Big Rainbow Six Siege Patch Adjusts Operators, Provides New Gadgets

Following the addition of new Operators in a recent update, another patch is now on the way for Rainbow Six Siege that reworks many of the existing ones and makes some other substantial changes.

Ubisoft today shared the patch notes for the Mid-Season Reinforcements update launching tomorrow, September 13. Chief among them are the tweaks to three Operators, which come after a recent change to Pulse.

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This starts with Twitch, whom Ubisoft says "is a good example of an Operator that is popular, has satisfactory pick and win ratios, yet her unique gadget, the Shock Drone, is quite underwhelming. Because of this, we have decided to change the utility of the Shock Drone quite drastically, in order to reinforce the uniqueness of her gameplay and the threat her Shock Drone."

With this update, she can now deploy a Shock Drone, rather than a regular drone, during the Preparation phase. A second Shock Drone takes the place of her two regular drones during the actual match, with this second one not replacing the first one. Shock Drones also now move more quickly (going as fast as standard drones), make less noise, have extended range on their darts, and no longer have a red light on them.

Positive changes are also on the way for Doc, who can now heal teammates with his darts and self-heal. His heals can also now boost the maximum health of a player for a limited time, bringing them up to 120.

Finally, Blackbeard's shield now works differently. Ubisoft found it to be used too passively--players equip it at the beginning of a round and then essentially forget about it. (It also described him as being a "very powerful" character.) To compensate, he now has two shields he can cycle through, with each of them having just 150 HP, down from the current 800.

While those are the only specific Operators being tweaked in dramatic ways, others may find they work a little differently. Some attacker-class character are gaining claymores in place of things like stun grenades and breach charges, while some defenders are getting impact grenades in place of nitro cells or barbwire. Additionally, Valkyrie now has one less Black Eye camera and both IQ and Montagne can deploy and unequip their respective gadgets more quickly.

This update also introduces two new weapon attachments (both pictured above). The muzzle brake reduces recoil on your first shot, while the heavy barrel has more recoil but does more damage at long range.

There are also further changes to weapon balancing (summed up briefly in the image above), hit registration, and team killing, as well as a number of bug fixes. For the complete rundown, check out the patch notes on Siege's website.

Ubisoft appears to have extensive plans to continue supporting Siege even as it approaches the one-year anniversary of its release. The patch notes state, "You can expect these kinds of updates for future seasons as we try to implement changes we think will help improve the game, while incorporating feedback from the community." There was also recently an indication that another season pass could be coming for Siege's second year.