Nerf to Rainbow Six Siege Operators have been on the rise but surprisingly one of the most controversial operators Jackal has not been touched for some time. All this may change very soon as Jackal is being reworked and will currently be on test servers to see if the incoming nerf will level out the playing field.

Testing out some big Jackal changes on the PC TS!

🐾 # of pings depends on age
🐾 Jackal can track himself or share pings w/team
& more…🦶

PC TS @ 1:30 PM EST / 18:30 UTC
Expected downtime: 30 min

TS Patch Notes: https://t.co/3Y3UFA6YPu
Bug Reporting: https://t.co/oHHQ2RcFW8 pic.twitter.com/YvLsumRGtm

— Rainbow Six Siege (@Rainbow6Game) October 10, 2019

Jackal is a very powerful attacking operator currently. His gadget allows him to see footprints of the defending operators giving him a good sense of their designated location. Not only that, he can then scan then footprint to start a visual ping on the defending operator that gives intel to all of his teammates. This ping will activate about every 5 seconds and will ping a total of 5 times. When this happens to a defender this will sometimes put them in a state of panic, forcing them to move around frequently to prevent them from getting jumped or shot through a wall or window by attacking operators.

Jackal has been seen as a huge threat and has the highest pick rate for a ban on attacking operators at the moment in ranked. Ubisoft has come to notice this and is now working on a potential nerf that will balance out his gadget and possibly get him off the ban list so frequently. The changes for Jackal are not huge but certainly make him less lethal in certain situations. Now, the age of the footprint will determine how many pings are set off on the defender. Fresh prints will provide more pings while old prints will give less. Jackal also has the ability to save the information only for himself to keep the charges of his gadget. If shared with teammates, he will then use one of his charges. Footprints will also disappear now after being scanned so Jackal will no longer be able to spam his scan on one set of them.

All of these changes are available now on the test server if you would like to see the changes for yourself. Keep in mind, nothing is set in stone yet as Ubisoft may make minor changes based on community feedback during the test. All in all, it would be nice to see if the nerf works out for the community and players will get to enjoy playing Jackal more in ranked matches yet again.