Rainbow Six: Operation Steel Wave goes live

Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six gets a new major update as Operation Steel Wave hits live servers today, June 16. The Patch will implement two new operators, a map rework and of course a plethora of other changes.

After several weeks of testing Operation Steel Wave is finally ready to hit live servers. Players will finally be able to get their hands on Operators Ace and Melusi after Ubisofts restarts the servers after maintenance.

New Operators: Ace & Melusi

Headlinging the new Operation will be the two new additions to Rainbow Six’ roster: Håvard „Ace“ Haugland and Thandiwe „Melusi“ Ndlovu. Ace will be joining the Attackers and bring his S.E.L.M.A. Aqua Breacher with him. The gadget allows him to reliably breach breakable and even reinforced surfaces, adding a new option for Attackers to get into heavily fortified areas of the map.

With medium armor Ace is versatile enough for most situations.

Operator Ace joins the fray in Rainbow SixOperator Ace joins the fray in Rainbow Six
Operator Ace joins the fray in Rainbow Six

For the side of the Defenders Melusi will be a new option for roamers. With Light Armor she can traverse the map fast and react quickly to the sound alerts of her gadget, the Banshee Sonic Defense. The gadget can be deployed on surfaces and will not only slow down enemies caught nearby but also play audio cues when set off. As it boasts a bulletproof surface Attackers either have to go up close to destroy it or deploy utility to get rid of it.

Operator Melusi joins the Defenders in Rainbow Six

Owners of the Year 5 pass can immediately play Ace and Melusi as soon as the servers go live, other players will have to wait another week to get their hands on them.

Map rework: House

Besides the two new operators Ubisoft has also been hard at work reworking the map House. Players will find an increase in size of the building as the developers not only made several areas larger but also added a new section on the south side. This also resulted in a brand new bomb site in TV Room and Music Room. In further bomb site adjustments the Living & Training Bomb Site was moved to Master Bedroom & Boys’ Room.

House has been reworked for Operation Steel Wave

Other areas of the map were reworked as well with Garage now offering another access option and Workshop beeing turned into Girls’ Room. Throughout the map most floors are now destructible, enabling vertical play on House.

Unified MMR across regions

Ubisoft will also rework their matchmaking across regions. Starting with Operation Steel Wave your MMR will be unified per playlist to prevent matchmaking abuses for switching regions. This will also cause the Champions leaderboard to become worldwide increasing competition among the top ranks. To qualify for the Champions rank you will now need to have a minimum of 100 matches on top of the 5000 MMR treshold.

Operation Steel Wave will also apply a extensive balance patch together with various bugfixes to Rainbow Six. You can see the full patch notes on the official website:

Rainbow Six: Operation Steel Wave Full Patch Notes

The Patch will be deployed June 16 on various times depending on platform:

  • Xbox One: 08:00 EDT | 12:00 GMT
  • PS4:           09:00 EDT | 13:00 GMT
  • PC:             10:00 EDT | 14:00 GMT

Patch size will be around 10 GB

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Image Credit: Ubisoft
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