Rat King: abilities, stats, lore and mods

His abilities, stats and lore, all 1,436 voice lines to play, and the mods built on him.

3 Oct 2026 · 10 min

Valve added Rat King to Deadlock on 2 October 2026, the first of the six heroes from the City Never Sleeps update.

He leads fights from the front. Scrap Grenade and Rat Swarm slow enemies and strip their bullet resist; Royal Pestments wraps him in scrap armour that can bounce bullets back at whoever fired them; and his ultimate plants a banner that speeds up and shields his whole team.

Who Rat King is

Rat King is the ruler of the New York Warrens, the rat tunnels under the city, and he towers over the rats he rules. In Valve's own words he is "no longer content with hiding underground", and he wants rats to walk the surface without fear of the pest control vans his subjects call human death squads.

His plan has three steps, and the game's lore text lists them as steps. Take Long Island. Declare it the sovereign nation of Ratannia. Execute every human who refuses to leave. He considers this airtight — and summons the patron anyway, to hedge his bets.

In his own words

He calls people crumbums, hates humans without exception, and treats ruling as a duty he did not especially want:

Look, these guys are idiots, but they're my idiots, and I'm gonna give 'em the home they deserve.

Being King of the Rats ain't easy. You gotta do things. Important things. Rat things.

Default

After a kill

Near death

Rat King's abilities

Four abilities and an innate, built to slow enemies, cut their bullet resist and keep his team standing.

Innate

Squeezing In...

Crouch next to a vent while out of combat and Rat King enters or leaves the map's tunnel network. The price is paid elsewhere: lifesteal from every source works at 75% effectiveness on him.

75%Lifesteal effectiveness

Ability 1

Scrap Grenade

26sCooldown

Throw a grenade of scrap that detonates multiple times, dealing bullet damage and applying slow.

The grenade can be meleed to knock it away — and the ability data defines separate light and heavy melee impulses, so a heavy melee sends it further.

×0.665Detonation damage

×0.08-20%Move speed

3Detonations

8mDetonation radius

4sSlow duration

◆Costs1ability points-8s Cooldown

◆Costs2ability points+65 Detonation Damage

◆Costs5ability pointsAdd an additional final Bigger Detonation — longer fuse, wider radius, more damage and a stronger slow

Ability 2

Rat Swarm

28sCooldown

50mCast range10mRadius6sDuration1Charge8sCharge cooldown

Call forth a swarm of rats that leap onto enemies, dealing spirit damage over time and reducing their bullet resist with every bite. The more rats are attached, the faster they will bite the target.

A ground or air dash shakes one rat off early.

×0.088Damage per bite

-1%Bullet resist per bite

1sBite interval per rat

4sDebuff duration

5Max attached rats

◆Costs1ability points+1 Charge

◆Costs2ability pointsIncreased Swarm Size and +4s Debuff Duration

◆Costs5ability points+8 Damage and -1% Bullet Resist per Bite

Ability 3

Royal Pestments

22sCooldown

6sDuration

Adorn scrappy armour, gaining a barrier based on your max health. As long as the armour holds, bullets have a chance to be deflected back towards the attacker.

The armour is carried by rats, and they can be stripped off. No tooltip says so, but the ability's data defines a rat count alongside seven armour piece slots, each with a matching shield, plus a sound and a particle effect for knocking one off. That is also why the first upgrade's "+7 Rat Count" is not the stray value it looks like — seven is exactly the number of slots.

The barrier does not benefit from resists, and Spellbreaker does not proc on damage dealt to it.

15%Barrier, of max health

×0.115%Bullet return chance

120Barrier at base health

7Armour piece slots

6sDuration

◆Costs1ability points+7 Rat Count and +4s Duration

◆Costs2ability points-8s Cooldown and +15% Bullet Return Chance

◆Costs5ability pointsCap all damage at 250 per hit, and +10% Max Health as Barrier

Ultimate

Rule, Ratannia!

130sCooldown

24mRadius12sBanner duration

Charge up and summon the banner of Ratannia, granting all nearby allies increased move speed, immunity from slows, and reduced incoming damage while near the banner.

Slamming it into the ground erupts the sewers below, dealing bullet damage while applying knockup and slow to everyone in the area. Rats swarm out of the sewers and apply Rat Swarm to whoever they hit.

The banner also grants slow immunity, a fire rate bonus and no movement penalty while shooting. Valve names the fire rate bonus but puts no number on it.

×1.2200Slam damage, bullet

×0.05+3 m/sAlly move speed

-40%Slam slow

20%Ally damage reduction

24mAura radius

◆Costs1ability points-20s Cooldown and +1 m/s Move Speed

◆Costs2ability points+8s Charge Duration, +8s Flag Duration and +8m Radius

◆Costs5ability points+150 Slam Damage and +15% Damage Reduction

How the kit fits together

Rat King's damage is overwhelmingly bullet damage — the grenade, his gun and the banner slam all deal it, and Rat Swarm is the thing that lowers bullet resist. Landing the swarm first is what makes everything after it hit harder. The ultimate does both jobs in one press, because the slam applies Rat Swarm by itself.

How to counter Rat King

Each ability ships with its own weakness, and three of them are written into Valve's descriptions:

• Melee the grenade away before it finishes its three detonations. A heavy melee sends it further than a light one.
• Dash to shed a rat — on the ground or in the air — when Rat Swarm lands on you.
• Steady damage beats Royal Pestments. The barrier gets no help from resists, so consistent fire chews through it. Once he has the third upgrade, though, single hits above 250 are capped while the armour is on, which flips the maths towards fast, repeated damage rather than one big hit.

Dispels remove the slows and the swarm debuff outright, Debuff Resist shortens them, and Unstoppable suppresses the crowd control from the grenade and the banner slam.

Rat King's stats

800 base health, the hero tags Scrappy, Regal and Tenacious, and a rapid-fire, two-pellet gun. One pellet lands exactly on your crosshair; the other spreads.

Weapon

Sovereign's Decree

60Damage per second

6+0.18 per boonBullet damage

2Pellets per shot

5/sFire rate

24Ammo

2.8sReload

203 m/sBullet velocity

20-50mFalloff range

Rat King's voice lines

1,589 audio files, 1,436 of them with subtitle text — we pulled the lot out of the game's sound packages and counted them. The rest are grunts and laughs, which carry no caption. His files hold kill lines for 39 named heroes, so almost every matchup has its own exchange rather than the generic one.

Every subtitled line is below, by category, and you can play any of them. Each row keeps the name of the sound file it came from, so anyone with the game can check it. Two groups are missing because there is nothing to print: 60 grunts — the pain and effort sounds — and 55 match-start conversations, which he has with seven heroes and which ship without subtitles.