Valve has just released the first Deadlock patch notes of 2025, and they come with some important changes. Both Yamato and a collection of items have been nerfed, so hopefully one of the most overpowered heroes in the game becomes a lot easier to deal with moving forward. Remember that Valve is still actively developing Deadlock, though, so tough heroes like Yamato might be a nightmare now, but the hope is they’ll be consistently tweaked over time.
While we wait for the full Deadlock release date, Valve continues to tweak and improve its new MOBA. While it’s a small patch, the latest update from Sunday January 12 is the first back from the holidays, and it takes particular aim at the ever-frustrating Yamato. According to the new Deadlock patch, Yamato’s bullet damage growth has been reduced from 0.33 to 0.27, and her Shadow Transformation fire rate increase has been reduced from 20% to 15%. These aren’t earth-shattering Yamato nerfs akin to the ones from late last year, when her Shadow Transformation ult was massively debuffed, but she’s still being tweaked slightly.
Valve has also introduced a handful of weapon and vitality item nerfs to Deadlock, so you’ll want to be aware of them before your next match. Berserker has had its weapon damage per stack reduced from 6% to 5%, and bullet resistance from 9% to 8% as well. Restorative Shot’s cooldown has also increased from seven seconds to nine, so you’ll want to be more careful when using it in a firefight. Frenzy also has some pretty big nerfs, with weapon damage per stack going from 8% to 7%, bullet resistance dropping from 10% to 8%, fire rate shrinking from 40% to 35%, and low health bullet resistance going from 55% to 50%. Lastly, the Unstoppable Vitality item will no longer block against anti-heal effects – so keep that in mind.
It looks like the community is also getting behind this patch, with some comments on the game’s subreddit happy with the changes. “That anti-heal thing is actually great,” user ‘Tawxif_ig’ writes. “You can now use toxic bullets and decay on an unstoppable enemy to kill them faster when they are stationary.” Sadly this likely won’t work on Yamato during her Shadow Transformation ult, however, because it gives her an immunity to negative status effects and and an initial invincible transformation phase.
This is Valve’s first minor patch since it shared the news of the major Deadlock update changes last year. Going forward, the Steam maker will no longer release big Deadlock updates in a fixed two-week cycle, instead getting rid of this schedule. This is good news though, because it means these updates can be bigger than ever before. The schedule change also doesn’t impact hotfixes like this one, as they “will continue to be released as needed.”
With Valve still developing the game make sure you stay up to date with all the Deadlock characters and ideal Deadlock crosshairs. Don’t forget about our sister site Deadlock Rank, either, which is constantly being updated to reflect the game’s evolving meta.
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