A new update for Rainbow Six Siege is set to launch on all platforms including PC, Xbox One and PS4. This update announced by Ubisoft does not include any new introductions but deals primarily with balance changes. This includes the much anticipated nerf to Lion, the Operator who is much widely considered as the overpowering factor since the launch.

The outline of plans from Ubisoft relating to balanced changes implements many of them onto Lion. The character’s gadget which is a drone that outlines players for the opponent team has been toned down significantly. When used after the update, Lion can only use it to scan twice per round, as opposed to thrice pre-update. Its cool down has increased to 20 seconds from 10 seconds.

The changes brought forward to Lion are significant, but other characters have been tweaked a bit in this patch as well. Blitz’s shield flash will lose charge and range; Hibana’s claymore has been replaced with a breaching charge; Jager’s magpie doesn’t destroy Hibana’s X-kairos pellets and Ying now has a claymore instead of smoke grenades. One notable change is Vigil’s electronic rendering cloak which works differently. It uses its charge in 12 seconds instead of 30, but will recharge in a mere 6 seconds rather than 12.

The remaining changes brought forward by the update deal with adjustments to the damage done by light machine guns (several have a damage boost), and a few bugs that have been fixed. The complete list of bug fixes can be seen on the Rainbow Six Siege website.

In year 3 of the Rainbow Six Siege post launch, two new operators were launched – Lion and Finka. The Lion nerf update was highly anticipated by gamers, and Ubisoft admitted ironically that they did not fix enough of him before release. A game designer; Jean-Baptiste Halle spoke to Reedit AMA and said there were clear limitations and flaws in the pipeline when it comes to testing an operator’s balancing before release so as to fix flaws.

The game designer then went on to say that they have expert players come in to test the content they developed, but due to the limited time and number of players, they never have a clear picture of flaws. Also due to the shortage of time, issues that have been spotted cannot be corrected efficiently.

When it comes to Lion as an operator, the developers had failed to detect even the outline of a problem. The shortage of time was again to blame otherwise modifications could have been prior to release. This also points to the fact that there is room for improvement in the game, and feedback is essential from all gamers.

Also there are a few iterations in the pipeline for future updates, so stay on the lookout for more improvements.