How Deadlock Ranked Works: Requirements, Calibration, Points and Seasons

Ranked mode is Deadlock’s competitive queue. It arrived with the July 30, 2026 update, which also overhauled matchmaking. You play the same game as Standard mode, but against players of similar skill, with visible ranks, stricter rules and a seasonal leaderboard.

Requirements

Before you can queue, you need:

Requirement	Details
60 wins	In Standard mode
3 Ranked heroes	A hero is unlocked for Ranked after 15 Standard wins with them
No active sanctions	Players with matchmaking restrictions or bans can’t queue

You can only pick heroes you’ve unlocked for Ranked. Newly released heroes (like Baba and Rat King) skip the 15-win rule for a while, so you can play them straight away, but they don’t count towards your three.

Calibration

Your first 8 Ranked games each season are calibration games:

• You must play them solo. No parties during calibration.
• After the eighth game, you get your starting rank.
• The highest rank you can calibrate into is Oracle VI. Players who belong higher have to climb from there.

Rank points

• Each win or loss moves you about 300 rank points, adjusted slightly by how evenly matched the game was. (It was 250 at launch and went up 20% on August 2, 2026.)
• 1,000 points promote you to the next subrank.
• The last subrank of each rank (VI) needs 2,000 points to move up to the next rank.
• Win streaks give bonus points starting with your third win in a row, growing with the streak. Valve’s last change (August 2, 2026) set the maximum bonus at +90, reached at five wins.

So, at roughly 300 points a game, you need about four more wins than losses to climb one subrank, and about seven to get out of subrank VI.

For every rank and subrank, see every rank tier explained.

Loss protection

You don’t drop the moment you lose at a boundary:

Where you are	Protection
Bottom of a subrank	2 losses before you drop to the subrank below
Bottom of a full rank	5 losses before you drop to the rank below

Parties

• Solo or duo only. No parties of three or more.
• Both players must be within one rank of each other.
• Eternus players can only duo with another Eternus player, within three subranks.

Hero bans and picks

• Ranked bans three heroes per match, one more than Standard mode’s two.
• In the 30-second pre-match phase, every player can change hero once.
• No duplicate heroes: a hero can’t appear on both teams.

Leaving games

• Before 5 minutes: the match doesn’t count for anyone except the leaver (and their duo partner), who are penalised.
• After 5 minutes: the leaver is penalised. The match stops counting for their team, unless that team wins anyway.

Leaving costs your team the game and costs you penalties. Don’t do it.

Seasons

• Season 1 (a beta season) started on July 30, 2026.
• It was due to end on October 7, but on October 6 Valve extended it to Thursday, November 5, 2026 at 2:00pm PT (21:00 UTC).
• Season 2 starts immediately after, and everyone calibrates again.
• Your season’s highest rank is kept in your rank history, and you get an item in your hideout to show off your best rank of the season.

Leaderboards

• Each region has a leaderboard of its top 1,000 players, showing each player’s top three heroes.
• Regions: North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania.
• There are also hero leaderboards for players with a lot of recent games and career wins on one hero.

Ranked vs Standard

	Standard	Ranked
Unlock	From the start	60 wins, 3 Ranked heroes
Parties	Bigger parties allowed	Solo or duo
Bans	2	3
Visible rank	No	Yes
Heroes	Any you own	Only Ranked-unlocked heroes

Next: Every rank tier explained →