Rat King arrived on October 2 as the first of the six heroes from the Deadlock City Never Sleeps update. On October 5, Valve shipped a patch aimed mostly at him: Minor Update 10-05-2026 went live at 4:05pm Pacific.
What changed
The main target was his ultimate, Rule, Ratannia!, the banner he plants in the middle of a fight.
| Rule, Ratannia! | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Cooldown | 130s (110s with the first upgrade) | 160s |
| Damage reduction | 20%, 35% total with upgrades | 15%, 25% total |
| Radius | 24m | 20m |
| Charge duration | 12s (20s with the second upgrade) | 10s |
| Flag duration from the second upgrade | +8s | +5s |
The bonus move speed no longer scales with spirit, although the first upgrade now gives +2 m/s instead of +1. He also falls faster while charging.
In return, Valve gave the rest of his kit a little more:
- Scrap Grenade: damage 65 → 70, with bounce targeting bugs fixed;
- Rat Swarm: cooldown 28s → 24s.
The same patch also nerfed Sinclair: less health regen, lower gun damage and range, and copied ultimates now last 9 seconds instead of 12.
What the numbers showed
We counted normal-mode matches across all ranks in three periods (data from deadlock-api.com, UTC):
| Period | Rat King games | Win rate | Pick share | Win rate rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2 to Oct 5, before the nerf | 288,798 | 61.4% | 8.1% | 1 |
| Oct 5 to Oct 15, after the nerf | 755,389 | 56.2% | 6.9% | 3 |
| Oct 15 to Oct 22, after the October 14 patch | 548,937 | 56.5% | 5.2% | 2 |
The nerf took almost five points off his win rate, and no more. After the Deadlock patch October 14, which left him alone, he is back at 56.5%. Only Graves is higher at 57.6%. He is also the second most picked hero, behind only Deadman Danny (5.6% against 5.2%).
Pick share is his slice of all heroes picked in the period. Even in his third week, roughly one player in twenty picks him; in his first days it was one in twelve. Pros respect him too: he was banned in 24 of 77 pro games in October, as our look at Deadlock pro bans shows.
The full post-patch table is in Deadlock hero win rates after the October 14 patch, daily numbers are on our Deadlock tier list, and the rest of the City Never Sleeps heroes are on the Deadlock characters page.