written by DocWhiskey

Today, I have had the incredible opportunity to sit down with YouTube content creator, and avid Siege player, Get Flanked. Flanked is notable for his guides on several different play styles from both attacking and defending operators, which are geared towards players who are new to the game, as well as seasoned veterans of the latest Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series of games. Also notable from his channel is his series “The Pro, and the Potato”, in which he speaks with players from several of the different Pro League teams such as PENTA, EG, and Rogue to get their input on the state of the game. In addition, he gives us, the viewers, a chance to see inside the heads of the best of the best. If you would like to view some of his content, a link to his YouTube channel will be provided at the end of this article.

Doc: “With the changes that are coming to Lion, with his EE-ONE-D uses going from 3 to 2, and the cooldown moving from ten seconds to twenty seconds, do you think it’s still going to be game breaking or at the least, extremely difficult to facilitate a post plant retake in spite of the nerf?”

Get Flanked: “So, he’s still going to have two right? Honestly, it’s something that probably shouldn’t be in the game, period. The ability to see an enemy through walls with a bunch of soft walls and floors is problematic. The fact that all he has to do is push a button in order to make that happen, he doesn’t have to risk anything. He [Lion] can still be in his spawn a minute into the round, laying down behind a wall and he can push that button and have a serious effect on the round, that’s a problem. I do think it will make him more situational. With three scans right now, you can use them a lot of ways, if you’re a Lion player right now. You want to chase out a roamer, use one of them for that? Go ahead. You’re still going to have two left for the rest of the round. So it is a step in the right direction, but I don’t know how it will affect his pick rate at the highest level of gameplay, I don’t know if it’s enough to make it not used. I hope that it is, because it’s just boring. It’s so boring to watch a player like BC [Evil Geniuses] play Lion when you’re used to watching him on Buck, and I don’t know how much you’ve watched BC but he’s one of the best Buck players in the world, and when he’s playing as Buck, he’s putting himself at risk, he’s going to get into confrontation a lot and you’re going to see him with some of the craziest grenade kills, you’re going to see him outplay people left and right. When he [BC] is playing as Lion, he’s outside because he has to play conservatively because he doesn’t want to die and lose those scans. He can’t, because thats the META* right now. That’s the way he should be playing, and I’m not criticizing him, but from a fan’s persepctive we’re losing so much by not getting to see BC on an operator that’s going to force the action a little bit more. All this really just comes down to Global Abilities*, and I get it, they [Siege Developers] want to get to 100 operators so we’re going to have Global Abilities in this game, but you have to make them extremely weak. If all you have to do is push a button, then this ability needs to be something that is weak. For example, Finka. I have no issues with Finka, I know a lot of people do and that’s fair enough. Think about the difference between Finka and Lion, she pushes a button and has no direct impact on her enemies, other than that she might buff them a little bit, such as if you’re a Smoke when Finka activates her Adrenal Surge, then I just got a little buff because the toxic smoke is going to take more health away faster. If I’m playing Pulse, then I get a little buff right there by being able to see the heartbeats from further away. That’s how Global Abilities should be, in my opinion. There is in no way, in this game, should someone just be able to push a button, and then tell me that I just have to stand still. That’s way too powerful. If’ you’re going to have Global Abilities, that’s fine. Just make them extremely weak or only affect that player instead of his or her team/opponents. I think Finka is a Global Ability done right, and Lion is a Global Ability done wrong.



Doc: “So it seems like this happens every season, with every set of new operators, that the speculation of the new ops being geared more towards being very powerful at release, to make it easier to adjust in the later patches and mid season reinforcements.”

Get Flanked: “I can tell you, that in talking to the creative director of Siege, Xavier Marquis, they want the META to change every season. I don’t know how the hierarchy works there, but I would imagine that a lot of this comes across his desk. I think he probably has the single biggest hand in all of this, but maybe not. That’s his way of balancing, he said as much when I interviewed him, and you can see that interview on my channel. That’s their way of balancing the game. In their opinion, all of the operators don’t necessarily have to be balanced. Ubisoft wants it to be balanced, and they don’t want one operator to be a ‘must pick’, but the way that it balances for them is by just flipping the META on it’s head every season, and making sure that people have to adjust. So I think, that more than them just making the operators overpowered, and then nerfing them back, I think the mindset is more of that they want the new operators to affect the META, and in order to make sure that it’s going to happen, they err on the side of making the operators stronger rather than weaker. They don’t want there to be a season where they introduce these operators, and nobody bats an eye. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on Lion. They didn’t, or probably didn’t, know that Lion would get a 100% or 99.999% pick rate in Pro League, that’s fair enough, but if you go back and look at Ela, that is probably the biggest example of an operator that was released very overpowered. I don’t know how they didn’t know that this [Ela] was going to be a bit much. Think about when Ela was originally released. She had a 50 round magazine, 1080 rounds per minute fire rate, higher damage than she does currently. She had four Grzmot mines instead of the three she has now, and those mines were much more powerful, and she was a 3 speed operator, and had impact grenades. How did they not look at that and say “This might be a bit much.?” I still give them the benefit of the doubt, because you don’t really see the effects until the world gets their hands on the new operators. You get the most creative people, and the most skilled people to get their hands on them and really explore and exploit them to get every last inch out of these operators. You don’t really know how it’s going to shake out.”



Doc: “In the current state of the game, with the exception of Lion and Finka, what are some changes to the game mechanics, gadgets, etc. would you like to see either changed or improved upon?”

Get Flanked: “I think we’re on the right track. I think the dropshot nerf* will be a good change. I know that it’s controversial to some people but I think that the game will be better without the dropshotting mechanic as it is right now. The way that they tested it in the Technical Test Server, I thought was a good change and it made sense to me, but it was kind of buggy. There was some unintended consequences from that that they’re going to try and iron out. The sight misalignment fix that’s coming is good. This is going to change things, as there is less recoil. It’s going to make people more accurate with the sight alignment fixed, and that’s a good change. We’re definitely moving in the right direction.” “As far as operators, I’ve mentioned before that I think that Mute should have a separate range on his mute jammers that block out Global Abilities, because right now the range that affects Global Abilities is pretty small, it really isn’t much. In my opinion, that range should be doubled, maybe even tripled, but only for Global Abilities. It shouldn’t block drones or anything. If you’re inside of that ring when a Global Ability is called in, like Lion or Dokkaebi, then you’re not going to be affected by it. In addition, the Global Ability operators themselves would not be able to trigger their ability while inside the area of effect of the Mute jammer. That’s an element I would like to see introduced to the game, it makes sense to me and I don’t think it would be too strong, but I also think that maybe they [Ubisoft] have an operator planned down the road that is going to do exactly that, and maybe they’re waiting to introduce that operator, even though we really could’ve used that operator in this season.”



Doc: “A lot of people feel as though Ubisoft doesn’t really care about the game, with the amount of bugs and glitches that are either introduced, or ignored season after season. The current issue with the Blitz shield glitch, or the invisibility glitch that plagued the game come to mind. Having had a chance to sit down and talk with some of the Ubisoft staff, and having mentioned that they’re all really heavily invested into Siege not just because they created it, but because they actually really love the game itself, despite the flaws, how do you feel they have handled the game?”

Get Flanked: “I think that what I could say about Ubisoft is that they could’ve very easily given up on this game. It was launched with a lot of issues, and it would’ve been very easy for them to just throw up their hands and walk away from it, but, to their credit, Ubisoft is changing as a publisher, and instead is sticking with their games. They’re really buying into the games being a service model, and Rainbow is a perfect example of that. You also look at For Honor, it’s kind of the same thing. They’re sticking with that game and continuing to improve it. I think I have to give Ubisoft a lot of credit on how they’re sticking with their games. If they’re releasing something, then they believe in it and they’re not going to give up on it initially. There area lot of publishers out there that I don’t know if you can say that about. I really, just have to give them a lot of credit when it comes to Siege and the fact that it’s still around today is because of the belief in their development team and their willingness to keep giving them the opportunity to improve it.”

Doc: “I think that about covers it for what I wanted to ask, and I have to say I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to have this sit down with me, and I think it’s awesome that you make yourself so accessible to your followers, because I know that that can sometimes be hard, especially for a successful and rising content creator such as yourself. Thanks very much for being here today Flanked.”

Once again, I want to give a huge thanks to Get Flanked for his willingness to have this conversation with me, so that I may in turn share it with all of you. I hope to do something like this again very soon, with other content creators, or even pro league players themselves. Be sure to show some love by subscribing to Get Flanked’s YouTube channel, and following him on Twitter. Following this article, anything indicated with an asterisk will have a short explanation, as well as the links to Get Flanked’s YouTube and Twitter.

Get Flanked YouTube Channel

Get Flanked Twitter

META – Most Effective Tactic Available

Global Abilities – Gadgets that affect every operator in a round, such as Lion’s drone, Dokkaebi’s cell phone hack. This also includes team enhancement such as Finka’s adrenal surge

Dropshot Nerf – the Dropshot nerf snuck it’s way into the technical test server a few weeks ago. This was unintended, and there are no official patch notes, but we know that it is a coming and welcome change.