What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and today’s video was originally just meant to be a quick
comparison of the changes that have come to Rainbow Six Siege with patch 2.0 for Operation Grim Sky.
But as you will have seen from the title and thumbnail, I believe there has also been an
unannounced buff to the BEARING-9.So, not only will I be demonstrating all of the changes
from the patch notes for the SAS’s SMG-11, Mira’s Vector, Maestro’s Alda 5.56 and of course Clash.
But we’ll also be examining the BEARING-9 and all of the other machine pistols too.
How good (or bad) are all of these guns now?
Let’s go and take a look!
First let us examine the impact of the changes that were announced in the patch notes.
The change to Maestro’s Alda is probably the least impactful for most players because
it only affects the hip fire bloom but you definitely need to be aware of it.
Maestro was introduced into the game with the unique feature of having a gun that has
a pretty good hip fire spread to begin with and when you start firing, that bullet spread
used to tighten up throughout the burst.
This was an interesting feature to have but in a game where hip firing is usually a really
bad idea, I don’t think many players really ever made full use of Maestro’s capability
and so this feature has now been removed and we now get a normal hip fire that opens up
significantly throughout the burst.
It’s no big deal but if you did get used to using Maestro’s hip fire, you need to
shake that habit pretty quickly or you will definitely be losing many of your gunfights
in the near future.
Clash has been nerfed in terms of her gadget capabilities but here is something interesting…
I recorded footage just before patch 2.0 dropped with the intention of showing the differences
of old and new Clash side by side.
But as you can see, there is no difference in terms of the switching time or recharge time.
When Clash received some bug fixes back in Patch 1.1 of this season, her gun switching
time was made more consistent at 2s from gun to shield and 1s from shield to gun and her
recharge started after 1s.
But is seems as if some changes must have slipped into the game with patch 1.2, because
in both of my 1.2 and 2.0 patch recordings, the switching time from shield to gun has
now been upped to 1.25s (instead of 1s) and the recharge starts after 2s (instead of 1).
So yeas, the switching and recharge times have changed but if you were playing Clash
before the latest patch drop, you won’t actually notice the difference because the
change had already been applied early!
I went ahead and confirmed the nerf on the slowing effect on enemies and it is now 0.5s as advertised.
Long story short, yes Clash has been nerfed but if you had been happily playing her before
the last patch, you can continue to do so because the changes were apparently applied a little early.
And now, let’s take a closer look at probably the most interesting topic of the video: comparing
the before and after performance of the SMGs that were buffed.
The fundamental change to all of the guns that received a buff is that the horizontal
element of the recoil diamond for each gun (that is the amount of random recoil deviation
per shot) has been reduced quite a lot, while the vertical climb for each shot as well as
the vertical element of the random diamond have been kept the same.
We can see this in the in-game recoil patterns.
Each shot group climbs by the exact same amount as it did before but you can see that the
patterns are now much narrower, especially for the 4th and 5th shots in each burst.
Since I was anticipating the change for the Vector and SMG-11, I recorded some before and after footage.
You can definitely see that the random chance of branching out to the left or right is significantly
lower with these guns now and that means that longer bursts become much more viable.
And when it comes to controlling the recoil (definitely on PC and partially also on console)
the vertical muzzle climb from shot to shot is not really a problem until it becomes extreme.
The difficulty in controlling guns comes from the random horizontal recoil that affects
your shots in addition to the climb.
So having this specific element of the recoil reduced means that it will now be much easier
to keep your gun on target while spraying.
Now of course, the change for the BEARING was not announced and so I never thought to
record a before video for the recoil but I do believe that there has been a change.
We can see in the in-game recoil chart comparison that the BEARING has basically had exactly
the same style of buff as the other two guns, with randomised horizontal spread being reduced
resulting in a much narrower spread pattern.
But the recoil for the BEARING, according to these patterns, is still pretty extreme.
The third shot could already go straight over the head of the target silhouette in the chart
and the forth shot is barely visible.
We can use the same test to double check the other full auto machine pistols: namely the
C75 and the SMG-12 and for both of these guns, the patterns remain exactly the same pre- and post-patch.
Could it be that there is just a glitch in the BEARING’s chart?
Maybe, so I tried to confirm the supposed new recoil with an in-game test and if we
do a comparison between my three post-patch recoil tests I did, I would say that the behaviour
of the BEARING is pretty much as I would have expected it from the new pattern.
The maximum horizontal deviation for the bearing is comparable with that of the Vector but
you can see that the vertical distance between the first few shots is much greater and that
the horizontal spread kicks in somewhat earlier than for the other two guns.
So, time to conclude and answer the all-important question: are these guns good now and should
you start using them more again.
Although in all fairness this question doesn’t really apply to the Vector.
Yeah, its recoil has been a bit more random since the beginning of Grim Sky, making long
range fights a bit dicey but the Vector still remained 83.4% more viable than that godforsaken
G.E.O shotgun, so almost everyone would still have been using it.
Nevertheless, I still think that it’s great news that the Vector is becoming more manageable again.
The Vector (and also the SMG-11 for that matter) will still be harder to control than almost
all other guns in the game but at least now, with some practice and as long as you are
ready to compensate for the above average recoil, you can use them with a little more
confidence, especially during longer bursts where the difference becomes most noticeable.
The BEARING-9 might have had an apparent mini-buff but I don’t think it matches that of the
other two guns at all.
The BEARING has been absolutely horrible since the launch of Grim Sky and even after this
improvement, it remains and extremely challenging gun to use as soon as you get beyond a few meters range.
Maybe give it a go and see what it feels like to you now but I personally may actually be
sticking to the P229, I haven’t quite decided yet.
And that is it for today!
Have you gone back to any of these guns and do you think they are viable now?
And what about any other hidden changes, do any of the guns feel better or worse after
the latest patch?
Let me know if the comments section below!
As always guys, feel free to leave a like or dislike to show me what you thought of
the video; I do hope you enjoyed it and I will see you in the next episode!