On March 13, in Atlanta, Georgia, Ubisoft finally unveiled every feature coming to Rainbow Six Siege in what's believed to be the game's most ambitious update: Rainbow Six Siege X.
With the release of Year 10 Season 2, players will be able to enjoy brand new features like weapon inspect, running while rappelling, destructible ingredients, new audio and graphics, and many more, even a 6v6 game mode called Dual Front.
- Read more: Rainbow Six Siege attackers and defenders to work together in new 6v6 game mode Dual Front
However, Ubisoft isn't only changing the way Rainbow Six Siege is played in Rainbow Six Siege X but also the way it's understood at a competitive level, as players will have to adapt to Rainbow Six Siege's brand new operator ban phase.
Starting from Rainbow Six Siege X operator bans will be completely different: instead of banning two attackers and two defenders at the start of the match, each team will ban a character from the opposition's operator pool before the start of each round. The bans stay from round to round and, by the conclusion of the first half of the game, the operator bans are reset.
If you haven't completely understood how the new operator ban phase will be played out, here's an example:
Let's say that we're playing on Border. Usually, when playing this map, defenders start picking Armory Lockers and Archives. If you're an attacker and your team wants to focus on breaching, you probably want to ban Kaid or Bandit. However, if you want to focus on a quick Archives plant, you may want to get rid of their Warden. In other words, this ban phase allows each team to be more specific with each veto, pushing the players to focus and understand how the rivals play.
Keep in mind that bans are carried from one round to another. If we continue with the Border example, if you ban Kaid in the first round, defenders won't be able to use it while playing in Bathroom; which means the Bathroom hatch won't be electrified and it will be easier to breach. This is also an important factor to consider, if you're too focused on an operator in a specific site you could be "wasting" a ban... always look at the bigger picture!
All in all, this brand-new operator ban phase is a breath of fresh air. At the same time, this is the first major system made to the operator ban phase, which means it will be interesting to see how the community will react to this update in particular.
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