Where you stand: the rank pyramid of Beta Season 1, and the hidden points ladder behind it
168,936 ranked players this week, a median at Sentinel 5, Oracle in the top 15%, Eternus reserved for 143 players. And a ladder secret: every sixth sub-rank is worth twice the others — hence the Oracle 6 wall. Your place is now shown on your profile.
In a month, on October 7, Ranked Beta Season 1 closes and every player receives a keepsake of their best rank. One question Valve has never answered remains: what is that rank worth? How many players are Oracle? What does "Phantom" mean as a percentage? We counted.
168,936 players, and a median at Sentinel 5
Between August 30 and September 6, 168,936 accounts played at least one ranked match. For each, we recorded the rank displayed in their most recent match. Here is the pyramid.
The median player is Sentinel 5: half the population sits below, half above. The bulk of the ladder is surprisingly flat — Sentinel, Mystic, Ritualist, Emissary and Oracle each weigh between 9 and 12% — with a belly at Seeker, the most populated tier, at 17.3%.
Then the ladder breaks. Oracle holds 11% of players; Phantom, 3.7%. Ascendant, 0.6% — 990 players. Eternus, 143 players in the whole population, one in a thousand.
As thresholds, to place yourself: Oracle and above is the top 15%. Phantom, the top 4.4%. Ascendant, the top 0.7%. Eternus, the top 0.1%.
The points ladder the game never shows
Every ranked match's data carries, for each player, a progression score the interface never displays in the open. We cross-checked it with the displayed rank across every match since August 23. The result is mechanically regular.
Each sub-rank is worth 1,000 points. Initiate 1 starts at 0, Initiate 2 at 1,000, Initiate 3 at 2,000. Except the sixth sub-rank of every tier, which is worth 2,000: Initiate 6 runs from 5,000 to 6,995, and Seeker 1 only begins at 7,000. A full tier is therefore 7,000 points, and the big steps always fall in the same places: Seeker at 7,000, Acolyte at 14,000, Sentinel at 21,000, Mystic at 28,000, Ritualist at 35,000, Emissary at 42,000, Oracle at 49,000, Phantom at 56,000, Ascendant at 63,000, Eternus at 70,000.
With the 300 points per match we measured in August, a sub-rank is a little over three net wins; the sixth, almost seven; a whole tier, twenty-three. That gate, twice as wide before every promotion, is written nowhere — and it explains a feeling many share.
The Oracle 6 wall
Across all ranked matches since August 23, the most-played rank on the entire ladder is Oracle 6: 116,703 appearances, against 52,313 for Phantom 1, right above it. A 2,000-point gate, placed exactly where the population breaks — 11% at Oracle, 3.7% at Phantom — makes a wall. If you feel stuck at Oracle 6, it is not a feeling: you are on the most crowded sub-rank in the game, in front of its tallest step.
Eternus, for its part, leaves the ladder: its sub-ranks overlap in points — Eternus 1 and Eternus 2 both start at 70,000, and observed scores climb to 97,240. At the summit, the sub-rank most likely no longer depends on points but on standing among players, as the leaderboard suggests.
What moved since the start of the season
We ran the same count on the season's second week, August 6 to 13: 158,832 players. A month later, the population has grown by 6%, and the base has not changed — Initiate weighs 11.2% then 11.1%, and the median slipped from Sentinel 6 to Sentinel 5, one notch lower, under the weight of newcomers entering at the bottom.
It is the top that unfolded. Phantom went from 1.6% to 3.7% of players, Ascendant from 86 players to 990, Eternus from 6 to 143. Oracle, meanwhile, slimmed from 13.3% to 11%: its best members went through the gate. In a month, the top of the ladder found its shape; the bottom was already in place.
On the site: your place in the pyramid
These figures found their use. From today, every player page shows, under the current rank, its position in the week's population: "Top 15%" for an Oracle 1, "Top 0.7%" for an Ascendant. The distribution is recomputed every Sunday over the last seven days, to follow a top that keeps unfolding until the season closes.
What we cannot claim
This population is that of players *active* in ranked over one week, not of every account that ever played a ranked match: a player who left the mode in August is not in it, whatever their rank. The rank used is the one displayed at the start of their latest match, one match off at most. Finally, the points ladder is inferred from observed scores, not from Valve documentation; the boundaries are sharp across fifty-five sub-ranks, but it is a reading, not an official source.
Methodology. Readings taken on September 6, 2026 from the `match_player` table of deadlock-api.com's public SQL endpoint. Population: for each `account_id` with a match in `match_mode = Ranked` within the window, the displayed rank (`player_rank_initial_display_rank`) of its most recent match; windows August 30 – September 6 (168,936 players) and August 6–13 (158,832). Ladder: minimum and maximum of `player_rank_initial_flat_progress` per displayed rank, across all ranked matches since August 23. Most-played sub-rank: number of appearances per displayed rank over the same period. The 300 points per match refer to our August 21 measurement.
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Update, September 11, 2026. We wrote here that Beta Season 1 ends on October 7, as stated in the July 30 patch note. The game's season file holds a different bound: Thursday, October 8, 21:00 UTC. We explain the discrepancy, and why we follow the file, in [our September 11 article](/news/deadlock-season-1-end-date-october-8).