What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and if you have seen the initial announcements about
the upcoming Season in Rainbow Six Siege, you may have noticed that there are huge changes
coming to the damage drop-off and health systems that will fundamentally rework how the guns work in the game.
I have spoken about the new health system in the past but beyond that, the long range
damage is changing for almost every single weapons class in the game and as always, I
am here to break these changes down for you and to summarise what this will mean for you in practice;
thank you once again to Alienware and Nvidia for sponsoring the video and with that, let’s get stuck in!
In terms of damage and health, there are two separate changes coming to the game at once:
The armour & health change I already covered in a past video (link in the top right hand
corner now and coming up in the end card if you want to see those effects explained separately)
and in addition to that newly standardised damage drop-off curves for almost all weapons
in the game… and I am saying “standardised” with a couple of big fat asterisks here because
with just a little bit of testing, I have already managed to uncover some apparent flaws
in the implementation of the devs’ plans.
So instead of being able to jump straight to the conclusion of which guns will be receiving
buffs and which nerfs, we first have to understand everything that is wrong with the system as
it currently stands on the test servers.
Here is the relevant section of the pre-season designer notes and let me say this first of all:
A* for effort here.
This section nicely explains what is changing and why and it even comes with a lovely little
table to give you all the data you need!
And that looks great right?!
In theory, I wouldn’t even have had to do any testing at all… but of course, all is
not as simple as it looks.
The first little issue here I want to point out is that the second bullet point talks
about how the devs have unified the “damage drop-off” for silencers to 15%...
But damage drop-off refers to the loss of damage potential across increasing distances,
so the use of the term here is a little confusing and I think what they simply meant to say was: “damage reduction”.
A couple of paragraphs down and the devs talk about the exceptions, so the new unified drop-off
will not apply to pistols, secondary SMGs and regular shotguns… and Kali’s CSRX
because of course that gun has had its damage specifically chosen to make it a one hit kill
weapon against level one armours at all ranges.
But even more confusing than that is the slug shotgun row in the table because apparently
the damage drop-off curve for these weapons starts at 25m… and also ends at 25m.
Just an instant 30% loss of damage, apparently… except that that is of course also a mistake
and with a little bit of testing I was able to confirm that this is really meant to say
35m (so basically the same as assault rifles).
But that’s not all here, everyone who has played Rainbow Six for a while now will know
that the very first slug shotgun ever introduced to the game was of course the double barrelled
BOSG.12.2 used by Vigil and Dokkaebi.
But when these notes say slug shotguns, they only mean the ACS and TCSG, NOT the BOSG,
which keeps its old drop-off curve of 10-18m and so we add it to the list of exceptions.
Interestingly, the table also tells us that with the new season, the drop-off curves for
the LMGs and DMRs is going to start at 30m, instead of the 25m that we have had for years now.
I tested this and I can confirm that the information is accurate.
LMGs and DMRs will be receiving a mini buff across the board, in the form of slightly greater reach.
The title of this paragraph is “Damage Drop-off & Silencers”, which is great but how about
we also talk about the Extended Barrel, maybe?
The Extended barrel is only available of SMGs and Rfiles and in all of my tests, this attachment
raised the Minimum Damage modifier from 60% to 80% for both of those weapon classes.
BUT, for all the talk of “streamlining hidden passive abilities”, they apparently forgot
that Sam Fisher’s SC3000K launched with a hidden passive, where the Extended Barrel
not only raises the minimum damage but for whatever reason, for this specific gun (and
ONLY this specific gun) the Extended Barrel also pushes the Last Drop-off distance from
35 to 40m but the modifier is still 80%, so at least that is consistent.
And ok, all of these things are relatively minor…
Some wording issues here, a few forgotten details there… no big deal really.
But a couple of final questions I would have for the devs are: How sure are you really
about your suppressed damage drop-off?
Are you certain that it has been standardised?
And those are of course rhetorical questions, I tested it and god knows what’s going on
with suppressors but there is no consistency in how they work at all... well, there’s
some consistency but with many issues.
According to these notes, suppressor damage has been unified with a consistent 15% reduction
and let me start off with the positive here: for the weapon groups that are getting new
drop-off curves, the close range damage reduction for suppressors seems to work.
I tested the TCSG, the ALDA, L85, FMG-9, R4-C and AR33 and for all of those weapons the
close range damage worked perfectly as expected: [baseline damage] x 0.85, rounded down.
But here’s the first issue: for the weapons that are not getting a new, unified drop-off
curve, the suppressor has NOT been adjusted and does not conform to the new 15% drop-off rule at all.
Here’s the PMM pistol and as you can see, at close range the suppressor modifier is
0.918 and at long range it is 0.793.
So for pistols, machine pistols and shotguns the suppressor damage will remain jumbled and confusing.
Beyond that, all of my tests confirmed that, at Minimum Damage range, the suppressor is
inconsistent even for the weapon classes that are getting standardised drop-off curves.
What we should expect, given the pre-season designer notes is that suppressed damage at
range is: [Base Damage of the gun] x [Minimum Damage
modifier] x [Suppressor modifier] (rounded down to the nearest whole number)
So for example for the FMG-9, that would be: 34 x 0.6 x 0.85 (rounded down) = 17… but
in my practical test the gun did 18 points of damage, so the suppressor is stronger than
expected and the damage reduction is only 10% instead of 15%.
For all other weapons that I chose to test (TCSG, ALDA, L85, R4-C and AR33) the suppressed
damage on the test server is 2-3 points lower than the calculation tells us it should have
been and it isn’t even consistent because for these we get modifiers of between 23 and 26%...
In conclusion, while the suppressor does appear to reduce the close range damage for some
of the weapon classes by a standardised 15% (rounded down) at long range, all bets are
off and for pistols, machine pistols and shotguns the new rule doesn’t even apply at short range.
Like I said right in the beginning, when it comes to the info in the patch notes, specifically
for this section: A* for effort but that’s probably a D for execution and I’m being generous here.
This video was supposed to be simple, just a straightforward analysis of the new weapon
drop-off… and yet here we are.
Since this is only week one of the test server, there is a chance that the suppressors will
still be tweaked before the launch of the new season, so I will not be discussing them today.
It would be a complete waste of time to test the real damage reduction for every single
weapon, only for everything to change again in two weeks’ time.
What we can do though, is check the new drop-off without suppressors and of course, that combines
with the new number of shots to kill for many weapons due to the new health system, so let
me highlight to you what all of that will mean.
Now over the last few episodes, I’ve been telling you about the new Nvidia Reflex and
DLSS graphics systems available in Rainbow Six Siege and how they help you get the best
possible performance out of your PC but at the end of the day, there is always a potential
bottleneck that can introduce latency into your gaming experience and that is your monitor.
If your monitor is only refreshing once every 16.6ms, you are essentially blind as to what
is happening in the game in-between and that is why I am so excited to have had the opportunity
to be testing out the Alienware 2521H 360Hz esports monitor over the last few months.
360Hz is currently the fastest available refresh rate in the world and means that there are
only 2.7ms in between each frame.
Combine this with the monitor’s ultra-fast (1ms response time) IPS panel that delivers
99% sRGB colour coverage and you have a monitor that is not only hand tuned for esports but
also offers an incredibly vibrant and smooth gaming experience.
If you want to minimise your system latency while gaming, you need a high performance
monitor to deliver high frame rates and right now, there is no faster option than the Alienware 2521H.
It’s performed really well for me and if you are looking to upgrade your setup, do check it out!
A massive amount of maths went into this damage analysis and if you are interested, the full
info will be uploaded to my spreadsheet (link in the description) but for now, let me take
you straight to the results summary.
First, here are the effects of just the new damage drop-off, let’s forget about the
new health system for two seconds.
As you can see, the new damage drop off means that SMGs across the board are receiving pretty
considerable nerfs and the same is pretty much true for most other weapons as well but
TCSG, ACS, DMRs, LMGs and Lion’s V308 also all get to benefit from later damage drop-off,
which results in the interesting pattern, where we have first a buff at reasonably long
range but then a nerf at very long range.
The only weapons that are receiving outright buffs are the CAMRS, 417 and SR-25, the 556xi,
M762, AK-12, C7E and 416-C.
If we look at the damage per second change, the heat map looks identical; because of course
it is the changing damage that is influencing the change in DPS.
In terms of shots to kill and time to kill, like I mentioned, my sheet will contain the
full breakdown of all weapons, at all ranges, against all types of armour and impact locations
but let’s stick to a summary here.
These tables show the difference in shots to kill, so a negative number means that after
the patch you will need less hits, a positive number means more.
Obviously, at short range there is no change but at long range, we can see that the damage
changes translate across quite consistently and it’s the SMGs that are getting hit with
the hardest nerfs (especially the weaker SMGs, such as the Vector and P90) and a handful
of rifles are getting the buffs (particularly Jäger’s 416-C, Jackal’s C7E, Zofia’s
M762 and Ace/Fuze’s AK-12).
Adding in the effects of the new health system I explained in my previous video (link in
the end card soon), you can see that fundamentally, not that much changes.
At long range, it’s pretty much the same guns that are getting the biggest nerfs and buffs.
But at least the P90 ends up with a bit of a close range buff to partially counterbalance
how week this gun will be at 28m and onwards soon.
All in all, I think the easiest way to summarise the coming update is that many weapons will
need one more or one less bullet here or there, depending on distance, target armour class
and strike location but overall the already slightly weaker SMGs are going to become even
weaker at longer ranges compared to all other weapon classes, with some needing up to 3
or 4 shots more than before.
So there it is, hopefully the mess that the suppressors are causing will get sorted before
launch and maybe I can come back then and figure out some new recommendations for which
guns would do well with suppressors and which would not.
Until then, many thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in
the next episode!