Graves Deadlock Guide: Abilities, Best Build, Counters and Lore

Who is Graves?

Darcy Graves is the daughter of two high-powered defense attorneys, a teenager who found the cemetery quieter than a home where every talk turned into an argument. A voice there led her to a lead-lined box buried in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx and to the severed hand of a lich looking for a student. Now she studies necromancy next to her homework at Blackmore Academy and helps the restless dead with their unfinished business. The game tags her Morbid, Area Denial and Necromancer, files her with the mystics and gives her a complexity of 2, one step above the simplest heroes such as Paige and Haze. She joined Deadlock on January 29, 2026, as the second hero chosen in the Old Gods, New Blood vote.

The Teacher and base stats

Her weapon, The Teacher, is a beam that latches onto the target nearest your crosshair within 20 m, so there is little to aim once it connects. It cannot land headshots, and according to the Deadlock Wiki every 13th hit in a row deals double damage, about 1.3 seconds of steady fire. Reloading or losing the target resets that count.

The beam is not where most of her damage comes from. Every ability deals spirit damage, through the Deadheads, the wall of hands or the Ghoul explosions, which is why nearly every Graves build is a spirit build with a few weapon items on top. Her 730 health is on the low side of a roster where 780 is typical.

Graves abilities and upgrade tiers

How her summons work

• Deadheads come from Jar of Dead. Each has 20 health, lasts 10 s and follows you around when no enemy is close. Build notes often call them skulls.
• Ghouls come from Grasping Hands and her ultimate, Borrowed Decree. They have 180 health plus 8 per boon, live for 20 s, hit troopers and Haunts for 40 and chase visible enemy heroes within 30 m.
• Haunts attack Ghouls once they are alerted.
• Summons are worth souls to the enemy: 7 for a Deadhead, more as the match goes on, and 35 for a Ghoul plus 2 for every minute played.
• Heroic Aura is one of the items that also boosts her Deadheads, which is why it shows up in so many Graves builds.
• The gravestone shows on the enemy minimap and breaks after two heavy melee hits.

Which ability to max first

Maxed first	Share of games	Win rate
Grasping Hands	56.7%	57.8%
Jar of Dead	19.8%	55.7%
Essence Theft	15.9%	54.4%
Borrowed Decree	7.6%	53.2%

Jar of Dead owns the lane. 84% of players unlock it first and 80% spend their first upgrade on it as well, for the heal on every death the jar collects. After that most switch to the wall, and maxing Grasping Hands first is both the most common choice and the one with the best record. The most common full order, seen in about one game in five, maxes Grasping Hands, then Borrowed Decree, then Essence Theft. Maxing Borrowed Decree first has the weakest record of the four.

Best Graves build: what players buy

Graves opens with lane sustain and cheap spirit. Restorative Shot, bought in 79% of games at about minute 2, heals her every few seconds when a shot lands, and Extra Spirit and Extra Stamina follow before minute 8. Mystic Shot adds a spirit hit to her beam every 8 seconds, and Arcane Surge makes the first ability after a dash-jump reach further, last longer and hit harder, which suits a wall you want to drop at range. Improved Spirit around minute 11 is her first big spirit item.

The middle of the build stretches her ability windows. Duration Extender and later Superior Duration keep the wall and the gravestone up longer, and Enchanter's Emblem adds spirit power and cooldown reduction while she stays above 65% health. Toxic Bullets, around minute 21, turns a beam that never misses a locked target into a steady bleed on tanks, and Boundless Spirit near minute 29 is the late spirit spike. Echo Shard, bought in 31% of games, resets a non-ultimate ability for a second wall or jar. We list how often items are bought rather than their win rates, because late items always look better: only games that last long enough get to buy them.

The most favorited community build

YT Farmingbip Spirit Build Annotated has more favorites than any other Graves build and wins 58.9% of the games it was picked in, 2.7 percentage points above Graves overall. Its author calls her a strong laner and explains nearly every pick: Restorative Shot is the main lane heal, Toxic Bullets makes side-lane fights easy against the many tanks in the roster, and Counterspell, which blocks an enemy ability with a parry, answers Bebop's bombs and the big ultimates of Infernus, Vindicta, Lash and Rem. Ability points go to Jar of Dead twice, then the other three, then a second point in Essence Theft before Grasping Hands, Jar of Dead, Borrowed Decree and Essence Theft are maxed in that order.

Two other builds are worth a look. Hudini's spooky scary skeletons, picked in 1,110 games with a 54.5% win rate, leans fully into the summons, names 4,800 souls in spirit items and 4,800 in weapon items with Toxic Bullets as its power spikes, and suggests dropping Borrowed Decree on a lane to push it. Chemical Burns (Dr. Spooki von Spookenstein), 1,070 games at 56.9%, splits after the core into a Ghoul explosion path with Tankbuster, Mystic Reverb and Spirit Burn, and a debuff path with Healbane, Slowing Hex and Knockdown.

How to play Graves

1. Stay where things die. A team fight fills the jar far faster than farming alone, and cooldown reduction lowers how much death each charge needs.
2. Put Grasping Hands where enemies have to cross it: across a lane, a doorway or the street behind a target you are chasing. Alt-cast turns the wall so it blocks the street instead of running along it.
3. Keep the beam on one target. Essence Theft needs 4 s of hits for its full steal, and switching targets lets it fade.
4. Throw jars at the start of a fight. Deadheads last only 10 s and go for whoever your beam is on, so open with a jar on your first target.
5. Use Borrowed Decree to push. Ghouls walk toward the enemy base on their own, so a gravestone in a lane keeps pressure on it while you fight somewhere else.

How to counter Graves

• Fight her from beyond 20 m. Her beam cannot lock on from there, and its damage already falls off past 7.6 m.
• Do not walk through Grasping Hands while it is up. Crossing the wall is what deals the damage and the immobilize, and it lasts only 5 s.
• Break the gravestone with two heavy melee hits. It shows on your minimap.
• Farm her summons. Ghouls give 35 souls plus 2 per minute and take 48% extra damage from headshots.
• Keep trades short. Essence Theft takes 4 s to reach its full steal, so quick exchanges leave you with more of your weapon damage.
• Buy spirit resist, since all her abilities deal spirit damage. Monster Rounds, which adds weapon damage against troopers and camps, also hits her Deadheads harder.

Graves matchups

Graves wins more than she loses against almost everyone: only Paige, Rat King and Seven hold her under 50%. Four of her five hardest opponents, Paige, Rat King, Seven and Haze, sit with Graves herself in the top five by win rate over the same days, so much of this list is simply who is strong right now. Ranked games alone point the same way. Ivy, Kelvin, Paige, Rat King and Haze are her hardest opponents there, all between 48% and 49.2%, while Paradox, Solomon, The Doorman, Shiv and Rem are her easiest, all above 59%.

Is Graves good right now?

Average rank in the match	Win rate
Initiate to Mystic	54.8%
Ritualist to Oracle	54.5%
Phantom to Eternus	51.2%

Yes. Across about 210,000 games since the October 5 patch she wins 56.2%, second only to Paige, and in Ranked 54.3%, fourth of 41, while showing up in about one ranked match in three. Her edge is biggest in the lower brackets, where she is the second best hero up to Mystic, and it narrows toward the top: sixth from Ritualist to Oracle and 13th from Phantom up. Her daily win rate stayed between 55.8% and 56.9% all week and her kit has not changed since September 16, so this is not a post-patch spike. She sits in S tier on our Deadlock tier list, and our characters guide counts her among the best picks for new players, who win 55.6% of their games on her.

Latest Graves changes

Graves has not been nerfed in City Never Sleeps. Her last balance change was a buff on September 16, 2026, which raised her health per boon from 33 to 35, and the September 29 update only let her beam destroy Venator's traps. The last big rework of her kit came on July 9, 2026: Grasping Hands' immobilize dropped from 1.25 s to 1 s while its Tier 3 cooldown cut grew from 10 s to 14 s, Essence Theft started building from melee hits and gained a fourth target at Tier 3, Jar of Dead filled faster from neutral camps and healed more with spirit power, and Borrowed Decree's Ghoul speed bonus moved from Tier 2 to Tier 1.

Graves lore and trivia

Her weapon is called The Teacher, the role the lich plays in her story, and her codename in the game files is Necro. While you play her in the Hideout, your friends list shows Playing With The Dead in the Hideout. The files also hold names of abilities that are not part of her current kit: Gravedigging, Borrow Life, Back Off!, Haunting Spectres and Wither & Die.

Blackmore Academy is Apollo's school too. In his story he was sent to New York for his own safety and now captains the Blackmore fencing team, so Graves and Apollo go to the same school.