A new Deadlock update leaves Graves and Silver gleeful, but Valve still can't get Shiv right

Valve has dropped a fresh Deadlock update on our heads, and while it's not nearly as substantial as last week's shakeup it's still likely to impact some of the MOBA's most popular heroes. We've got more changes for the Soul Urn (stop me if you've heard this one before), the Unstable Rift (our newly minted name for the King of the Hill objective), and some roster balance changes. As a Graves and Silver enthusiast, I'm pleased to report that both of their stocks are rising again, but it's bad news if you're a Shiv or Drifter main.

Now that Valve has separated the Urn and Rift into two distinct objectives, it's honing their balance as it continues taking feedback from the Deadlock community about what's working and what isn't. Catching the Urn runner should now be easier: they'll get less of a benefit to their move speed and sprint (meaning no bonus at all on the latter unless you're behind). The Urn will also call out its position more often, every six seconds instead of eight, and it can be heard from even further away to help you track its location down.

The Unstable Rift, meanwhile, is being made even more worthwhile. The wave of buffed-up Rift Troopers earned by the winning team now come with Spirit Resist (starting at 30% and scaling up to 45%) and Melee Resistance (a flat 25%). They'll spawn at a marginally slower rate, staggering them out a bit more, but the total number that you can get if your team is behind has gone up from 12 to 14. As for the Rift itself, the warning time is down from 25 seconds to just 20, making scouting its location beforehand extra valuable, and the size of the resist aura it provides for the trailing team has grown from 20 meters to 35.

Before we get into hero-specific adjustments, there's one more notable change to core mechanics: the bounty split provided by objectives to nearby players has been lowered from 40% to 30%. In effect, Valve explains, this means a slightly bigger portion of the bounty is split team-wide rather than being given to an individual player. The power of tier-four Spirit item Scourge's damaging aura has also been very slightly nerfed again.

As I mentioned, the big winner today feels like Graves. The Necromancy specialist now builds her Jar of Dead faster from neutral creeps, and it provides 60% more spirit scaling on the heal effect. Melee hits now count towards Essence Theft's stat-stealing effect, and it can target one extra opponent at max rank. The increased Ghoul speed on her ultimate has been moved from tier two to tier one, and the second upgrade gains the benefit of causing them to spawn faster. Her only slight nerf is to the immobilize duration of Grasping Hands, but it gets four more seconds knocked off its cooldown at tier three.

One day, I believe Valve will be satisfied with Shiv. It's not today. Bloodletting's active now clears less of the deferred damage it's holding back, and the cooldown at base level is five seconds longer (you'll get this back once it hits tier one). The fatal health threshold on Killing Blow has been lowered, although this is compensated for when you max it out. He also now has less spirit scaling on Serrated Knives and Slice and Dice, along with less Spirit Resist reduction on the second-tier upgrade.

My favorite werewolf is back, too, with Silver's ultimate cooldown dropped back down to just 60 seconds, making it much more viable to have ready for every engagement. If you're keeping track, it's still less potent than the 40-second CD it used to boast a month ago, but it's a huge improvement from the 80 seconds Valve had gradually pushed it up to across multiple patches.

Yamato's Flying Slash has had its range slightly reduced, down to 26 meters from 28. Once at level three, the delay between its additional charges has been raised from three to four seconds. Most notably, however, targeting an ally to dash to now specifically requires you to use the alt-cast input. This might take a little getting used to, but I think it's a change all Yamato fans will ultimately welcome - it ensures much more consistency when you're dealing with situations where multiple characters are in your vision at once.

Across the remaining patch notes, the other big loser is Drifter, who gets markedly less Bullet Damage gain per boon. The early game cooldown on Stalker's Mark has also been nerfed, not recovering until tier two, and the bleed bonus at max rank has been lessened. Elsewhere, Mirage trades faster cooldowns on Djinn's Mark and max-level Traveler for worse Fire Scarabs and Dust Devil spirit scaling, Holliday's Powder Kegs lose some power, and Victor's ultimate cooldown gets a welcome 35-second reduction.

This Deadlock update is live now. The big question on everyone's lips, however, is what comes next. We're rapidly approaching six months since the arrival of Old Gods, New Blood, and I'm sure Valve has been cooking up another major upgrade in the background as it toyed around with finding the right mix of mid-match objectives. Hopefully we'll have that fresh evolution in our hands soon, whatever it might be.