XDefiant is Ubisoft’s take on an arena shooter, with five playable factions at launch. These are essentially classes, each with unique active, passive, and ultra abilities. While the game is set to release a new faction every season, the current set of classes already fits a variety of playstyles. Players who like disrupting enemy abilities, like Valorant’s KAY/O or Overwatch 2’s Sombra, will love the DedSec Faction.
The different factions in XDefiant are pulled from Ubisoft’s popular franchises, like The Division and Splinter Cell. DedSec hails from the Watch Dogs series, so it’s no surprise that this class’ skill set is all about hacking, with a bit of crowd control. Such abilities can significantly turn the tides of a match if timed and executed properly, making the DedSec annoying and downright scary to play against.
The DedSec’s Disruptive and Deadly Skill Set
The hackers of the DedSec faction are masters of sabotage, perfect for players who like playing mind games with the enemy team. The class’ passive trait, Fabricator, 3-D prints gadgets after they’re deployed. For active abilities, DedSec has the most frightening one: the Spiderbot. This gadget hugs the nearest enemy's face and stuns them. This class can also hack deployed enemy abilities, like the Cleaners’ Incinerator Drone, and make it their own through the Hijack skill. Lastly, DedSec’s Ultra ability is called Lockout, which is similar to Killjoy’s Lockdown ult in Valorant. It disables nearby enemies’ abilities, minimaps, and heads-up displays.
While players don’t have to be geniuses like XDefiant’s hackers, they need to play smart to get the most value out of the faction’s abilities. For example, one could Hijack an opponent Libertad’s El Remedio canister to stop them from healing to full HP. A DedSec could also control an opponent Phantom’s Mag Barrier in XDefiant at a capture zone, rendering their team defenseless against a retake. Speaking of retakes, DedSecs can also deny enemies from doing so with a well-timed Lockout. Players who place their Spiderbots in unpredictable places can catch opponents off-guard, and it would be an easy kill once the spider latches onto them.
The Origins of XDefiant's DedSec Faction
The DedSec’s members are cyber attackers who believe in dismantling the systems of power, according to XDefiant’s official description of the faction. This portrayal perfectly describes their role in the Watch Dogs franchise as well. The history of the organization can be as blurry as its members’ faces on CCTV footage. However, it’s believed that its founders were engineers who unwillingly took legal liability for their private security firm employers’ atrocities. This resulted in them being jailed. After being released, they formed the group to fight corporate corruption through the only way they knew how: cyber warfare.
Within the faction are the Chicago and San Francisco branches. Chicago has a more serious and violent approach to its activism, as evidenced by the fact that it hired Watch Dogs protagonist, Aiden Pearce, to kill their enemies. The members of San Francisco, as seen in Watch Dogs 2, are more focused on non-lethal methods like pranks and building underground support through their app.
The group also grew outside the U.S. Its London branch was under fire in Watch Dogs: Legion because it was framed for a terrorist attack. The future of DedSec currently hangs in the balance, as it’s rumored that the Watch Dog franchise might be retiring, as most of its senior designers have either left Ubisoft or have moved on to other projects.
DedSec is a unique faction in XDefiant because its abilities prevent enemies from using theirs. It also has one of the most potent stuns in the game with its Spiderbot. Apart from its skills, DedSec’s backstory is also popular because of its significant presence in the Watch Dogs franchise. For these reasons, this faction may be wreaking havoc across all game modes and maps until Ubisoft introduces another hacker-type class.
XDefiant is currently in development.