Valve reins in Baba and rescues Deadman Danny: the October 14 patch, by the numbers
Baba had become the hero with the highest win rate in the game (58.3%), Deadman Danny had just set the worst first day on record (37.5%). Last night’s patch nerfs one twelve times and buffs the other eighteen times. Where they stood, what changes, and the first hours.
Four days ago, in [our halfway check](/news/deadlock-new-heroes-halfway-solomon-baba-rat-king), Baba had just gone from 44 to 56% wins and we wrote that she "takes learning". She kept going. And the hero released on Tuesday, Deadman Danny, did the opposite. Overnight from October 14 to 15, Valve stepped in: twelve nerfs for one, eighteen buffs for the other.
Baba: from comeback to the top
Day after day, Baba kept climbing: 57.2% on day six, 58.1% on day seven, 58.2% on day eight. From Danny's release on Tuesday evening to the patch, she was the hero with the highest win rate in the game: 58.3%, out of 42, ahead of Graves (57.7%) and Rat King (57.2%). In ranked too, at 58.2%, and everywhere: between 57 and 62% at nearly every rank.
What Valve takes away from her
Twelve lines, all against her. The heaviest:
- she takes more damage: -7% base Bullet Resistance, and a Spirit Resistance scaling down from 0.12 to 0.1; - Threadsap recharges in 28s instead of 26, and its Spirit reduction now ends when Baba dies; - Granny Long Legs recharges in 32s instead of 30, and loses mobility: chained light melees in the air carry less and less, the light melee launches her less high, and the ground pound no longer gains speed on slopes; - Baba's Brew: Barrier down from 100 to 90, its scaling from 1.2 to 0.7, cooldown from 25 to 27s.
In Street Brawl, Threadsap also lasts 35% less.
Deadman Danny: the worst start on record
Last Friday, Solomon set the worst first day in our series: 43%. On Tuesday, Deadman Danny did much worse: a 37.5% win rate over his first twenty-four hours, out of 113,363 matches, and 32% in ranked. Up to the patch he was 42nd out of 42, seven points behind 41st (Shiv, 44.6%). Yet nearly everyone tried him: he was in nine matches out of ten.
His players die more than everyone else (7.8 times per match, against 6.6 on average), kill less (5.4 vs 6.6) and collect 9% fewer souls. And like Solomon, he lost more the higher the rank: 36% among Initiates, around 28% in Phantom and Ascendant.
Eighteen buffs to rescue him
Valve didn't hold back:
- sturdier: 730 base health instead of 680, regen from 2.5 to 3.25; - his gun: uncharged shots from 12 to 15 damage, charged shots from 44 to 48; - Strix Salvo: cooldown from 30 to 25s, Spirit scaling and upgrades raised; - Chimera Mk1, his flight: cooldown that drops faster with levels, heal on hit doubled, weapon scaling from 1.15 to 1.4, and slows affect him less in the air; - Close the Deal: +90 damage on the first upgrade instead of +50, and +75% against targets under half health instead of +50%; - his rocket jumps cost him 5% of his max health instead of 6.5%.
The game files hold more, missing from the notes: faster Strix Salvo missiles, a cheaper overheat dive (10% of his health instead of 12%), better cooldown reduction on Chimera Mk1's T3, and a height cap on Close the Deal's flight. It's all on [the patch page](/patches/59).
The first hours
The first matches after the patch point the intended way: from 3:11 am UTC to our pull, Danny wins 44.3% of his matches (6,799) and Baba 50.7% (2,968). Rat King (56.1%) and Solomon (47.8%), untouched by the patch, stay at their level, which makes the comparison more reassuring. But this is a few hours, in the middle of the European night: the measurement that counts comes at day two, then day seven, on [the patch page](/patches/59), where it shows up on its own.
Solomon recovers on his own, Rat King holds
The patch touches neither Solomon nor Rat King. Solomon didn't need it: starting at 43%, he gained nearly a point a day, up to 47.1% on day five, and 47% in ranked, where he had been at 40%. We had written that a hero at 40% in ranked called for a buff: Valve chose to let players learn him, and the numbers prove it right so far. Rat King stays between 55 and 57%, third in the game.
The fifth hero releases tomorrow, Friday, October 16 at 2 pm Pacific. Nurse Harrow and Violet remain.
Methodology. Ranked and unranked matches in normal mode, pulled on October 15, 2026 around 7:40 am UTC from the public data of deadlock-api.com. Days = 24-hour slices since each hero's release (9 pm UTC). "Before the patch" = from Deadman Danny's release (October 13, 9 pm UTC) to Valve's patch notes (October 15, 3:11 am UTC), about 158,000 matches. Ranks = the player's displayed rank at the start of the match, in ranked. Danny's and Solomon's first days are measured the same way; numbers in our earlier articles may differ by a few tenths, as deadlock-api switched databases on October 15.