Dominate the meta with these Siege guides (Image credit: Ubisoft) Rainbow Six Siege editions: which to buy

Rainbow Six Siege Year 5: what you need to know

It’s 2020, and Rainbow Six Siege has 57 (!) operators. As Rainbow has recruited eight new spec ops friends each year, who to pick has only gotten more complicated. Modern Siege is full of laser beams and smart glasses, but good team composition still requires the basics: fraggers, supports, roamers, and anchors. No one operator fills each job perfectly. Sometimes a situation calls for the light touch of Maverick’s blowtorch instead of Thermite’s blunt breaching charge.

We want to help you overcome choice paralysis and guide you toward the best operators for your playstyle. Here’s our full breakdown of the Rainbow Six Siege operators we recommend under the current meta.

The best Rainbow Six Siege operators, September 2020 log

With the mountain of changes hitting Siege all at once in Operation Shadow Legacy, it's hard not to see this season as a new era for the game. Fundamental changes like new scopes, the secondary hard breach gadget, and the reinforcement pool are rewriting rules that have been in place since launch. Then there's Shadow Legacy's new attacker, a grizzled, 63-year-old Sam Fisher (codenamed Zero) that brings a network of stealthy cameras. Keep a lookout for Sam's entry in the list as well as big changes to Capitão, Lion, and a bunch of other ops affected by the latest patch.

It's a really fun time to be a Siege player, and if early leaks are any indication, Season 4 will have a dramatic addition of its own: the laser gating, robo-armed Aruni on defense.

ATTACKERS

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Thermite, Hibana, and Ace

Thermite, Hibana, and Ace are the bedrock of good team composition. They’re the three main hard breachers in Siege, and their ability to destroy reinforced surfaces is important to every match. A round of Siege is often won or lost based on how much of the defense the attackers were able to tear down, and these three cut the deepest. If you’re looking to give your team the best chance in most situations, take one of them. And a team two of them isn't in a bad spot.

Very useful

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Sam Fisher (Zero)

Besides being a video game legend, Sam Fisher is making a big splash in Siege as a powerful and versatile intel operator. His four Argus cameras can pierce straight through reinforced walls/hatches any soft surface to see what's on the other side. Not only can he share that info with his team, but each camera can also fire a single laser burst strong enough to destroy most defender gadgets. He's a clever combination of Twitch and Valkyrie that can fluidly move between aggression and passive surveillance.

With his iconic SC3000K assault rifle and the choice of grenades or claymores to back him up, Sam is a refreshingly simple operator that slots nicely into his own niche.

Sledge & Buck

Sledge and Buck are two sides of the same coin, both accomplishing the same goal in different ways. They both excel at soft breaching: Sledge with his titular hammer, and Buck with his rifle-mounted shotgun. They’re both two-speed ops and both carry frag grenades, so the choice between them really comes down to the preference between Buck’s unmatched breaching speed and Sledge’s versatility. Bring one when you expect an enemy to pick an objective room with a soft ceiling, like Drug Lab on Theme Park.

Capitão

Capitão’s crossbow is a treasure trove of utility, bringing smoke bolts and fire bolts that aren’t countered by Jager’s ADS and are pinpoint accurate. A 2019 rework to his fire bolts drastically increase their area of effect and makes him much better at his job. The bolts deal less damage, but they've never been better for rooting out entrenched defenders.

Until recently, Capitão’s critical weakness was the lack of breaching. Now that he's been gifted a secondary hard breach charge, he's the Swiss Army knife of support. In a pinch, he can root out anchors, smoke off a defuser plant, or hard breach a path into site. Wowza!

Maverick

Maverick is a hard breacher like Thermite, Ace, or Hibana, but his playstyle couldn’t be more different. He cuts through walls with the subtle hum of his blowtorch instead of the piercing boom of a breaching charge. He excels at exposing Bandit batteries and Mute jammers on reinforced walls, but he can also dominate as a stealthy flanker, opening smaller murder holes to catch enemies off guard while his teammates draw attention from elsewhere. His versatile kit makes him a solid pick in almost any situation, but his blowtorch does take practice to use efficiently.

Ash

Ash is FPS comfort food: a pure run-'n-gunner with a powerful rifle and a lot of breaching power. Her greatest strength is the R4-C, which boasts all-around great stats with low recoil. Paired with her breaching grenade launcher that allows her to quickly open soft walls, she excels as a rusher who can overpower weaker defender weapons.

Thatcher

The perfect wingman for a good attack, Thatcher sets ‘em up so hard breachers can knock ‘em down. His EMP grenades can be thrown on the outside of a wall to disable electronic devices in its large radius. Most often, this is used to counter the electric reinforcement of Bandit and Kaid so that a hard breacher can penetrate the defense. Operators like Twitch can accomplish this task in riskier ways, but Thatcher’s EMPs make the job trivial. Against a savvy team, your hard breachers will be useless without Thatcher's support.

Shadow Legacy's Thatcher rework does change things slightly, though. Now that Thatcher can only disable every gadget, it's easier for his grenades to potentially go to waste on a poorly-timed breach that Bandit successfully tricks.

Twitch

Twitch has what I consider to be one of the most thrilling roles in the game, because driving her shock drones is like its own metagame within Siege. It's hard to sneak the boxier, less maneuverable drone under the nose of a defense, and once it's there she needs to act fast: dismantling as many of the defenders gadgets as possible before the jig is up. The shock drone is a powerful way to gather intel while also hindering the enemy, a role that she now shares with Sam Fisher's wall-piercing Argus cameras. But even when off the drone, Twitch sports a solid two-armor kit and the F2, one of the best weapons in the game.

Zofia

Zofia is a powerful support and fragger combo. Her double-barreled grenade launcher has both impact grenades and concussion rounds that daze opponents when launched nearby. Zofia brings more utility to the team at the cost of weapon power and speed, but it’s an easy tradeoff to work with. On almost any composition, she’s an easy pick.

Viable, but not essential

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Iana

Iana’s Gemini Replicator is sort of like a rechargeable, humanoid drone. That alone makes it handy in almost any situation, but it’s not exactly meta-shifting. The hologram’s true value is its ability to fool defenders into believing Iana is halfway across the map when she’s actually sneaking up behind them. Unfortunately, deploying the gadget is loud enough that most defenders are perfectly aware when to expect the real and fake Iana. It'll be interesting to see if Ubisoft tinkers with this aspect of Iana's gadget.

Amaru

After a year of hooking into an early demise, Amaru's Steel Wave buffs have finally arrived. Now that she can ready her gun quickly after grappling through a window, she's a uniquely mobile attacker that excels and sudden entrances. She's the perfect offbeat pick against a team that's underprepared at the start of rounds or doesn't cover important regions of the map. She's also one of the few attackers with the new Hard Breach secondary charge, so things have really turned around for her in 2020.

Kali

Siege's second sniper confidently wields the new CSRX 300, a powerful bolt-action rifle with a scope that magnifies 5X or 12X. It only takes one torso shot to down enemies and a bullet can punch through seven walls. In a pinch, her LV Explosive Lance grenade launcher can take out anti-breach tech similarly to Thatcher. Her Lances are less reliable when facing the Bandit Trick and well-hidden Electroclaws, but they’re also great for destroying defender utilities like deployable shields, barbed wire, and Maestro’s Evil Eyes.

Her powerful rifle comes with a big caveat: if you miss, you’ll probably die. That’s a lot to ask for you and me, but she’s a great fit for seasoned Counter-Strike AWP veterans. Now that ADS sensitivity can be adjusted individually between every magnification level, it's finally possible to fine-tune Kali's 12X scope for maximum precision.

Nøkk

Nøkk’s combination of Caveria’s Silent Step and Vigil’s camera scrambler has always been tremendously useful, but an underpowered loadout made it hard for her to compete. After buffs to her kit in Shifting Tides and Void Edge, Nøkk is in a much better place in the meta. Post-damage buff, the FMG9 is a pinpoint accurate laser beam with respectable damage. Shadow Legacy's new scopes have also giving her the 1.5X sight on her SMG, giving her a much-needed range boost. She now plays like the ultra-aggressive Caveira counterpart that she was originally billed as.

Gridlock

A year after Gridlock’s introduction, she has since proven an effective support pick. Her Trax Stinger traps can completely canvass flanking routes to protect against roamers, but her utility is stacked with smoke grenades and a secondary shotgun. She boasts high survivability at the cost of speed. In the hands of a cautious player, she’s a safety blanket that stays alive long enough to set her traps and assist with the defuser plant.

Blackbeard

Blackbeard has always been a divisive operator in the community. Players can’t seem to agree on whether he’s overpowered nonsense or mostly useless, and it’s because his gadget is so situational. His two mounted rifle shields essentially give him two extra lives at the cost of speed and ADS time, and in the right hands he is absolutely terrifying. If he’s holding a long angle or attacking a window from outside, he always has the advantage. A 2019 nerf slightly lowered the health pool of his rifle shields while also giving some of his speed back, but he remains a great pick when playing toward his advantages.

Jackal

Jackal 2019 rework nerfed the effectiveness of his footprint-tracking Eyenox visor, but he remains good at hunting roamers, evidenced by his high ban rate in Ranked. Nobody’s location is safe from him, unless you’re the light-stepped Caveria. On the rare chance that you are allowed to play him, he also carries one of the game’s greatest assault rifles, the C7E, smoke grenades, and a secondary shotgun.

Ying

Ying is all about overwhelming defenders with more flash grenades than they know how to deal with. Her three candelas each expunge five flash grenades that can be rolled under a doorway, thrown into a room, or penetrate the other side of a soft surface. It’s a disorienting primer when pushing a site, with proper coordination. She’s balanced by the low fire rate of her primary LMG, the T-95 LSW.

Glaz

In Shifting Tides, Glaz went back to being the reliable sharpshooter he once was. The fire rate of his OTs-03 rifle has risen back up to its punchy consistency. The nerf to his smoke vision scope was partly reverted to make him an effective site pusher with an emphasis on caution. Enemies are highlighted in yellow at all times, but he needs to stand still to see through smoke.

Montagne

Montagne, lovingly known as Monty, is the attacker’s resident shield wall. His extending shield creates a barrier that few things can interrupt, so Monty is best used as a scout for spotting enemy locations while safely standing behind the shield. He doesn’t have many options when backed into a corner, but his powerful pistol can still contribute to a fight. The way shields interact with melee at close range is still inconsistent, so expect wonky behavior and occasional unfair deaths.

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Nomad

Another counter to roamers, Nomad’s Airjabs are fired from a rifle-mounted launcher and, when triggered by an enemy, push them onto the ground. When it comes to planting the defuser, there’s no better support pick. Her Airjabs don’t deal damage, but they do knock over victims long enough to pick them off without a fight. Nomad’s true power is that she does not have a real counter on the defender side. If the defenders allow her to cover a site in Airjabs, the round is essentially over.

Lion

Lion was in a bad place for a long time, but a 2019 patch finally reworked him into a reasonably powerful support operator. His full map scan has been tweaked to only ping enemies when movement is detected, similar to triggering Alibi's decoys. Defenders are still inclined to stand still during the scan, but it now it's over in a couple of seconds. He's far more balanced now and serves a real use, but he's still boring to play as.

His low-impact map scans have kept Lion near the lower-middle of the pack for a year, but his new secondary hard breach charge transforms him into a hybrid intel/hard breacher that can be effective against skilled roamers.

IQ

When it comes to enemy gadgets, nobody can provide more intel than IQ. With a communicative team, she can use her electronics scanner to warn friendlies of traps, expose certain roamers, and shoot Bandit batteries/Electroclaws through floors and ceilings. She lacks any other supportive utility, but powerful weapons and high speed gives her plenty of room to frag.

Finka

Finka’s adrenal surge ability is great for giving the team a boost to health and recoil before a fight. Even when randomly activated at the whim of Finka, her boost makes the team instantly tankier, which directly leads to more fights won. Her 6P41 LMG gets a huge power boost when combined with her recoil-reducing burst. Like Lion, her new secondary hard breach gadget legitimizes her as more than just an offbeat support op. On sites where big destruction isn't a worry, why not bring recoil/health buffs?

Dokkaebi

Similar to Ying, Dokkaebi has a strong support ability overshadowed by her lack of competitive weapons. Her Logic Bomb is a powerful tool that makes every defender emit a loud vibration sound from their phone. To anchors, it’s mostly a harmless annoyance, but the real value is how it reveals sneaky roamers. She can also hack the phone of a fallen defender to gain access to defender cameras for the rest of the round.

Her information warfare potential is unmatched, but her tradeoff is an awkward set of weapons. She can take either the Mk 14 DMR or BOSG slug shotgun. The Mk 14 is a middling DMR and the BOSG is more of a weird novelty. She has lost her frag grenades in Operation Void Edge, but she still has plenty of support utility thanks to a boost to destruction with DMRs. Her MK 14 can now break soft hatches, similar to Glaz's rifle.

Hard to make work

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Blitz

Blitz has seen a lot of changes in his lifetime, from his ability to sprint with his shield up to his ever-shifting eyeballs . Nowadays, his playstyle feels appropriately aggressive. If all were well with the technical side of things, he’d be easy to recommend. But there are too many issues with shield collision and melee that come up often playing Blitz. Whether he’s getting meleed through his shield or the flash effect isn’t working consistently, there’s too much working against his success at any given time. Make no mistake, you can kick ass with Blitz, but it's in spite of his broken state.

A 2019 nerf increased his cooldown between flashes from 2 seconds to a whopping 7. Chain flashing enemies into permanent blindness is no longer an option, so Blitz mains have to be sure the first flash does the trick. An Ember Rise nerf also raised his ADS time.

Fuze

The premise of Fuze's cluster charges make them seem powerful and exciting. In reality, experienced players have little issue avoiding these bouncing bombs, so instead, they’re best used as a way to destroy gadgets. But Fuze’s problem isn’t with his launcher, it’s with him. Even with his powerful assault rifle, he’s one of the only non-shield attackers with a one-speed rating. His slow running speed is definitely a factor to his low pick rate, but I’d argue the biggest hindrance is the extra noise that he makes. It’s important when attacking to make subtle movements to draw less attention to yourself, but the loud thud of Fuze’s boots can be heard a mile away. This is less of a problem for fellow one-speed Gridlock, who can cover her flanks with Trax Stingers.

DEFENDERS

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Bandit or Kaid

If hard breachers are the backbone of a good offense, Bandit and Kaid are the hammer that breaks that back in two. Their job is to thwart the attackers’ attempts to destroy reinforced walls and hatches. The pair both utilize electricity to shock away Thermite and Hibana’s explosives, but they go about it very differently. Bandit’s shock wire batteries are less versatile, but they’re quick enough to pull off the “Bandit Trick” and zap away an Ace charge before it can go off. Kaid’s Rtila Electroclaws can be stuck anywhere (including under hatches) and are harder to spot, but their arming time means he can’t play as many tricks.

The strength of both ops are mostly defined by their gadgets, but Bandit’s speed and nitro cell make him a smart pick in almost any situation. Kaid is a little more situational as a heavy anchor, but his 2X Scope-equipped TCSG12 slug shotgun is a long-range powerhouse. On objectives with multiple hatches, Kaid and Bandit pair well together to provide maximum security.

Mute

Mute isn’t the most exciting operator to play, but his impact can be immense. His signal jammers are extremely flexible since they can be placed anywhere with enough room and cover an impressive distance. Placed next to walls, a jammer can fill the role of Bandit with slightly less effectiveness. On doors and windows, they’re great for jamming drones trying to sneak into the objective. If the enemy team is favoring Lion or Dokkaebi, placing jammers at common anchoring points will nip their gadgets in the bud. His flexibility and respectable kit make him someone who’s never a bad idea to take along.

Very useful

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Wamai

Wamai is a different flavor of Jäger. The South African defender throws frisbee-shaped MAG-NET traps that capture projectiles mid-flight, carries them to the device, and detonates whatever it caught. It doesn’t neutralize what it captures, but instead lets Wamai turn it against the attackers. He’s a wonderful remix of Jäger that encourages clever placement. Their functionality is more situational than the ADS, since attackers are more likely to discover and destroy a MAG-NET. Wamai gains more traps throughout the round, he’s best played as a light roamer or anchor.

In firefights, Wamai has the option of the AUG A2, an assault rifle borrowed from IQ (that’s right, a straight-up assault rifle on defense). He can’t slap a long-range sight on it, but it’s still one of the most powerful weapons on the defender side. That, and his potential utility in every round makes him high-tier right out of the gate.

Mozzie

Mozzie has made a big impression on defense in his first year. His launchable Pest robots can be set as proximity traps to capture attacker drones or fired directly at them to nab them quickly. If you’re proactive, you can capture up to three and add a fleet of new cameras to your defense. He can also capture Twitch drones to turn their zappers on his foes. It’s an incredibly powerful gadget that splits the difference between Mute and Valkyrie. Mozzie’s high-powered Commando 9 rifle round him out as a fighter with utility, though his loss of the Super Shorty shotgun in 2020 makes him a tad less useful.

Pulse

Pulse is Siege’s OG information gatherer, and dozens of operators later, he remains one of the best. As long as every new op has a beating heart, Pulse will be able to see it with his scanner. He’s best utilized alongside a nitro cell, waiting for an attacker above and blowing it at their feet from below. He has no automatic way to callout the heartbeats he sees, so he can fall a little flat if the teammate isn’t on mic.

Mira

There used to be two eras of Siege: before Mira, and after Mira. When she released, her Black Mirror gadget opened up defenders to new strategies that powerfully lock down an objective. Merely placing her one-way bulletproof rectangle on a soft wall is a powerful deterrent because Mira is likely on the other side, watching for an opportunity to step over and strike.

Placing her mirrors in smart locations can take valuable time away from the attackers, but she also sports a powerful kit. Her Vector unloads its full mag in 1.5 seconds, but the fire rate and controllable recoil ranks it high among defender weapons. Her secondary shotgun (matching Jackal’s) lets her remodel walls without help from teammates and she even gets a nitro cell to further capitalize on her one-way information stream. With the gift of a 1.5X Scope on her Vector in Shadow Legacy, she can even compete at range.

Rook

Rook is often only described as a great operator for beginners. While that’s true, he’s also just a great pick for most situations. His armor plates buff everyone’s health a bit and ensure that you’ll enter DBNO if you’re not shot in the head. For the already beefy three-armor anchors like Rook, the buff is appreciated but overall minimal. For one-armor roamers like Alibi or Caveira, the extra health can save their lives. Rook also sports the accurate MP5 (2X Scope-compatible) and impact grenades that let him reliably set up a defense with rotation holes. He’s not a must-pick by any means, but can hold down the fort and help his friends survive.

Jäger

Jäger is a rare example of a defender without any obvious downsides. His gadget, the ADS, can be placed on walls and floors to zap away many different kinds of grenades and gadgets as they fly into a room. In the same way that Thatcher is a good companion for hard breachers, Jäger helps take away the advantage attackers try to achieve in altering an objective room. Nothing takes the wind out of an Ash’s sails like throwing in a few flash grenades before a rush just to have them zapped away. A Year 5 nerf has slowed him down to a 2-speed, but that has had little effect on his pick rate.

Valkyrie

In the game of information warfare, Valkyrie is a top dog. Her three Black Eye cameras can be placed anywhere and provide clear color picture and near-360 degree views of the map. Players are accustomed to hunting down her cams, but the best Valkyries mix up their hiding places and even toss them outside after the round starts. Giving the entire team three new vantage points is an incredibly valuable ability. As a counterbalance, her SMG is one of the weakest in terms of raw power. In the hands of a master and a team with good communication, Valkyrie remains indispensable.

Viable, but not essential

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Melusi

Melusi is a thorn in the side of attackers. Her Banshee noise generators, ADS-sized trapezoids mountable on floors and walls, slow every attacker in its radius to a meandering walk until it’s either blown up, hit with melee, or disabled. They’re an effective anchoring tool that makes crucial chokepoints and hallways even more dangerous for attackers to brave. Her annoying dubstep alarms aren’t as essential as extra camera gadgets or breach denial, but she’s no slouch in a gunfight with her 3-speed rating and Lesion’s T-5 SMG.

Goyo

Goyo's Volcan shields are a double-edged sword, and a very sharp one at that. His special deployable shields hide a red charge that explodes into a spread of fire when shot (or blown up by a grenade). Similar to Mira's Black Mirrors, anyone can use the shield if they're positioned correctly. But unlike a Black Mirror, a Volcan shield can roast you to death in seconds.

Positioned well, the Volcan shield is an effective way to deny a hallway or door to enemies. But if Goyo finds himself retaking an objective the attackers have taken over, there's a good chance his own gadget will get him killed. Even in the best circumstances, he's a risk. But his loadout choices of the Vector SMG and TCSG slug shotgun (plus a nitro cell) give him a ton of flexibility as a roamer or anchor.

Warden

Warden is designed to hard counter some of the attackers’ best support operators. His Glance Smart Glasses can see through the effects of flash grenades and smoke, abilities previously only held by Glaz and Ying. He’s a great answer to a team favoring flash/smoke entry, but his MPX SMG primary requires headshots to win most fights. A pair of recent buffs sped him up to 2-speed and gave him a nitro cell, both of which increase his support power and fragging power. His MPX can also equip the 1.5X Scope in Operation Shadow Legacy, a perk that Valkyrie doesn't share.

Maestro

Maestro has cemented himself as Siege’s ultimate anchor. His two Evil Eyes are bulletproof cameras that can also shoot laser beams that can destroy gadgets and sting enemies. The durable cameras are a great help even without the lasers, but only Maestro can operate them.

His informational benefits are crucial, but his true power is the Alda LMG, the only of its kind on defense. It boasts some of the strongest stats on defense, and easily the largest capacity without having to reload. He can take on multiple opponents without needing a breather. He excels at locking down the fort and knowing where the enemy is coming from.

Kapkan

Kapkan still feels inessential, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make a difference. His trip mines mounted on doors and windows are easier than ever to step into. The punishment for doing so is a harsh 60 health drop, which either kills you if you’re already damaged or puts you in a vulnerable spot for the rest of the round. His VSN SMG has some of the best balance between recoil and damage, plus his option of impact grenades or nitro cell adds some flexibility to how you want to play him. Any careful player can spot his traps easily, but he’s a fun pick against a team that favors rushing.

With the new reinforcement pool quality-of-life change in Shadow Legacy, a huge weight has lifted off of Kapkan's shoulders. Now he can confidently run off-site in the prep phase to set traps while teammates cover his walls.

Alibi

Alibi is one of the more unique defenders of Siege. She places three “Prisma” decoys that project a full-sized fake Alibi that can fool enemies from afar. When the decoy is shot or walked through by an attacker (or their drone), their location is pinged for the next few seconds. It’s sometimes hard to tell if the decoys make a difference, but I still fall for them occasionally. It all depends on the situation: spread across an objective the decoys can be useful as alarms, and while roaming a crafty Alibi can use them to cover her tracks.

Caveira

Caveira is, by far, my least favorite operator to fight against. Her Silent Step ability dampens the sounds of her movements drastically, and her Luison pistol is deviously powerful. The worst part of getting bested by her is what happens after. If she’s able to pull off an interrogation, spotting every enemy on the map for a few seconds, it can easily win a round right then and there. Thorough droning and teamwork is the only way to reliably take her down. Experienced Cavs can interrogate enemies, stay undetected, and waste time for the attackers. If you let her get the better of you, good luck.

Doc

Playing Doc is like taking a more active role as Rook. His stim pistol can deliver three doses of 40 health from a distance, or self-apply. He can overheal for a total of 140 health, but the boost will deplete over time. He carries the same MP5 and P90 options as Rook, so he’s also a great anchor to take along. Since Doc usually stays near the objective, he’s best utilized after a fight or when roaming teammates come back to get healed. In Shadow Legacy, Doc has lost his access to a long-range scope on his MP5, limiting his popular role as a spawn-peeking sharpshooter.

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Echo

Before Maestro, Echo was the only defender who spends the round mostly on cameras. His Yokai drones can jump up and stick to the ceiling to enter a cloaked mode. From there, it can fire sonic bursts that disorient opponents and interrupt gadget use. A recent nerf made him susceptible to Dokkaebi’s Logic Bomb disruption, which is a big deal when using the Yokai to deny a defuser plant.

His drones have been untouched for a while now, but the rest of his kit has seen some important changes. With the loss of his ACOG (he's now limited to the 1.5X Scope) and addition of impact grenades, Echo mains have had to adjust to a more aggressive approach.

Ela

In 2020, Ela sits somewhere in the middle of the pack. Her Grzmot mines are traps that concuss and hinder attacker aim, but if you’re not nearby to capitalize on their detonation, they’re just fancy alarms. Her Scorpion SMG was the subject of a recent buff and subsequent nerf, but the end result is an easier recoil spread for its first few shots. There are better options for pure roamers, but her mines are a great tool against rushes and late-round attacker pushes.

Smoke

A popular pick with high-level players, Smoke is an anchor that takes finesse to maximize. His remote-activated poison smoke canisters are the best way to stop a defuser plant without exposing yourself. Though, they require good aim and precise timing.

Lesion

Lesion’s Gu mines provide a blanket of security across the map that can greatly disrupt (but mostly annoy) attackers. The mines are hard to notice when cloaked and force attackers to take a moment to remove the needle. Lesion becomes more useful the longer he lives since he earns more mines over time for a total of seven. In Void Edge, Lesion’s Gu Mines were nerfed to not deal initial damage. Lesion also can’t see them through walls anymore, so his informational power has taken a significant hit. Still, a great loadout and useful gadget makes him dominant.

Vigil

Vigil is a stealthy roamer with somewhat opposite abilities to Caveira. Cav is strong when sneaking up on enemies but is foiled when spotted by drones. Vigil can’t step silently, but he can activate a backpack jammer that makes him disappear on cameras. Drones can still detect when he’s nearby, so enemies can still surmise where he’s hiding, but it gives Vigil a solid chance at fending them off. His K1A SMG hits hard and is controllable at longer ranges, so it feels kind of like Jäger’s 416-C.

Frost

Frost sets bear traps that snare enemies and take them immediately into a DBNO state. They can be saved by a teammate, but more often an enemy will finish the job. Her Welcome Mats are the most obvious trap in the game and can easily be disabled, especially after a 2019 nerf that lowered their health to 60. This is by design: it’s high risk versus high reward, but because of this her utility often goes to waste. In a fight her strange WW2-era SMG is alright, but its extremely low fire rate makes accuracy more important.

Castle

The reality of Castle’s bulletproof barricades is that they can hinder defenders as much as attackers if they're not placed wisely. On an experienced team, Castle can be a clutch pick to kill the attackers' momentum and punish a lack of breaching tools. He should be avoided by players who don't know the maps in and out.

Hard to make work

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Oryx

Since his release, Oryx has proven to be a liability when using his Remah Dash. His destructive body is useful for making rotations and not much else. Busting through walls and climbing hatches gets Oryx killed more often than it helps. A few small buffs in Operation Steel Wave have helped, but he still needs some help.

Clash

Clash is the only operator on defense with a shield, and it’s a really weird one at that. Her full-body shield can shoot taser bursts at enemies that slow them down temporarily. Unlike Monty, Clash’s shield can be meleed to knock it away and open her up for attack. She can’t shoot unless she puts away her shield, a process that takes longer than ever after a series of nerfs. After balancing, Clash is a useful support operator in the right circumstances, but a terrible anchor the rest of the time.

When a teammate is grouped up with you to help take out the attackers you’ve slowed, Clash can work as intended. But the rest of the time, you’re fumbling around slowing people without a good way to take them out yourself. She’s the very definition of “hard to make work,” but if you can pull it off, it’s a fun role to play.



Avoid completely

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Tachanka