DenyPick
Patch 09-16-2026 Data researched 2026-09-21 What changed
GR Graves — controller frame

Graves

ControllerSummonerMage close range hybrid damage mid-game Medium difficulty

Measured 56.8% win rate on patch 09-16-2026 across 19,289 matches.

Strengths

  • Best-in-class unattended map pressure via Borrowed Decree Ghouls marching at objectives
  • Grasping Hands is a long, reusable root wall that shapes every chokepoint fight
  • Essence Theft simultaneously buffs her and debuffs the enemy carry in sustained fights
  • Jar of Dead recharges off deaths rather than a pure timer, so uptime scales with how well her team is doing

Weaknesses

  • Effectively zero personal mobility — no dash, no blink, no vertical tool
  • Extremely short weapon falloff forces her into the range band where divers want her
  • Both her summons and her gravestone are destructible and can be cleared by any AoE
  • Almost no burst — she needs time, and any hero who can end a fight in two seconds skips her entire kit

Weapon

pistol ("The Teacher"). Low per-shot damage (about 3.6) fired from a large 40-round magazine, so damage arrives as a steady stream rather than in chunks. Damage falloff starts very early (roughly 8m and bottoms out near 17m), which forces Graves to fight at genuinely short range for Essence Theft to accumulate; heavy melee hits for around 116.

Abilities

Jar of Dead

Ability 1 · resource-collecting passive plus thrown summon

Passively banks a charge whenever something dies near Graves. Throwing the jar releases Deadheads that repeatedly strike nearby enemies for spirit damage; with no enemy nearby they trail Graves instead.

What it is for: Turns every lane creep and jungle camp death into stored offensive resource, then converts it into free chip damage on a contested point or a lane wave.

Damage
roughly 16 spirit per Deadhead hit at base spirit power (deadlock.one, patch 09-16-2026)
Crowd control
none at base; the tier-2 upgrade adds roughly a 30% movement slow for about 1s on hit
Defensive
tier-1 upgrade returns a small heal (about 5 health) when a death is collected

How to play against it

  • Deadheads are short-lived and stationary-ish: leave the jar's area rather than trading inside it, since walking out ends the damage entirely
  • Deny the passive by not dying near Graves and by contesting the wave so Graves is not the one soaking every creep death
  • Spirit Resist items (Spirit Armor line) blunt the per-tick damage, which is small and resist-sensitive
  • Once tier 2 is online the slow is the real threat, not the damage — hold Dispel Magic or a movement active for the jar plus Grasping Hands combination

Interactions

  • Charges build off ANY nearby death, so contested lanes and jungle rotations refill it far faster than a fixed cooldown would
  • Deadheads keep applying damage while Graves is behind cover, so it pairs with Grasping Hands to punish someone stuck in the wall
  • Spirit Power items raise the per-hit damage directly; Escalating Exposure-style spirit amps benefit from the repeated small ticks
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 1: heals Graves a small amount for each death collected
  • Tier 2: Deadhead hits apply roughly a 30% slow for about 1 second
  • Tier 3: +2 additional Deadheads and +4 seconds of lifetime

Grasping Hands

Ability 2 · placed line/wall with root and summon

Raises a line of undead hands out of the ground that damages and immobilizes anyone passing through, spawns a Ghoul, and leaves a lingering rift behind. Alt-fire rotates the line before placing it.

What it is for: Graves's only real defensive button and the core of her zoning — it cuts a lane, a stairwell or a doorway in half and freezes whoever tries to walk through it.

Damage
roughly 90 spirit at base, +90 more at tier 2 (metabot.gg, deadlock.one)
Crowd control
immobilize (root) on enemies who pass through; tier 3 adds about +0.75s to the root
Mobility
none for Graves
Defensive
rooting a chaser behind the line is the main escape tool in the kit

How to play against it

  • It is a root, not a stun — keep shooting and keep using items; Dispel Magic clears it outright
  • Watch the cast and strafe around the end of the line rather than dashing through it; the wall has finite length even at tier 2
  • Air time beats it: jump, Bounce Pad, Rain of Arrows or any vertical mobility crosses over the hands
  • Before tier 3 the cooldown is long — force it out on a throwaway approach, then commit on the follow-up

Interactions

  • Alt-cast rotation matters: laid across a chokepoint it blocks, laid along a corridor it chases
  • The rift persists after the initial hands, so re-entering the area can be punished
  • Root, not stun — the victim can still shoot, use items and cast abilities
  • Tier 3 adds an extra Ghoul, which stacks with the Borrowed Decree summon pressure
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 2: +90 damage and +10m wall length
  • Tier 3: +1 Ghoul, about -14s cooldown and +0.75s immobilize

Essence Theft

Ability 3 · weapon passive stat steal

Graves's bullets siphon weapon damage and spirit resist from whoever they hit, transferring it to Graves up to a per-target cap.

What it is for: Rewards long, grinding gunfights: the longer Graves holds the trigger on a target, the weaker that target's gun gets and the softer they become to her spirit damage.

Damage
no direct damage of its own; steals up to about 25% of the target's weapon damage (deadlock.one)
Defensive
indirectly defensive — a carry with stolen weapon damage kills Graves more slowly

How to play against it

  • Break line of sight early — the steal accumulates per sustained hit, so a 2-second trade costs almost nothing while a 6-second one is devastating
  • Spirit Armor mitigates the payoff of the stolen spirit resist since her damage is mostly spirit
  • At tier 3 you also have to kill or walk away from her Ghouls and Deadheads, not just from Graves
  • Range is the cleanest answer: her falloff bottoms out near 17m, so fighting at 25m+ makes the steal nearly impossible to build

Interactions

  • Tier 3 lets her summons apply Essence Theft too, so Ghouls and Deadheads strip a target Graves is not even shooting
  • The spirit resist steal makes her ability damage hit harder on exactly the target she has been shooting
  • Wants sustained-fire weapon items (Rapid Rounds, Ricochet) and anything that keeps her magazine on target
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 3: +1 maximum steal target, and all Graves's summons apply Essence Theft

Borrowed Decree

Ultimate · placed summon structure (passive plus active)

Plants a gravestone that spawns Ghouls over time. The Ghouls march toward the enemy base and detonate near heroes or objectives for area spirit damage and a slow. Enemies can break the gravestone with two heavy melees.

What it is for: Free, unattended map pressure — it pushes a lane, contests an objective or adds a second front to a teamfight without Graves being present.

Damage
roughly 115 spirit on Ghoul detonation and about 40 melee per upgrade tier; summons around 180 health (deadlock.one)
Crowd control
area slow on Ghoul detonation
Defensive
a gravestone placed on your own walker or guardian turns a defensive hold into a stalemate the enemy has to spend time on

How to play against it

  • Two heavy melees kill the gravestone — walk to it and delete it instead of fighting the Ghoul stream forever
  • Ghouls have only around 180 health; any wave-clear ability (McGinnis turrets, Charged Shot, Powder Keg, Napalm) erases a wave of them
  • Fight away from the gravestone — its value is entirely positional and it cannot be moved once placed
  • At tier 3 the Ghoul death damage scales with your current health, so tanks specifically should not body-block the Ghouls

Interactions

  • Ghouls count as summons, so at Essence Theft tier 3 they also strip weapon damage and spirit resist from heroes they reach
  • Best value is on objectives — walkers, guardians and the Patron — where there is nobody to clear the Ghouls
  • The gravestone is a destructible object: two heavy melees remove it entirely, so cover matters more than placement range
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 1: +25% Ghoul move speed and about -15s cooldown
  • Tier 2: +10s duration and faster spawn cadence (about -0.3s spawn time)
  • Tier 3: Ghouls deal roughly +5% of the target's current health as damage when they die

Laning strengths

  • Jar of Dead charges off every creep death, so a lane Graves is winning snowballs the ability's uptime
  • Grasping Hands across the lane chokepoint denies a safe approach to the soul orbs and punishes anyone who steps up to secure
  • Essence Theft makes extended gun trades favorable if the opponent lets her hold the trigger inside 17m
  • Deadheads chip the wave and the enemy simultaneously, so contesting last hits is costly

Laning weaknesses

  • No dash, no vertical mobility and no escape beyond Grasping Hands — a lane bully with a gap-close simply walks onto her
  • Very short falloff (about 8m to 17m) means she loses every mid-range poke lane outright
  • Essence Theft earns nothing in short trades, so hit-and-run opponents deny her whole slot-3 identity
  • Grasping Hands is on a long cooldown pre-tier-3; once it is spent she has no defensive answer at all

Power spikes

  • ult unlock: Borrowed Decree converts her into permanent lane and objective pressure even while she is elsewhere on the map
  • Grasping Hands tier 2: +10m wall length turns it from a spot-block into a lane-wide cut, which is when her zoning starts controlling teamfights
  • Essence Theft tier 3: Summons begin applying the steal, so Ghouls and Deadheads debuff targets Graves never shoots
  • mid 20-35min: Objective phase — gravestones on walkers plus wall zoning is where her win rate lives; her scaling is space, not raw damage

Playing against Graves

  • Fight her past 20m — her falloff bottoms out around 17m, so Grey Talon, Vindicta or any mid-range poke makes Essence Theft literally unbuildable
  • Dive her: she has no dash and no escape once Grasping Hands is down, so a gap-closer (Phantom Strike, Abrams charge, Shiv dash) deletes her
  • Carry Dispel Magic specifically for the Grasping Hands immobilize — it is a root, so you keep shooting and items keep working while you clear it
  • Kill the gravestone with two heavy melees rather than fighting the Ghoul stream; the ult's entire value is the object surviving
  • Bring one wave-clear ability into the fight (Napalm, Charged Shot, Powder Keg, Arctic Beam) — Ghouls have roughly 180 health and evaporate to any AoE
  • Never take a long stationary gunfight inside 17m; two-second trades cost her the entire Essence Theft payoff

Bait these first

  • Grasping Hands first — it is her only defensive tool, has a long cooldown before tier 3, and once it is on cooldown she has no answer to a dive. Fake an approach down a chokepoint, let her place the wall, then commit from a different angle
  • Then Jar of Dead, since a jar spent on a creep wave is a jar that is not slowing you during the dive (tier 2 onward)
  • Borrowed Decree is worth baiting only when you can immediately break the gravestone with heavy melees — otherwise let her use it in a bad spot and simply fight elsewhere
  • Do not bait Essence Theft — it is a passive and cannot be spent; deny it with range and short trades instead

What Graves does to you

  • Grasping Hands across a doorway or stair roots you in place while Deadheads and Ghouls grind you down — the root itself is what kills you, not the wall damage
  • Essence Theft quietly strips up to about 25% of your weapon damage over a long fight; the carry who committed to a drawn-out duel with Graves loses it slowly and never notices why
  • Borrowed Decree gravestones sit on your walker and chip the objective while your team is forced to rotate back and clear Ghouls
  • Jar of Dead tier 2 slows stack with the Ghoul detonation slow, so walking out of her zone gets harder the deeper you are in it
  • She snowballs on contested lanes — every kill or creep death near her refunds Jar of Dead charges, so a losing lane gives her more ability uptime, not less

Punish windows

  • The moment Grasping Hands is placed and rotated — the cast has a visible tell and she is stationary during it
  • Any time she is holding a sustained gun angle inside 17m, because she is standing still to build Essence Theft stacks
  • Immediately after Borrowed Decree is planted — she is committed to a location that you now know, and the gravestone is a two-heavy-melee object
  • When her Jar of Dead charges are empty after a big wave clear, she has no chip damage and no slow for the next several seconds
  • Any fight she enters without Grasping Hands available — with zero mobility that is a free kill for any diver

Hardest matchups for Graves

Ranked by how far below Graves's own baseline each pairing measures — not by raw win rate.

Victor 49.1% -7.7 pts
Seven 50.1% -6.7 pts
Paige 51.0% -5.8 pts
Ivy 52.3% -4.5 pts
Mo & Krill 52.6% -4.2 pts
Warden 53.2% -3.6 pts
Dynamo 53.7% -3.1 pts
McGinnis 54.4% -2.4 pts

Best matchups for Graves

Same measure, other direction.

Mirage 63.4% +6.6 pts
Silver 63.2% +6.4 pts
Venator 62.1% +5.3 pts
Mina 61.6% +4.8 pts
Paradox 61.3% +4.5 pts
The Doorman 61.2% +4.4 pts
Sinclair 61.0% +4.2 pts
Pocket 60.7% +3.9 pts

Every Graves matchup

Analyse a full enemy team

Matchup pages cover one enemy. The tool reads all six together.

Open the tool as Graves
Sources and confidence for this record

Record confidence: Strong evidence. Compiled for patch 09-16-2026, researched 2026-09-21.

Difficulty rating: deadlocklabs.gg hero page lists in-game complexity as 2 of 3 stars (★★☆)