Ubisoft just revealed the latest season coming to Rainbow Six Siege, Operation Neon Dawn, which will be bringing the new defender Aruni to the game and a plethora of new changes to make up for the absence of a second op.
Apart from the latest defender Aruni, Ubisoft has also made some changes to some of the existing operators to address the 20-second meta. The devs also added a map rework, some quality of life updates, and more. So here’s the full breakdown of all the new changes introduced in Operation Neon Dawn.
Aruni: New Defender
Apha “Aruni” Tawanroong will be the new Defender from Thailand joining the Rainbow Six Siege squad. Aruni can use her indestructible Surya Gate gadget to place a grid of lasers in doorways, which will deal 40 damage to any Attackers passing through it. The gadget can be easily countered by throwing any projectile, including drones and this will disable the grid of lasers for 30 seconds. And the gate can then be reactivated by anyone just by shooting the device.
The gadget might be frustrating for Attackers in the late-round when you might not have any projectiles to clear the gate, so it’ll require some coordination from your team to disable it. However, the laser is laser wall is completely see-through, unlike Castle barricades, so Defenders will still need to keep an eye on where the gadget is placed.
Aruni will be a 2-speed & 2-armor operator and will be the first defender to bring a DMR. In her loadout, Aruni will have the P10 Roni, Dokkaebi’s MK 14 EBR DMR, and the PRB92 Handgun as her secondary. She also has the option of barbed wire or a bulletproof camera as her secondary gadget, although the announcement video mentioned proximity alarm instead of the bulletproof cam.
Aruni also has a prosthetic arm that gives her a passive ability, which allows her to make larger sized melee holes in soft walls. She can use her arm to create rotations too, but it won’t be the most time-efficient.
Skyscraper Map Rework
The map Skyscraper released in Y2S1 is getting a rework in this new season. Although the map can be very fun to play, it had some clear flaws, which made it competitively unviable. Some of the changes include the removal of some windows, which were providing Attackers to set up easy crossfires. Some new rotations have been opened up, with Dragon now being brought inside and some new rappelling options have been added for the Attackers.
Hibana Rework
Hibana has been a reliable and pretty balanced operator for a long time now. But with the introduction of Ace and the secondary hard breaching gadget, she has kind of been left out. However, as announced before, Hibana will be getting a slight rework that will now allow her to cycle between the number of pellets to shoot.
Hibana can now shoot a group of two, four, or six pellets with her X-KAIROS launcher. This is intended to increase the synergy between the hard-breachers, as in future Attackers will be able to use a mix of several hard-breaching tools to open up reinforcements.
JÄGER REWORK
JÄGER is currently one of the best and most-picked Defender in the game at every level of play. Jager is also a main contributor to this 20-second meta in the Pro scene, as his ADS gadgets can shoot out any projectiles thrown at it (6 projectiles in total). This combined with deployable shields makes attacking a utility removal simulator in the first minutes, with the main push coming in the final 20 seconds.
The new rework will change the ADS to absorb only one projectile at a time and then going on a ten-second cool down before it’s activated again. But the ADS gadgets will now have unlimited charges. This new change will surely make it a lot easier to clear out shields and players from tight positions, and at this moment it seems a little too easy, but we’ll have to wait and test it out.
Echo nerf
If you are an Echo main, you are not going to like this change. The new nerf will now disable Echo Yokai drone’s invisibility, meaning it won’t no longer go invisible while it’s on the ceiling. This change does remove some frustration from playing against Echo, as sometimes it might be very difficult to spot his drones while being constantly concussed. However, to give him some advantage, the devs will be returning the deployable shield back to his loadout.
Quality of life updates
There has also been some new Quality of life updates made such as the new decreased run-out timer, which will now reveal the defender’s location within one second (reduced from 2s). The countdown timer will also be replaced with a new gradual progress bar.
Other changes include some new accessibility features for chat, including voice to text and vice versa. We still have to wait and try out these features when they drop on the Test Servers.
Rainbow Six Siege Operation Neon Dawn will be coming to PC Test Servers sometime tomorrow. Stay tuned for the upcoming patch notes for the new season.
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