The latest Rainbow Six Siege test server is live, and it’s bringing some substantial nerfs to shield operators, as well as some notable buffs for operators like Glaz and Nokk. As always, the TTS changes aren’t guaranteed to make it to the live server, but they’re a very strong indication of what Ubisoft is planning next for Siege.
The cone for hip-fire from behind a shield has been increased, as Ubisoft says “we have standardized the hip-fire penalization when you have a ballistic shield equipped.” Similarly, shield melee is getting less deadly – instead of an immediate kill, your shield bashes will just hurt your opponent enough to send them down-but-not-out. (Maybe this is karma for all the recent shield glitches.)
Glaz comes out on the positive side of the changes, as the movement time before vision gets lost completely has been more than doubled from 2.5 to six seconds, and a few other tweaks to the vision penalty have made it a bit less of factor.
Nokk also comes out well in these notes, with a buff bringing ability duration (and the refill timer) up to 12 seconds, which Ubisoft says should let you “better leverage her ability.”
You can see the full patch notes over on Reddit, or you can fire up the latest test server on Uplay to try out the changes for yourself.