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Operation Crystal Guard: What You Need to Know

With their third season of the year, Rainbow Six Siege drops Operation Crystal Guard, containing a host of updates,... Fragster | 8. September 2021

With their third season of the year, Rainbow Six Siege drops Operation Crystal Guard, containing a host of updates, QoL improvements, and of course a new operator: Osa. Released on the 7th of September 2021, the new season contains a number of balance changes, as well as a couple of minor buffs for other operators.

Now in its sixth year of major content updates with quarterly “operations”, Rainbow Six Siege continues to keep the game evolving with changing metas, updated maps and a constant improvement of quality of life.

With the test servers for operation Crystal Guard being opened on August 17th, the community has had roughly a month to test out the new operator, updated maps and operator reworks.

With Y6S3 Operation Crystal Guard now available to the entire Siege community, here’s everything you need to know about all the major updates, balance changes, and map reworks, as well as what Osa brings to Siege’s current meta.

Osa

Rainbow Six Siege’s freshest operator is Osa, the shield girl. Hailing from Croatia as stated by the in-game lore, Osa is essentially Mira on attack. Her unique ability is the Talon-8 Clear Shield, of which she gets two.

The shield is transparent both ways, as well as bulletproof, though if the shield is melee’d it will “shatter”, remaining bulletproof but becoming opaque, completely blocking any line of sight.

The shield can be destroyed by explosives, and just like Mira’s Black Mirrors, each Talon-8 Shield has a small canister on the back which, when shot, will also destroy it.

The main advantage of Osa’s shield is its maneuverability: Osa is able to place it anywhere, either randomly on the floor or attached to doorways much like a normal deployable shield, as well as on windows, which covers about two thirds of the window. Much like Mira, Osa’s introduction into the game is mixing up the meta with new protecting lines of sight provided for the attacking team, and has been met with a mostly positive response from the community:

Along with her pretty cool unique ability, Osa has also been given a pretty adequate overall loadout. For primary weapons she has the choice between the PDW9 submachine gun or the 556XI assault rifle, two decent options for either long or medium range. Along with the PMM pistol as a sidearm, Osa has a choice between smoke grenades or claymores, and with her gameplay style of controlling line-of-sights, the smoke grenades complement her unique ability perfectly.

Maps

With each new season, the developers at Rainbow Six Siege tend to update and rework old maps along with the release of a new operator, and for operation Crystal Guard the three maps to get a makeover are Bank, Coastline, and Clubhouse.

Bank

Bank got the all-star treatment of updates this season, and can almost be considered a full-on rework – we did a full in-depth breakdown and analysis on the Bank map changes in another article.

Firstly, a new alleyway has been created linking the Jewelry Front and Back Alley spawn points, as well as the filing cabinet between Lobby and ATMs being removed to create an extra doorway to give more options to the attackers.

The main changes come in the closing off of windows, with all of the semi-circle windows looking onto banana as well as the square lobby skylight now being closed off.

Other notable changes include removing the metal bars in the vault, moving the jail hatch further into Vault, expanding the lower elevator section and making the railings on the spiral staircase destructible.

Coastline

With the introduction of Osa, it’s clear that the devs realized that the lines of sight on Coastline needed some reworking. The most important change is on the roof, where a metal plate has been added to the wooden overhang in order to hinder the attacking team’s view into the map from above.

Changes have also been made to one of the bombsites, with the F1 Reception room replacing the F1 Service Entrance bomb site, in order to make planting the bomb more difficult for the attackers. The window between VIP balcony and the VIP room has also changed, having been replaced by a large soft wall that the defenders will need to reinforce.

Clubhouse

Clubhouse received only a minor set of updates and changes, with the largest change being to the first floor bombsites. The devs have decided to split 1F Bar into two separate bombsites, with one of the bombs located behind the bar and the other on the stage. Because of this split, the 1F Stock Room will no longer be a bombsite.

Just like with Bank, an external alleyway/path has been created to connect two of the attacking spawn points, the EXT Kennels and the EXT Graffiti Area, allowing for greater maneuverability for the attackers. The devs have also added a couple of extra props into the Bar, as well as a doorway between the bar and stage areas in 1F Bar.

Operators

The most impactful operator reworks come to Fuze and Twitch, with some minor tweaks also given to IQ and Mute. The Fuze buff has arrived, and he can now place his charges onto any reinforced surface. Yes, you read that right, reinforcements no longer protect you from Fuze.

When placed on a reinforced surface, the Fuze charge will take longer to work as it “saws through” the material, and once through, it can also be shot by the defense. This means that with plenty of warning, anyone with audio should be able to survive a Fuze charge.

Much of the community has already caught on to its improved tactical importance, either in getting defenders to move out of cover or to combat Bandit-tricking, with popular Siege streamer and TSM member MacieJay saying: “I was made for the new Fuze buff, I just love the tactical side of Siege!”

Twitch will now have three drones in total, with her prep-phase drone being a regular one alongside her two Twitch drones that she can deploy during the round. More importantly though, is that her Twitch drones can now jump!

Not only can her drones jump, but Twitch’s electric shots now have unlimited range, meaning destroying far-away cameras and defender gadgets is now much easier.

Mute and IQ also get updates, with Mute’s signal disruptors now working in a spherical radius, rather than a cylindrical one, and IQ now being able to ping the devices she scans.

Other Updates

Alongside updates, reworks, and a new operator, Operation Crystal Guard also brings a number of QoL improvements, including reduced screen-shake from explosives, fixing the DBNO (Down But Not Out) point scoring, and equalizing the flash effect.

With the new DBNO system, players will no longer get a kill for finishing a downed enemy, and will instead get an assist. This means that you will get a kill score for either eliminating an enemy or for downing an enemy.

Flashes will now completely flash any affected operator, meaning if the flash reaches you at all, you will have the full effect of the flash – i.e. temporarily blind. A long list of other minute patches such as changes in damage drop-off, weapon damage changes, and other miscellaneous updates come with Operation Crystal Guard, and can be found on the season’s official release page.

 

(Header via Ubisoft)