke, enemy-backline-threat. Verified
• Phantom Strike (vitality T4) — Holliday gives this team real air mobility. Buy to catch flying or long-range heroes who otherwise never enter your range, and to disarm a gun carry mid-burst. Why this is shown: Answers: enemy-air-mobility, enemy-mobility, enemy-backline-threat, enemy-long-range-poke. Verified

Common mistakes

• Players buy Dispel Magic for Holliday and then discover it does nothing about Spirit Lasso. Dispel Magic purges non-ultimate negative effects only — anything sourced from an ultimate is outside its scope entirely. Work out which of Holliday's disables come off abilities and which come off the ult before you spend 3,200: the ability-sourced ones are purgeable, the ult is not, and for the ult you need either Unstoppable pre-cast or the discipline not to be there. Why this is shown: Dispel Magic cannot purge ultimate-sourced debuffs; enemy cc 3 with a hard disable tag. Verified

Analyse this against your whole enemy team

A single matchup only tells you part of the story — which enemy to actually focus, and what to buy, depends on the other five. Open the tool with this matchup pre-loaded and add the rest.