Ubisoft are gearing up to roll out the next patch of Rainbow Six Siege’s Operation Para Bellum update, and ahead of that, they’ve posted a lengthy blog post, as part of their Designer’s Notes series, that details some of the most major changes they’ll be making to the game. Mostly, it looks like they’re making balancing changes to certain characters in the game.
Several characters, such as Finka, IQ, Glaz, and Twitch have been deemed to be too powerful by Ubisoft, and hence they’re being nerfed. Ubisoft, however, also wants to make sure that the popularity of these characters isn’t affected by these nerfs, so while they’ll be made a little less powerful, the developers are going to try and make sure they still remain desirable to players.
For instance, IQ’s electronics scanner is having its range lowered a bit, going from 20m to 15m, while she will no longer have frag grenades either, and will instead be equipped with claymores. Finka, on the other hand, will now have frag grenades, which will be replacing her stun grenades, but to make her less all-powerful than earlier, her ability duration is being cut down by half, going from 20 seconds to 10 seconds. Meanwhile, the damage of Twitch’s FAMAS is being dropped from 40 to 37. The damage of Glaz’s OTS-03 is also being slashed significantly, dropping from 85 to 71.
Conversely, there are some characters that are now being made more powerful by Ubisoft. Dokkaebi, for instance, turned out to have much more utility than Ubisoft had intended, thanks to being equipped with smoke grenades and claymores. As such, the latter will be replaced with stun grenades. Jackal’s pick rate is also being cranked up a little, by giving his scanner’s distance ever so slightly, from 5m to 8m.
Frost is also receiving some boosts. Her SMG will now do 45 damage instead of 43, while her shotgun damage will also be kicked up from 32 to 35. Then there’s Blackbeard, who’s going to receive a number of tweaks. For starters, his shield will now take 50 damage instead of 60 before breaking. The damage values of his weapons are also being changed, with one increasing and one decreasing. The MK17 goes up from 42 to 49, while the SR-25 drops down from 72 to 61.
Ubisoft have also increased the slow rate of the barbed wire item from 45% to 50%, though everything else about it remains the same. Meanwhile, they’ve also promised that Frost is one character who will probably receive more tweaks in the future, as they continue to look into her and whether or not she needs more balancing changes. Other characters that they’re also going to be looking into more are Alibi, Castle, Ash, Kapkan, Twitch, Maestro, Bandit, and Jager.