What’s up guys Rogue-9 here!
The question of “What is better in Rainbow Six Siege: armour or speed?” has been thrown
around basically since the launch of the game and now that Jäger is being changed from
the iconic speedy-boi he has been for over four years, to just an average old 2-speed
/ 2 armour, the question is once again on many players’ minds.
Could this upcoming change actually make the man stronger?
Could this intended nerf backfire spectacularly and create the ultimate defender?
We’ll, I’ve run some tests and crunched some stats and I do believe that I have a definitive answer.
My analysis around these questions was structured into three main topics:
• What speed advantage do 3-speeds have over 2-speeds and how does this play out in game?
So, how much is that extra bit of speed really worth?
Then: • How much more damage can a 2-speed really
tank over a 3-speed and will it make a difference for Jäger?
And Finally: • Is there any evidence in the performance
& pick rate data that Ubisoft have been sharing over the past nine seasons that can give us
an insight into how speed and armour ratings affect the power level of the operators?
As always, timestamps in the comments section can help you navigate the video but let’s
just go through these sections one by one!
Quantifying the speed differences between the three different operator classes is relatively simple.
We can test this by running a fixed distance and then calculating by what percentage the
time taken increases from armour class to armour class and hey presto, if we use 3-speed
operators as the default, then 2-speeds will be 5% slower and 1-speeds are 15% slower by comparison.
So if you run for 20s as a 3-speed, then 2-speeds will take 21s to run the same distance and
for 1-speeds it will take 23s.
Neat!
But what does this actually mean when playing the game?
Surely saving 1s when travelling long distances won’t really make that much of a difference
in most rounds, right?
Well , the advantage that speed offers in Rainbow Six is is not really about the travel times.
I made a video a while ago, explaining why high ping is not an advantage in R6 and a
number of people misunderstood the point I was making and started telling me that they
experience peeker’s advantage all the time.
But well, those are two difference things, aren’t they?
Because the fact is that in a fast paced, one-hit-kill game (like Rainbow Six Siege
or any other low time to kill online shooter), peeker’s advantage will most definitely
be a factor and will continue to be a factor in the foreseeable future, it’s just that
high ping doesn’t actually help you.
And as much as a 5% speed advantage might seem trivial, during a peek, when literal
milliseconds count, this can and does make a difference.
That is where the true power of the Rainbow Six 3-speed operators comes from!
I ran a few tests to try and measure the potential disadvantage that Jäger will experience once
he goes down to the 2-speed / 2-armour class but I have to admit, coming up with possible
trials that would provide any meaningful results was a bit tricky.
All of the following experiments were run on a server where both players had a ping
of just under 100ms and the idea is that this moderately high ping will provide us with
decently realistic results when testing for peeker’s advantage.
In this test we are simply comparing how long it takes Jäger to cross from one side of
the Oregon Lobby to the other and as you can see, even at such a relatively short distance,
the minor 5% difference in speed does have an impact.
But that doesn’t really give us much insight into the advantage you will get during the peek itself.
To test this, I went into the basement and found a spot where both Ash and Jäger are
exactly 3m away from an obstacle and I replicated the same peek both on the regular servers
and on the test servers and what I found was quite interesting and bear with me here because
it gets a bit funky.
If we synchronise the two clips from Jäger’s perspective, so that both start moving at
the exact same frame; and then we synchronise each of Ash’s clips to the respective Jäger
clips using the round timer (so synchronise Ash regular server with Jäger regular server
and the same for the TS) then we end up with both of Ash’s clips synchronised so that
in both of them, Jäger starts his peek at exactly the same time.
Now if we step through this synchronised footage, as a 3-speed, Jäger gets a full view along
the wall in front of him after 25 frames.
The two speed Jäger takes on average around one and a half frames longer to reach that
point (in this specific trial it was two frames).
And that makes sense: slower Jäger means slightly slower peek.
Now from Ash’s perspective though, the 3-speed peek lags 11 frames behind what Jäger sees,
while the 2-speed peek basically appears around the same time for her (so the lag is only 9 or 10 frames).
What this would suggest is that at the same ping a 3 speed can build up a slightly greater
peeker’s advantage compared to a 2-speed.
In our case with both players at a ping of around 100ms that advantage looks to be between
one and a half to two frames in the specific test we ran.
But beware, these results should be taken with a couple of grains of salt because there
are a few limitations.
The synchronisation of the Ash and Jäger clips had to be done via the in-game timer,
so the results are dependent on the timer being synced for both players and I have no
way to guarantee that that is the case.
A further issue is that when characters sidestep in Siege, their head does not move in a smooth motion.
Because of the stepping animation, we occasionally get these breaks where the head stops for
one frame while the body catches up.
I had to discard several tests because this one frame pause in the movement would mess
with the results depending on when it happened.
So the summary is that I do think I was able to demonstrate experimentally that peeker’s
advantage can be slightly greater for 3-speeds vs. 2-speeds and that makes perfect sense
because the faster your character is moving in an online game, the greater the distance
that you can create between where the character is on your local client of the game and where
the “ghost” of your character is on the server.
And that means that greater speed in Rainbow Six Siege will result in greater gun fighting
abilities, all other things equal.
But does this theoretical advantage really translate into elevated in-game performance?
Impossible to tell from these kind of tests alone and that is why I also added on the
statistical analysis of what is probably hundreds of millions of rounds played over the last few years.
But we’ll get to that later.
For now we know that speed is a definite advantage and that losing his 3-speed status will be a nerf to Jäger.
So the next question is: what about the additional armour?
Will this possibly provide enough of an advantage to counter balance or maybe even supersede
the disadvantage of slower movement?
Well, this is pretty easy to check.
I have been gathering and analysing Rainbow Six gun stats literally for years now and
so it is really easy to calculate the additional number of shots a 2-speed is able to tank
vs. a 3-speed since 2-armour operators in Siege take 90% of the baseline damage for
each gun, rounded down to the nearest full point of damage.
This table shows the difference in shots to down/kill between 3-speeds and 2-speeds for
each gun and since Jäger is a defender, it is of course the attacker weapons that are of interest here.
So if we go ahead and filter out the defender only guns, you can see that at close range,
the 2-armour rating is not really going to do much for Jäger after the upcoming patch.
Looking at the primary attacker weapons, you can see that at ranges below 20 odd meters,
2-armours can only take 1 extra shot to the upper body from IQ’s G8A1 machinegun and
Twitch’s F2 assault rifle and there is a brief window between 12 and 16m where the
BOSG will also need 1 shot more.
And then there is also Jackal’s PDW9 SMG.
But that is it!
And even for secondaries, it’s not looking great.
Only two of the four machine pistols and 3 out of 17 pistols will need that one extra shot.
Even at max range (where the additional armour effect is enhanced a little by the weaker
damage from each gun) you’ll only have an advantage in 23 out of 57 cases.
Rook plates will also help a bit but again, the real impact- is still inconsistent with
only 20 out of the 57 weapons requiring one extra shot before damage drop-off.
I guess everyone is free to make their own judgement here as to how valuable the additional
armour rating will be but for me, the case is pretty clear.
The bottom line is that at the most common combat distances a 2-speed / 2-armour operator
can only tank 1 additional body shot for 8 out of a total of 57 attacker weapons (not
counting the shotguns).
If you were hoping to pick Jäger after the patch and that you would be tanking 1 or 2
extra shot from all weapons, at all ranges, then think again!
It’s just not gonna happen!
In almost all of the most common situations, you are basically going to go down just as
easily as before and there are no ifs or buts about it.
At this stage, we know that losing the speed will be a slight disadvantage, while the additional
armour will not really be making up for that.
But all of that is a relatively theoretical analysis and that is where my last topic comes in.
The Ubisoft dev team have been sharing performance insights for all operators with us since way
back in Year 3 Season 1.
So we now have 9 season (over 2 years) worth of actual performance and pick rate stats
taken from hundreds of millions, if not billions, of rounds of plat & diamond level Rainbow Six Siege.
That is a lot of data and despite the confounding variables we have to consider here, I do think
that we can analyse these stats to compare the performance of the different speed/armour
classes in the game.
What I essentially did was to calculate the average win delta stats for each operator
class, during each season and I then also split the stats for attack and defence, simple as that.
Now there are a few limitations to consider with this method.
The charts that the dev team put out each season are really well made, illustrative
and quick to understand but they are not the most accurate way of conveying this info.
Essentially, there is someone on the comms team that has to read a table of stats and
then manually build the chart and then on the other end, there is me converting the
chart back into a table, so that I can actually analyse the stats.
Small inaccuracies are basically guaranteed here.
And then of course there are also a whole shedload of confounding variables that are
messing with the meaningfulness of analysing the stats in the way I did because an operator’s
performance doesn’t just depend on the armour rating we are hoping to understand but of
course also on things like the guns, abilities and secondary gadgets that each operator has access to.
So yes, there are a few limitations here but nevertheless, if we finally look at the average
stats, we can see that they paint a pretty clear picture.
3-speed operators almost always have the best average performance; 2-speed operators almost
always have the second best average performance and 1-speeds are almost always the worst group
out of the three.
If we filter out the attackers and only focus on the averages for defenders, the picture
becomes even clearer.
3-speeds, across more than 2 years’ worth of Siege games (possibly billions of rounds)
consistently have the best average win deltas whereas 2-speeds are pretty consistently second
best, apart from the first half of year 3, where they were actually the worst performers.
The fact is that all three of my analyses here paint a very clear picture and provide
us with our conclusion: Jäger is getting nerfed, there are no two ways about it.
Losing the speed is going to make him 5% slower in getting around the map and will negatively
affect his ability to win gunfights with peeker’s advantage.
Gaining additional armour will do literally nothing in most cases.
And as if those two facts weren’t enough.
The stats from about a cajillion rounds of Siege over the last few years prove that 3-speeds
consistently perform better than 2- or 1-speeds.
If you love playing as Jäger and you were somehow hoping against hope that the devs
might actually be accidentally buffing him with this upcoming patch, I have bad news
everyone… it’s a nerf.
It’s definitely a nerf.
But maybe it’s finally a chance for all of us to give Wamai a fair go.
He’s already had a really strong showing in Pro League since becoming available in
the second half of the current season, so the best players in the world definitely seem
to see something in him.
If you haven’t seen it yet, I made a handy video analysing the strengths and weaknesses
for both Jäger and Wamai; let me stick a link to that in the upcoming end card so you
can catch up if you like!
Until then, thank you so much to everyone who stuck through the video until here, things
did get a little technical, didn’t they.
As always, I do hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!