Rainbow Six: Siege is a competitive first-person shooter grounded heavily in tactical team-based gameplay, meaning you need to choose the best operator for your squad’s needs when you play. But not all operators are created equal, and some can provide a much larger advantage to your team than others. If you can have an advantage right from the character select screen, why not take it?
Get ready to brush up on who the champs (and chumps) are in Siege’s ever-expanding roster, so you can be prepared to best assist your team in competitive play.
6.) BEST: Valkyrie
In a game that’s all about having eyes in as many places as possible, Valkyrie’s assortment of relocatable cameras can give the defending team a massive edge on any map in Siege. To balance this out, drawbacks include that she only gets a few of them and they’re easily destroyed, not to mention that Siege‘s shoddy netcode means her cameras can’t see enemies who teleport all over the map. Still, if used wisely, Valkyrie’s cameras can provide intel that ends a match before it begins, especially if used in conjunction with a low-tier scrub teammate who plays Mira.
5.) WORST: Castle
Castle has fancy barricades which, at least on paper, should be great. Unfortunately, almost everything breaks them. Repeated punching, breach charges, Ash’s drill ability, Sledge’s hammer, strong gusts of wind, etc. Really, these defensive structures are nothing more than a minor inconvenience. And for someone with a subpar set of guns and little to no utility beyond the aforementioned barricades, Castle’s about as bad a choice as one can make when selecting defensive operators. Just another prime example of Ubisoft’s blatant casual racism, what with them making the game’s premier black male operator a complete joke.
4.) BEST: Caveira
Having a good Caveira on your team can be the biggest defensive asset in all of Siege, as her ability allows her to interrogate singled-out opponents and reveal all enemy locations on the map. The trade-off here is that the 50% of the time you fail to successfully interrogate anyone on the enemy team, your own squadmates will verbally abuse the shit out of you and call you a “fucking scrub” for picking “the weakest operator in the game.” If you use her ability to its fullest, those same teammates will then magically stop talking. Of these people, whoever refused to give you shit in the first place and understands Caveira is a nuanced, risky character will have proven themselves a worthy ally. So use this operator if you want to suss out who’s worth adding as a friend on Uplay.
3.) WORST: Tachanka
While Tachanka is a lord in the Siege meme community, he’s little more than a glass cannon in the game itself. His mobile turret is basically useless against anyone who knows what they’re doing and will leave you as a sitting duck for the enemy. And, speaking of ducks, what about the lame duck that real-life counterparts to Tachanka helped get elected? Are we not going to lambaste Ubisoft for supporting and endorsing the very kinds of Russian agents who helped topple the United States’ democracy? The fact people like Tachanka are even in this game proves that Ubisoft hates Americans. Disgusting.
2.) BEST: Chat Auto-Moderator
Use this operator if you hate yourself but somehow hate the enemy even more. With this operator, you can pull sleazy maneuvers in the chat, such as typing “what’s a synonym for “a bundle of sticks”?” in order to draw out nasty responses and get the players who wrote them auto-banned for life. Seriously, if you get an opponent to type anything even potentially capable of being construed as offensive, such as “nibba,” “sucker,” or “dumb fuckin’ degenerate who should be mowed down in the street like the rat bastard they are,” you will ensure that their account becomes completely unusable thanks to Ubisoft’s developers’ life-threatening fears of bullying. Apparently, every dev at Ubisoft was mercilessly bullied in elementary school, and that influenced them so strongly that as adults, they decided anyone who was a “meanie” deserved to be ruthlessly cheated out of $60. Of course, this fun little bit of dev diary trivia is neither here nor there.
On a final note, be careful with this operator, because they support nuclear-grade friendly fire! Not only can you kill your teammates with this operator’s special ability if you accidentally bait them into saying something like “u r bad,” but you can get them banned for life. So only use this character if you’re playing with people who believe in safe spaces.
1.) WORST: BattleEye
This operator’s claim to fame is that it can crack down hard on Siege cheaters. Sounds like a useful fella to have on your team, right? Wrong. As it turns out, BattleEye is the weakest piece of “protection” your team can have. Wallhackers, aimbotters, pieces of shit who use trainers online, and all other manner of hack-employing scumbags can still use their pathetic software boosts online without issue because Ubisoft didn’t balance BattleEye whatsoever for Siege‘s meta. Seriously, while Chat Auto-Moderator is out scoring easy wins for its team by getting someone blacklisted from society for saying “fucker,” BattleEye can’t stop people from using codes and scripts intentionally and explicitly designed to ruin the game for other players. It’s incredible how useless BattleEye is. Worst operator by a mile.
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