What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and now that the release of Operation Steel Wave for Rainbow
Six Siege is only a matter of days… well maybe weeks… ok at worst months away, I
thought it would be a good idea to present a final recap and demonstration of all of
the major gameplay changes coming to the game next season.
Timestamps to individual topics will be in the description and pinned comment below and
maybe some of you will even see the different sections highlighted in the scroll bar at
the bottom of the video.
This is a really cool new YouTube feature although it does seem to be a little temperamental
at the moment in terms of who gets to see it but one way or another, the timestamps
are there should you wish to use them.
And with that, let’s go!
One of the operators that is getting a pretty major injection of fun next season is Amaru!
Since her introduction during Ember Rise, Amaru’s pick rates have been pretty poor
and maybe that’s not surprising given her background as an anti-terror anthropologist
… wait what…
*guys, the script says that she’s an anti-terror anthropologist… ok…*
eh, whatever you say.
Well given that she is an anthropologist, it kind of makes sense that she’s not really
brought that much value to Team Rainbow.
But, with the start of the next season, this old bird may yet develop a bit of a bite.
Her grappling hook ability is being buffed with a whole number of little tweaks that
should make Amaru more fun to play and also help her performance a little.
The range of her hook shot and the grapple speed remains the same but when she attacks
through a window, her ability will be far less predictable than it used to be.
Instead of breaking the barricade at the beginning of the grapple, she now won’t actually open
it up until she comes bursting through which can be really useful if you manage to land
on top of an unsuspecting defender, because getting kicked in the head by Amaru will still
instantly take out any enemy.
On top of that she will soon be able to ready her gun a full 200ms faster than before; for
the G8 LMG the times will be 700ms after passing through the window instead of the previous
900ms and other guns will be even faster!
In our testing, we discovered that both the primary and secondary shotguns will be another
200ms faster than the LMG and if you grapple while wielding the SMG-11, you can even get
up to a 300ms advantage over the G8.
Pretty good to know if you really want to surprise your opponents!
But wait, there’s more!
Smashing straight through closed barricades and being able to shoot much quicker are not
the only tweaks!
With the next season, Amaru will also be able to grapple straight through unreinforced hatches,
which is better than having to shotgun them open first but I do have to mention that hatches
will still be a little bit more risky to use than windows.
Firstly, even though you can grapple through a closed hatch the hatch is opened up as your
hook grips on, so you will not have quite the same element of surprise as you would with windows.
In addition to that, Amaru will not be able to ready her gun any quicker after hatch grappling in the new season.
In every test we ran, the time to bring up the weapon after a hatch grapple was still
the same as in Operation Void Edge…
The patch notes are a little unclear on what the intention is with hatches, all they say
is: “faster recovery when landing ” but is this only meant to be for windows or is
it supposed to be for hatches too and the fact that the final stages of the test server
still have the same recovery speed as the live build is simply a bug or an oversight?
I don’t know… it feels odd that we get better recovery for windows but not for hatches
and if it really is a conscious design choice, then why not highlight something like that
in the patch notes?
But, I guess we will have to simply file this along with all of the other mysteries of Siege,
like the real meaning of mobility stat or the question of why the suppressed damage
values are wrong for almost every gun in the game.
Moving on!
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A significant change that was not announced in the season’s patch notes but instead
only briefly mentioned on the Test Server Subreddit as a bug fix is that the explosive
properties for Fuze’s cluster charges are being changed.
The patch notes only say: “FIXED – Operators can take damage or even die when standing
next to a detonating cluster charge even if they are not in the cluster charge AOE.”
and that is complete nonsense.
The actual reason why players can die on the floor above or below the explosions is exactly
because those players are still in the area of effect of the pucks and because the new
shrapnel system allows the damage to travel through the floor or ceiling respectively.
And that is the problem that is being fixed!
Going forward, Fuze’s pucks will no longer do shrapnel damage, the entire shrapnel system
has simply been deactivated for this particular gadget.
It doesn’t matter what kind of soft surface is shielding you, a floor, ceiling or even
a wall; after the next patch goes live, all of these obstacles will 100% protect you from
the blasts of the pucks.
Here is a great example of an enemy hiding behind a soft wall and in the current live
build, as you can see, every single explosion will do shrapnel damage and the enemy is taken
out… while in the test server build, even though the pucks are landing right next to
the wall and the opponent is right on the other side, mere centimetres away, no damage
is transferred through at all.
All other explosives, such as nitro cells or hand grenades, will still do shrapnel damage
through walls, floors or ceilings, exactly as before.
See a couple of examples here .
It’s good to see that this unintentional
buff to Fuze (which also made him quite dangerous to use) is finally getting fixed but sadly,
explosions in Rainbow Six are still a bit of a challenge for the devs to deal with and
so, as simple as the fix to Fuze is, it is still not perfect because it can still happen
that Fuze himself takes damage from his own charges as you can see in this example here.
My theory is that this happens when a puck manages to get a direct line of sight onto
Fuze through the hole that the launcher bores into the soft surface before firing out the pucks.
It’s a bit unfortunate that this can still happen but I guess as long as you move a little
bit away from the hole, you should be pretty safe once the new patch goes live.
Another significant change to the game is the addition of a new secondary gadget for defenders.
The long rumoured proximity alarm is finally coming to the game and it will essentially
function similar to an Ela mine or maybe Wamai’s MAG-Nets.
You can throw it and it will attach to any surface and after that, it will have certain
area of effect and will beep angrily at any attacker that gets to close.
Functionally, it will act similar to barbed wire in that it can be used as an early warning
system to cover your back against sneaky crouch-walking attackers.
Interestingly, this new device is not only added to the main operators but it also becomes
part of the primary gadget choices for the defensive recruits and the deployable shield
is switched over to the group of secondary gadgets instead.
Finally for reference, these are the operators that will get access to the alarm and which
gadgets they will be losing.
Stun effects can be quite weird and confusing in Rainbow Six, with a lot of different operators
inflicting a lot of different and sometimes complex stuns and so to simplify things a
bit, Echo, Zofia and Ela will be seeing some changes to how their gadgets affect opponents.
The stun effect of the two Polish sisters has always been unique in the game as the
only effect that reduces the target’s aim sensitivity and while everything about being
stunned is kind of frustrating, not being able to aim properly for a few seconds is
super-duper annoying and so this is the part of the effect that will be removed with Operation Steel Wave.
All other components of the effect stay as they are: you will still see double, you will
still see floating lights, you will still get a dark vignette around your screen and
you will still experience a significant reduction in movement speed.
When it comes to Echo, his stun effect is also being simplified but you could actually
argue that his changes add up to an overall buff, rather than a nerf.
Up until now, what made Echo so confusing to play against for newer players, was that
the effect of his stun became more intense, the faster you moved and this will be simplified
with the new season.
The main change to Echo’s stun is that players will no longer experience the drunken camera
sway while moving and that the duration of the stun is now fixed.
Up until now, the audio effects only lasted about 4.5s while standing still
but up to 10s while running.
The dark vignette and double vision lasted 6s (while standing or running)
but you also had up to about 8.5s of camera sway only while running.
From the next season onwards the audio effect will always be 10s, not matter how you move
and that is a bit of a buff to Echo.
Also, your double vision and vignette will last around 8.5s, which again is longer than it used to be.
In addition to that you can also notice that the black vignette around the screen has been
standardised, which means that it will become a bit more intense while standing still but
it will no longer grow while moving.
So it’s a bit worse in one way but a bit better in another.
The only nerf to Echo’s stun is that the drunken camera roll effect while running is
being removed completely.
So the bottom line is that Echo’s stun has been standardised but most of the changes
are now actually a bit worse than before.
And finally, there are a whole bunch of simpler changes next season that will benefit (or
maybe harm) a variety of characters and why don’t we start out straight away with Echo
again because he is also losing his deployable shield and instead getting access to impact grenades.
I think most players agree that this is not only a nerf but also a bit of an odd choice.
Echo’s real value during the match (especially during the final stages of a round) is being
able to operate his Yokai drones and so a viable tactic with him has always been to
anchor somewhere safely near the site, hiding behind his shield and only fighting when he
absolutely has to.
As annoying as the reworked shield can be in high level play, if there was any defender
in the entire game for whom it made sense to have a shield, due to the role his/her
main gadget forces them into, it would have been Echo, no?
But there it is, his shield is being removed in the near future, whether we like it or not.
Clash’s SPSMG9 is having the red dot in its sight switched to the reflex scope’s green triangle.
The devs don’t give a reason for this but a quick test shows that ever since Operation
Grim Sky, Clash has been suffering from a sight misalignment and that shots land slightly
low with the red dot, so my theory is that the new reticle is simply chosen to fix this issue.
And this will not only affect Clash because with Steel Wave, the SPSMG9 is also being
made available for Kali in exchange for the P22 Mk5 pistol.
Speaking of Kali, besides getting access to the SPSMG9 she is also getting a couple more
micro buffs and when I say micro, I really mean tiny.
The fuse timer for her explosive lance is being reduced from 2.5s (after boring in) to 1.5s.
This won’t really improve anything against static defences but I guess it will make bandit
tricking a bit harder.
Her final change is a reduction in vertical recoil for her CSRX sniper rifle.
On paper, this sounds quite useful but here’s the thing.
Her reset time will still be the same as before and you are still going to lose sight of your
target after each shot, even on the smaller zoom factor.
I guess maybe you could argue that your target will be unsighted for just a little bit less
than before but I personally don’t see this having any real effect on the usability of her rifle.
It is still going to be a really challenging gun to handle.
Finka has been one of the consistently best performing attackers in Rainbow Six Siege,
season after season and so of course the logical thing to do is to buff her.
On the live servers right now, getting revived by her Nanoboost gives you 5 HP plus an additional
temporary 20 H P.
Even before the 20 HP boost runs out, this 25 HP, in most cases, is not enough to survive
even a single hit from any weapon.
So, with the new season, Finka will now be able to revive players for 30 HP, plus the
time limited 20 HP boost and that on the other hand, is enough to survive at least one hit
from most weapons in the game.
After several nerfs many seasons ago, Kaid and Nomad’s .44 Mag has become quite difficult
to handle and won’t do nearly as much damage as it used to and the chances of survival
for most players when their primary weapon runs out of ammo are pretty low.
So, in order to help both characters out a bit, the devs are giving them access to one
alternative sidearm each: With the new season, Kaid will get access to the French LFP586
revolver and Nomad will be able to pick the PRB92, which is Capitao’s semi-auto pistol.
It might be interesting to do a bit of a Loadout META review comparing the .44 Mag to each
of these new options, so do keep an eye on the channel for those in future.
Oryx has had a bumpy start to his career on the Team Rainbow roster, significantly underperforming
during his first season on the team and in order to help with that, he is also getting
a couple of little tweaks.
Running through walls is going to harm the guy less and he will only take 5 damage instead
of 10 and in addition to that, he is going to be set up a bit more for his role as a
roamer and off-site ambusher.
He is losing his bullet proof camera and getting the brand new proximity alarm instead and
he will also be able to attach an angled grip to his MP5 in future to give him that extra
snappy ADS time so that he can engage opponents more quickly after bursting through a wall
or jumping up through a hatch!
And finally, last but definitely not least for console players, a change that went live
for the PC version of the game all the way back in April is that Ying is finally losing
her recently added bonus candela for console too.
It turns out that the buff she got last season was just a bit too much and the following
nerf has just taken a bit longer to be activated on consoles, most likely due to the current
worldwide health situation.
And that is it, a brief rundown of all of the important gameplay changes coming to the
game with Steel Wave.
I will be following up with loads of Loadout META videos to assess the new weapon options
that many of the characters are getting, so if you are interested in that and not yet
subscribed to the channel, now is as good a time as ever and while you’re down there,
leaving a like is free and each one gives me that little boost of endorphins that keeps
me going while being locked down for months on end, so do feel free to leave a like as well!
And with that, as always, many thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and
I will see you in the next episode!