Hero image: Deadlock Ranked Beta Season 2. Image: Valve
Deadlock’s first Ranked season is over, and the second one has already started. Your rank will drop a little, your shields are thinner, and every match is worth more points.
Valve’s Ranked – Beta Season 2 post went up on Steam at 6:58am AEDT on Friday 6 November, by our conversion. Season 2 starts now and ends on Thursday 11 March 2027, which gives the climb four months. Season 1 players get a Hideout plaque of their highest rank once the season rolls over.
Start with the reset. It is a soft reset, and Valve says it is “significantly smaller” than the last one. On average, ranks drop by about one badge. Valve also uses last season’s win rate to move players one or two subranks either way. Returning players skip calibration, but if you sat out Ranked in Season 1, you calibrate as usual.
There is a second step first. Valve is running a global redistribution of every rank to account for the new players who have arrived. That happens before the soft reset is applied, so some players will actually start Season 2 higher than they finished Season 1.
Now the rule changes. Rank loss protection is gone entirely for Phantom, Ascendant and Eternus. Everyone else gets fewer shields: 3 at a full rank boundary instead of 5, and 1 between subranks instead of 2. In practice, a Mystic I player on 0 points now drops to Sentinel after 3 losses, not 5.
The points are kinder. A match is now worth 350 points, up from 300, and moving from a final subrank to a new badge takes 1,500 points instead of 2,000. The gap between subranks stays at 1,000.
Ranked now bans 4 heroes a match, up from 3. Placements go higher too, with players able to start as high as Ascendant I, and possibly Ascendant III on last season’s form. Last season the cap was Oracle VI.
Unlocking a hero for Ranked now runs on points, not wins. It takes 35 points, with 2 for a win and 1 for a loss. Valve says the old 15-win requirement worked out to about 45 points at a 50% win rate, so this is quicker. If Nurse Harrow is your Ranked pick, those points start counting now.
Leaderboards have been rebuilt, and each season now has its own. To appear, a player needs 50 Ranked matches in the season within the last 30 days. A hero leaderboard needs 15 Ranked matches on that hero in the same window.
This comes a day after the minor update that nerfed Celeste, Baba and Deadman Danny, and a month after Season 1 was extended. Deadlock was sixth on Steam’s most-played chart when it was read this morning.
Source: Deadlock – Ranked – Beta Season 2 (Steam), Steam – Deadlock