Valve shipped a minor Deadlock update on August 12. No new heroes, no system reworks — just a dense list of numeric adjustments across thirteen characters, plus two structure-targeting fixes tucked into the Doorman section. McGinnis takes the longest entry in the changelog and the sharpest cuts.
The nerf side of the list
McGinnis loses 5% off both base bullet damage and its growth, and her spirit resist per boon drops from +0.625% to +0.35%. Her Mini Turrets stop targeting heroes riding ziplines and lose the 80% decaying resist they had during their first six seconds, though they gain raw health in exchange (100 + 9 per boon, up from 90 + 7.8). The Medicinal Specter upgrades also swap roles: the +40% spirit resist moves to tier three, while the extra duration moves down to tier one.
Drifter is next in line. Rend’s spirit scaling falls from 1.7 to 1.4, Stalker’s Mark now sits on a 26-second cooldown instead of 24, and its tier-two cooldown reduction shrinks to -10 seconds.
Billy gets base health regen cut from 2.5 to 2.0 and Chain Gang spirit scaling reduced to 0.7. His Rising Ram tier three is rewritten entirely: instead of dealing a slice of max health as spirit damage on impact, it now grants +10% max HP for 16 seconds on hero hit — a survivability upgrade rather than a burst one.
Smaller trims land on Wraith (Card Trick Heart and Full Auto scaling), Ivy (Stone Form stun down to +0.75s), Vindicta (Stake tier one from +65 to +45 damage), Doorman (Doorway range down to 65m) and Lash (falloff window compressed to 18m–54m).
Buffs and one real rework
Apollo comes out ahead. Riposte cuts melee resist harder, tier two now bundles the resist reduction with extra stun duration, and tier three jumps from 60% lifesteal over 7 seconds to 75% over 13. A bug that let movement abilities cancel Itani Lo Sahn is fixed as well.
Vyper’s Petrifying Bola grows from an 8m to a 12m radius with a slightly longer petrify, while Paige gains weapon damage scaling on Plot Armor and Seven gets a wider Lightning Ball tier three.
The one genuine rework belongs to Holliday. Powder Keg now delivers half its damage instantly and burns the rest over three seconds, with multiple instances stacking. Total damage is unchanged, but the timing isn’t — targets get a window to disengage, and kills land later than they used to.
Base structure fixes
Two Doorman entries read less like balance and more like closing off a favourable interaction. The Walker no longer treats enemies dragged by Luggage Cart as valid stomp targets until a delay after drop-off, and the healing-area turrets in base follow the same rule. Judging by how the change is worded, hauling an opponent into friendly structures was paying off more than intended.
What this means for players using software
The published changelog is pure balance work — there are no engine or anti-cheat entries in it. That does not make the build irrelevant to your loader. Every Deadlock update, minor or not, is a fresh binary, and offsets that ESP and aim assistance depend on can shift with it. Launching yesterday’s build against today’s client either crashes you out or feeds garbage memory into overlays while eleven other players watch the match unfold around you. Check the software update status before the first match rather than testing it live.
On the balance side, two profiles are worth revisiting. McGinnis lost weapon damage, and Lash’s falloff window got tighter — if you tune triggerbot ranges or recoil compensation per hero, the distances you trusted last week now return less damage than the numbers on screen suggest. Holliday’s burn changes kill timing too: a target flagged as lethal by health-bar logic may survive the burst and die seconds later, so any priority sorting built around instant Powder Keg damage needs a manual look.
The zipline change to Mini Turrets rewrites which rotations are actually dangerous, which matters if you rely on structure highlighting while moving over the top routes. Turrets are tankier overall now but softer in their first seconds on the ground. Builds verified against the current client are listed on our Deadlock page.
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