Rainbow Six Siege's mid-season reinforcements implement some significant changes to Operators, alongside other various gameplay adjustments.
Back in November, Ubisoft debuted the eighth season of content for its tactical first-person shooter, Rainbow Six Siege. Titled "Operation White Noise," the expansion delivered several new additions around a South Korean theme, including a new multiplayer map, three new operators, and various other changes.
Kicking off the New Year, Rainbow Six Siege is now set to receive a wave of new changes, as a part of Operation White Noise's "mid-season reinforcements." This implements a range of tweaks to gameplay ahead of next season's "Operation Chimera," including Operator balancing, bug fixes, and other miscellaneous changes. And seen in a post to the official Rainbow Six site, a lengthy list of patch notes has accompanied the announcement.
Easily the biggest change among the mid-season reinforcements affects Ela – an Operator generally regarded as one of the most unbalanced in the game today. Significant nerfs are being deployed to both her primary weapon and concussive mines that reduce her influence on the field, which hopes to put her in line with other defenders. Following this change, Ela will have 40 bullets in her SMG magazine, rather than 50. Concussive effects of her mines will also no longer prevent sprinting, while the effect on motion has been reduced from seven to four seconds.
On the attackers' side, Ash's R4-C will be seeing a downgrade, with maximum damage reduced from 41 to 39 at closer ranges. Capitao's Para-308 rifle will be seeing an upgrade, with increased maximum damage from 43 to 48 at closer ranges. Some controversial changes also come with this update, including a significant nerf to Twitch, dropping her Shock Drone ammo from 15 to five.
Here's a quick breakdown of the main Operator changes, sourced from Ubisoft's official patch notes:
- Ela's SMG will have a reduced magazine size. We have decided to lower the magazine size of her SMG from 50 to 40 bullets.
- Ash's R4-C nerf. We reduced the damage of the R4-C to 39 (from 41).
- Capitao's Para-308 buff. We increased the Para-308's raw damage is to 48 (from 43). We also slightly reduced the intensity of the random components of its recoil.
- Twitch's Shock Drone Ammo. We reduced the max ammo for each Shock Drone to 5 (from 15).
- Bandit's barbed wire. Bandit will now have two barbed wire (down from 3).
- Lesion's Gu Mine refill timer. We lowered Lesion's Gu Mine refill timer to 30 sec (from 35).
Beyond Operator changes, tweaks have been made to the Caster Camera experience, user interface animations for the Bomb game mode, as well as full implementation of Temporal Filtering on PC. For a look at the full changes, alongside corresponding notes from developers, make sure to check the full post.
This update is set to hit the Technical Test Server (TTS) on January 11, ahead of a public release sometime later. What do you think of these latest changes? Make sure to drop into the comments section below with your thoughts.