Rat King Deadlock Guide: Abilities, Upgrades, Tunnels and How to Play Him

Who is Rat King?

In Deadlock's story, Rat King is Louis, ruler of the New York Warrens, a crowned rat who climbs out of the sewers with a plan to claim Long Island as the rat nation of Ratannia. The game tags him Scrappy, Regal and Tenacious, which is a fair summary of how he plays.

Valve does not assign official roles in Deadlock. Launch coverage called him a tank, and his kit backs that up: a short-range gun, a barrier and a team-wide defensive ultimate all want him near the front of a fight.

Weapon and base stats

His gun, Sovereign's Decree, fires two pellets per shot, and one of them always lands exactly on your aim point.

Abilities and upgrade tiers

How the tunnels work

Rat King can crouch at a vent to drop into the tunnels and pop out at another one. Squeezing in is a 1.7 second channel, so enter where nobody is watching. The key limit: you cannot enter or leave while in combat. Tunnels are a rotation and flanking tool, not an escape button, so decide where you want to arrive before the fight starts. Every vent route is on our Deadlock tunnel map.

• Use tunnels to move between lanes while the enemy thinks you are still farming.
• Pop out behind a fight that has already started, so your first action is a swarm on their backline.
• Do not plan to tunnel out of a losing duel. You will be in combat, and the vent will not take you.

How to play him

1. Open with Rat Swarm. Each bite lowers bullet resist, so your spreadshot and your team's guns hit harder on that target for the rest of the fight.
2. Throw Scrap Grenade where the enemy is going. The slows keep targets inside your short weapon range, and the last blast is the biggest.
3. Save Royal Pestments for burst you cannot block any other way. It absorbs pure damage, which most barriers do not, and at Tier 3 it caps every hit at 250 damage.
4. Plant the banner where your team will fight. Move speed, slow immunity and damage reduction are team tools, and the slam hits hardest when enemies are already inside.
5. Fight inside 20 meters. Past that, your damage drops off until it bottoms out at 50 meters.

How to fight against Rat King

• Dash to shake off his rats, since a dash removes a latched rat.
• Dispel effects clear his grenade and swarm debuffs.
• Unstoppable shuts down the crowd control from his grenade and banner slam.
• Against a Tier 3 Royal Pestments, many small hits beat a single big burst, because each hit is capped at 250.
• Fight him at range. His gun falls off from 20 meters.
• Rem, Mo & Krill and Calico in Ava form fit through the same vents, so they can follow him in.

Rat King won about 60% of ranked games in his first days. The October 5 update cut his banner's damage reduction, radius and charge time and raised its cooldown from 130 to 160 s, while buffing Scrap Grenade and Rat Swarm a little. Since then he wins 53.5%, still A tier on our Deadlock tier list.

Rat King in Ranked

Rat King launched with a temporary exemption: new heroes can be picked in Ranked without the usual 15 Standard wins for a limited time after release, which is why he appeared in about seven of every ten ranked games in his first two days. He does not count toward the three ranked heroes you need, and once the window closes he needs 15 Standard wins like anyone else. Standard games are still where you learn tunnel routes and banner timing. The sandbox is the fastest way to check his falloff. Our City Never Sleeps heroes guide tracks who comes next.