Rainbow Six Siege has just released its latest edition of designer’s notes, detailing the upcoming FPS game update’s balancing changes and how operators will play differently. The developers behind Rainbow Six Siege are focusing on placing operators on a more level playing field with this balance update, buffing characters like Thorn in the spirit of making such trapper choices more appealing to players. The update is bringing a variety of tweaks to abilities and load-outs, with both additions and removals.
From Thorn’s load-out boost to Oryx’s reduced interaction time, you can find an overview of the Rainbow Six Siege operator balancing update changes below.
Operator balancing update
Thorn
UZK50GI
- Sights: Added 1.5x.
Thorn is currently one of the least-picked trappers on defender lineups. Her loadout is being boosted by adding a 1.5x sight to the UZK50GI, which should increase her popularity within the trapper ecosystem.
Nøkk
HEL Presence Reduction
- Removed silent steps while the ability is active.
- Increased the duration of the ability to 20s (from 12).
- Updated glitching reasons.
Deception is always a controversial topic and Nøkk’s ability is conceived around it. She can become invisible to observation tools and at the same time mute her footsteps. She is leading some of the main frustration for defenders and this update aims to tackle this. In a quiet environment, everyone should be able to hear someone else approaching, and Nøkk’s ability to move silently breaks this rule. The update removes the silent facet of the ability in exchange for increased ability duration.
Vigil
ERC-7
- On observation tools, Vigil will share the same glitching effect as Nøkk.
- The ability won’t deactivate while performing certain actions, like shooting, and will instead trigger the glitch effect on observation tools.
- Vigil won’t be immune to Lion’s EE-ONE-D or Grim’s Kawan Hive. Both gadgets will detect him, but he can prevent being pinged down by activating the ERC-7.
Nøkk and Vigil share a similar ability, and in the pursuit of consistency, this update extends Nøkk’s cloaking rules to Vigil. With this change, Vigil will glitch on observation tools while performing actions like shooting, deploying a gadget, or sprinting. These new interactions will reward players that proceed more carefully while using the ERC-7 and will punish those who act more carelessly.
Oryx
Hatch Climb
- Reduced hatch climb interaction time by 30%.
Game data shows that Oryx does not profit much from his ability to climb hatches. The update aims to make this interaction smoother by reducing its recovery time. Now it should feel less dangerous to perform.
If you want to view the full designer’s notes for a more detailed look at the statistics and upcoming changes, you can find them on Ubisoft’s website here.
For more information on R6, be sure to check out our guide on the best Rainbow Six Siege operators. You can also have a look through a few of our other favorite PC games for an idea of what to play next.