Rainbow Six Siege Details Huge Balance Update, 8 Operators Tweaked
For competitive first person shooters like Rainbow Six Siege, game balance is extremely important. That is why developer Ubisoft regularly tweaks operators based on player feedback and in-game statistics. In the upcoming mid-season balance update, eight operators including Lion are receiving major changes.
Lion
The Lion rework is among Rainbow Six Siege’s most anticipated changes. First revealed during the Six Invitational, the complete revamp of the EE-ONE-D is finally coming to live servers.
After the update, Lion’s drone will no longer highlight moving enemies in a red outline. Instead, a red ping debuff, similar to Alibi’s Prisma, will be applied. The drone’s scanning duration, available charges, warning time, and cool-down have all been adjusted.
“This change is aimed at reducing the oppressive feeling of his ability while maintaining his intel-gathering role,” writes Ubisoft. “Following the changes introduced, we expect players to put more thought before using this ability and require more skill to be advantageous for the attacking team.”
During last month’s test server update post, Ubisoft stated that Vigil’s ERC-7 cloak would make him immune to Lion’s scan. However, the patch list shown above doesn’t mention that. It’s possible that the developers ended up deciding against this change. After all, that’s what test servers are for.
Capitao
A rework of Capitao’s asphyxiating bolt was also revealed earlier this year. It was supposed to launch with operation Burnt Horizon, but was delayed at the last minute to make the following change:
“We have adjusted the amount of time it takes to expand to the full area of effect. This will allow players time to react to the deployment of his Asphyxiating bolts.”
The damage per tick of the asphyxiating bolts has been weakened, and they now function as an area denial gadget.
Blitz
Rainbow Six Siege’s most annoying shield operator is finally being nerfed. In order to “reduce the frustration generated by this operator”, Ubisoft is increasing the cool-down of his shield flash to 7 seconds. Although this probably won’t make one on one fights with the character any easier, at least he won’t be able to embarrass defenders by continuously flashing them.
Nomad
As evident by Nomad’s win rate and pick rate statistics, the operator is “too strong” or “overpicked”. Hence, Ubisoft is slightly nerfing the airjab gadget.
Activated airjabs now emit a continuous beeping sound that will alert defenders to its location. “Our goal is to reward cautious players to spot nearby Airjabs and to adapt appropriately.”
Maestro
To reduce the effectiveness of his Evil eyes, its bulletproof windows will now be half-way opened when affected EMPs or Shock Drones.
With this change, attackers will have a much easier time countering Evil eye turrets. Maverick, Sledge, Twitch, Thatcher, and operators with access to explosives like Zofia can now destroy the turrets.
Echo
IQ’s electronics detector will now be able to detect Echo when he is operating cameras. It’s unclear why this wasn’t already a thing, but the situation is finally being rectified.
Ying
“In order to make Ying’s Candelas more intuitive and simple, we have inverted the cooking mechanic.“
The device now function more like frag grenades, and should help reduce the effectiveness of spamming all three Candelas in quick succession.
Kaid
Kaid is the only operator who’s gadget isn’t being changed in any way whatsoever. In fact, both of his primary weapons are being tweaked. The total reserve ammo of the TCSG12 slug shotgun has been reduced, and the AUG-A3 has had its damage increased to 33 (up from 27).
Patch 1.3 will be one of Rainbow Six Siege’s biggest balance updates. The previously announced Glaz rework is yet to go live, so we should expect an update on that front very soon.
