IIITankbuster
Charges up over time with bonus spirit damage , causing abilities dealing more than 165 damage to deal additional damage. Ignores Spirit Resistance.
How Tankbuster is performing now
Ability cadence
Charges up over time with bonus spirit damage , causing abilities dealing more than 165 damage to deal additional damage. Ignores Spirit Resistance.
Tankbuster functions as ability cadence within the Spirit shop. The strategic value is changing how often—or for how long—a key ability can influence the fight. Because it is a core mid-to-late purchase, the right comparison is the fight pattern it unlocks versus the other purchases that the same 3,200 souls could complete.
When Tankbuster belongs in the build
- A specific ability is central to your initiation, damage, rescue, or escape pattern.
- The extra cast, charge, or duration produces more value than a flat-stat purchase at the same price.
- You can reliably survive long enough to use the improved cadence more than once.
- Your important ability is limited by positioning or target access rather than cooldown or duration.
- The affected cast does not scale meaningfully with the item's stated benefit.
- A direct damage or defensive breakpoint is more urgent than another ability cycle.
Timing, movement, and hero fit
Tankbuster is a core mid-to-late purchase at 3,200 souls. Judge it against the next fight and the purchases it delays, not only against its isolated tooltip value.
Lock Lab has not received a reliable current sample for Tankbuster yet, so no performance conclusion should be drawn from missing data.
What else the same budget can buy
It occupies the same 3,200-soul price point. Inflict damage over time to a target, dealing damage based on their current health. Decay's damage is non-lethal and does…
COMPARE ITEM →Disarming HexIt occupies the same 3,200-soul price point. Disarms enemy target and reduces their Bullet Resist .
COMPARE ITEM →Greater ExpansionIt occupies the same 3,200-soul price point. Increases the range and effect radius of your abilities and items.
COMPARE ITEM →How Tankbuster has changed
- No longer procs off of items
- Current Health Bonus Damage increased from 7.5% to 8%
Tankbuster strategy, mistakes, and counterplay
Reviewed for the current high-volume item set. Live popularity and hero-fit evidence remain in the Item Pulse above.
Tankbuster rewards a qualifying high-damage Spirit hit against targets whose health pool makes the extra pressure meaningful. It belongs on abilities that cross the trigger consistently, not on scattered low-damage ticks.
Buying it into fragile targets or before the chosen ability reaches the trigger. The item can look powerful in theory while contributing nothing to normal casts.
Spirit resistance, barriers, and spacing can reduce or absorb the triggering hit. Squishier heroes should avoid being the convenient target used to start the proc pattern.
Confirm the ability's real post-resistance hit, then add Tankbuster when durable frontliners are surviving the rotation and Mystic Burst no longer matches the target profile.
Mystic Burst is the earlier, lower-threshold proc. Escalating Exposure favors repeated hits, while Tankbuster specializes in heavier single impacts against larger targets.
Tankbuster in Deadlock builds
Item strength depends on hero kit, purchase timing, lobby rank, and the current patch. Use the hero pages below to compare this item against complete build paths instead of treating a single item as universally optimal.
Transparent reference, original analysis
Live performance and purchase timing come from community-indexed match records. Lock Lab's rates, comparison windows, confidence labels, and hero-affinity analysis are original calculations—not official Valve recommendations.
VIEW ANALYTICS SOURCE ↗Current-patch all-ranks sample · refreshed automatically