Violet Starts at 42.4% Win Rate in Deadlock

42.4%. That is the share of games Violet has won across 3,969 Phantom 1+ games, according to the Deadlock API reading of October 18, which puts her 42nd out of 43 heroes. The fifth winner of the City Never Sleeps vote came out on October 16. Among the five heroes from the vote, she posts the third-best start, behind Rat King (about 61%) and Baba (43.8%), and well ahead of Deadman Danny (27.9%). The sixth and last, Nurse Harrow, arrives Tuesday.

What Violet Does With Her Ink

The text of the October 16 update, titled “Paint the Town”, presents Violet as an art student. Her development names are “Artist” and “Painter”, and her official voice line sums up the character: “I worked too hard to get here, I can’t stop now.”

The Deadlock Wiki page, checked on October 18, gives her 710 health. Her weapon, Creative Solutions, fires 1.54 bullets per second at 30 damage each, with 15 ammo and a 2.7-second reload. That comes to 46.2 damage per second, with a critical multiplier reduced by 20%. A slow fire rate and heavy bullets: the weapon demands accurate aim.

Her four abilities:

• Living Ink (22-second cooldown, 2 charges): her next 3 bullets become steerable, meaning she can guide them in flight. Each deals 120% of bullet damage plus 35 spirit damage in an area. Each hit on a hero reduces her ability cooldowns by 1.5 seconds, half as much for items. She can also draw with ink up to 25 meters away.
• Flow State (23 seconds): a slide on ink that deals 50 to 100 damage depending on duration, with 2 seconds giving the maximum, then slows enemies hit by 60%, decaying over 2 seconds.
• Still Life (35 seconds): she sketches an enemy up to 25 meters away over a 2.6-second channel (she must stay focused on her target). The sketch deals 30 damage per second, then 60 damage and a 1-second stun. If the target leaves her sight for about 0.4 seconds, the drawing is interrupted. It also leaves a bonus depending on the hero drawn, such as +4% weapon damage, +3 spirit power or +20 maximum health.
• Abstract Landscape (ultimate, 165-second cooldown, 6-second duration): a zone that gives her allies 25 spirit power. Enemies inside take 100 damage, lose 30% speed and get 2 seconds of silence, which stops them from using their abilities.

Two tier 5 upgrades stand out on the wiki page. Still Life loses 11 seconds of cooldown and gains 0.35 seconds of stun. Abstract Landscape adds 1.25 seconds of silence and 4 seconds of duration.

Violet at a 42.4% Win Rate, 42nd of 43

On her page, Deadlock API counts 3,969 Phantom 1+ games this season. Her pick rate (the share of games in which the hero is picked) is only 2.9%, last place there too. Few players pick her, and those who try her lose a little more than one game in two.

On the item side, three stand out for their win rate: Transcendent Cooldown at 60.6% over 350 games, Spirit Burn at 57.6% over 662 games and Spiritual Overflow at 57.0% over 549 games. All of them bet on cooldown and spirit power, which fits Living Ink, whose every bullet that hits a hero shortens her ability cooldowns by 1.5 seconds. Boundless Spirit is the most common, bought in 52% of games, for 51.3% wins. These top three scores sit 15 to 18 points above the hero’s average, but they rest on a few hundred games each.

Blitz rates Violet tier B, with 42.8% wins over 4,185 Phantom+ games and a KDA of 2.7. KDA is the ratio of kills plus assists to deaths: at 2.7, the player averages 2.7 kills or assists for each death. The two sites differ by 0.4 points, on similar game pools.

The same page lists her counters: Graves, Yamato and Rat King. It also flags good synergy with Celeste.

The ability leveling order shows the most striking gap. The most played, which starts with Living Ink, sits at 46.8% over 365 games. The one with the best rate, Living Ink, Abstract Landscape, Flow State then Still Life, climbs to 56.2% over 235 games. Read that 56.2% with caution: the sample is small, and it all comes from two days of data since the October 16 release.

What Became of Rat King, Baba, Solomon and Danny

Four heroes from the vote came out before Violet, and Deadlock API lets us reread all of them on the same day, October 18, on this season’s Phantom 1+ games. Rat King (released October 2) had opened around 61%, as our October 6 article noted. Baba (released the 6th) was at 43.8% two days after her arrival. Solomon arrived on the 9th without his starting rate being recorded here, and Deadman Danny (the 13th) showed 27.9% over 827 games in our October 14 reading.

Hero	Release	At launch	On October 18	Rank
Rat King	October 2	about 61%	55.1%	1st of 43
Baba	October 6	43.8%	52.1%	9th of 43
Solomon	October 9	not recorded	44.1%	41st of 43
Deadman Danny	October 13	27.9%	37.3%	43rd of 43
Violet	October 16	42.4%	42.4%	42nd of 43

The overall direction is clear: Baba gains 8.3 points in ten days and Deadman Danny 9.4 points in five days, while Rat King drops about 6 points yet stays first in the ranking. A 42.4% start therefore does not doom the newcomer: Baba started barely above her and now sits near the top of the table.

These launch readings were not taken on the same day after each release, do not cover the same number of games and do not all come from the same source. The table compares five isolated points, not a curve tracked day by day, and Solomon is missing his starting point.

The October 16 Patch Already Tweaks Nurse Harrow

The “Paint the Town” notes, published on October 16 then updated on the 17th on unDeadlock, nerf Nurse Harrow before she is even playable. A nerf is a deliberate weakening of a hero or item by the developers. Here, the bullet damage gained per level goes from 0.53176 to 0.42541, about 20% less.

The patch also touches Solomon. When he casts the knight promotion on himself into a king, reactivating the ability now moves the king. According to the wiki, Kingside Knight is now played with the ability key.

On the item side, Burst Fire gets its description corrected: the fire rate and speed bonus triggers on a hit on a hero, rather than on an enemy hero. On the map, the Diner and the Drug Store on the blue lane were tweaked.

Nurse Harrow Arrives Tuesday, and the Vote Ends

The official announcement, picked up by the Deadlock Wiki on its October 16 update page, is dated: “our final hero – Nurse Harrow – will be joining us Next Tuesday October 20th at 2pm PDT”. That is 11 pm Paris time (CEST) on Tuesday, October 20.

The Deadlock Wiki page is already online, with a warning: its stats “may not reflect this hero’s final stats”. They give 52.4 damage per second, 5.5 damage per bullet, 27 ammo and 9.52 bullets per second, for a projectile speed of 660 m/s. The words describing her are Strict, Terrifying and Savior. Her abilities remain hidden, the page only says “To be released!”.

Her weapon is the opposite of Violet’s, which fires 1.54 bullets per second at 30 damage each: Nurse Harrow sprays small bullets, more than six times faster. With her, the vote for the City Never Sleeps update closes on its sixth hero.