Deadlock Patch Notes October 5, 2026: Rat King and Sinclair Nerfs Explained

Every change in the update

Valve posted the Minor Update on the official Deadlock changelog on October 5 at 4 pm Pacific. It touches two heroes and one general bug. Nothing changed for items, the map or Ranked rules.

Rat King

• Scrap Grenade: fixed bugs in how the bouncing grenade picks its targets.
• Scrap Grenade: damage per blast up from 65 to 70, and the tier 2 bonus up from +65 to +70.
• Rat Swarm: base cooldown down from 28 s to 24 s.
• Rule, Ratannia!: the bonus move speed no longer scales with spirit power, and Rat King falls faster while charging.
• Rule, Ratannia!: the cooldown, damage reduction, radius and charge time were all cut, as the table below shows.

Value	Before	After
Cooldown	130 s	160 s
Cooldown, fully upgraded	110 s	160 s
Ally damage reduction	20%	15%
Damage reduction, fully upgraded	35%	25%
Radius	24 m	20 m
Charge time	12 s	10 s
Charge time, fully upgraded	20 s	10 s
Tier 1 move speed	+1 m/s	+2 m/s
Tier 2 flag duration	+8 s	+5 s

The fully upgraded rows are the real story. Tier 1 used to take 20 s off the cooldown and tier 2 used to add 8 s of charge time. Both bonuses are gone, so a maxed banner now comes up about 30% less often, protects allies for less and covers a smaller area.

Sinclair

• Base health regen halved, from 2 to 1 per second.
• Gun: bullet damage down from 17.76 to 16.5, and falloff range from 25-61 m to 20-60 m. Spectral Assistant's gun got the same falloff change.
• Vexing Bolt: now deals half damage to objectives.
• Rabbit Hex: radius down from 6.5 m to 6 m, and the tier 3 bonus from +3 m to +2 m.
• Audience Participation: a copied ultimate now lasts 9 s instead of 12 s, and its copied cooldown went up from 40% to 60%.

General

• Fixed bugs that made troopers walk too slowly in lane.

What it means in a match

Rat King's laning got slightly better and his team fights got noticeably worse. Scrap Grenade and Rat Swarm come out more often or hit harder, but the banner that won fights on its own is now a once-a-fight tool with a long wait. Play him as a brawler who uses Rat Swarm to shred bullet resist, and treat the banner as the finisher, not the plan. His full kit with the new numbers is in our Rat King guide.

Sinclair lost a little of everything: less damage and range on his gun, half his base regen, and a copied ultimate that lasts a quarter less and costs more. The objective nerf to Vexing Bolt hurts players who used it to push towers from safety.

Win rates before and after

Hero	Before	Since October 6	Place among 40 heroes
Rat King	59.7%	53.7%	1st to 7th
Sinclair	50.0%	44.7%	17th to 37th

The patch did what it was meant to do. Rat King dropped about six points but is still a strong pick, now seventh of 40 heroes in Ranked. Sinclair fell from the middle of the pack to near the bottom. Where every hero stands now is in our Deadlock tier list.

How we measured it: public ranked match data. For Rat King, before means October 3 to 5, his first full days; for Sinclair, September 30 to October 5. After means October 6 to 8 for both.

What comes next

Baba, the second City Never Sleeps hero, arrived the next day; our Baba guide covers her kit and first numbers. Solomon, the chess master, followed on October 9; our Solomon guide covers his kit. The next hero is due on Tuesday, October 13 at 2 pm Pacific, and Ranked Beta Season 1 now runs until November 5. Our season reset guide explains what happens then, and the next round of balance changes is in our October 14 patch notes.