Deadlock Ranked Season 2: more points, fewer shields, 4 bans
Ranked Beta Season 1 closes at midnight UTC on November 6 and Season 2 runs until Thursday, March 11, 2027. Valve softens the rank reset, raises matches to 350 points, removes shields at the top of the ladder and unlocks heroes with points. Everything that changes, with the numbers.
Valve released the notes for Ranked Beta Season 2 on November 5 at 11:58 am Pacific. According to the game files, Season 1 closes at midnight UTC on November 6 (4 pm Pacific on Thursday, November 5), and Season 2 starts at the same second. It will end on Thursday, March 11, 2027 at 10 pm UTC (2 pm Pacific): four months, as announced. Everyone who played Season 1 will receive a commemorative Hideout plaque of their highest rank when the season rolls over.
A softer reset, in two steps
- First, a global rank redistribution: Valve reshapes the curve to account for the many new players. Some players will therefore go up at the start of the season, despite the reset;
- then the soft reset, much smaller than the last one: around one badge lower on average, then a 1–2 subrank adjustment based on your Season 1 win rate;
- no new calibration for players who played ranked in Season 1. Everyone else calibrates as usual;
- initial placement capped at Ascendant I, up to Ascendant III based on last season’s results. Season 1 capped at Oracle VI.
Climbing gets faster
A match is now worth 350 points instead of 300, and reaching the next badge from the final subrank only takes 1,500 points instead of 2,000. Between subranks, it still takes 1,000.
In practice, three wins in a row are now enough for a subrank (1,050 points), down from four. For a new badge, you need five (1,750 points) instead of seven.
Fewer shields, none at the top
Shields protect you from being demoted after a loss.
- Phantom, Ascendant and Eternus have none at all. Before, 5 at the bottom of a badge and 2 between subranks;
- for everyone else, 3 shields at the bottom of a badge instead of 5, and 1 between subranks instead of 2.
4 bans instead of 3
Every ranked match now bans four heroes.
Unlocking a hero: points rather than wins
Playing a hero in ranked used to take 15 wins with them. It now takes 35 points: 2 per win, 1 per loss. Valve points out that at a 50% win rate, the old requirement was worth 45 points, or 30 matches. The new one takes about 23 (12 wins and 11 losses).
Reworked leaderboards
- Valve rebuilt how they work to fix numerous bugs, and each season now has its own leaderboard;
- to appear on it, 50 ranked matches in the season within the last 30 days; the order follows badge progress;
- for a hero’s leaderboard, 15 ranked matches with that hero within 30 days; the order follows badge progress and recent results on that hero.
The direct consequence: the Season 2 leaderboard will be empty for the first few days, until the most active players reach 50 matches. Our Leaderboard page will follow it as soon as it fills up.
Valve applied this new order to the Season 1 leaderboard on the evening of November 5. In Europe, MikaelS, first on our 8 pm UTC snapshot, ends up 28th on the reworked leaderboard, and Scoish Velociraptor Maloish takes the lead. The Season 1 final leaderboard, captured just before the close, stays available on the site, and the hall of fame follows tomorrow.
On the site
- The Season 2 countdown replaces the Season 1 one;
- every new rule is listed on the patch page.
Sources. Valve’s “Ranked - Beta Season 2” notes (November 5, 2026); start and end times read from the ranked_seasons.vdata file of build 6853 (GameTracking-Deadlock), since the notes only give the day; deadlock-api.com public leaderboard, pulled on November 5 around 8:30 pm UTC.