R6 Siege North Star Operator reworks: All Y6S2 patch buffs and nerfs

Rainbow Six Siege's 21st expansion North Star is about to drop some huge changes to the game.

The North Star expansion is coming alongside the Y6S2 patch, and Ubisoft has revealed its plans to bring "a wide range of balancing tweaks and overall reworks."

The plan for this update is to shake up the meta and help some underperformed operators to find their place, while also introducing several big changes in terms of general gameplay mechanics, most notably a brand new "Gameplay After Death" system.

Of course, the biggest focus of the update is on Operator reworks.

The Y6S2 patch features balance changes for 7 operators directly, and another three indirect buffs to Vigil, Dokkaebi and Warden, due to buffs to the SMG-12.

• Read more: R6 Siege Y6S2 update: Downtime, patch notes, new Operator, more

After several weeks of testing, the update is now ready to be deployed on the live server, and below you can see al the Operator reworks and balance changes coming with the Y6S2 patch.

The Y6S2 patch Operator reworks and balance changes 

Smoke

(Picture: Ubisoft)

• Toxic gas from Smoke's Remote Gas Grenade will not travel through walls, floors, and ceilings
• A new sound plays when the canister is detonated
• Toxic gas damage increased to 15 HP every 0.66 seconds while in the area of effect

Smoke's Remote Gas Grenade has been reworked and while now it deals more damage, it also offers much less utility due to its more natural way of spreading.

Players won't be able to abuse it in some unexpected ways, and now with less area covered and more predictability in the way it behaves, it will be much less effective.

Ash

(Picture: Ubisoft)

• Reduced Breaching Rounds to 2 (from 3)
• Modified R4-C recoil, harder to control
• Increased vertical kick
• The horizontal spread will be more constant and stronger to the right
• Long burst recoil will start on the 8th bullet (previously the 12th)
• Breaching Rounds are now immune to electricity

Ash has the highest kill-per-round ratio among Attackers while also offering a lot of flexibility and utility.

Developers think that her being a great all-around pick is definitely not healthy for the game and thus we are seeing several nerfs for her in the Y6S2 patch, particularly targeting Breaching Rounds and her R4-C where they think she shouldn't be as efficient.

Finka

(Picture: Ubisoft)

• Finka's ability will fill up teammates' base health. The exceeding boost health will be allocated as overheal

This change comes due to Ubisoft wanting healing abilities to have consistency.

Now Finka's gadget will work in the same way as Thunderbird's and Doc's when it comes to overhealing.

Melusi

(Picture: Ubisoft)

• Banshees are now deployed closed and will open when triggered, revealing a Banshee Core
• Banshee Cores are vulnerable to bullets and melee attacks
• The device now also detects enemies' feet (previously detected head and hip)

These changes are a part of series of changes where Ubisoft wants to make gadgets more vulnerable. To compensate, Banshees will now detect feet as well.

Vigil

(Picture: Ubisoft)

• Modified K1A recoil, harder to control:
• Mild increase to vertical kick
• The horizontal spread will be more constant and stronger to the right
• Long burst recoil will start on the 6th bullet (previously the 12th)

A slight increase to the K1A recoil as developers don't want his loadout to "become too stacked" due to the SMG-12 buff.

Zero

(Picture: Ubisoft)

• Added same resource management system as Twitch's drone to Argus Camera
• Cooldown: 15s
• Initial/Maximum shots: 1

Ubisoft hopes that this will "help incentivize more creative camera placement" as they want players to carefully strategize over where and how they are placing Cameras for maximum value and utility.

• Read more: Siege Thunderbird: Release date, loadout, gadgets, unlock price, more

And there you have it, these are all of the changes slated for operators in the North Star expansion, coming with the Y6S2 patch.

The expansion releases for owners of the Battle Pass on 14th June 2021 and will be available worldwide on 5th July 2021.