What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and today, I want to revisit the Muzzle Attachments in Rainbow Six Siege.
Over the years, many members of the Siege community (including me) have produced guides
on which attachments are the best for which guns and which playstyles and a number of
people have already produced experiment or experience based guides since the introduction
of the new recoil system with Operation Grim Sky.
But there is a fundamental problem with all guides we have seen up until now and that
is that nobody has ever been 100% sure about what each attachment actually does.
Recoil in Rainbow Six (like in most games) is randomised and that makes it basically
impossible to deduce the precise stat modifiers of each attachment by running in-game tests.
But good news everyone, the time of uncertainty is finally at an end!
Because you see, I kind of cheated this time.
Instead of spending 40h shooting at walls in custom games and comparing screen shots
or spending dozens of hours running terrorist hunt missions with every possible attachment…
I simply sent an email to Ubisoft asking if they would be willing to share the details
of how each muzzle attachment works… and within one day I had the exact breakdown in my inbox.
And I have to say, after fully understanding how each attachment works; I will definitely
be revising my advice from previous videos.
The Muzzle Brake is great but I now believe that there are some weapons that may in fact
benefit from different attachment choices.
So, let’s go over the attachments one by one to find out how they affect the recoil
and muzzle flash, before discussing which is best for which type of recoil and which type of playstyle!
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To explore the different muzzle device options, let’s just go left to right here and the
first choice is technically: no attachment at all; but of course for almost all weapons
in the game, this isn’t really a choice anyone should make.
Next up are the suppressors and those of you who have been following the channel for a
while may have seen my three part exploration of the suppressors in the past.
I suspect that some of the exact damage reduction numbers may have changed a bit since that
series and may warrant another look, but for the purposes of this video, let me simply
share the info I received from Ubisoft.
As we already knew, the suppressors remove the smoke trails from bullets, they remove
the white threat indicator that your opponent would normally receive for near misses and
they reduce damage by around 15%.
In addition to these fundamental changes, I think it is also worth mentioning that the
suppressor is hands down the best attachment in terms of removing muzzle flash from your gun.
Muzzle flash is definitely not the most important factor when choosing a muzzle attachment and
there are several reasons for this.
First off, not every gun has a problematic muzzle flash.
Many of the defender SMGs will have such a small flash, that no matter what attachment
you choose, it will never really cause you any problems.
And secondly, while the flash on some weapons can be blinding when you are in the darker
areas of some of the maps, in lighter areas the same flash will be barely visible.
Long story short, the effect on the muzzle flash will not be important for all guns and
may only make a significant difference in darker areas but the effect of each attachment
is still worth bearing in mind because the flash can not only obscure your vision but
can also make you easier to spot for the enemy.
Since the recoil changes in Operation Grim Sky, quite a number of players have been trying
out the suppressor as their muzzle attachment of choice, since controlling the recoil has
become a little bit more manageable for many of the guns.
Whether the damage downside is tolerable for any individual player probably comes down
to how frequently you get headshot kills.
If you land mostly headshots, then the damage reduction doesn’t matter; if you are still
aiming mostly for the chest then maybe stay away from the suppressors for now because
the damage reduction can be a real problem, especially at longer ranges.
And now we finally get to some of the more complex and more interesting attachments.
The Flash Hider has a mixed effect on recoil stats by reducing the first shot vertical
recoil by 37.5%, reducing the centring time by 30% and reducing the recoil diamond by 5%.
The Flash Hider is also pretty good at reducing and the muzzle flash of your gun, who would have thought?!
But I think before we continue, we need to take a moment to explain what each of the
stat modifiers means.
Vertical recoil reduction is the easiest; it is simply the distance that the gun kicks
upwards after each shot and it is interesting to note that the flash hider will only improve
vertical recoil after the first shot.
The centring time is how long it takes for the gun to return to the original point of
aim after rising during a burst.
And I discovered something really interesting here.
It would have been reasonable to assume that each gun returns to the starting point at
a fixed speed which would mean that the further up the recoil takes you, the longer it would
take to re-zero.
That is not the case though and instead, we have a fixed reset time!
Using the example of the C8-SFW with the flash hider attached, we can see that it takes 300ms
for the sights to come back down to the starting position, irrespective of how long a burst we fire.
Even after only a couple of bullets, the reset time is still 300ms.
And of course, if the reset time is 300ms with the Flash Hider attached, then it should
be around 428.57ms without any muzzle device.
If we go ahead and test that, we end up with a time of 433ms which is about as close as
we can expect, given that I am analysing footage recorded at 60fps.
Ok and finally, what’s the deal with this recoil diamond?
Basically, the probability of recoil movement in Rainbow Six is expressed by a diamond which
means that if for any single shot you end up with a lot of vertical movement, the horizontal
recoil will be lower.
You will never randomly have the maximum vertical and horizontal recoil at the same time.
Of course the recoil probabilities are different from gun to gun.
Some guns will have short and wide probability diamonds while others will have tall diamonds.
For some guns, the diamond might be biased to either the left or the right hand side
and for many guns nowadays, the recoil after the first shot is actually much higher than
for the rest of the burst.
And finally, there are now also a number of guns where the first two or three shots are
actually quite manageable but any shots after that become completely unpredictably.
So reducing the size of the diamond will mean a reduction in both the vertical and horizontal
recoil potential for each and every shot.
Great, so now that we understand the function of the stat modifiers we can evaluate the
usefulness of the Flash Hider.
Only providing vertical recoil reduction for the first shot was a surprise for me but I
guess the description has always told us that the device is best for reducing short burst
recoil and the combination of strong initial recoil mitigation and smaller long term tightening
of the recoil diamond achieves just that.
Minimising muzzle flash is a nifty bonus side-effect but when it comes to the centring time, I
have to say that I’m not too sure how useful this modifier is anymore.
Without a doubt, for less experienced players who do not control the muzzle climb of their
gun when firing bursts, the reduced reset time is super useful because it will allow
them to reacquire their target more quickly after finishing a burst.
But after almost three years of competition in Rainbow Six that keeps intensifying from
season to season, almost every single active Siege player nowadays is controlling the recoil
of their weapon while firing.
When you control the recoil, so that you have minimal muzzle climb during the burst, the
reset will actually pull the gun down below where you started out and the faster that
happens, the more violently you will have to push your mouse or control stick back up
at the end of a burst to stop your reticule from dipping down too far.
Is this a huge issue?
No, nobody has ever complained about this feature but it is worth keeping in mind.
Let’s move over to the Compensator now and this attachment is nice and straightforward.
It simply reduces the recoil diamond size by 17.75%; nothing more, nothing less.
This means that every shot, not just the first one, benefits from the Compensator’s positive
effects but the effect is significantly reduced compared to other muzzle devices, especially
when it comes to the vertical recoil control.
And I guess once again, the in game description is actually pretty helpful for us in terms
of understanding the strength of the Compensator being longer bursts.
The muzzle flash for guns is improved over having no attachment at all but the ring like
flash will still obscure your sight picture to a degree.
The Muzzle Brake is also pretty simple: The muzzle flash is directed mostly sideways with
only the occasional flash of fire creeping into the bottom of the sight and it reduces
both the first shot vertical recoil and the centring time by 45%.
There are no improvements at all for later shots in a burst.
This is something that the in-game description made pretty clear already but if the device
is only useful after the first shot, then why is the Muzzle Brake seen as so useful
by so many people (including me)?
Well for many guns, it is the first shot that has the most recoil and evening that out will
make those guns feel far smoother to control.
Having a gun jump up drastically at the beginning and then become more consistent can lead to
a number of problems when controlling the recoil.
Some players might end up firing most shots of a burst over the top of an opponent while
others might react to the initial recoil by compensating much more and will then actually
end up dragging the point of aim down from where they really want it to be.
So first off, evening out the recoil is pretty valuable but beyond that, every follow up
shot when shooting at a high fire rate will stack on top of the recoil of the previous shot.
Even though the benefit of the Muzzle Brake only affects the very first shot, this stacking
effect means that reducing first shot recoil has a positive knock on effect for later shots in the burst.
And last and also least, before I move on to some conclusions we can draw from all of
this new knowledge, there is of course the Extended Barrel.
The function of this attachment is already quite well understood, it does not improve
recoil in any way but will increase the lowest damage you gun will do after drop-off.
I still represent the opinion, that adding a little more power to a gun at 28 or even
35m depending on the gun is not very useful in a game where the average kill distance is less than 10m.
And so, let’s draw some conclusions.
The easiest conclusion of all is that for single fire weapons such as pistols or DMRs,
the Muzzle Brake is still absolutely king.
When every shot is the first shot you fire is also the first shot of your burst… because…
they’re all single fire, the recoil benefit of this attachment will stack up to basically
reduce muzzle climb by half and having a faster reset time in between is also very helpful.
Furthermore, for guns that have a particularly aggressive first shot recoil that is much
larger than that of later shots, the Muzzle Brake can still be a great choice to try to
even out the muzzle climb.
In the past, I had basically written off the Compensator as not being a great choice.
Putting a bunch of lead down range is an important part of gunfights in Rainbow Six Siege but
if you find yourself firing burst of 15, 20, 30 shots or more, then something has probably
gone horribly wrong and you are more than likely to lose the current fight.
So in the past, a logical conclusion here was: “Why attach a muzzle device that works
best for longer bursts?”
But given what we know now about the function of the muzzle attachments, I believe there
might actually be some weapons in Siege that could truly benefit from the Compensator.
Any gun that has manageable muzzle climb but has either a tendency to wander off in a particular
direction (or even worse, will suddenly and unpredictably move out to either side) could
actually benefit from the reduction of the recoil diamond provided by the Compensator.
You see, pulling down on a mouse or pushing forward a stick to counter vertical recoil
is a skill that can be learnt with a bit of practice.
Randomised left or right movement is impossible to control, no matter how much experience you have.
So for instance Ella’s Scorpion, Mira’s Vector or even Alibi’s Mx4 may actually
benefit more from having the horizontal recoil tightened up than they would from easier first
shot vertical recoil control.
As you can see in the tests in the background, both the Scorpion and the Vector will still
branch out left or right during longer bursts but nowhere nearly as bad as when using the muzzle brake.
And what about the Flash Hider?
As we have suspected until now, the stats confirm that this device really is a compromise
between the Compensator and Muzzle Brake.
And so it would be guns that have strong first shot recoil but also a tendency to travel
left or right that would be best served by the Flash Hider.
Beyond different recoil patterns, different gameplay styles could also be taken into account.
If you have a habit of just holding down the fire button until your gun runs dry or the
opponent falls over, then the Compensator might provide you with more of an advantage
than the other attachments.
If on the other hand, you tend to use controlled bursts, then the Flash Hider or even Muzzle
Brake might be more your cup of tea.
And that’s pretty much it for this video.
I hope that you now have a better understanding of what each muzzle attachment does and what
their individual strengths are.
I for one will be going into the operator selection menu to have another look at the
baseline recoil style of every gun to maybe spot some opportunities to try out the Compensator
or Flash Hider on certain weapons.
Who knows maybe I’ll come away with some new setups that will suit me better than just
sticking the muzzle brake on pretty much every gun.
If you like these kind of videos, there’s always more coming in future and you know
where the like and subscribe buttons are.
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come and join me there as well…
If you like! ;-D
And with that, as always thank you so much
for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!