What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and in this video I want to discuss the operator balancing
changes that are coming to Rainbow Six Siege with Operation Shifting Tides.
The volatile phase of the test server is over and I think it’s safe now to look at these
changes without any of them getting dropped or modified any more; because that’s always
the trade-off, right?
I could smash out a video as soon as the test server drops and get the info out as soon
as possible but then that runs the risk of certain changes not making it into the game
and then I’d just be causing confusion rather than providing useful info, so I will always
prefer to stay a bit more cautious.
That said, I think the time has now come to discuss Shifting Tides and there is in fact
so much to talk about, that I will be splitting the analysis into three different videos:
Operator Balancing, Gameplay Changes and Gun Balancing, starting off with the Operators!
Check the pinned comment below for timestamps and with that, let’s finally get going!
With the latest update to Siege Glaz is buffed significantly with an update to his banana
vision and boy is this a good one.
I have mentioned in the past that I consider Glaz to be a bit of a knife edge character.
Only a few seasons ago, his ability to see through smoke was META defining and Glaz was
consistently pretty strong.
Then came the big nerf with Operation Phantom sight that forced Glaz to stand still for
his smoke vision charge up…
He essentially went from a must pick, to a near useless operator overnight and ever since
then, the devs have been gradually re-buffing him bit by bit to bring him back to an acceptable power level.
And up until now, those changes were kind of like drops in the ocean, sure he became
better but not nearly enough to make him viable in any truly competitive match.
This update though changes all of that.
As you can see, with Operation Shifting Tides, Glaz now has a very bright and visible yellow
overlay for enemies, even when the meter on his scope is completely depleted.
When looking through smoke, the empty state is not nearly as effective but even with no
charge at all, you can still see the enemies just a tiny bit.
Combining this far more forgiving overlay system, with the slower charge depletion and
faster fire rate updates that came before and it looks now as if we might be back to
the good old days (at least for Glaz mains).
It feels like the usability nerf from Phantom Sight has been almost entirely reversed and
the way the scope works now makes it actually possible for a skilled Glaz player to use him effectively again.
Will this tip Glaz too far again in terms of the power balance?
In my opinion it definitely feels as if this might take him too far over again but hey,
maybe that will at least give Warden some validity and who knows, maybe the two will
actually balance each other out by some miracle.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the final outcome will be but if you used
to enjoy playing Glaz, all I can say is definitely give him a go; you might well find that he’s pretty usable again now.
What are your thoughts on this buff?
Let me know in the poll in the top right hand corner now!
Kaid is also getting a bit of a buff with increased range on his Electroclaw area of
effect (from 0.75 to 1.3m) and he is handing in his impact grenades and drawing some shiny
new barbed wire from the Team Rainbow armoury.
Or maybe I should say shiny old barbed wire, because he only just lost that recently.
It never made any sense to me why Kaid, who’s main gadget has such great synergy with the
wire, should lose access in the first place but hey, it’s back so who cares?
The increased Claw range will allow him to electrify up to three walls at once and that
goes for side by side or 90 degree angle arrangements.
The deploy time stays the same, as you can see, and that means that overall, Kaid will
now simply get more bang for his buck on each Claw and this should go some way towards pushing
his utility up a bit.
This, combined with his recent AUG A3 buff will make him far more competitive as an alternative
(or supplement) to good old Bandit.
Kaid didn’t quite live up to expectations when he was released but the consecutive buffs
have now finally raised him to a point where I’m starting to like have taken a him a lot.
It might year, but hurray, Kaid has finally arrived!
You know the drill, a poll for your thoughts is available now!
Warden is also being… ehm… changed?
A tiny bit?
He’s basically losing his barbed wire and gaining a nitro cell, which is supposed to
make him a more powerful anchor and plant denier…
I mean, sure C4 is great and all but if you want to bring an operator to deny the plant
with explosives, then why not bring one that can also add something to the team with a
useful main gadget?
The whole argument of Warden now being able to act without exposing himself completely
contradicts the nature of his main gadget.
He is supposed to withstand flashes and smokes in order to be able to expose himself at the
right time and counter the push.
If using the C4 from cover is the play, then literally any other defender who owns a nitro
cell can do this and be more valuable to the team with other abilities at the same time.
I think Warden may need some more love in future here.
The Jackal update has been discussed to death already by now, but there are some aspects
that are not properly elaborated on in the patch notes.
So let me skip over the basics relatively quickly before going into more detail on the new Caveira interaction.
The number of pings he gets now are dependent on the age of the footprints, which will be
evident to you by their colour and the format of the highlighting ring around the print you are scanning.
When you scan now, all footprints of that specific enemy disappear, so you will have
to make a choice between following the prints or scanning for pings but of course, new prints
left after the scan will be scannable again.
Finally, Jackal will no longer be able to see or scan footprints from below after opening up the ceiling!
So that should be clear, right?
Interestingly, the patch notes also mention an improved interaction with Caveira’s silent
step ability but they don’t really explain what that means.
So I did some digging around in the game and actually, this is a really neat little update and fix.
Pre-patch if you’re playing as Jackal and scan Caveira, one of two things could happen
if she activated her silent step ability.
If you scanned her and she activated her ability afterwards, she would avoid getting pinged
but the countdown timer for both Jackal and Cav would look exactly the same (i.e. blue).
If on the other hand, Cav already happened to be in the silent step exactly when the
scan completed, the entire scan would just fail and you would have basically wasted one of Jackal’s charges.
The new system addresses both of these possibilities.
Firstly, when Cav manages to avoid getting pinged by activating her ability after getting
scanned, the timer is greyed out for both operators which then makes it clear that the
pings are failing due to Cav’s super sneakiness.
But even better than this, if Cav just happens to be sneaking at the time of getting her
prints scanned, the scan will no longer fail.
It will just start out in the greyed out state indicating that she is hidding but offering
the possibility of one of the other pings still working in future.
That’s quite cool and I think an important fix before this overall nerf goes live.
Imagine scanning prints, seeing them all disappear and then getting no payoff at all because
Cav just happened to be silent stepping right at that moment.
It would kind of suck, so seeing this fixed is great!
Here’s something that wasn’t in the patch notes and is probably a minor bug; Nokk’s
ADS time when using her cloaking ability will now be shorter compared to not using her ability.
As you can see in my test footage from before the new patch, the time with the FMG-9 used
to be consistently between 216 and 233ms, irrespective of her ability being active or
not and this made complete sense because the FMG-9 is supposed to have an ADS time of 220ms,
which falls exactly between two frames when recording at 60 fps.
Thanks to some helpful hints from fans (many thanks for reaching out guys!)
I also tested this on the TS build and as you can see, when Nokk is using her ability
now, her ADS time is reduced to around 183ms, so over 17% faster than it used to be.
I don’t know what could have caused this, it definitely doesn’t feel like an intentional
change and if it’s a bug, well then I wonder what other guns or operators have been affected as well.
Have you noticed anything off for operators’ ADS times?
Share a comment below!
And last and definitely also least, the voice actors for Hibana and Mira are being changed.
Ubisoft is planning to put out more lore-style content in future and just like Angela Basset
being swapped out of the role of Six, I suspect that Hibana and Mira being replaced is down
to a cost saving measure.
Using higher profile actors for voiceovers is cool and all but I can understand how things
could become really expensive once you start putting together more cut scenes, voiceovers
or even motion capture sessions for animated short films.
So either Jamie Choi (who previously played Hibana) and Christine Solomon (who played
Mira) are just too busy to commit to future Rainbow Six engagements or they are simply too expensive.
Although, this swap might also give us a hint at the next short film we might be getting.
The first one focused on Thatcher and Dokkaebi, maybe the next one will be a Mira/Hibana special?
Although Mira definitely makes sense in general, since voiceovers from her have become a significant
part of the gadget reveal teasers each season.
But yeah, no real impact on gameplay here and it is almost certainly just down to commitments or cost.
And those are the Operator Balancing updates and changes of Operation Shifting Tides.
Do let me know your thoughts on the changes in the comments below; thank you so much for
watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!