Rainbow Six Siege Operation White Noise mid-season patch nerfs Ela, Ash, concussion effects

Rainbow Six Siege developer Ubisoft has kicked off this year's balance updates with the Operation White Noise mid-season patch.

The update goes live today on Rainbow Six Siege's test servers, bringing a host of balance changes and bug fixes, as is typical with mid-season patches. Some of these, like the Ela nerf, were communicated ahead of time. Ubisoft did not set a date for when patch 4.2 will hit live servers just yet.

Starting off with Ela, her SMG's magazine size has been lowered from 50 to 40 bullets. This was done partially to make her less desirable as a pick, since she's very popular right now which is affecting the metagame. Ela is also getting another nerf, but that's because concussion effects are getting reduced across the board.

Both Ela, and Zofia will be affected by this. Concussion will no longer disable sprinting, but will still to cut movement and camera rotation speed. Concussed players will be able to recover in four seconds instead of seven, however. The only effect that will last for the full seven seconds is the effect on sight and hearing.

Moving on to Ash, her R4-C rifle is getting a damage nerf, as its damage output combined with the high rate-of-fire made her a bit too powerful. This applies to regular damage, suppressed, as well as when using a long barrel.

Capitao’s Para-308 has had its raw damage increased to 48 (from 43), and the intensity of the random components of its recoil reduced. This is part of making Capitao a more desirable pick, but Ubisoft promised to do more with his gadget in the long-term.

Twitch's Shock Drone gets a massive reduction in max ammo, from 15 down to five. This will make her less strong, and Ubisoft hopes this will force players to carefully pick when to shoot and when to save ammo.

Bandit will now spawn with two barbed wires instead of three, another change to make the class more desirable than it currently is. The final hero change affects Lesion’s Gu Mine. Now, the weapon's refill timer will take 30 seconds instead of 35 to help with his survivability.

Outside of hero changes, the update also adds some valuable features, such as the ability to set a render resolution separate form the display resolution. This is done with the help of TAA tech.

Other gameplay changes include updates to the bomb UI to make it easier to see which teammate is interacting with the defuser, and a couple of adjustments to caster camera in spectator mode to make it easier to read.

See the rest of the fixes below:

Gameplay

• FIXED – Shield exploit that involves Deployable Shields being held in front of an Operator.
• FIXED – Attack Operators can appear as a 2D texture when approaching broken walls while holding the hostage.
• FIXED – Certain operator weapons produce extremely bright smoke and can obscure the view of the players.
• FIXED – Zofia dies after using Withstand when a match has a Handicap of 75 or less Damage.

Game mode

Terrorist Hunt

• FIXED – Bombers do not always spawn during a Terrorist Hunt Classic on Tower map.
• FIXED – Last three enemies of a wave will get stuck behind the reversed table in 2F Meeting room.

Spectator camera

• FIXED – Switching to Dokkaebi on support mode during her gadget animation will show her gadget screen empty.

Operators

Dokkaebi

• FIXED – Dokkaebi loses functionality, and a broken animation is present if Dokkaebi gets into DBNO state while hacking the camera system.
• FIXED – No warning appears when Dokkaebi is out of Logic Bomb uses and tries to activate it.
• FIXED – When in ADS, you do not need to hold the appropriate key to use Logic Bomb.

Echo

• FIXED – Yokai is stuck and has framed camera rotation rate on uneven terrain/debris.
• FIXED – The drones including Yokai have issues smoothly turning when navigating on certain destructible surfaces.
• FIXED – The Yokai drone loses signal in multiple places on Tower.
• FIXED – Echo drone can stick to the canister under Mira’s Black Mirror.

Zofia

• FIXED – Zofia's LMG-E should have 150 bullets instead of 151.
• FIXED – Users can extend the bleed out timer by spamming Withstand.

Ying

• FIXED – Ying's Candela will not go through the Ramps of 3F Watchtower of Oregon.

Level design

Chalet

• FIXED – Players can prone between objects at 1F Trophy Room and be pushed inside the wall or outside at EXT Campfire Wood.
• FIXED – Nitro cells do not inflict damage if detonated on the plants from 1F Great Room.
• FIXED – Defenders in Prone stance in one corner of 1F Dining Room are not contesting the objective.

Bank

• FIXED – Bullets pass through the desk located at CCTV room.

Clubhouse

• FIXED – Player can be stuck inside a wall if they use the vault prompt on beer cases.

Consulate

• FIXED – Castle’s double door Armor Panels do not cover the entire frame.

Tower

• FIXED – Player can vault in a specific location to get on a window frame.
• FIXED – There are lights on the side of the tower, which can block an Attacker's rappel trajectory.

Kanal

• FIXED – Due to a missing texture, players can exploit an area using drones and kill enemies.

Coastline

• FIXED – Attackers can plant the Defuser from outside the objective at Ext Main Entrance.

Theme Park

• FIXED – Attackers can place a drone inside the barricaded window of EXT Sweet Shops.
• FIXED – Vault prompt is missing on the rooftop of the building.

UX

• FIXED – Too much smoke appears when shooting with some weapons.
• FIXED – Installing the latest graphics driver for AMD will cause a crash when explosives are triggered.
• FIXED – Concussion and Sonic Burst effect applies to replays if applied after the start of replay.