Vegas Turns Mina’s Nox Nostra Into Deadlock’s Latest Ult Hypocrisy Fight

On May 9, 2026, Vegas turned a familiar Deadlock balance complaint into the day’s cleanest ult hypocrisy fight: players hate Haze for pressing 4, but Mina’s Nox Nostra is getting a softer read even though it can apply Silence from range.

The spark was a pair of posts from Vegas on X. The first framed Mina’s ultimate as safer and more forgiving than Haze’s Bullet Dance; the follow-up was blunter: “Just remove the silence from ult man.” DramaLock’s scout captured the main post at roughly 99,000 views, 2,600 likes, and more than 100 replies later on May 9.

The balance facts matter because the viral shorthand is messier than the argument. Deadlock Coach currently lists Nox Nostra at 130 seconds base cooldown, 40m range, and a 1.25 second Silence on hit, with its second upgrade reducing cooldown by 55 seconds. That means the clean ability-sheet read is 75 seconds after the upgrade before cooldown items and other modifiers, not a flat 40-second base button.

Haze’s Bullet Dance, by comparison, is listed at 145 seconds base cooldown with a 75 second cooldown reduction on its final upgrade. That lands the upgraded ability around 70 seconds before items. So the useful version of Vegas’ complaint is not a literal base-cooldown table. It is the experience argument: Haze has to commit her body to a close-range damage window, while Mina’s ult feels like a safer ranged status check when the Silence lands.

Valve has already touched Nox Nostra this year. A March 6, 2026 balance pass increased the ability’s cooldown from 115 to 130 seconds, reduced its damage, and made the cooldown upgrade larger, according to the Nox Nostra patch timeline. That is the awkward part of this drama: Mina was not ignored. Valve already nerfed the ult on paper, and the community is still arguing that the part that feels worst is not just the damage or the timer. It is the Silence.

Raw win-rate data also complicates the dunk. Deadlock Labs currently has Mina at about 48.6 percent win rate across roughly 744,000 tracked matches this patch. Haze sits higher on the same tracker, around a 52.5 percent average. If the argument were only “which hero wins more games,” Haze would not be the victim in the room.

But that is why the thread hit. Balance drama rarely starts with a spreadsheet. It starts with a death that feels unearned, repeatable, and hard to answer in the moment. For Mina, the complaint is that Nox Nostra can convert range, tracking, and Silence into the feeling that your health bar effectively ends before the actual kill happens. For Haze, the complaint is older and simpler: she presses Bullet Dance, and somebody evaporates.

The difference is social. Haze has been publicly hated for a long time, so every Haze ult arrives with a built-in jury. Mina’s Nox Nostra discourse is still becoming a settled community ritual. Vegas’ thread tried to force that ritual early: if players are going to call Haze cheap, they have to explain why Mina gets to fire off a status-heavy ultimate from safer space and keep the better public relations campaign.

As of publication on May 9, 2026, we found no public Valve response to the Vegas thread. That makes this a community pressure story, not a patch story yet. The watch point is whether the next Mina adjustment targets cooldown math again or finally touches what players are actually screaming about: the Silence.

Current hero guide: For the complete current build, ability order, combos, counters, and play plan, use the Mina Deadlock guide.