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Rainbow Six: Siege

Rainbow Six: Siege - Operation Chimera

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Ubisoft's shooter Rainbow Six: Siege has been receiving content drops every three months on average since launch for the first two years, including new maps and operators, and now Operation Chimera is the newest content drop coming to Siege as the first season of their third year, starting on March 6. At the Six Invitational esports competition in Montreal this weekend we got the chance to try out the new content early, and although there isn't a new map to dive into, there are two brand new operators as we've come to expect.

As we've already learned, this content drop will include two operators - Finka and Lion (from Russia and France respectively) - both of which bring their own unique abilities into the game, as we're used to seeing from new operators in the past. The twist this time though is that both of them are attacking operators, so there's nobody coming to bolster our defence this time around. They say that attack is the best form of defence, after all.

Ubisoft told us in Montreal that these operators are unique in the sense that they can both affect the entire map without having to rely on aim or line of sight, which for Finka applies to her ability to buff teammates with the press of a button. This means all your allies gain health and can even get revived just by activating this ability, and what's more is that they also become more resisitant to things like Grzmot and Gu mines, so the stuns effects are lessened (although importantly not removed entirely).

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In practice, Finka seems to be most useful with communication, which although it sounds blindingly obvious in a tactical game like Siege, it's still worth mentioning. To get the most out of Finka you'll need to coordinate pushes to make sure all of your team benefit equally from the buff (of which you have three), making sure that you don't waste the effects, which can even boost your teammates' health beyond 100. Of course this is complicated a little when you need to revive allies, but still, communication is key with Finka.

Rainbow Six: Siege

Lion, on the other hand, has a rather different ability. Via a drone perpetually positioned above the map, activating his ability will give you a three-second counter, at the end of which all opposition defenders that are moving will be detected and shown on their screen via a perfect outline of their body. As you can imagine, this will prove very useful, especially since all of the team can see these outlines, which is perfect especially for taking down those pesky roamers like Caveira. With three of these available per round, we can imagine Lion will become extemely popular with both pros and amateur players alike.

One minor thing we should point out is that it seemed as if, when defending, we were still visible on the map via an outline even when we'd stopped moving after being detected, so it appears as if you're detected for the duration of the drone scan, even if you've stopped moving after the initial detection. It's too early to tell if this is a problem or not, but it's worth mentioning, since it could be the difference between life and death in a lot of situations, and will change when you need to freeze to avoid detection.

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It's also worth making clear that neither of these operators are breaching operators, so these won't be too useful for making your way to the objective. Instead, these two are all about detection and kills, helping players to make the most impact on the defenders, whether that be protecting against damage or knowing where to shoot. Whether that means that they'll have less of an impact on the meta remains to be seen, but it's not like it's going to change the key breaching operators like Thermite/Thatcher etc.

We liked the brief time we had with Finka and Lion in Siege, but we have to say that Lion remains our favourite. We anticipate he'll have a lot more impact that his counterpart due to the fact that he can detect enemies so precisely, which will be of help to everyone. Finka will perhaps be better suited to the pro teams that can coordinate themselves better than those regular joes playing casual or ranked, but make no mistake, she can also be incredibly useful when deployed correctly.

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