What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and today I want to show you how some of the upcoming
changes for Rainbow Six Siege, that are currently on the test server, compare to what we have
in the live build.
If you are looking for any particular topic, you will find a pinned comment down below
with the relevant timestamps.
And now let’s get right to it!
Glaz was nerfed at the beginning of Operation Phantom Sight and boy what a nerf it was.
His performance and pick rates plummeted through the floor making him pretty much one of the
worst if not the worst performing operator in the game, so the nerf is being walked back
a little with the upcoming patch.
In the current live build, Glaz’ banana vision decays once he starts moving in any
way and within 2.5s he will have lost all capability of seeing through smoke.
This time is being upped to a far more generous 6s which will allow more flexibility when
providing cover through smoke but will still make it very hard for him to push as aggressively as he used to.
In addition to this, in the live build, he is only able to look from side to side over
a total angle 90° before his vision starts to decay.
After the patch this angle is being increased to 120° so you will be actually be able to
look around and scan for targets while providing the cover through smoke.
Being able to move around and look around a bit more will make Glaz so much more comfortable
to play and hopefully these changes will help bring him back to a state where he can actually
provide some support for his team.
At the very least, I think this is a good step in the right direction.
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Over to Jackal: He is an operator that has consistently been underperforming in Rainbow
Six Siege over the last year and a half but with a little buff to his Eyenox gadget during
Operation Para Bellum he has gradually grown into a significant annoyance to most players.
His pick rate has been steadily increasing from season to season over the last year and
as of the last 3 months, his pick rate is the highest he’s ever seen and once you
add his ban rate on top of that it becomes clear that he is currently a seen as relatively
powerful and also a bit of a nuisance by the community.
He is still underperforming in terms of his win rate (with a win delta of around -0.5%)
but the significant ban rate speaks volumes about how the community feels about being
tracked and for that reason; Jackal is getting a minor nerf.
The number of times that a defender is pinged when getting Jackal tracked is being reduced
from five to four in the coming update.
So this means 20s of frustration and anxiety instead of the 25s we have to deal with right now.
And this might seem like a very slight nerf but I think that makes perfect sense.
The problem with Jackal is not his performance and that he is overpowered, the issue with
him is that he is frustrating to play against.
So the aim is to reduce the frustration that he causes without weakening him too much because
he is already underpowered as it is.
Will one less ping be enough to remove the frustration of getting tracked?
Well, it’s definitely an improvement but 20s of being forced to constantly move around
to avoid getting pinched or wall banged is still quite a lot.
Any more of a nerf though and there is a serious risk of Jackal becoming completely irrelevant.
We shall see how it all plays out but I would not be surprised if we see more tweaking of
Jackal’s ability in future.
Echo is another operator that has become a casualty of the pick and ban system in ranked.
In fact, he is the most banned character of all right now but interestingly his win delta
of around -0.6% again puts him in the slightly underpowered group of operators.
Clearly, the operator bans right now in ranked are used more to tackle frustrating, rather
than powerful operators.
So, once again we are getting a gadget nerf and the designer notes tells us that for Echo
this means that the stun effect timer of his Yokai drones is being reduced from 10s to 7s.
But there’s more to it than just that because those times are only for when you stand still
when getting stunned and Echo’s stun effect hits you harder and lasts longer when you move.
In the past when I tested Echo’s stun charge, I concluded that sprinting while stunned makes
the visual star speckling effect worse; it gives you tunnel vision that significantly
obscures the outer two thirds of your screen and it double the effect timer to 20s.
But when testing the effect again for this comparison, I noticed that there are even
more factors to take into account.
The speed at which you move is important, so if you are jogging or just walking, you
will be better off than when you are sprinting.
And rather confusingly, if you are already sprinting when you get hit by Echo and you
then continue sprinting, the visual effects will only last the usual 10s instead of being
doubled to 20s in the live build…
To me this seems odd and I wonder if it’s a bug rather than an intended feature and
this probably bug is also present on the test server.
Amway, what that means for the new patch is that if you’re already sprinting when you
get Echo’ed, the visual effects will last for 7s (although the sway does go on for a
little longer) but if you start sprinting just after getting stunned, then we would
have expected the effect to last 14s (i.e. double) but instead, it lasts only around 11s…
Long story short, Echo’s stun effect is getting nerfed by 30% when the target remains
stationary and by around 45% when sprinting... maybe; unless that is also unintended and
it’s really supposed to be double in which case the timer might be increased to 14s before release of the patch.
Over to the next nerf and I’m starting to feel like a broken record here.
Shields are getting nerfed and once again, if we look at the past performances of Blitz
and Monty over the last 18 months, their performance and pick rates never really showed them to
be a massive problem from a gameplay perspective.
Blitz’s win delta reached its peak in Y3S2 at around +1.7% but ever since Y3S3 he’s
always been negative with his current win delta at -1.1%.
Monty used to underperform Blitz, with his best performance coming in Y3S4 at +0.55%
but to be fair to him, the last 3 months have seen him climb all the way up to around +0.75%.
This indicates a potential slight overperformance but less than a single percentage point in
the positive is still nothing to write home about.
Nevertheless, Montagne is the most banned attacking operator in Siege right now due
to the frustration of playing against him and therefore we are seeing two types of nerfs
applied to all shields: Their melee will only set their opponent to Down-But-Not-Out rather
than killing them and their hip fire is being increased significantly although there is
some rebalancing going on here as well because different shield ops are getting different levels of nerfs.
I tested and analysed the hip fire nerf for Fuze, Blitz and Monty, comparing three different
states: standing, crouching and jogging while standing.
Fuze is relatively straightforward: When holding the shield his hip fire is being increased
by around 71-73% depending across all three test scenarios and the hip fire cones with
his shield on his back remain exactly the same.
This gives him pretty appalling hip fire although he’s still a good chunk better than Monty.
Speaking of which, Monty is also pretty consistent with his hip fire cones being 43% larger after
the update while carrying shield but interestingly, his cones are also growing by a couple of
pixels with his shield on his back.
At the moment, so before the patch, Monty has the worst hip fire spread of all three
of these characters and despite the relatively modest increase, his hip fire spreads remain
the worst and will be literally gigantic after the patch; over 1000 pixels at a resolution
of 1440p when moving!!
Blitz is getting the smallest nerf of all three operators as long as he remains stationary,
only 23% for standing and crouching but when he starts moving with his shield up, his nerf
is the largest with a 77% increase in hip fire spread.
And beyond this, his spread with the shield on his back and while moving is also getting
nerfed by a considerable 44% spread increase.
So for Blitz, standing still before opening fire seems to be very much worthwhile once the patch drops.
Maverick is at long last being nerfed with a new blowtorch sound.
Let’s have a listen and compare.
Ok so from the first person perspective, it might not seem all that different but the
audio meter in my editing software assures me that the new sound is a couple of decibels louder.
But in all fairness, the first person perspective is really not important, so let’s compare
the sounds from the view of a defender.
Now from this angle, the difference is much more noticeable and it’s down to Rainbow
Six’s sound propagation system.
The problem with Maverick up until now was never really that the sound of the torch was
too quiet, the problem has more to do with the fact that as long as the wall is still
closed, it blocks almost all of the sound from coming through, so the first hole that
Maverick can make in any wall is almost inaudible to anyone of the other side.
Once the first hole has been made the torch becomes far more noticeable but by that time
it is usually too late for any unwary defender on the other side.
The biggest improvement with the new sound is that while a closed wall still blocks the
sound of the torch itself, they have added a crackling effect to the wall that can still
be heard by anyone on the other side and that should finally put an end to anchoring defenders
dying to holes that were opened up right beside them.
And finally, last and maybe also least, Nokk’s performance so far has been underwhelming
to say the least.
She is currently the second worst attacker in terms of her win delta (only beaten by
the appallingly ineffective post-nerf Glaz) and so to try to elevate her value on the
attacking team a little, the timer on her cloaking ability is increased by 20% (from 10 to 12s).
I doubt that this will have a huge impact on her effectiveness in the hands of most
players but there may be situations now and then where the extra two seconds of cloaking
could make all the difference.
It’s always good to stay on the cautious side when buffing a new operator, especially
when that op hasn’t been used in Pro League yet, so I understand the reserved approach
to this buff and I guess there’s always room for more improvements in the future, if required.
And that’s it, which of these changes are you looking forward to the most?
Let me know in the comments section below and with that, thank you so much for watching;
I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!