The operators in Rainbow Six: Siege have various strengths and weaknesses and Ubisoft is continuously working to balance them. However, with a patch, the developers have apparently overdone it and need to backtrack.
Which operator is it about? It is about Ying, who received a buff with a patch on April 20. This has changed the attacker in many ways:
- instead of Claymores, she gets smoke grenades to choose from
- from her operator gadget, the Candelas, she can carry four instead of just three
- the damage of her LMG T-96 LSW was increased from 43 to 46
The reason for her buff was probably that she was among the least played operators. As the official statistics from Ubisoft on April 8, 2020, show, Ying had one of the lowest play rates and a lower win rate than other operators:
That was the problem with the buff: With the buff, Ying has apparently become significantly too strong. The biggest problem was the number of her Candelas.
These scatter several flash grenades in the room, which blind all affected enemies for some time.
Instead of being played little as before, she received significantly more attention and players complained that they could not enjoy the game for all the blinding:
The colleagues from GameStar took up the debate about Ying. They state that Ying could even take out entire enemy teams on her own due to the buff.
The problem has also shown in esports. In the currently ongoing GSA League, there were more Ying bans than would have been usual in esports before.
As a result, important bans on other potentially strong operators were missing.
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Buff too strong, nerf after a week
So Ying was nerfed again: In a tweet from the official Twitter account of Rainbow Six Siege, it is stated that on April 30, 2020, a nerf for Ying has come. The number of her Candelas was reduced from four back to three. The patch is currently only available for PC, with Xbox One and PlayStation 4 to follow later.
In the initial reactions, players thanked for the quick resolution of the issue. From Twitter user BikiniBodhi it is stated:
- “Good and quick response to Ying! Thank you!”
Players also discuss a major problem with cheaters that Ubisoft is already addressing.
What else is changing? Other issues that Ubisoft addresses with the patch are the XP cap for PvE missions as well as fixing a bug with the pop-up for resetting matchmaking ratings.
Whether the changes will help to curb Ying’s exaggerated strength remains to be seen. Should you still have problems against her, you can check out tricks from the pros of Rainbow Six, with which MeinMMO author Benedict Grothaus has already improved.
Perhaps the next over-buff won’t hit you as hard.
