Clash and Maestro nerfed in latest Rainbow Six Siege update

A new entry in Ubisoft’s Designer Notes series gives Rainbow Six Siege players an update on operator balance as we continue through Operation Grim Sky. There are only a few immediate changes to balance coming in the next patch, including key nerfs to Clash as well as adjustments to SMGs and Maestro.

Clash

Reduced weapon swapping speed between CCE Shield and Sidearm
Delay before refilling charge after usage ends increased to 2 seconds, from 1 second
Attackers regain full mobility after 0.5 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds, after being shocked

“Ultimately, we believe that this will further drive the idea that Clash is reliant on teammates, as opposed to an Operator than can exist completely independently,” the blog post reads. Clash’s previous super-human weapon swap speed turned out to be the result of a bug that was corrected in last week’s patch. These further changes cement Clash’s role as a scout to make callouts and a way to assist your teammates with kills.

Maestro

Since Maestro’s release back in June, his signature ALDA LMG has proven to be a powerhouse for defender weapons, thanks in part to its unique hipfire recoil that gets more accurate as you keep firing. Ubi said this abnormal advantage led to “confusion, and did not play out in the way that we had anticipated.”

As detailed later in a developer AMA by game designer Emilien Lomet, the original intention behind the ALDA was to try out “suppressive fire gameplay that would not require difficult implementation,” but it didn’t work out the way they hoped. This change still leaves the ALDA in a great place as a defender weapon, but maybe gives Maestro mains a reason to switch to their secondary at close range.

The new recoil patterns introduced for all guns at the outset of Operation Grim Sky had a particularly harsh effect on SMGs with high fire rates. Ubi wanted to discourage using a secondary SMG as your primary, as has been common with Smoke and Dokkaebi. But Ubi has now lowered the recoil of Smoke’s SMG-11 and Mira’s Vector, saying the initial recoil had a “significant impact” on them.

The posts ends with status updates on two operators that the balancing team still isn’t happy with: Lion and Glaz. Ubi says Lion continues to be “problematic for us at higher level play.” They’re working on two possible ways to rework him at the moment. One would “remove the intel gathering aspect of his gadget” entirely, and the other would shift the red outline of his scan to a more “Jackal style ping” that updates the player location at a slower rate. Both of these ideas are in the early stages and nothing is final yet.

Ubi’s comments about Glaz are a little more cryptic, but it wants to move away from his established role as a site pusher. “We want to bring him closer to the original idea of a sniper, holding a line of sight with a high powered rifle,” reads the post. To me, this points to a change to his thermal scope that can see through smoke. One other comment by devs might hint at this possibility. In response to a question about Alibi’s Prisma decoys, the development team said “changes to other operators might make her Prismas more appealing.” Glaz’s scope is the only gadget that can see through the decoy’s ruse, so a future change to this interaction makes sense.

Ubi also gave a quick update on a few other reworks and another operator they’d like to work on in the future. Thatcher and Castle’s reworks are still in progress, Frost’s Welcome Mats continue to be reconsidered, and forever-meme Tachanka will get his rework eventually. A new candidate mentioned was Fuze, whose gadget is “very risky and not reliable to use” most of the time, according to Ubi.

No definite date was given for the mid-season balance patch, but based on Ubi’s track record we can expect it in the next week or so.

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Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.