Ubisoft introduced several major changes to the Rainbow Six Siege Test Server with the Y4S3.3 patch today and most of those changes will be making it to the live servers in the near future.
Twitch’s F2 nerf, Jackal’s minor rework, Glaz’s rate of fire buff, and Warden’s armor-speed type will all be heading to the main game soon. The Designer’s Notes also provide a look into how Ubisoft is retooling the way the dev team handles the Win Delta information.
Despite some negative feedback from Twitch mains, Ubisoft will be moving ahead with the nerf to Twitch’s F2 primary. It’s a modest nerf but it’ll surely shake up the way players handle her primary. The nerf sees the F2’s magazine size drop to 25 rounds from 30. Ubisoft said this is in an effort to reduce her fragging capability and encourage team play.
The proposed changes to Jackal will also make it into the main game next season in an effort to curb his ban rate. The operator is banned 73 percent of the time at Platinum and Diamond ranks, according to Ubisoft. The second most-banned attacker is Montagne and he’s only banned 30 percent of the time, which further highlights the severity of Jackal’s woes. The changes to Jackal should help balance the operator and encourage more team play rather than just harassing defenders.
Warden’s shift from a three-armor, one-speed operator is also confirmed for the live servers. The defender has a gadget that sounds amazing on paper, but when put into practice, he falls infinitely short of expectations. Being able to see through smokes and flashes is situational since it relies heavily on the attacking team’s playstyle.
Making Warden a two-armor, two-speed is meant to give him more opportunities to use his gadget. It definitely makes Warden a more attractive choice just in terms of being able to close gaps a bit quicker. His loadout is heavily geared toward the short to medium range, so having added mobility could increase his viability as an operator. Ubisoft is also considering changes to his loadout in the future, but nothing is in motion as of this patch.
Glaz will also receive a healthy rate of fire buff when the patch hits the live servers. The buff will see the OTs-03’s rate of fire increased by a massive 33 percent. While this seems a bit overpowered, Ubisoft needed to do something to increase Glaz’s pick rate—and the change is actually quite balanced when considering the substantial recoil of the weapon. Ubisoft has tried a rework, Frag Grenades, and now this buff. It likely won’t make Glaz’s pick rate soar, but it may help him win more gunfights.
In addition, the Designer’s Notes gave fans insight into where Blackbeard, Nøkk, and Kaid are at in terms of balancing. Blackbeard has seen an uptick in his Win Delta and is being monitored closely. This doesn’t provide too much information but it does hint that Ubisoft is considering a change of some kind to the fundamentally broken operator.
Nøkk is in an interesting place. The attacker isn’t well liked by the community but she’s seen some massive success in the Pro League, mainly when used by Giants Gaming’s Maurice “AceeZ” Erkelenz. Ubisoft has been considering changing her weak loadout, but after seeing her used so successfully in the Pro League, it’ll continue to monitor her progress before making any further decisions.
Kaid is simply being monitored to see how he may be able to have more opportunities to use his secondary gadgets. The defender has seen some utility shakeups and had been granted a C4 in the past. Ubisoft remains tight-lipped about what it’s looking at for Kaid and no further details were given.
Ubisoft has also tweaked the way in which Win Delta information is relayed. The introduction of the Pick-and-Ban System into Rainbow Six Siege caused the dev team to reassess the way it looks at the data for each operator.
Now, the Win Delta of each operator is gauged by Win Delta (in percent) as the Y-axis and “Presence” (in percent) as the X-axis instead of Pick Rate. The term “Presence” is defined as “the pick rate of an Operator when not banned,” according to Ubisoft. This change in how Ubisoft looks at data should give players and the team a better representation of what’s actually going on with operators and their relationship with players in-game.
There’s no word yet on when the patch will hit the live servers. Fans can go ahead and test out the forthcoming changes on the Test Server. Players are encouraged to take part in Ubisoft’s BugHunter Program and to report anything they come across to the devs for consideration.
