Rainbow Six Siege's next patch will buff Smoke and Mute, redesign skins shop

Following yesterday’s reveal of Rainbow Six Siege’s Operation Wind Bastion, Ubisoft has released patch notes that detail a batch of lower-profile changes coming alongside the new operators and map. The patch mostly consists of small bug fixes, but some notable changes include a loadout change for Mute and another nerf for Zofia.

The blog post begins by detailing new operators Kaid and Nomad and introducing new map Fortress, all of which we’ve detailed in our hands-on impressions. For Wind Bastion’s first round of operator balancing, Mute, Clash, Zofia, Lesion, and Smoke are under the microscope.

Mute & Smoke

Mute is gaining the SMG-11 as a secondary option similar to his fellow SAS defender Smoke. Ubi wants to make Mute “slightly more attractive as a choice,” which this no doubt will do. The SMG-11 is also getting a slight damage buff, but the exact numbers were unspecified. This also functions as a small buff to Smoke, who Ubi feels is “still a bit weak.”

Zofia

Zofia is back into the balancing crucible, and is losing another concussion grenade this time around: from 3 to 2. Ubi says Zofia still has “too many projectiles at her disposal, and is able to offer too much utility when compared to her teammates.” This is hard to argue with. At launch, Zofia had 4 concussion grenades along with her impact rounds. An even 2-2 split on her utility should mean she’s still plenty powerful.

Clash

Wind Bastion is going to be a rough season for Clash. To get ahead of this and to answer for her low pick rate following a previous nerf, her taser shield damage is going up from 3 to 5 damage per zap. “She is now very weak and underpicked, and we anticipate that Nomad will be a hard counter against her,” the post reads. This is an understatement. For Nomad, taking down Clash is as easy as firing an airjab at her face and shooting her while she’s defenseless on the ground. I don’t anticipate this damage buff improving such a one-sided encounter.

Lesion

Lesion has never been top-of-mind in the community as someone in need of balancing fixes. He’s a great operator and very accessible, but apparently Ubi sees him as slightly too strong. The damage of his T-5 SMG is being slightly decreased by an unspecified amount to bring him in line with where Ubi wants him.

Throwables trajectory

This change is a bit out of left field, but the trajectory of all thrown gadgets will be changing in Wind Bastion to make them “easier and more comfortable to use,” as Ubi explains. The one exception to this change is the Nitro Cell, which won’t be changing. So expect your friends’ grenade tosses to be a little sporadic until everyone gets used to it.

Shop interface

Wind Bastion will also introduce a new shop interface that will replace the antiquated and confusing menus Siege has used for years. The new shop will allow players to more quickly navigate items, immediately equip cosmetics, and adds an “equip all” button to skins. Currently, players have to dive into a dozen layers of menus to equip one skin on several operators or weapons. The screengrab Ubi shared looks snazzy, but I’m interested to see if the shop is still navigational mess.

There are a bunch of other bug fixes coming to specific maps and operators. For a full list, head over to the official post. Tomorrow marks the beginning of the Technical Test Server for Wind Bastion, so expect the unspecified information on damage changes and throw trajectory to be clarified this week by players. Wind Bastion still has no official release date, but history tells us it’ll likely come out between December 4-7, so stay tuned.

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.