Deadlock Rat King Guide: Kit and How to Play Him

Rat King went live on October 2, 2026 — the first of the six City Never Sleeps heroes, and the one the opening vote picked. He is a front-line brawler built out of slows, spirit damage and a team-wide banner: he does not delete people, he makes them easier for everyone else to delete. Valve has published one paragraph about him and no numbers, so every figure below is community data.

• Playable now, but only with a Steam friend invite: how to get a Deadlock invite in 2026.
• Slot one of a six-hero drop, not the whole patch: City Never Sleeps breakdown.

That is Valve's own reveal card, and the three trait banners across the bottom read Scrappy, Regal and Tenacious. Valve has published no numbers for any of them.

What Valve actually said

Official source: Listen up, Crumbums! Your King is here. — Valve Steam announcement, October 2, 2026

The whole hero write-up is one sentence: his Scrap Grenade bounces "down Broadway", his Swarm of Rats bites "at their heels", by donning his Royal Pestments he "shakes off incoming damage", and allies are inspired when they see "the great Banner of Rattania waving in the middle of combat". Then: "The Rat King is available to play now!"

That is the entire official record: no damage, no cooldown, no radius, no duration, no weapon name, no role. If a page quotes you a Scrap Grenade cooldown as official, it read a datamine.

He is slot one of the cadence Valve published with the update: two heroes a week on Tuesdays and Fridays at 2:00pm PT. The second slot is settled by the next vote on Tuesday, October 6 at 2 p.m. PT, per Shacknews' October 2 report. Dated slots are in the new hero release schedule; voting rules are in the hero vote guide. On roster size, 38 heroes were confirmed before this patch and six more are unlocking one at a time, and Valve has published no total.

The four abilities: Valve's name vs the name in your HUD

The community wiki's Rat King page, built from in-game data, lists the same four abilities under different names than the announcement uses.

Scrap Grenade: the setup tool

A bouncing grenade that detonates several times: 26s cooldown, three detonations, 8m radius, a 20% move speed slow lasting 4s, the final detonation carrying a longer fuse, bigger radius, more damage and a stronger slow. It can be knocked away with a melee hit, so an enemy can bat it back down the lane. Tier 4 shaves 8s off cooldown for 65 detonation damage.

Rat Swarm: the payoff, and the counterplay

Rats leap out and latch on: 28s cooldown, up to five attached per enemy, 8 damage per bite, minus 1% bullet resist per bite, one bite per second per rat, four seconds of duration. The more rats attached, the faster they bite. Debuff resist shortens the duration; the effect can be dispelled.

Worth remembering: an enemy can shake a rat off early by performing a ground or air dash. So the rats are not the setup — the slow is.

Royal Pestments: where the "tank" label comes from

Scrappy armour granting a barrier based on your maximum health: 22s cooldown, 6s duration, 15% max health as barrier, and while the armour holds, bullets have a 15% chance to be deflected back at the attacker. The barrier does not benefit from resists. Tier 5 reads as a damage cap: all damage reduced to a maximum of 250 plus 10% max health. The wiki footnotes its barrier testing with "testing in shooting range, may not be accurate".

Banner of Rattania / Rule, Ratannia!: the team button

130s cooldown, 24m radius, 12s flag duration. Planting it creates a zone where allies get move speed, immunity from slows and 20% damage reduction. Slamming it drives the sewers into an eruption for roughly 200 bullet damage with a knockup and a 40% move speed slow, and rats burst out applying Rat Swarm. Upgrades run from minus 20s cooldown at tier 1 to plus 150 damage at tier 5.

He also has an innate: crouch (CTRL by default) next to a vent to enter or leave a tunnel, and he cannot enter one while in combat. His weapon on the community page is Sovereign's Decree, rapid-fire, 60 damage per second with falloff from 20m to 50m, filed under spreadshot weapons, three stamina pools and slow dash speed.

How to play him: slow first, rats second

Order matters more than targets. Scrap Grenade is the only reliable way to hold someone still long enough for rats to matter, because one dash strips them. Lead the grenade, let the slow land, then throw rats onto the slowed target. Reversed, your damage-over-time evaporates the moment anyone moves.

Save the banner for a fight the team is already starting. It is a 130-second cooldown around a 24m zone that only works while allies stand in it. Plant it on the objective your team is contesting, not on a lane nobody holds. The slam is the engage tool; the flag is why the team stays.

Track dashes. Enemy survival and your own escape both revolve around dash timing — read the movement guide before blaming your aim. Valve's September 16, 2026 minor update cut all move slow values by roughly 20% globally and made slows affect air drag — softer slows raise the value of grenade-first ordering.

Spend on uptime, not damage. His damage comes from rats chewing and the banner slam, both of which scale with how often they are up. Cooldown first, then the barrier and health items that lengthen the Royal Pestments window, then weapon damage. Valve's investment breakpoints are 4.8k / 6.4k / 8k / 11.2k / 16k souls as of the May 22, 2026 patch — the souls economy guide covers how to get there. There is no honest tier placement for a hero one day old; the meta guide shows how to read the patch yourself.

Is Rat King hard to kill?

Short windows, yes; whole fights, no. The community numbers describe 15% max-health barrier that ignores resists, a 15% bullet return chance, a 6-second window on a 22-second cooldown, a tier-5 upgrade that caps incoming damage, and a tunnel vent to leave through. What he lacks is damage reduction outside that window, and because the barrier ignores resists, buying resistance will not extend it. Expect to eat a focused burst between armours; treat the vent as the real disengage.

Voice lines, and why the drop mattered

PC Gamer counted 1,534 individual utterances for the hero, of which 126 are dedicated to the rat ability, each naming a different rat in his following — reported October 3, 2026. The community voice lines page records his most recent VO pass as October 2 and names no performer; neither does Valve. Treat any voice actor claim as unverified.

The reason the community cared is the origin: a fan concept by user DragonRollZ posted on the official Deadlock forums on September 2, 2025, joked about for a year as the "secret 7th hero" of Old Gods, New Blood — helped along by the mouse traps in the Hideout. PC Gamer called him a tank who "started out as a fan concept before becoming part of Deadlock's official roster". A year of expectation is heavy to land a four-ability kit on, which is why the is it worth playing in 2026 question is a different question.

FAQ

Can I play Rat King without an invite? No. Access is still limited to friend invites through playtesters, as before this patch — see how to get an invite, or how to invite friends from the sender side.

Is Rat King in Ranked yet? Not immediately. Per Valve's July 30, 2026 matchmaking update, Ranked needs 60 Standard wins, and a hero unlocks there only after 15 Standard wins with that hero. The ladder is in the ranked and MMR guide.

What is his ultimate actually called? "Banner of Rattania" in Valve's announcement, "Rule, Ratannia!" in the community in-game data. Same ability, different display name.

Is he a tank? He is played as a front-liner with a barrier and bullet return, but the wiki files him under slow dash speed and his damage is damage-over-time, not burst. Nothing Valve published assigns him a role.

Related Guides

• New Hero Release Schedule — the six dated slots.
• Hero Vote: How Voting and Unlock Order Work — the vote that picked him.
• Movement Guide: Dash, Slide and Mantle — the skill floor behind your slow.
• Souls Guide: Farming, Last Hit and Deny — reaching the cooldown tiers.
• City Never Sleeps Update — the patch he landed in.