The new season for Rainbow Six Siege, Operation White Noise, has finally been announced in

detail and in this video I’ll be discussing my thoughts on the new map and operators,

so let’s get right into it!

The new South Korean map is called Tower and yesterday we were given a first glimpse of its layout.

The most important thing about the map is of course that it has a museum and a bar.

It just wouldn’t be a Rainbow Six Siege map without those two aspects ;-P

I’m joking of course but have you ever noticed how many of the maps seem to have museums and bars in them?

Think about it…

If we examine the floor plans of the new map, we can see that it is quite unique compared

to everything we’ve seen before and these are the things that stood out to me most.

Firstly, there is no real outdoor area.

Attackers can spawn on one of two locations on the roof and then abseil down the sides

of the building or descend down an elevator shaft.

In practice, that means that there will be no spawn peeking and no runouts but if the

defenders can figure out where the attackers will try to get into the building, they might

be able to hold them off from even getting in for quite a while.

The second thing that stands out to me, is that the map only appears to have 2 floors,

which is less than we are used to on most maps, although in contrast to many of the

more vertical existing maps, the area of each floor is significantly larger.

The final thing I noticed on the floor plans that were revealed is that, even though there

is a symbol for line-of-sight breachable floors, there are no floors actually marked with these

red and black stripes.

Given how in high ranked games and especially during pro-league matches it is quite common

to exploit breachable floors to put pressure on defenders a floor below, it is surprising

that this map appears to completely forgo this aspect of Rainbow Six gameplay.

But with plenty of open areas that allow a view onto lower floors and a good number of

hatches, I guess there will still be some of verticality to the map.

So like I said, Tower looks quite different from anything we’ve seen in the past.

No outdoor area, only two levels and no line-of-sight breachable floors.

But instead we get large horizontal areas with the potential of opening up long sightlines

and plenty of walkways and balconies.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out!

But enough of the map, over to the new operators and all of their lovely new toys!

The thing that really impresses me about the new operators this season is the amount of

synergies and specific nemesis style counter operators they have.

Let’s go over them one by one; in case you have not heard about their gadgets yet, I

will very briefly describe how they work and then go into more detail on their specific

interactions with other operators and my personal thoughts on them.

Let’s start off with Dokkaebi: she is a hacker with the ability to trigger a logic

bomb ability twice per round.

This will have two effects.

Firstly it will ring the phones of most of the defenders, creating the buzzing vibration

sound we are all familiar with, while at the same time blocking their access to the camera network.

This can give away a defender's location as long as there are attackers close enough to hear the buzzing.

Defenders will need to go through an animation, similar to pulling out a Gu dart, in order

to turn off their phone, making them vulnerable for a brief moment.

Even more useful than the logic bomb ability though, is Dokkaebi’s ability to hack the

phone of a defender that has been killed.

This will allow all of the attackers to access the defenders’ camera network, including Valk cams!

They can even then use the hacked cams to mark defenders.

That makes Dokkaebi a direct counter to Valkyrie.

The better the defenders’ Valk player is at setting up a secondary network of cams,

the greater the benefit to the attackers, if Dokkaebi manages to hack into this network.

On the flip side, the defenders Echo, Mute and Vigil will act as direct counters to Dokkaebi’s abilities.

Echo is so technologically advanced that his phone simply cannot be affected by logic bomb

and any operator within the effective rate or a Mute jammer is also immune.

Vigil’s own ability somewhat protects him from Dokkaebi but we’ll get to that in a bit.

In terms of synergies, Dokkaebi partners up excellently with IQ, since IQ will be able

to detect a defender with her scanner during the brief period in which the defender is

trying to switch off their buzzing mobile phone.

Great for some sneaky wall bangs if you can co-operate and get your timing just right!

These are some pretty unique abilities and I’m really excited to try them out.

Over to Vigil and his ability is similar to Caveira’s silent step except that it hides

him from drones and cameras instead of making him quieter.

The ability takes a second to take effect once triggered, operates on a cool down timer

and is cancelled when Vigil fires his weapons.

The effectiveness of this ability is balanced out by giving drone/camera operators a static

overlay effect whenever Vigil is nearby.

So even though he cannot be seen on cam, his approximate location can still be droned out.

This makes Vigil a soft counter to Dokkaebi, since he can still hide to some degree, even

when the defenders’ cameras have been hacked.

Attackers that can counter Vigil are Thatcher & Twitch, whose gadgets will temporarily disable

his cloaking device and IQ, who will be able to track Vigil with her scanner, whenever

he is actively using his cloak (much like she can track Pulse).

The idea of being able to hide from drones in plain sight is amazing and could make Vigil

the perfect ambush roamer but triggering the jammed overlay in drones means that it will

be hard to remain completely hidden.

I guess that’s fair enough from a balance perspective but still kind of a shame especially

considering how powerful Dokkaebi’s camera hack looks to be.

But we shall see.

Last but not least, the new Grom attacker Zofia comes equipped with a double barrelled

grenade launcher that can shoot impact fused breaching grenades as well as concussion grenades

that will cause essentially the same drunken effect as Ela’s Grzmot mines.

These concussion grenades can be bounced around corners and are on a timer as well as being

equipped with a proximity fuse that will detonate the grenade once it is close to a target.

But this is not Zofia’s only ability.

Once per round, similar to Doc, she will be able to self-revive from the Down-But-Not-Out

state but instead of using a fancy injector gun loaded with Red Bull (or whatever is in there)

she does it with pure willpower.

The only downside to this brute strength approach is that she only ends up with one single HP

once she’s back up meaning that even a mild gust of wind will be enough to take her out.

Some of people I have spoken to were shocked at hearing about this ability, fearing that

it would be massively OP but I don’t think it’s going to be a huge issue.

I mean, Doc already has a version of this ability and he ends up with more health when

he self-revives and while that can very occasionally lead to an amazing clutch situation, how many

times has it had a massive impact on your games?

And also, it is important to remember that if there is a friendly attacker nearby, it

is better to let them help you up, since you get half of your health back, so the self-revive

should really just be a last resort strategy.

Back to the grenade launcher and apart from being a two armour / two speed operator, I

would almost say that Zofia is a straight upgrade of Ash.

Her breaching grenades explode instantly instead of delayed and she also gets the stunners on top of that.

There may still be a place for Ash in the game but I do believe it is likely that her

pick rate will end up being partially cannibalised by Zofia.

In terms of counters, Zofia has a bidirectional counter relationship with her sister / fellow Grom operator, Ela.

Since both use the same style of concussive gadgets, they are partially immune to each

other’s weapons.

The concussive blasts will still affect them but only for a very brief period of time.

So there you have it and as I mentioned before, I am really impressed by how the devs have

created these unique interactions between the new operators and some of the existing ones.

Especially IQ seems to have benefitted from a couple of passive buffs and I wonder if

this will translate into a higher pick rate for her in future.

Out of the three new operators, Dokkaebi is the one that excites me the most but I can’t

wait to get my hands on all three of these guys’ gadget plus of course testing and

exploring their new weapons!

And let’s not forget that shiny new map!

Which of the new operators has caught your fancy and what do you think of the new map?

Let me know in the comments below and do go ahead and leave a like or dislike

if you liked or disliked the video!

And with that guys, thanks so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video

and I will see you in the next episode!