What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here!
The new season for Rainbow Six Siege, Operation White Noise, has finally been announced in
detail and in this video I’ll be discussing my thoughts on the new map and operators,
so let’s get right into it!
The new South Korean map is called Tower and yesterday we were given a first glimpse of its layout.
The most important thing about the map is of course that it has a museum and a bar.
It just wouldn’t be a Rainbow Six Siege map without those two aspects ;-P
I’m joking of course but have you ever noticed how many of the maps seem to have museums and bars in them?
Think about it…
If we examine the floor plans of the new map, we can see that it is quite unique compared
to everything we’ve seen before and these are the things that stood out to me most.
Firstly, there is no real outdoor area.
Attackers can spawn on one of two locations on the roof and then abseil down the sides
of the building or descend down an elevator shaft.
In practice, that means that there will be no spawn peeking and no runouts but if the
defenders can figure out where the attackers will try to get into the building, they might
be able to hold them off from even getting in for quite a while.
The second thing that stands out to me, is that the map only appears to have 2 floors,
which is less than we are used to on most maps, although in contrast to many of the
more vertical existing maps, the area of each floor is significantly larger.
The final thing I noticed on the floor plans that were revealed is that, even though there
is a symbol for line-of-sight breachable floors, there are no floors actually marked with these
red and black stripes.
Given how in high ranked games and especially during pro-league matches it is quite common
to exploit breachable floors to put pressure on defenders a floor below, it is surprising
that this map appears to completely forgo this aspect of Rainbow Six gameplay.
But with plenty of open areas that allow a view onto lower floors and a good number of
hatches, I guess there will still be some of verticality to the map.
So like I said, Tower looks quite different from anything we’ve seen in the past.
No outdoor area, only two levels and no line-of-sight breachable floors.
But instead we get large horizontal areas with the potential of opening up long sightlines
and plenty of walkways and balconies.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out!
But enough of the map, over to the new operators and all of their lovely new toys!
The thing that really impresses me about the new operators this season is the amount of
synergies and specific nemesis style counter operators they have.
Let’s go over them one by one; in case you have not heard about their gadgets yet, I
will very briefly describe how they work and then go into more detail on their specific
interactions with other operators and my personal thoughts on them.
Let’s start off with Dokkaebi: she is a hacker with the ability to trigger a logic
bomb ability twice per round.
This will have two effects.
Firstly it will ring the phones of most of the defenders, creating the buzzing vibration
sound we are all familiar with, while at the same time blocking their access to the camera network.
This can give away a defender's location as long as there are attackers close enough to hear the buzzing.
Defenders will need to go through an animation, similar to pulling out a Gu dart, in order
to turn off their phone, making them vulnerable for a brief moment.
Even more useful than the logic bomb ability though, is Dokkaebi’s ability to hack the
phone of a defender that has been killed.
This will allow all of the attackers to access the defenders’ camera network, including Valk cams!
They can even then use the hacked cams to mark defenders.
That makes Dokkaebi a direct counter to Valkyrie.
The better the defenders’ Valk player is at setting up a secondary network of cams,
the greater the benefit to the attackers, if Dokkaebi manages to hack into this network.
On the flip side, the defenders Echo, Mute and Vigil will act as direct counters to Dokkaebi’s abilities.
Echo is so technologically advanced that his phone simply cannot be affected by logic bomb
and any operator within the effective rate or a Mute jammer is also immune.
Vigil’s own ability somewhat protects him from Dokkaebi but we’ll get to that in a bit.
In terms of synergies, Dokkaebi partners up excellently with IQ, since IQ will be able
to detect a defender with her scanner during the brief period in which the defender is
trying to switch off their buzzing mobile phone.
Great for some sneaky wall bangs if you can co-operate and get your timing just right!
These are some pretty unique abilities and I’m really excited to try them out.
Over to Vigil and his ability is similar to Caveira’s silent step except that it hides
him from drones and cameras instead of making him quieter.
The ability takes a second to take effect once triggered, operates on a cool down timer
and is cancelled when Vigil fires his weapons.
The effectiveness of this ability is balanced out by giving drone/camera operators a static
overlay effect whenever Vigil is nearby.
So even though he cannot be seen on cam, his approximate location can still be droned out.
This makes Vigil a soft counter to Dokkaebi, since he can still hide to some degree, even
when the defenders’ cameras have been hacked.
Attackers that can counter Vigil are Thatcher & Twitch, whose gadgets will temporarily disable
his cloaking device and IQ, who will be able to track Vigil with her scanner, whenever
he is actively using his cloak (much like she can track Pulse).
The idea of being able to hide from drones in plain sight is amazing and could make Vigil
the perfect ambush roamer but triggering the jammed overlay in drones means that it will
be hard to remain completely hidden.
I guess that’s fair enough from a balance perspective but still kind of a shame especially
considering how powerful Dokkaebi’s camera hack looks to be.
But we shall see.
Last but not least, the new Grom attacker Zofia comes equipped with a double barrelled
grenade launcher that can shoot impact fused breaching grenades as well as concussion grenades
that will cause essentially the same drunken effect as Ela’s Grzmot mines.
These concussion grenades can be bounced around corners and are on a timer as well as being
equipped with a proximity fuse that will detonate the grenade once it is close to a target.
But this is not Zofia’s only ability.
Once per round, similar to Doc, she will be able to self-revive from the Down-But-Not-Out
state but instead of using a fancy injector gun loaded with Red Bull (or whatever is in there)
she does it with pure willpower.
The only downside to this brute strength approach is that she only ends up with one single HP
once she’s back up meaning that even a mild gust of wind will be enough to take her out.
Some of people I have spoken to were shocked at hearing about this ability, fearing that
it would be massively OP but I don’t think it’s going to be a huge issue.
I mean, Doc already has a version of this ability and he ends up with more health when
he self-revives and while that can very occasionally lead to an amazing clutch situation, how many
times has it had a massive impact on your games?
And also, it is important to remember that if there is a friendly attacker nearby, it
is better to let them help you up, since you get half of your health back, so the self-revive
should really just be a last resort strategy.
Back to the grenade launcher and apart from being a two armour / two speed operator, I
would almost say that Zofia is a straight upgrade of Ash.
Her breaching grenades explode instantly instead of delayed and she also gets the stunners on top of that.
There may still be a place for Ash in the game but I do believe it is likely that her
pick rate will end up being partially cannibalised by Zofia.
In terms of counters, Zofia has a bidirectional counter relationship with her sister / fellow Grom operator, Ela.
Since both use the same style of concussive gadgets, they are partially immune to each
other’s weapons.
The concussive blasts will still affect them but only for a very brief period of time.
So there you have it and as I mentioned before, I am really impressed by how the devs have
created these unique interactions between the new operators and some of the existing ones.
Especially IQ seems to have benefitted from a couple of passive buffs and I wonder if
this will translate into a higher pick rate for her in future.
Out of the three new operators, Dokkaebi is the one that excites me the most but I can’t
wait to get my hands on all three of these guys’ gadget plus of course testing and
exploring their new weapons!
And let’s not forget that shiny new map!
Which of the new operators has caught your fancy and what do you think of the new map?
Let me know in the comments below and do go ahead and leave a like or dislike
if you liked or disliked the video!
And with that guys, thanks so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video
and I will see you in the next episode!