DenyPick
Patch 09-16-2026 Data researched 2026-09-21 What changed
HA Haze — assassin frame

Haze

AssassinCarry close range bullet damage late-game Low difficulty

Measured 53.1% win rate, 4.5% pick rate on patch 09-16-2026 across 104,927 matches.

Strengths

  • Highest single-target sustained DPS in the roster once Fixation is stacked
  • Invisibility plus sprint gives her total control over when a fight starts
  • Smoke Bomb tier 3 purges non-ultimate debuffs, so most CC applied before she cloaks is wasted
  • Scales into the late game harder than almost anything, because her damage is a per-target ramp rather than a fixed value

Weaknesses

  • Bullet Dance is a channel — one stun, silence or knockdown deletes her ultimate
  • Metal Skin, Ethereal Shift and Frozen Shelter each individually invalidate her damage window
  • Fixation stacks are per-target, so forced target-swapping guts her output
  • Weak, slow early game with no wave-clear; a team that pressures her before 15 minutes denies her scaling entirely

Weapon

submachine gun. Very high rate of fire (around 9.5 rounds per second) with tiny per-bullet damage (about 5.3) from a 25-round magazine, so her output is entirely about time on target rather than individual shots. Falloff starts at roughly 20m and bottoms out near 46m; headshots matter a lot because they generate triple Fixation stacks.

Abilities

Sleep Dagger

Ability 1 · thrown single-target skillshot with sleep

Throws a dagger that damages the target and puts them to sleep. Damaging a sleeping target wakes them almost immediately.

What it is for: Her opener and her escape button — it removes one enemy from a fight for a moment, or buys the seconds she needs to break away, and crucially it does not break Smoke Bomb invisibility.

Damage
about 65 at base spirit power (deadlock.one)
Crowd control
sleep (hard CC); target wakes roughly 0.1s after taking damage. Tier 2 adds about +1s sleep duration; tier 3 adds a 40% movement and dash slow for about 3s after waking
Defensive
sleeping a chaser is her cleanest disengage, and it works from inside Smoke Bomb

How to play against it

  • Have a teammate shoot you — any damage wakes a slept ally in about 0.1s, so a slept target near friends is barely CC'd at all
  • Dispel Magic removes the sleep; Unstoppable pre-cast makes you immune to it entirely
  • It is a thrown projectile with travel time — strafe, and do not stand still on a lane approach where she can dagger from stealth
  • Post-tier-3 the real threat is the 40% dash slow on wake, not the sleep — budget your escape item for after the wake, not before

Interactions

  • Does not break invisibility — she can dagger you while still cloaked
  • Tier 2 applying 15 Fixation stacks means the dagger is not just CC, it is a damage ramp head start
  • Any damage wakes the target almost instantly, including your own teammates' stray AoE — which is how you rescue a slept ally
  • It does NOT interrupt channeled abilities, so it cannot stop a channel the way a stun can
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 1: reduces the target's bullet resist by 10% for 6 seconds on wake-up
  • Tier 2: +1 second sleep duration and applies 15 Fixation stacks
  • Tier 3: about -17s cooldown, plus 40% movement and dash speed slow for 3 seconds after waking

Smoke Bomb

Ability 2 · self-invisibility with sprint

Vanishes from sight and gains bonus sprint speed. Attacking ends the invisibility, but using items does not. Enemies standing close enough can see through it.

What it is for: The button that defines her — it is her approach tool, her escape tool, and her reset tool, and it means she chooses when and where every fight involving her starts.

Mobility
significant sprint speed bonus while active; 2 charges at tier 2
Defensive
the strongest single-hero escape in the group — at tier 3 it also purges non-ultimate debuffs and grants 50% bullet lifesteal for 5s

How to play against it

  • Buy a revealer item and place vision on her flank routes — she has to physically walk the approach, invisibility does not teleport her
  • Stand near teammates: the proximity reveal means a grouped team simply sees her arrive
  • Splash damage flushes her — Napalm, Powder Keg, Entangling Thorns and Arctic Beam all hit a cloaked hero in the area
  • At tier 3 the purge means applying a slow before she cloaks is wasted; save your CC for after the cloak ends

Interactions

  • Items still work while invisible, so she can pop lifesteal or movement actives mid-cloak without revealing herself
  • Sleep Dagger does not break the invisibility, so she can open with CC while still hidden
  • There is a proximity reveal radius — standing close to her breaks the stealth regardless of what she does
  • Tier 3's debuff purge means slows, curses and most non-ultimate CC come off the moment she cloaks
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 2: grants 2 ability charges
  • Tier 3: removes non-ultimate debuffs on cast and grants 50% bullet lifesteal for 5 seconds

Fixation

Ability 3 · stacking per-target weapon damage passive

Each bullet that lands on a target adds a stack of bonus weapon damage against that specific target; headshots add three stacks instead of one.

What it is for: The reason she is a late-game carry — her damage against one target climbs the longer she stays on it, so a fight she is allowed to sustain in is a fight she wins.

Damage
roughly +0.2 weapon damage per stack at base; tier 3 adds about +0.11 per stack with weapon-damage scaling (as of 09-16-2026 the tier-3 weapon scaling was raised to 0.00035)
Crowd control
tier 1 applies about 40 spirit damage and a 12% slow for 2s every 20 stacks

How to play against it

  • Break line of sight for a few seconds — stacks decay, and forcing a reset costs her the entire ramp
  • Rotate who she is shooting: put a durable body between her and the carry so her stacks build on the target that does not mind
  • Bullet Armor and bullet-resist items scale well here because 100% of Fixation's payoff is weapon damage
  • Deny headshots by breaking her sightline vertically (crouch behind cover, use elevation) — headshots are 3x her stacking rate

Interactions

  • Stacks are per-target — switching targets throws away the entire ramp, which is the single biggest constraint on her play
  • Headshots grant 3 stacks (raised from 2 in the 09-16-2026 patch), so headshot-accuracy items and aim matter disproportionately
  • Sleep Dagger tier 2 pre-loads 15 stacks, so the dagger-then-shoot opener is far stronger than raw shooting
  • Ricochet and other multi-hit weapon items generate stacks faster because stacks come per bullet hit
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 1: every 20 stacks deals about 40 spirit damage and applies a 12% slow for 2 seconds
  • Tier 2: +40 maximum stacks and +5 seconds of stack duration
  • Tier 3: +0.11 damage per stack, and the bonus now scales with her weapon damage

Bullet Dance

Ultimate · channeled multi-target auto-fire

Enters a firing flurry, shooting her weapon at nearby enemies with perfect accuracy and added bullet damage.

What it is for: Her teamfight payoff — combined with Fixation stacks and lifesteal it turns her from a single-target assassin into something that deletes a grouped team, provided nobody interrupts her.

Damage
added bullet damage on top of her weapon; exact per-shot bonus not sourced for 09-16-2026
Mobility
tier 2 adds about +3 m/s move speed and +10% fire rate during the channel
Defensive
tier 3 grants 40% evasion, which is a substantial survivability window mid-ult

How to play against it

  • Interrupt the channel — Silence Wave, Knockdown, or any hero stun (Guided Owl, Concussive Combustion, Stone Form, Spirit Lasso) ends it immediately
  • Metal Skin makes you bullet-immune for the duration of the burst, which is the single cleanest personal answer
  • Ethereal Shift makes you untargetable through the worst of it; Kelvin's Frozen Shelter walls her out entirely
  • Do not group tightly when her ult is up — she hits nearby enemies, so spread denies the multi-target value even if you cannot stop the channel

Interactions

  • Perfect accuracy means Fixation stacks build at maximum rate during the ult, so she compounds into her own damage curve
  • Lifesteal items plus Smoke Bomb tier 3's 50% bullet lifesteal make her effectively unkillable mid-ult if nobody stops the channel
  • It is a channel — stuns, silences and knockdowns end it, which is the fundamental counterplay
  • Tier 3's roughly -65s cooldown means late game she can have it up for most fights
Upgrade tiers
  • Tier 2: +10% fire rate and about +3 m/s movement speed
  • Tier 3: 40% evasion and about -65s cooldown

Laning strengths

  • Smoke Bomb lets her reposition across the lane or rotate out of a losing trade with no cost
  • Sleep Dagger from stealth is a guaranteed opener on a laner who steps up to secure a soul orb
  • Fixation means that if the enemy laner ever commits to a long trade, she wins it on the back half

Laning weaknesses

  • Very low base bullet damage (about 5.3 per round) makes her one of the weakest early gun laners — she loses short trades to almost everyone
  • No wave-clear ability at all; she farms slowly and depends on raw gun damage
  • Low durability and no damage reduction, so a lane bully with a gap-close (Abrams, Infernus, Shiv) can simply walk her down before Smoke Bomb is upgraded
  • Fixation stacks reset when she has to disengage, so a harassing laner denies her whole scaling mechanic

Power spikes

  • ult unlock: Bullet Dance turns her from a single-pick threat into a fight-winning channel
  • Smoke Bomb tier 2: Two charges means she can approach AND escape in the same fight, which is when her pick pressure becomes constant
  • Sleep Dagger tier 2: The 15 pre-loaded Fixation stacks massively shorten her time-to-kill on an opener
  • late 40min+: Fixation tier 3's weapon-damage scaling plus stacked lifesteal items makes her the strongest single-target DPS on the map

Playing against Haze

  • Buy Metal Skin and hold it for Bullet Dance — bullet immunity turns her ultimate into nothing
  • Bring one hard interrupt for the channel: Silence Wave, Knockdown, Guided Owl, Concussive Combustion, Stone Form or Spirit Lasso all end Bullet Dance instantly
  • Stack Bullet Armor — her entire damage profile including Fixation's bonus is weapon damage, so bullet resist is a pure counter, not a partial one
  • Group and use the proximity reveal on Smoke Bomb: a team standing together simply sees her arrive and never gives her an isolated target
  • Contest her before 15 minutes — she has no wave-clear and very low base bullet damage, so early pressure permanently sets back a hero whose whole plan is scaling
  • Break line of sight for a few seconds mid-fight to wipe her Fixation stacks and force her to rebuild the ramp

Bait these first

  • Smoke Bomb first — before tier 2 she has one charge, and a Haze without Smoke Bomb has no approach and no escape. Show a fake target, make her cloak to reposition, then collapse
  • Sleep Dagger second: force it on a durable frontliner who can be woken instantly by a teammate's chip damage, which wastes both the CC and the 15-stack Fixation head start
  • Bullet Dance last — bait it with a target who is holding Ethereal Shift or Metal Skin, so the channel is spent on someone who cannot be hurt by it
  • Do not try to bait Fixation — it is a passive; deny it with line of sight breaks and target rotation instead

What Haze does to you

  • Sleep Dagger from inside Smoke Bomb opens with hard CC that she throws while still invisible — you often do not see her before you are asleep
  • Fixation makes her time-to-kill drop the longer you fight her; the exchange you were winning at second two you are losing at second six
  • Bullet Dance with perfect accuracy plus stacked lifesteal means a full-health squishy dies through their own healing if the channel is not interrupted
  • Smoke Bomb tier 3 purges your slows and curses on cast, so pre-applied CC does not stick to her
  • She picks off anyone who walks a jungle rotation alone — isolated farming is where her entire kill pattern lives

Punish windows

  • The moment Smoke Bomb ends or is broken by her first shot — she is a low-durability hero standing in your line of sight with no escape for the cooldown
  • The entire Bullet Dance channel if you have any interrupt: she is committed and the ult goes on full cooldown
  • Her 2.35s reload with a 25-round magazine — at 9.5 rounds per second she empties fast and reloads often
  • Pre-15 minutes generally: no wave-clear, low base damage, and Fixation not yet upgraded
  • Right after a Sleep Dagger is used on a woken-up ally — the dagger has a long cooldown before tier 3, and without it her opener is just walking at you

Hardest matchups for Haze

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

Graves 45.2% -7.9 pts
Seven 47.2% -5.9 pts
Calico 49.0% -4.1 pts
Abrams 49.2% -3.9 pts
Warden 49.3% -3.8 pts
Vyper 49.4% -3.7 pts
Apollo 49.8% -3.3 pts
Celeste 50.2% -2.9 pts

Best matchups for Haze

Same measure, other direction.

Sinclair 57.6% +4.5 pts
Venator 55.3% +2.2 pts
Shiv 55.2% +2.1 pts
Mina 54.8% +1.7 pts
Grey Talon 54.5% +1.4 pts
The Doorman 54.2% +1.1 pts
Paradox 53.9% +0.8 pts
Holliday 52.9% -0.2 pts

Every Haze matchup

Analyse a full enemy team

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

Open the tool as Haze
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 1 of 3 stars (★☆☆)