What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and in the wake of the recent balancing sprint, the Y4S3.3
patch for Rainbow Six Siege has just gone live.
In this video, I will be discussing the changes, as well as my opinion on some of the designer
notes info on the most prominent operators in the game right now.
Let’s go!
We’ll start off with the brand new changes and first up is a minor nerf to Twitch’s F2 assault rifle.
This gun has been in the game since its launch in 2015 and it has always been a bit of a
curiosity because its ammo capacity for nearly 4 years was always 30+1 bullets.
The model of the gun though has always featured the straight magazine that was issued with
the original version of the FAMAS and this magazine can only hold 25 rounds in real life.
So the capacity and the gun model in Rainbow Six Siege were never in line with each other
and yes, in all fairness, this is a really minor detail.
Nevertheless, this issue is finally getting addressed and the in-game capacity is being
reduced to 25 rounds in a move that kills two birds with one stone.
The annoying discrepancy is resolved and Twitch’s role within the game is adjusted ever so slightly.
Is this nerf necessary or deserved?
Arguably the strict answer to that would be: no!
Yes, Twitch is still one of the most picked and best performing attackers in the game
but if we look at her stats, you can see that her Win Delta is barely above 0.5% and that
her presence (that is the pick rate when not banned) is high, at around 47.5% but it nestles
in quite nicely in that cluster of highly picked operators.
Her Ban Rate in season 3 so far is only 2% and the player frustration data shows us that
she is actually below the midline, which means that in aggregate, she is considered to be
more fair than frustrating.
So if she’s not outperforming, not over picked, not over banned and not considered
to be frustrating, why nerf her?
The patch notes answer this question for us.
The objective here is to reduce her fragging capability without affecting her gadget utility.
Many players will default to Twitch right now, not because of the unique value she brings
to the team but simply because she has a very handy gun that performs very well in combat.
That is not the intended role for Twitch and bringing down the fragging capability of the
F2 just a little bit, will help manoeuvre he closer to the anti-gadget support role
that she is meant to be performing on paper.
I personally like that F2’s in-game model and ammo capacity now finally match and the
loss of 5 bullets doesn’t really make that much of a difference for me.
I like playing Twitch and this nerf won’t make me pick her any less but please do feel
free to leave your personal thoughts in the comments section below!
Over to Warden, the pretty much worst performing, least picked defender in the game right now.
This poor old chap was developed at the height of the Glaz/Ying/Smoke meta but because it
usually takes around 9 months to define, prototype, test, produce and then release new operators,
by the time he ended up in the game, Bullet Proof Cams had been invented, Ying had been
made harder to use and Glaz had been nerfed into the ground to such a degree that his
feet literally popped out in Australia.
Warden was the perfect solution to a problem that no longer existed; he was quite simply
redundant upon launch.
To fully address his lacklustre performance, I think a larger rework would be required
and the patch notes confirm that the devs agree.
In the meantime though, he will become a little more fun to play as a 2 speed/ 2 armour.
Being able to move faster and make less noise is undoubtedly an advantage when taking engagements
but when it comes to Warden specifically, there is also a bit of a drawback because
here’s the thing: The amount of time it takes for Warden’s go go gadget, banana
spy-vision to disappear is inversely related to the speed at which he moves.
So sprinting will deplete his ability quicker than jogging, which is quicker than walking
or crouching or crawling.
The faster you move, the faster your special vision meter is depleted.
I ran a couple of quick tests pre- and post-patch and lo and behold, who would have guessed it… lol and lmao!
2 speed operators move 10% faster than 1 speed operators and conversely Warden’s vision
meter now goes down to zero pretty much exactly 10% quicker than pre-patch across all different stances.
So hurray you can now move faster as Warden but his gadget has essentially been nerfed
in the exact same proportion that his speed has been buffed.
What does this add up to overall?
Nerf, Buff or do the two separate changes simply cancel each other out?
Vote in the poll in the top right hand corner now to give me your opinion!
And finally, last and maybe also least (or maybe not who the heck knows anymore) Glaz
is also receiving a token buff to help him re-emerge from the depths that he had been
nerfed to earlier this year.
He is the lowest picked attacker in the game right now and his Win Delta is so bad that
they had to extend the scale to actually fit him onto the chart.
If you have a Glaz on your team, the simple fact is that you are far more likely to lose
that round than if you had any other operator instead of him, all else equal.
Glaz just seems to be one of those “knife edge” type of operators when it comes to balancing him.
When he was initially released he didn’t have thermal vision in his scope and his simple
flip-up sight was probably the most underwhelming gadget in the game.
Then they added the banana vision and for many seasons, the Glaz & Smoke plant META
ruled the entire game.
Then Glaz was reworked and even though he kept his thermal vision, it was now so uncomfortable
to use that the Smoke META literally vanished overnight.
Glaz appears to be either hot as lava or cold as the arctic in terms of his performance
and never anything in between.
With that said, the 33% fire rate increase that he has just received feels like a proverbial
drop in the ocean.
If you haven’t been having much success with Glaz up until now, I highly doubt that
being able to spam your bullets out just that little faster will make any real difference.
On paper, the OTs-03 will now do 450 damage per second instead of 337 (you guessed it,
an increase of 33%, perfectly in line with the 33% growth in fire rate) and compared
to the other DMRs at the ranges that matter the most: that’s still the worst, perfectly
in line with Dokkaebi’s MK 14 EBR at the very bottom of the list.
The Times to Down/Kill against all three armour types (with or without Rook Plates) have also
decreased by a third and will now be either 158ms or 316ms, depending on your targets
armour and the distance you’re fighting at.
And actually, those numbers are solidly below average as long as you can spam this semi-auto
rifle as fast as it can go and hit the two or three shots required to take out your opponent.
Here’s the thing though.
Faster fire rate, especially for a semi-auto rifle also means far less controllability,
so once again this buff also includes a nerf at the same time and they cancel each other out to some degree.
With mouse and keyboard and with some practice, you can probably get to a point where you’re
still reasonably in control of the gun but with a controller, this is going to be a bit more challenging.
Conclusion, the gun’s damage is quite decent now but the controllability is lower and the
gadget is still difficult to deal with.
And that’s it for the changes!
The patch notes do give us a few more interesting insights though so let me quickly give you
my thoughts on those!
Blackbeard has really shone this season with a significant increase in his ability to win matches.
The patch notes claim that the devs are not sure as to why this is but my guess would
be that the ADS time fix that went live this season has something to do with it.
In case you have not heard about this yet, I have a detailed breakdown video out on the
channel already (see link in the card on screen now or wait for the one in the end card)!
A brief summary of what happened is that the animation tree refactor at the beginning of
the season decoupled the ADS time from the first person animation and for the first time
ever now, the aiming times are what they were always supposed to be and that is a good chunk
faster than they used to be in the past.
Both of Blackbeard’s rifles have benefited from this a bit more than most of the other
weapon classes and the bottom line is that his guns now aim in just as fast as regular
rifles and DMRs used to before the Ember Rise patch.
Consequently, Blackbeard is now much more comfortable to play and can be handled pretty
much as aggressively as any other operator in the past.
Taking his ADS times down from 750ms to 450ms is no joke and I fully believe that this is
a very viable theory when it comes to explaining his sudden increase in effectiveness.
How could Ubisoft address this?
Well, way back when I did my Blackbeard Loadout META video comparing his guns, I was surprised
to discover that attaching his ballistic shields to his guns doesn’t actually affect their ADS times.
That to me makes no sense at all from a realism perspective and from a gameplay perspective,
I think it would also be much more interesting to have a choice between the guns without
shields but with regular ADS times OR attaching the shields and at the same time suffering
an ADS time penalty.
If that could be added into the game, it would be the perfect time to also tweak the ADS
timings to bring Blackbeard’s performance back to where it is supposed to be.
Until that happens though, my motto will be: “Make hay while the sun shines!”
I am unashamedly picking Blackbeard much more than I used to and I think you should consider that option too.
Nokk is mentioned as another operator that the devs have their eye on.
In Ranked, she has been one of the worst performing operators since she was introduced into the
game but then along came Aceez from the Vodafone Giant’s in EU Pro League and started absolutely
slaying with her.
As it turns out, when you are playing against a defence that relies on cams to catch approaching
attackers, being able to sneak past can be super effective.
Will this benefit anyone in regular Ranked matches?
Definitely not as much as in Pro League but I do believe that there is a decent chance
that some of the brand new strats that have been shown off this season will slowly make
their way into the highest levels of Ranked over time and maybe Nokk’s performance and
presence will naturally increase.
The Dev’s are taking the wait and see approach and for now, I personally think that that is fair enough.
Kaid, is actually not in a terrible spot right now but his performance and especially presence
are definitely lower than those of Bandit.
The patch notes mention that the devs are not ready to discuss the options that they
are currently evaluating but during the balancing sprint podcast I was specifically given permission
to mention one of the ideas that I got to test, so since that info is already out there
I feel comfortable mentioning that one possible buff could be to increase the range of his Electroclaws.
Right now, you can use them to electrify a maximum of two separate reinforced walls side
by side but it is possible that in future, their area of effect radius is buffed to just
about be able to include up to three reinforced walls.
Now this is of course just one idea and there were some potential concerns with this but
when I got to play a prototype of Kaid with greater Electroclaw range, it felt perfectly fine.
The final section of the patch notes refers to the Jackal rework that we got to discuss
on the podcast but since that is not coming to the game until at least next season, I’m
not going to go over it for now.
If you want the full breakdown of this change as well as the commentary of the developers
on the topic, feel free to check out the latest episode of the Hot Breach Podcast and with
that, thank you so much for watching!
I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!