Valve just completely changed the Deadlock Urn again, days after its rework spawned a weekend of mayhem

Valve has just dropped an 'emergency' Deadlock update, and I hope you didn't get too used to the new Soul Urn, because it's all changing again. The most recent patch shook up the hero-shooter MOBA in a number of ways, but by far the most significant was its redesign of the way the Soul Urn worked. Dumping it right in the middle of the map, it quickly turned every match into a hyper-chaotic team fight. Making matters worse were incredibly tight timers and a gigantic 50% Bullet Resist and Spirit Resist aura if held by the losing team.

Now, everything has changed. Valve's regular point of contact, Developer 'Yoshi,' has shared the new Deadlock patch notes, and they're already sounding like an improvement to my ears. Probably the most important switch is that the fights are no longer concentrated around the center point of the map - the drop-off is now under the bridge in the side lane, on the opposite side from where it was collected. This is a little further away than where the other Urn spawn is, so you'll have further to go.

Compensating for this is that the Urn carrier will no longer have their sprint disabled, and in fact will have maximum sprint acceleration. Additionally, they'll benefit from +2m Sprint, +1 Stamina, +10% Dash Distance, and +15% Stamina Regen. If your team is behind enough to get the favored urn, the runner gets an additional +4m Sprint bonus on top of that.

Speaking of the 'favored' Urn, handed out if your team is 10% behind in value (15% for the first one that appears), there are big adjustments there too. In cases where this applies, the pickup spot will be moved to the location of the comeback drop-off spots of old, making it even easier for you to grab it. The Bullet and Spirit Resist aura for the losing team still exists, too, although it's been lowered to a more reasonable 35%.

The base time for the deposit to complete has been increased - it's now five seconds for the favored Urn, ten when neutral, and 15 for unfavored. Additionally, the timer extension when one team successfully contests it has been raised from 1.25 seconds up to three, giving fights around the drop-off a little more room to breathe without having to be a complete non-stop battle for control. The Urn's collision radius has also been increased by 20%, and a few "smaller holding timers and variables" have been tweaked slightly.

Overall, this sounds like a much more reasonable incarnation. There are still some big wrinkles that Valve will likely be looking to iron out over time, however. Most notable among these is the fact that the favored Urn is now extremely easy for the losing team to control, due to its new spawn spot. Combined with the 35% resist aura, we're already seeing players experiment with simply holding onto it instead of carrying it across the map, and using it to bolster their defensive potential dramatically.

This new Deadlock Soul Urn update is live now. "Please continue to give feedback on the Urn as we work through iterations on it," Yoshi writes. I'm certainly not upset about the wild weekend we went through - Deadlock is still very much in the experimental phases, after all, and taking big swings is often how you end up with the most satisfying conclusions.