Rainbow Six Siege: The upcoming nerfs will affect Maverick, Zofia and Glaz

Shortly after adding the operation Grim Sky on the test servers of Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft are ready to add some more changes to the game balance, which is based on the player’s feedback. The most radical changes mostly will affect Maverick, in order to balance him before the official release. This nerf will also influence Zofia, Glaz and Dokkaebi.

Maverick

The amount of time and fuel to destroy the barbed wire for blowtorch has been increased

When Maverick has shown up on the test server this week, players were surprised at how efficient his blowtorch was. It was able, not only melt walls, but to destroy everything else instantly. The ability to make barbed wire disappear in a blink of an eye seemed overpowered. Mostly because he could do it nearly noiselessly. After Maverick’s nerf he still will be able to do so, but it will take more time and precious fuel in order to destroy barbed wire.

The smoke grenade was misplaced with a stun grenade

Ubi explained such changes declaring, that smoke grenades gave Maverick the ability of being “too useful”. Maverick corresponds to a long list of criterium of popular and universal operators of the game: he has 3 speeds, strong gun and gadget, which can be used to completely change the game meta. Mav can easily cause a game to be offence - oriented. Smoke grenades are considered to be incredibly useful for object - capturing or defusing a bomb. That is why developers expect to spare the game from a new primary pick by taking smoke nades away from Maverick. 

The sound of blowtorch has been slightly increased 

This changes will definitely make some players happier. Ubisoft has admitted with player’s feedback about blowtorch being too quiet. Even when the player was stationed right near the wall, Maverick breaking through, the blowtorch was almost silent.

Ubi have also addressed some other aspects of Maverick, which a lot of players complained about. Such as, the distance of his blowtorch and fuel consumption, which provides an opportunity to break through a lot of surfaces. Developers tried to avoid decreasing the blowtorch’s range. As they stated “This is an extremely delicate aspect of his gadget, and will require months of work to adjust to ensure the gadget still works properly in all situations. If this is absolutely necessary, we will discuss it further down the line, but this will be the last resort adjustment”.

The developers intend to wait and gather more feedback, before proceeding with the decision about the amount of blowtorch’s fuel. It is really controversial that his blowtorch can make a huge amount of holes, but in order to do so, players need a lot of practice and while burning holes, he will remain extremely vulnerable. Mav’s gadget can be too powerful in high ranks, but pretty much balanced on low and average ranks.  

Hibana   

The amount of X-KAIROS pellets required to destroy a hatch has been decreased from 6 to 4

This adjustment to a lesser extent is focused to correct the game balance, but to a higher extent was just a necessary fix. From the very moment Hibana appeared in the first season, she suffered from a bug, which sometimes makes some of her pallets miss the target. Reducing the number of pallets required to destroy the hatch, only reduces the disappointment when this bug occurs.

Zofia

The amount of concussion grenades for KS79 Lifeline has been decreased from 4 to 3

This was a sudden decision, hence to the question about Zofia’s balance was not relevant for several months before Grim Sky. Nevertheless, Ubisoft’s crew believes that Zofia as they say “currently has too much utility, which leads to her being able to burn the defender’s ADS too easily, or take a room without much of a contest”. Since she was released last year, a lot of players have mentioned that 4 concussion grenades are a little bit of an overkill, but it was never a critical issue.

Glaz

Glaz is no longer able to destroy Castle’s Armored Panels with OTs-03.

Basically, it all started as a bug, which developers decided to keep in the game. They commented this issue as “Originally, we had a bug that prevented Glaz from being able to destroy Castle’s Armored Panels. As this makes sense and is a positive way of adjusting both Operators, we have decided not to fix it”. Their statement goes on and finally says that it is about time to fix this issue and Glaz’s rifle will no longer be able to even penetrate Castle’s Armored Panels. More likely, this change is a part of bigger developers plan for Castle’s rework, to make him more effective on each game level.

Dokkaebi

Ubisoft is exploring the possibility of Logic Bomb having a set time limit, after which phone-call will automatically shut off. Developers consider an option, where the timer will be about 7 or 8 seconds, but the theoretical implementation of this option is way far from giving some time frames.

Recoil

In the massage from Ubi one more issue arises. It is related to a new gun recoil system, which was provided on test servers: from now on, shotguns have a very small recoil after the first shot. “We are working on a fix, but will not have it ready by the release of Grim Sky” - says Ubisoft. Fixing this issue will, most likely, occur somewhere during the season, which is sad news for most of the players. It will take month and month away, during which players will deal with such a big issue, that has a direct impact on the game balance.

The SMG recoil is also being reviewed after it was greatly modified in the new system. As Ubisoft developers say “We want to push the secondary weapons to being true secondary weapons, as opposed to their primary weapons. We may go about this in a different way and make adjustments to the recoil in the future, but not prior to the release of Grim Sky”. Obviously, it refers to SMG-11 and SMG-12. Those submachine guns are so good, Sledge, Smoke, Vigil and Dokkaebi use them more often than their primary weapon.