What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here!
A new balancing patch has gone live in Rainbow Six Siege and as is by now tradition, the
patch of course also contains a new Jäger nerf.
Looking over the designer notes, I couldn’t help but notice that this change is driven
by a couple of fundamental mistakes.
One looks like a potential mistake in the performance data and the other is an analytical
mistake which, according to the devs, was the driving factor behind the upcoming change.
So, let’s go and take a closer look at this nerf, as in what it is and why it might be
completely and utterly flawed.
Go!
We begin with examining what this nerf is and then we’ll look at the “why” and
how the reasoning presented in the designer notes is flawed.
Last season, we saw a nerf to Jäger’s gadget, now the devs are once again taking aim at
his primary weapon, the Heckler & Koch 416-C carbine.
The weapon is receiving a double punch nerf, in the form of a magazine size reduction and
additional recoil and before we look at any kind of recoil comparisons…
I need to say a word or two on the idea of just fiddling about with the mag capacity
because there is one rule in Rainbow Six Siege that has basically been in place for over
five years, since the very launch of the game and that is that the magazine capacities of
the weapons *almost* always reflect the capacities these weapons would also have in the real
world and that rule is apparently going right down the drain now…
“But wait”, I hear you cry!
“This isn’t even the first time that this trick has been used to make a gun slightly
more challenging to use!” and you are correct.
Back in October 2019, the Siege devs were looking for a way of decreasing Twitch’s
popularity a little with a quick and easy tweak and I believe it was a very stable genius
who proposed that the magazine capacity of her F2 assault rifle could be reduced from
30 to 25 rounds.
This amazing guy made the argument that not only would it be an easy change that would
make Twitch slightly less comfortable to use BUT, it would also FINALLY address a long
running discrepancy in the game.
Since the launch of the game, Twitch’s F2 has always been modelled after the FAMAS F1
variant and as you can see, this gun model crucially featured the straight 25 round magazine,
rather than the more modern curved 30 rounder you will find in the G2 variant of the rifle.
“Two birds with one stone!”
I told them.
There’s your easy little nerf and finally, the gun model will match the capacity.
It just made sense!
What doesn’t make any sense though is reducing the 416’s capacity to 25 rounds.
The 416 was from the ground up designed as an improvement of the Colt M4 and as such,
it uses STANAG magazines.
These commonly come in 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50 round box magazines, 60 and 100 round casket
magazines or 90, 100 and even up to 150 round drum magazines.
Loads of variety to choose from but 25 just doesn’t really exist.
I know it’s only a small detail and yes, balancing trumps realism and yes again, it
IS of course possible that Jäger has just decided to underload his magazines by putting
25 rounds into the 30 round mags… but for a pernickety hair splitter like me breaking
long established rules like this just hurts…
I don’t like it.
But that aside, it will make the gun just that little bit less comfortable to use, so
it will actually achieve the intended balancing goal quite nicely.
Now to the recoil.
You may have already tested this for yourself or seen someone else do it, so I will be quite
brief here: As you can see, for mouse & keyboard users
the first shot recoil of the 416-C is increasing a lot while the vertical jumps for each follow
up shot increase by a little as well.
Interestingly, the random horizontal recoil (the part that is actually far more difficult
and frustrating to control) seems to be reduced.
This becomes really evident once you attach a vertical grip and flash hider (my preferred
setup for this gun).
The individual bullet impact groups are definitely further spread out vertically but much more
consistent horizontally.
For controller players, the changes are basically the same but of course the recoil is much
less harsh overall.
This is what the final comparison looks like without attachments; And here is the vertical
grip and flash hider combo for controller users.
What do I think of these changes?
They look perfectly fine to be honest and I think they even make perfect sense.
Shooting long bursts with Jäger will require more recoil control from the player (both
on PC and on Consoles) but it’s nothing that is unmanageable.
In addition to that, the 416-C is one of the most compact rifle calibre weapons in the
game and as such, it makes perfect sense that a lighter, smaller gun is a bit harder to
handle compared to a full sized rifle using the same ammo.
Ok, so that is a brief discussion of what is changing and it’s all quite straightforward.
It’s the reasons the devs give for why they are making these changes that don’t feel right to me.
Let’s start out by looking at Jäger’s performance over the last season for Plat
ranked players and above.
According to this chart, he is the most picked operator by far (over 90% presence in matches
in which he is not banned) but at the same time he is supposedly also the lowest performing
defender in the entire game…
Literally, the vertical axis on this chart compares the chances of a team winning a round
with the operator to winning a round without the operator and at somewhere below -2%, Jäger
is supposedly the lowest performing defender in the game; lower than castle, lower than
Clash, lower than Warden or any other garbage tier operator you could possibly pick.
Straight off the bat, I find that hard to believe and would almost suggest that there
is some kind of mistake in the chart and that suspicion is amplified when we go down and
read about the reasoning the devs give for nerfing Jäger’s gun.
“Our next step is to look at the frag potential of his 416-C, which has been performing above
average among ARs.”
How is Jäger above average in terms of his frag potential but still the worst performing
defender in the entire game?!
It makes no sense, so I would definitely question the accuracy of the data provided in the performance
chart for the last season.
And that aside, the little passage of the dev blog we just read includes a much worse analytical error.
They are saying that their decision to attack the 416-C is because it is performing above
average compared to other ARs…
Do you see what the issue here might be?
Yes, the 416 is modelled as a rifle in the game but comparing the a primary weapon that
is only used by a defender with a group of guns that (apart from Jäger and Wamai) is
only used by attackers, is the literal real life version of comparing Apple to Oranges.
Saying that a defender weapon is performing better than attacker weapons is completely
meaningless because the roles of the two teams are so different in Rainbow Six Siege.
It is a long established fact that defending is easier than attacking in the game and this
will 100% influence the performance rates of the weapons used by either team.
I strongly believe that any conclusions drawn by comparing a weapon on one team, to a group
of weapons used by the other are flawed to the point of being completely invalid.
If you really want to establish how the 416 is performing, you must compare it to the
main group of weapons used by defenders, i.e. the SMGs.
In my personal opinion, the entire analytical reasoning behind the Jäger nerf is flawed.
I cannot believe that an operator with an outperforming weapon is also the worst performing
defender in the game and using a comparison to attacker weapon performance to assess the
gun is just completely the wrong approach.
That being said: All in all, these changes to the 416-C feel
like they will make Jäger slightly less easy to play which would be a step in the right
direction in terms of lowering his pick rate.
It’s definitely a mechanism that has worked in the past.
For example, Ela, when she was launched, was one of the most brokenly overpowered new operators
the game has ever seen but upping the recoil on her primary weapon cured her pick rate almost instantly.
Twitch similarly saw her pick rate normalise once the F2 became harder to handle.
It’s a proven method that works but when it comes to the specific changes for Jäger
that are on the TS right now, I also feel that most players will be able to adapt to
these changes almost instantly and so: will this really lower the operator’s pick rate?
I don’t think so.
We probably need to brace ourselves for more nerfs coming in the future.
Have you had a chance to play on the TS?
What are your thoughts on these changes?
Feel free to leave a comment below and with that, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will
see you in the next episode!