Every Y11S3 Balance Change in Rainbow Six Siege, and What It Does in a Round

Operation Split Fire went live on September 1, and most of what shipped isn't the new operator. Two of the changes are to guns rather than gadgets, which is why this patch reaches further than the operator list makes it look: a gun change moves everyone holding it, and nobody reads patch notes by weapon.

Biggest first, polish last.

The SMG-12 nerf is the biggest change in the season

It's a secondary, so it's easy to skim past. It's also carried by three operators who all live or die on close fights they picked, and Ubisoft cut its damage almost in half.

Their reasoning is that the fire rate was letting it dump too much damage too fast, and that this pushes you toward controlled bursts. What it means at the keyboard is that whiffing costs more now. Fewer bullets in the magazine, and each one doing 16 instead of 28.

It lands on Dokkaebi, Vigil and Warden, who have nothing else in common.

Dokkaebi's payload now has to be defended

The Jegeo Payload used to be fire and forget. Now it needs a constant connection between Dokkaebi and the phone she's calling, and breaking that connection cancels the upload outright.

Her tablet also stays lit for the whole upload, which means Solis's SPEC-IO Electro-Sensor can find her mid-call and Mute's Signal Disruptor can stop the thing landing at all. She swapped EMP Impact Grenades for Breach Charges too, and the reason is funnier than it sounds: her own EMP could disable the phone she was uploading to.

She's the operator this season changed most, and she ate the SMG-12 nerf on the same day.

Kali got the buff nobody expected

The CSRX 300 used to be a rifle you committed to and then regretted. Swapping to the V-Lance no longer cancels your ADS, and that one line matters more in a fight than every number under it.

Recoil and hip fire spread both went up, so she still gets punished for close fights she didn't plan. And the lower magnification isn't a nerf whatever it looks like on paper, because 12x was unusable at the ranges anyone actually plays this game at.

Both defender DMRs came down

Aruni and Tubarão lost the Muzzle Brake, and then the guns got hit as well.

Ubisoft calls this bringing them in line with what a defender gun should do, not deleting them, and that reads about right. They still hurt. They're just less reliable when you chain shots down a long angle, which is exactly where they were carrying.

The refinements, which are small on purpose

Ubisoft lists these separately and says they aren't meant to move anything, just tidy it up.

The SPSMG9 belongs to Clash and Kali, so Kali got buffed twice in one patch and nobody seems to have said anything about it.

What shipped alongside it

The addendum is mostly test server bug fixes, but two of them were hitting gadgets rather than menus, which is worth knowing if you spent the test server confused: Pulse's Cardiac Sensor wasn't showing enemies it had detected, and Montagne's Le Roc extend and retract animations were rough. Both fixed.

Every number on this page comes from Ubisoft's own Y11S3 Designer's Notes. Tier placements are read live from our own list, which is built from 2 named creators' published rankings rather than from telemetry, so they move as that list does. Statistical data is based on external APIs and publicly available information. It may differ from official data.