What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here!
I’ve been playing some Ember Rise recently and in this video I want to give you my personal
impression of the new attacker Amaru.
I will cover everything you need to know about her gadget, as well as her loadout, before
finishing off with a bit of an assessment of what she will bring to the table.
I have also created a separate video on the new Defender Goyo (who looks really promising
by the way) and there will be a link to that in the end card.
But now: Amaru!
Let’s go!
The new attacker in Rainbow Six Siege, will be a two speed, two armour operator with a difficulty rank of one.
That is at least what the menu tells us, I will get into my thoughts on difficulty a
bit more during the summary of this video.
As you may know by now, Amaru will be equipped with a Pathfinder style grappling gun… or
maybe I should really call it a Link style grappling gun because in my books he’s the
real OG when it comes using a hook shot to get to hard to reach places in a hurry.
This gives her an entry frag / flank role because her only purpose during any given round will be to get kills.
To assist her in this quest, she comes outfitted with IQ’s G8A1 (except that it now has access
to the angled grip – alongside all the existing attachments of course), Echo and Hibana’s
Supernova shotgun (except that that now also gets the option of a suppressor) and then
as sidearm options you can pick between the SMG-11 or Jackal and Mira’s ITA12S mini shotgun.
Bringing a shotgun with Amaru is quite important (we’ll get to that in a minute) and so I
see basically two viable permutations here.
Bring the G8 with the ITA12S on the side or bring the Supernova with the SMG-11.
And now let me tell you a little bit about the Garra Hook grappling gun!
It comes with enough propellant to fire the hook 4 times, has a reach of 15m and each
time you use it, it takes 9s before the next shot becomes available.
When you’re outside, it can attach to any ledge that your normal hook could also attach
to and it can also attach to windows.
Grappling into windows is definitely a double edged sword though.
If there is a defender on the other side, grappling in is just like swinging in from
a regular rappel and it will give you an instant kill.
The problem is that the barricade on the window will be broken as soon as the hook attaches
and that gives defenders several seconds in which they can shoot you out of the air.
You won’t be able to use your gun at all until you have landed and that brings other
issues with it; Grappling into a window means that you have no chance at all against any
traps waiting for you on the other side, such as Kapkan traps or especially Frost mats.
Another strong counter to Amaru is Castle, since castled up windows cannot be grappled
into until the Caslte barricade has been destroyed first and since Amaru has no ranged explosives,
it will require the cooperation from a teammate.
Once you are indoors, the ability to use the Garra Hook becomes much more limited.
The only grapple points you can attach to are hatches from below (once they have been opened) and skylights.
And with the hatches you need to be really close to them before the prompt pops up.
Unlike grappling into a window, climbing up a hatch will not harm any defender waiting
above but you are still vulnerable during the ascent.
And that is pretty much it and I actually want to take a brief moment to discuss the
difficulty rating of Amaru before giving my final thoughts on her.
Difficulty ratings are of course always somewhat subjective and you can get different ratings
depending on what factors you consider.
If you base your difficulty rating on something like, how easy is it to get to use the gadget
and how dependent your team is on you… then I guess 1 actually fits quite well.
Amaru has no special purpose on the team that anyone would need to depend on.
If she did die in the first 10s of a round, it’s not like you’ve lost your only hardbreacher or anything like that.
On the other hand, if you want to factor in how easy it is to get any significant use
out of the gadget, then I think Amaru can actually be quite challenging.
Sure, any player can use her to get to the roof quickly at the beginning of the round
but what has the really achieved?
In my opinion, getting any significant value out of this character will require quite a
lot of experience and especially map knowledge.
Every time you pick and operator, you have the opportunity cost of not being able to
bring other ones and you miss out on everything they could have brought to the table, so in
order to justify bringing a grappling gun, you’re going to have to pull of something significant with it.
Maybe quickly getting into a position that cuts off important rotations very early in
the round… maybe using the gadget to ascend a hatch and thereby blindside the defenders…
literally everything that Amaru can do that would add value to the team, requires knowledge
and prior planning and then you also need to get lucky and have the Defenders choose
to defend a sight where you can realise those plans.
So is a difficulty rating of one justified… well if getting to the roof is what you count
as using this operator successfully, then I guess yes.
But if having an impact on the round is important then I would even go as far as to grade her as difficulty three.
Actually getting any significant use out of her is very difficult.
The great things about Amaru is that she is easy to understand and a decent operator for solo queueing.
If you are not communicating or working with your team at all and just want to rush up
and wreck some fools, then hey, she might be exactly what you’re looking for.
The G8 with angled grip could actually be a really interesting proposition for fulfilling
that fragger role, since an LMG without the key downside of the slow ADS time could be
a really scary weapon in the hands of a player who can control the recoil.
And the meme value of sneaking up a hatch and getting in a sick flank or yeeting yourself
in through a window and actually getting a couple of kills from a ridiculous manoeuvre
like that is also undeniable.
I think this new attacker could be a lot of fun but in terms of having a profound impact
on the ranked meta or competitive scene, I think that for Operation Ember Rise, Goyo is going to be the play.
But again, that’s just my opinion: what are your thoughts on Amaru?
Let me know in the comments below and if you have not seen my Goyo video yet, a link to that is coming right up.
As always, thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!