Now, to the actual loadout.

The big must-haves in Dredge's deck building are Dark Bargain and Expansive Vault.

Dark Bargain is the single best healing card in the game and there is no competition. At lvl 5 it grants 250 health per second just for standing near a portal. Something you should be doing at all times anyway as stepping into one is one of very few sources of complete invincibility in this game. The amount of ultimates I've dodged with well timed teleports is crazy.

The range of Dark Bargain is also very generous and goes through terrain. A portal under the point of Warder's Gate can heal you if you are standing on the point and vice versa. Placing portals within healing range of each other on opposite sides of terrain is very useful when clutching, because it means you get healing both during your invincibility and after teleporting, so you can get back in fighting shape as quickly as possible.

Expansive Vault is extremely strong at lvl 1 because the jump strength and number of empowered jumps is unaffected by level. The only thing that increases is the time during which the empowered jump is available. A few patches ago the base duration was even changed from 1 second to 2.5, so now there is even less reason to upgrade this card. The jump height is honestly quite extreme, and combined with wall-jumping you can reach some incredible heights. This card is one of the biggest reasons why Timbermill is my favourite Dredge map. It also has really good synergy with Abyss Spike as mentioned earlier.

Dreadnought is here because we are trying to be as tanky as possible. Every point we put into this card is an exponential addition to our survivability because more time spent alive = more time healing = more time spent alive, and because we are planning on buying two % based additions to our effective health that stack multiplicatively with each other (Veteran and Haven).

Crow's Nest is another card I personally think should be in every loadout because it literally just adds a completely new tool to your kit with very little investment. Every extra level only amounts to an additional 30% of the base knock-back, so on paper this is definitely more optimal at lvl 1. However for my purposes I found lvl 3 to be the sweet spot as it allows me to do all of the jumps I like to do with high consistency. Remember to use it to nudge yourself out of stuff like an Evie ult. Preferably towards or into a portal.

Hull piercer is a really strong cooldown card that is especially good with Abyss Spike. I run it as filler and am very used to managing it with the current cooldown, but stealing some levels from Crow's Nest is perfectly fine too.

As Far as items go we build effective health (Veteran, Haven) and movement speed (Nimble). Effective health for the exponential synergy with our lvl 5 as mentioned. Movement speed for better access to our portals, improved kiting, and because it increases the effectiveness of our mobility cards.

Resilience is usually the last item, but a lot of items work in this slot if cc isn't a problem.

Even though we work well with wrecker, it's rarely needed as pretty much every capture point has some sort of structure to bounce broadsides off of in such a way that they land behind the shield. Barik's Dome Shield is pretty much the only counter to this, but we can just hold Kraken to push him out of it. If we ever do need to melt shields, our shield damage is completely viable without wrecker. Wrecker is absolutely a strong Dredge item, but it's rarely necessary if you play smart.

Update:

With the new item changes we start Veteran and Nimble. After that I tend to get Armor Plating. Then either Arcane Warding or Sentinel. Generaly my 3rd and 4th item will be any combination of Armor Plating, Arcane Warding, Sentinel and Unbound.