Year 9 of Rainbow Six Siege is officially starting off with a bang as today’s live stream during the Sao Paulo invitational showcased the brand new season. We got a new look at Deimos, the meticulous antagonist plaguing team rainbow, as this season’s brand new attacking operator with a new gadget that is sure to shake up the meta heavily. We also got new information regarding overall game health and new mechanics to usher in a new year for Rainbow players. New changes to shield operators, reworks to strong operators, and balancing changes will be detailed further. 

Lets begin with Deimos, he is a 2 armor 2 speed attacker and has the M590A1 shotgun alongside the Ak-74 as his primaries, but his secondary is the real star, a custom scoped revolver with incredible stopping power and damage, he will also be allowed to bring either frag grenades or breaching charges. His gadget, the Deathmark, is going to be the best tool in the game for dealing with roamers. Once a player on defense has been identified via drones, Deimos can add said player to his kill list. Once in his kill list he can select the player and send out a nano copter drone which will constantly reveal his position for a respectable amount of time. While Deimos is in his Deathmark mode, he can only use his secondary revolver but that is no hindrance at all. Should be noted that this only works for Deimos and not the rest of his team emphasizing the lone wolf aspect of the character, and the defender will also be able to see Deimos as well although periodically. 

Now for some other information that was revealed, focusing on game health and balancing. The shield rework is officially coming this season which will change the way we see shield operators in the game. There is no longer a hip fire option for shields, it has been replaced by a free look mechanic, the melee no longer kills players on impact but just knocks them down, and you can now reload, use lethals, and activate gadgets from behind the shield. The Azami rework is also dropping this season, with her Kiba’s now having a set health pool and can now be destroyed with bullets instead of only melee and explosives.  The team also revealed that they will be cracking down on cheaters this season further with an addition of a ban on data systems. This alongside the addition for new players to have restrictions for ranked will further improve game health for the long term lifespan. Additional changes to game health include pre-visualization for throwables and improved rappel systems. 

Another major change coming to the game that will have certain players have their stats significantly drop are the changes to ADS and sights. Before all sights for the weapons in the game were classified by non magnified, 1.5 x, 2.5x, 3x, and 3.5x. Now that has been changed to only having non magnified sights, to 2.5x, and 3.5x, with the higher magnification sights having  slow aim down sight speeds. There has been a significant change in weapon attachments as well with grips in the game no longer affecting recoil, but movement speed and aim down sight speed. It’ll be very interesting again to see Ash and certain defenders running an acog again after it being deemed game breaking.