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Here’s who’s getting Rainbow Six Siege’s new hard breaching gadget

Shadow Legacy is changing up the Siege meta by allowing a bunch of operators work as hard breachers

rainbow six siege operators thermite

Attacking team composition in Rainbow Six Siege has, for years now, depended largely on the choice of who to bring along as a hard breacher, particularly for certain bomb sites. Teams on offense know that they’ll need a Thermite, Hibana, Ace, or Maverick if they’re going to get through reinforced walls. With Operation Shadow Legacy, that’s about to change: now, eight more attackers will have the option to bring a hard breaching gadget along with them.

The hard breach charge gadget was revealed at the Six August 2020 Major. It’s an optional secondary gadget that creates a hole big enough to crawl or vault through. It takes three seconds to set up, and six more to set off, so it’s not as though it’s as good as the options available to the dedicated hard breacher operators. But according to the latest batch of Designer’s Notes from the Siege team, the idea is just to relieve some of the pressure.

“This new gadget could open a window of opportunity for teams willing to adopt a more versatile approach and reduce the pressure on Hibana, Maverick, Ace, and Thermite mains,” Ubisoft writes. “This is quite an important change, and results will be monitored closely. We would like to see if the presence of Operators listed above will increase as well.”

Here’s who will be able to add the hard breach charge to their loadouts when the Rainbow Six Siege Shadow Legacy release date rolls around:

  • Montagne instead of Stun Grenades.
  • Ying instead of Breach Charges.
  • Fuze instead of Smoke Grenades.
  • Finka instead of Breach Charges.
  • Amaru instead of Claymore.
  • Nokk instead of Breach Charges.
  • Capitao instead of Stun Grenades.
  • Lion instead of Claymore.

The designer notes also detail how Thatcher’s EMP grenades will interact with Bandit’s Shock Batteries and other electronic devices. In the game’s current state, EMP grenades destroy defender gadgets in their are of effect outright, making it very easy to counter breach denial operators like Mute and Bandit. Bandit players have adapted to this using a method known as ‘Bandit-tricking’, which involves placing the Shock Battery down after an EMP has gone off in order to destroy the hard breach gadget.

So, how will Bandit-tricking work after these changes? After the update, placed Shock Batteries will be temporarily disabled, so in order to place a working battery down, you’ll first need to remove the disabled one. This will make it much harder to use Bandit’s Shock Batteries to ‘trick’ a Thermite charge as your timing will need to be perfect. However, as the game’s other hard breaching gadgets all have longer fuse times, it’s still possible to trick them.

We tested out the change in the test build of Shadow Legacy and found that there is another method for Bandit-tricking that still works against Thermite. Instead of picking up the disabled Shock Battery, you can just shoot it so you don’t have to go through the animation of picking it up again.

More changes are on the way with Shadow Legacy as well, including the addition of Splinter Cell’s Max Fisher as attacking operator ‘Zero,’ and several ‘hidden’ tweaks and changes.

PCGamesN’s Jordan Forward contributed to this report.