The highly anticipated Deadlock Beta Season 2 is now live, and it has introduced a series of changes to the game’s ranked system, aiming to improve the overall gameplay experience for players without compromising on the bar of entry.
The Deadlock Beta Season 2 kicked off right after the conclusion of the first season, and it will continue for just over four months before coming to an end on March 11, 2027.
Deadlock Beta Season 2 Rank Reset
As confirmed by the dev team, players will see their rank get a soft reset, and they will receive a commemorative Hideout plaque of their highest achieved rank in the last season.
This time, though, the ranked reset is considerably smaller than the last reset we saw. On average, players can expect to drop around one badge, with further adjustments of one to two subranks based on their win rate last season.
Due to the recent influx of new players, Valve is running a global rank redistribution at the start of the season. As a result, some players may actually end up with a higher rank than before, while others could fall slightly further than the average.
If you already calibrated a rank during the Beta Season 1, you won’t need to calibrate again, but newcomers will still have to go through the usual process.
Changes to Rank Shields
One of the biggest changes comes to the rank loss protection that was in place throughout the first season. Moving forward, players in the Phantom, Ascendant, and Eternus ranks will no longer have any shields. For everyone else, the shields have been reduced from five to three at full rank boundaries and from two to one at subranks.
To account for this, points gained or lost per match go up from 300 to 350, and the points needed to reach a new badge from a final subrank drop from 2,000 to 1,500. Note that the points between subranks will remain at 1,000.
Changes to Bans & Placements
The number of hero bans per Ranked match has increased from three to four. The highest initial placement is now Ascendant I, with a chance of reaching Ascendant III depending on last season’s performance.
Hero Unlocking Improvements
Lastly, hero unlocking for the ranked mode of Deadlock is getting a nice quality-of-life improvement with this update, as it now works on a points system instead of win count alone. The total number of required points has also been considerably lowered. Players need 35 points to unlock a character in ranked, earning two for a win and one for a loss. Under the old system of 15 wins, a player with a 50 percent win rate would have needed the equivalent of 45 points.
