With Season 5, Paladins is giving its core game mode a big shake-up. Alongside Team Deathmatch and Onslaught, Siege has been in the game since the beginning. It is Paladins’ most-played queue and the default competitive format, and is now on track to receive a substantial overhaul through Siege: Beyond. While players get accustomed to Beyond, the old Siege playlist will remain available under the name Siege: Core. This quick guide will walk you through the differences between the Siege: Beyond and Siege: Core in Paladins.
Item shop
The main difference between the two Paladins game modes is the item shop. Siege: Core has the traditional open system, allowing players to freely buy from a selection of 16 upgrades. However, the choice present in that selection is illusory, as each hero type (such as Tank, Support, or Damage) only has a handful of valid choices which they buy by default in every match. Conversely, in Siege: Beyond, the decision of which upgrades to buy is streamlined through a track system. When choosing what to buy each time they have enough currency to spend, players may only select one of three available options. Over the course of a match, a player may buy up to 12 upgrades from the shop. The selection of items is also different, with some items in Siege: Core not available in Siege: Beyond and vice versa.
Ranked Siege and custom matches
None of the Siege: Beyond features are in effect in the Ranked Siege playlist. That means that competitive Paladins events will remain on Siege: Core ruleset for the time being. Custom Siege matches also don’t feature the Beyond differences and instead follow the old Siege: Core format.
Availability and future
Siege: Beyond deploys shortly after the start of Paladins Season 5 in the first half of February. Developer Hi-Rez Studios will introduce more changes to Siege: Beyond with each Schism update, distinguishing the mode from Siege: Core further. The next two new features are planned for Paladins’ third and fifth major updates in 2022. We will update this guide will additional information for both Paladins game modes as it becomes available.
Since Siege: Beyond functions as an always-on public testing ground for a gradual redesign of the Siege mode in Paladins, we expect the two modes to be consolidated into a single Siege mode again sometime in 2023 after Siege: Beyond reaches its final form.
