What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and Ubisoft have just re-activated the Rainbow Six Siege
test servers with a build of the game that includes some long awaited and really exciting
balancing changes to Lion, Capitao and team killing.
This video is really in two parts.
First, I show off how the reworked gadgets for Lion and Capitao are planned to work in
future and then I will go into a bit of a discussion around the new team killing – damage
reflection system… because the fact is, there are some serious issues with it as it stands right now.
But let’s tackle these topics one at a time, off we go!
Lion has been out for just over a full year now and to say that a significant rework of
his EE-ONE-D gadget has been “long awaited” is somewhat of an understatement.
But finally, we are now so close!
With the nerf going onto the test servers, we can only be a matter of days or maybe a
week or two away from these changes going onto the live servers.
This is what the patch notes tell us about the rework, the devs have:
Reduced the ability warning from 3 to 1.5 seconds
Reduced the scanning duration from 4 to 2 seconds
Replaced the scan outline by a red ping debuff Increased the number of charges from 2 to 3
Reduced the ability cooldown from 27 to 15 seconds
Vigil's ability cloak makes him immune to Lion's scan
So, the active time for the gadget has been
cut in half and shortening the disruption caused to the defenders makes it much harder
for the attacking team to capitalise on this.
And even if you can force a defender to move during the scanning period, they will no longer
be highlighted by an outline but instead will receive three Alibi style pings in very quick succession.
Scanning defenders will still reveal their identity but the brief pings will make it
very difficult to actually get a kill compared to how the EE-ONE-D used to work in the past.
Further to this, Vigil’s cloaking ability is being buffed to also hide him from the
scanning technology, making him a very dangerous counter player to any team running a Lion.
As an attacker, you can no longer fully rely on the Lion scan protecting you from a roaming Vigil.
I also went ahead and tested how Caveira and Mute would work with the new scanning mechanic.
Mute’s jammers were recently buffed so that walking into them after a Dokkaebi call had
already started would cut off the call.
This buff has not been transferred to work against the EE-ONE-D. If you are in the area
of effect of a jammer as the scan goes off, the jammer will block you from being detected
but if you are outside of the Mute radius and get detected, walking into the jammer
will do nothing for you.
Caveira’s silent step ability will not protect her against Lion scans; confirmed.
Now these changes are significant nerfs to the EE-ONE-D and so in order to make Lion
not completely redundant, there are also some minor improvements as highlighted in the patch
notes: he gets one extra scan and his cooldown has been reduced to 15 seconds, down from 27 seconds.
So the summary is that Lion will have more scans that he can use in quicker succession
but the effectiveness of the scans is greatly reduced.
I think it is safe to say that the Lion’s reign of terror is finally coming to an end.
Yes, his gadget is still a one click, low risk, global ability but the effects have
been trimmed back to a point now where we can finally call him a low risk / low reward operator.
Will his ability need further tweaking in future to make it even weaker or could he
now even be underpowered?
Time will tell but I think most of us will agree that if he does end up becoming a bit
underpowered, that’s perfectly acceptable.
The changes to Capitao’s crossbow are built upon the rework that had already been on the
Burnt Horizon test servers a few weeks ago.
Reducing damage per tick from 19 to 12 Size of the area of effect increased
The area takes 2 seconds to reach its maximum size
The arrow is affected by gravity after 10 meters
Reducing damage from 19 to 12 points per tick is definitely a nerf but since the ticks are
once every 300 or 350ms (and yes, I tested it and the ticks really are first 350ms, then
300, then back to 350 and so on…
I don’t know why but that’s just the way it is)… because you basically get 3 ticks
per second the bolts are still plenty dangerous enough.
Sure, before the nerf, inhaling the flame… gas… cloud (whatever it is) would have taken
you down to 5 health in 1.6s whereas post nerf it will take 2.6s to go from full health
all the way down to 4.
That’s an extra second to live; great but like I say, don’t be fooled.
These bolts are still plenty dangerous enough.
The size increase of the area of effect is about a third up to a diameter of around 6m
now, where before it was an estimated 4m.
This will make it easier to lock off wider corridors but it will take 2s for the area
of effect to grow to its full size.
And in addition to this growth time, the area of effect is now blocked by objects.
So beforehand for instance, hiding behind a deployable shield was completely pointless
because the fire effect would simply ignore it.
After this update goes live, the effect will sort of flow across the floor and it will
have to make its way around obstacles.
This makes the bolts harder to use effectively and removes a whole bunch of unintended uses
for the gadget.
And last but not least, there is of course also the new gravity effect beyond 10m.
Since introduction, Capitao’s crossbow bolts have always flown… well… straight as an arrow.
But after this patch, we will all need to get used to a bit of a ballistic curve if
we want to use the fire or smoke bolts at longer ranges.
This again increases the skill required to use Capitao and also removes certain exploits, hurray!
Finally, the much anticipated reverse friendly fire mechanic is also live on the test servers
combined with a forgive system (yet again a feature that has been on Rainbow Six players’
wish lists for absolute ages)!
The way works right now is that once a teamkill takes place, the killed player will have the
option to forgive or punish the offender.
If the choice is that the kill was accidental, then the game continues as before without any changes.
If the kill is flagged up as a purposeful teamkill or if no choice is made, the damage
reflection becomes active for the killer and this also applies to anyone killing the hostage in hostage mode.
Once the system is activated any firearm damage the killer does to teammates for the rest
of the match is simply mirrored onto them and this once again includes damage done to the hostage.
Any stun or concussive gadgets on the other hand will still work on teammates and their
effects are not reflected.
This makes perfect sense because otherwise an attacker could flash out an entire room
while his teammates walk in without being affected; it would be OP AF so no, that’s
not going to be a feature but I thought I would test it anyway, just to be sure.
Now all of this might still look pretty simple, right?
But here are a few more details that are worth highlighting and in fact, upon further testing
I found out that the system in its current state is actually quite confusing and definitely
needs some more tweaking.
After the reflection mechanic is active, throwing objects at teammates will also continue to
do damage to them, so it’s reflected.
I guess you could use this to continue resetting teammates after this update goes live but
with the new 20% health regain system resetting isn’t all that useful anymore anyway…
Beyond that he patch notes tell us that: “When a player uses a unique operator gadget to
deal this damage, reflected damage will impact the gadget itself.”
And that is definitely true for some gadgets, such as Maestro’s evil eye or Twitch’s shock drone.
But here, things already become somewhat inconsistent because when you use your Twitch drone to
zap a friendly gadget, your Twitch drone dies.
But when you use the Evil Eye to zap friendly gadgets, nothing happens… you just lose
points for destroying a friendly gadget.
Shooting a friendly gadget or drone will also not reflect any damage onto the shooter…
so it’s just the Twitch drone that is the odd one out here.
Maverick is another exception because even though his Suri Torch is a unique gadget,
it still reflects damage onto the operator like a firearm instead of onto the gadget
which would of course be silly.
But things get even more confusing because there are plenty of other unique gadgets that
will keep doing team damage.
For instance Smoke’s canisters, Fuze’s cluster charges, Ash’s breaching grenades,
Kapkan’s EDDs or Capitao’s crossbow are all unique gadgets as well but they don’t
reflect damage onto the gadgets and they also don’t reflect damage onto the offending player themselves.
Even if a player has damage reflection active, all of these lethal unique gadgets will still
do team damage and the same goes for all of the other lethal gadgets like grenades, claymores,
nitro cells, impact grenades, you name it.
And that, is a huge problem in my eyes.
With this update, the teamkill autokick feature is being removed and that makes sense because
players are only supposed to be able to commit one teamkill before they just end up committing
suicide every time they shoot a teammate.
But if all explosives and deadly gadgets still allow teamkilling, then a truly toxic player
could just kill his team with smoke canisters or fire bolts and he or she won’t even get
kicked for it anymore…
That just cannot be.
If this system goes live like that, then we are actually taking a step backward because
teamkillers can just use explosives or gadgets and they will get away with it.
What we will need is a system that differentiates for each gadget.
It makes sense that Fuze charges don’t reflect damage because then we’d just have a new
strat where Fuze fires his pucks into the objective while the rest of his team charge
in without any danger.
Only Fuze dies and that would be dumb.
So Fuze still needs to be able to teamkill.
You could argue that the same should also be true for claymores or Kapkan traps because
it’s not really the player’s fault when a teammate stays too close to these explosives and they go off.
But this cannot apply to other explosives because otherwise that would leave a huge
loophole in whole system.
So is the solution that other deadly gadgets reflect damage instead?
Well that’s not really a great idea either because the Fuze sacrifice tactic could kind
of also be used by attackers with grenades or fire bolts… It’s not easy for sure.
On the one hand you either leave huge loopholes in the entire system and trolls will exploit
those to commit unpunished team kills or on the other hand you will leave the game open
to innovative new sacrifice tactics that could end up game breaking.
Maybe the only solution is to double up on the damage once a purposeful teamkill has been committed.
So if someone uses a deadly gadget and damages a teammate, the damage is reflected to avoid
leaving loopholes but at the same time, the damage is also applied to the teammate to
avoid sacrifice tactics from taking over the game.
I admit, that dealing damage to both players is not the perfect solution either but maybe
out of the three options it’s the least bad… and anyway, this whole conundrum only
becomes an issue if a teamkill is confirmed as purposeful.
What are your thoughts on this problem and which option do you think is best?
Reflect all damage (including explosives and gadgets)?
Don’t reflect damage gadget damage?
Or apply it to both?
What do you think is the least terrible option here?
Let me know in the comments section below and while you are there, feel free to like
the video if you liked it or dislike if you didn’t!
Many thanks Willdda117 for the help with the all the testing last night and with that,
thank you everyone for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!