Deadlock Tier List and Meta (October 2026): Best Heroes for Ranked

The tier list

Each tier is a win rate band. Two points of win rate sound small, but across thousands of games they are the difference between a hero that climbs and one that holds you in place. Pick your bracket to see the grades for the ranks you play in, and filter by role to find the strongest Brawler, Marksman, Mystic or Assassin.

All ranksInitiate to MysticRitualist to OraclePhantom to Eternus

All rolesBrawlersMarksmenMysticsAssassins

1. S54% and up

   • Paige55.9%
   • Kelvin54.9%
   • Rat King54.5%
   • Graves54.3%
   • Ivy54.1%

2. A52 to 54%

   • Haze53.9%
   • Seven53.6%
   • Dynamo53.6%
   • Wraith52.8%
   • Victor52.3%

3. B50 to 52%

   • Abrams51.7%
   • Apollo51.4%
   • Lash51.1%
   • Vindicta51.0%
   • Vyper50.8%
   • Celeste50.2%

4. C48 to 50%

   • Drifter49.8%
   • Holliday49.7%
   • Mo & Krill49.4%
   • Yamato49.3%
   • Calico49.3%
   • Baba49.0%
   • Billy48.1%

5. D46 to 48%

   • Lady Geist47.9%
   • Rem47.8%
   • Infernus47.7%
   • Venator47.7%
   • Mina47.6%
   • Silver47.6%
   • Viscous46.7%
   • Bebop46.6%
   • McGinnis46.5%
   • The Doorman46.4%

6. FBelow 46%

   • Pocket45.6%
   • Grey Talon45.3%
   • Sinclair45.3%
   • Paradox45.3%
   • Shiv45.2%
   • Warden44.3%
   • Mirage43.5%
   • Solomon41.5%

Why the top heroes win

Best heroes at your rank

Brackets use the average rank of everyone in the match, and the overall list leans on lower ranks because that is where most games are played: about 51,000 of the week's matches fall in Initiate to Mystic, 31,000 in Ritualist to Oracle and 19,000 in Phantom to Eternus. The leader changes with the bracket: Paige is first up to Oracle and Kelvin from Phantom up. Higher brackets also favor harder heroes, and Vyper and Celeste climb from C tier at the bottom to A tier at the top.

Heroes that get better or worse as you climb

Hero	Initiate to Mystic	Ritualist to Oracle	Phantom to Eternus
Vyper	49.5%	51.1%	53.3%
Viscous	45.8%	46.3%	49.6%
Holliday	48.4%	49.9%	51.9%
Celeste	48.9%	51.1%	52.2%
Shiv	43.8%	46.1%	46.7%
Lady Geist	49.0%	46.3%	44.7%
Graves	54.8%	54.5%	50.8%
Calico	50.9%	48.3%	48.1%
Apollo	52.2%	51.3%	49.9%
Victor	52.9%	51.9%	50.7%

• Vyper, Viscous, Holliday and Celeste reward execution. They lose more often in low ranks, where players are still learning them, and win 3.3 to 3.8 points more in the top bracket, where everyone knows their combos.
• Graves, Calico, Apollo and Victor do their best work in low ranks and lose 2.2 to 4.0 points by the top bracket. Lady Geist drops the furthest, from 49.0% to 44.7%.
• If you are climbing out of low ranks, the second group gets you there faster. If you are already in Oracle or above, the first group is worth the practice.

Most banned heroes

Bans follow frustration more than strength. Sinclair, The Doorman and Bebop are among the five most banned heroes, yet none of them wins more than 47% of ranked games. Celeste tops the list again, and at Phantom and above, where she wins 52.2%, the ban has some backing. Paige, the strongest hero overall, draws about 1% of all bans, and Rat King, Baba and Solomon have no recorded bans in this window.

What about Baba and Solomon?

Both are new, so treat their grades as provisional. Baba arrived on October 6 and now wins 49.0% in Ranked, a C, up from 40.9% over her first three days. Solomon arrived on October 9 and sits last at 41.5%, an F, which is normal while players learn a hero: Rat King's own numbers moved a lot in his first week. Our Baba guide and Solomon guide track how both are doing, and the City Never Sleeps heroes guide covers the rest of the new releases.

How this tier list was built

• Source: public match data, ranked matches only.
• Window: October 6 to 12, 2026, the first week after the October 5 patch. Solomon counts from his release on October 9.
• Every hero has at least 8,000 ranked games in the window, so the overall grades are accurate to about one point. Bracket samples are smaller, down to about 900 games for Warden at Phantom and above, so a hero next to a tier line there can swap places from week to week.
• Win rate shows how a hero does in the hands of the people who play it. It does not tell you how well you will do on a hero you have never played.

We refresh the list after every balance patch. Win and pick rates for every hero by rank, experience and match length are on our win rates page. For the ranks behind these brackets, see the Deadlock rank distribution, and for what every hero does, our full character list.