What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here!
I’ve spent some time digging into the changes coming to Rainbow Six Siege with Operation
Void Edge and Year 5 Season 1 and in this video, I want to discuss all of the most impactful
operator balancing changes.
Which operators are changing, will they be nerfed or buffed and what impact will these
updates have on gameplay?
Let’s go and find out!
The first little update we will be getting is on the Recruits.
Ubisoft have stated many times in the past that the only reason the Recruits were added
to the game in the first place and the only reason they are still there is to cater for
very new players, just in case the situation arose where all of the operators they owned
were already picked by teammates.
Other than this small minority of cases, the Recruit was never supposed to be picked because
you and your entire team miss out on bringing the powerful main gadgets you could have with
a unique operator instead.
Nowadays, even the base version of the game comes with all launch operators unlocked and
so the reason for adding Recruits into the game in the first place is no longer valid
and it has now been close to a year since the Recruit was removed from Ranked.
The fact is that the Recruits have no more purpose in a hero shooter and as iconic as
they may have become, Ubisoft regards them as a waste of resources in a game where data
limits have become a severe bottleneck.
My prediction at this stage is that we will see a gradual phasing out of this character
and this rework is probably only the first step towards the final goal of removing the
recruits from the game entirely.
But so much for the little history lesson and future speculation, now let’s discuss
the way Recruits will work after the next season’s patch goes live!
Going forward, you will no longer be able to pick recruits based on CTU, all you will
have to choose from is a selection of primary and secondary weapons (including the Super
Shorty) and then a selection of primary and secondary gadgets.
All weapons will have a fixed setup that cannot be changed but this is definitely an improvement
over the old recruits where you were forced to run your weapons without any attachments.
The gadget selections have become quite versatile and you will now get the full loadout quantities
rather than the reduced number of items from the past, plus the defender Recruit can now
also carry two reinforcements rather than just one.
In my tests, all Recruits were 2 speed / 2 armour, no matter which weapons or gadgets
I chose and it seems like all voice lines are now those of the former FBI SWAT recruit.
My guess is that the models for the heavy and light armour as well as the voices of
the other CTUs are being retired to free up space in the game but again, I have no confirmation on that.
My conclusion on the effectiveness of these new versions of the Recruits is that they
will be more powerful going forward and so this is an overall buff.
No more blank weapons and full gadgets and reinforcement loadouts will definitely make
the Recruit a stronger character going forward, although arguably the actual operators will
still be preferable due to their unique abilities.
What are your thoughts on the new Recruits and would you mind seeing them phased out overall?
Leave a vote in the poll on screen now!
Now let’s look at the changes that will affect individual operators and why don’t
we start off with the somewhat meatier changes to Lesion and Twitch?
Lesion is getting nerfed just a touch; hopefully enough to make him less annoying but also
not enough to stop him from being effective and fun to play.
Lesion being able to see all of his mines, all over the map, all of the time was never
meant to be a gameplay mechanic.
The only reason he had those icons in the first place was to help players pick the mines
back up, since they were so hard to see.
Now with the new patch, Lesion will still get those icons but only as long as he has
line of sight to the mines and only if he is relatively close.
As soon as you move more than 8m away, the icons start to fade and will eventually disappear completely.
Beyond this, Gu mines will no longer do initial damage but instead, the later damage per tick
is increased from 4 to 6.
This makes the mines far less punishing when you first step into them (especially if you
are already on very low health) but at the same time increases the urgency for the stricken
attacker just a tiny bit by making the mines more punishing over time.
The final change is that Gu mines will no longer affect attackers that are Down But Not Out.
I’m not sure where this change came from or what it is really meant to achieve and
in a way, this feels like more of a nerf for Frost because now the Welcome Mat/Gu combo
will no longer finish off an opponent.
I guess dying to a Gu when you are in a state where you cannot pull out the stinger is kind
of frustrating but out of all of the things that can be frustrating in Siege, I think
this was pretty far down the list for most players.
But there you go, that’s what is going to be happening with Lesion in the near future
and so over once again to you: do you think these nerfs will add up to achieve the goal
of making Lesion less frustrating for attackers but still fun enough to play on defence?
Leave your votes in the poll on screen now!
Next up is Twitch and… ehm buff?
Nerf?...
let’s call it a change to her shock drone gadget.
Currently on the live build, the shock drones come with a capacity of five shots each that
are instantly available but will be gone forever once fired.
After the patch, the max capacity per drone will be only 3 shots but they do recharge
at a rate of one every 30s, so in theory, with a 45s prep-phase and 3m round time, if
you are a busy little bee, you could fire off a total of 10 shots per drone throughout the entire round.
This is twice the amount you get to shoot now but also very difficult to achieve because
you would need to be on your drones so much, without getting them caught and also finding
viable targets all the time.
Something that will help with pumping out those shots though is that after the patch,
you can fire off the shots at double the rate compared to now; 1 every second instead of 1 every 2s.
This of course could make the drones pretty annoying if they are used on players instead
of gadgets and so there is also a significant nerf to the damage the darts will do, from
10 points right now, to a measly 1 point in future.
And the drone nerf/buff is not the only change coming to Twitch.
According to the patch notes, her dearly beloved and much revered F2 Assault Rifle is getting
a recoil increase to the first six shots of each burst.
But as you can see in the side by side comparison here there’s more to the change than that.
Both of these tests were run without any attachments and yes, the vertical recoil is increasing
for those first few shots, but at the same time the recoil diamond (which gives us the
randomised recoil effect in Siege) is apparently becoming a bit smaller because rather than
ending up with a final pattern that shows a continuous stream of bullets, with the new
recoil we can still see the individual groups of bullets for each shot.
Also, you will notice that the current recoil is relatively straight and the future recoil
has a definite bias to the right.
It’s definitely a nerf overall but once you slap on the vertical grip and muzzle brake
things will improve a bit more.
The F2 is definitely more challenging to control than most attacker guns especially after receiving
multiple recoil nerfs across several seasons now but it’s still nowhere near as bad as
some weapons can be *cough, SMG-12…*.
What are your thoughts on the gadget change and further F2 nerf?
You know what to do: Poll, Screen, Now!
And finally, let me quickly take you through the secondary gadget updates for a handful
of operators: Dokkaebi is losing grenades and gaining stuns, Maverick gets the grenades
and hands over his stuns, Nøkk & Ying both lose their Claymores and pick up from frags instead.
Three new attackers with Frags and one less gives us a NET change of two and while that
might ring alarm bells for many players worrying about having to play defence against such
a line up, I think it’s also worth considering that we now have two dedicated anti projectile
operators, so hopefully Operation Void Edge will not turn into an absolute Frag fest.
Again, and for the last time today, I would love to get your opinion on these changes!
Why all the grenades all of a sudden?
Do you have any theories about what these changes are supposed to achieve?
Leave your comments in the comments section below and vote in the poll to let me know
whether you like these changes or not!
And with that, I think I’ve waffled on quite enough for one day!
This patch is once again quite extensive, so join me in a couple of upcoming videos
to go through the rest of the changes; feel free to subscribe to the channel to make sure
you don’t miss anything!
Thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you in the next episode!