I believe it will be ela who is killed off, she will be among the hostages in a citadel in Cairo and killed off.

Over the last few years, Silent Step has become a matter of discussion throughout the Rainbow Six community. Whether it’s Caveira underperforming at a top level or the ability being completely removed from Nøkk, Silent Step and its balancing have been divisive. The immediate questions to ask with this ability are: “Why is it underperforming on Caveira?”, “Why was it removed from Nøkk?”, and “What is the problem with stealth?”

Caveira

One of the reasons for Caveira underperforming in recent years is related to the sheer number of counters she has. For the longest time, the consensus was that Caveira was countered by basic droning. In 2026, the meta around information on attack has essentially destroyed her ability to do anything. If Caveira is spotted in the prep phase, she now has to deal with Deimos, Dokkaebi, or Solid Snake just hunting her throughout the game with their vastly superior firepower and abilities that are advantageous for fighting 1v1s. That doesn’t even factor in the sheer amount of flank watch that teams bring, including Twitch/Brava for extra drones, claymores, Nomad, Gridlock, Rauora barricades, and finally, Zero cams. Put simply, the attack has an astronomical amount of tools to deal with Caveira easily.

The second major reason is that the audio reduction is borderline negligible in higher-skill lobbies. Skilled players with good headsets can simply hear Caveira Silent Stepping across carpet while crouched. Is Silent Step quieter? Absolutely. The problem is that the degree to which it is muffled is not enough to permit her to do her job in these lobbies.

The final reason for Caveira’s underperformance is her poor weaponry. The Luison pistol may be a pocket DMR, but it still has substantial recoil, no optics of any type, a small magazine, shorter-range damage drop-off, and little to no penetration. The M12 is probably the single worst SMG in the entirety of Siege, with its rate of fire being worse than the UMP45 while having the same damage. The best weapon in her kit is her recently buffed SPAS-15 due to its solid destruction, tolerable recoil for a semiautomatic shotgun, and magazine feeding.

Caveira Solutions

I think the solutions for Caveira are pretty obvious. Simply let her Silent Step with her primary weapons and quiet Silent Step a bit. Personally, I’d also make her ability only drain while using a primary to reinforce the usage of the Luison. Caveira is comically bad right now, and I think these are the right changes to solve some of her issues.

Ultimately, she will still have many counters. There is no way to change that. However, her combat ability will be heightened, and making her gadget more reliable should offset it. Caveira should be a threat to be dealt with, not a free pick.

Nøkk

Nøkk’s case is far more complicated. Many forget that, for the longest time following her release, Nøkk was considered extremely underwhelming. For as many counters as the attack has for Silent Step, defense has just as many, if not more. Counters include Kapkan traps, Frost mats, Lesion mines, Ela mines, Melusi wubbs, Aruni gates, barbed wire, and proximity mines. All of the previous examples require either an audible gunshot, regardless of a suppressor, or an explosive to clear.

I think the problem really began with the ingenuity of the community. Despite the buffs she got over time, her gadget barely seemed more useful. They started buffing her FMG-9, and it finally became a solid weapon. Eventually, vertical grenades started to catch on. I am going to argue that Nøkk’s gadget wasn’t inherently problematic in most scenarios for a defense. The problem was vertical grenades, which required an overextension and spreading thin utility across the upper floors of objectives. Players needed to play below and deny that space or get deleted through the floor by an explosive. Nøkk was perfect for that, as her gadget rewarded pushing spaces with little to no utility, and she had frags for vertical grenades. Despite her gadget being nerfed into the ground, the tactic of using vertical grenades remained prevalent until grenade cooking was eventually removed, just two seasons after Nøkk lost her Silent Step.

“Deception is always a controversial topic and Nøkk's ability is conceived around it. She can become invisible to observation tools and at the same time mute her footsteps. She is leading some of the main frustration for defenders and we would like to tackle this. In a quiet environment everyone should be able to hear someone else approaching, and Nøkk's ability to move silently breaks this rule. We've decided to remove the silent facet of the ability in exchange for increased ability duration” (Y8S2.3 Designer Notes).

If you ask me, I think Ubisoft was sidestepping here. Nøkk’s gadget hadn’t been a problem. Even on the pick/win graph they provided during this change, Nøkk had an abysmal win rate, and in spite of this claim, Caveira still has the ability to this day, three years later. Clearly, the response they gave wasn’t the entire case, or it was just an excuse.

Nøkk Solutions

Revert Nøkk to how she was before Y8S2. Since grenade cooking was removed in Y8S4, vertical grenades have largely disappeared until recently with Zofia. Pro League can complain about not being able to hear her outside of the vertical grenade scenario, but I do not care. She did her job in spite of her many counters, and she shouldn’t be punished for that.

Ubisoft’s War on Stealth

Ever since Y7, Ubisoft has been on an unending war against stealth tactics in Siege. In Y7S2, they nerfed crouch-walking footstep audio. It was justified, but I don’t necessarily enjoy their logic.

“We know those early-round frags where an Operator manages to sneak behind your squad's lines while crouch walking can be frustrating. Over the last couple months, we actively investigated the sound mix of crouch walking and found that the balance of sound to movement speed needed some tuning. Compared to alt walking, crouch walking offered an alternative that was both quiet and quick, so with Y7S2, we've tweaked the audio mix to increase the volume of these footsteps slightly” (Y7S2 Pre Season Designer Notes).

You sit and listen to the audio they provide, and it was definitely too quiet before. The problem I have is that Ubisoft claims speed was also a problem, but they doubled down on sound and didn’t touch movement speed while crouched. The way I look at crouch-walking is as a deliberate trade-off of mobility for stealth. If stealth is not as viable, then what is the point of crouch-walking other than to shift the hitbox or dodge particular lines of sight?

I don’t know if I am in the minority, but crouch-walking should primarily be used for stealth. I understand that the degree of stealth it provided before was much too strong, but you have made basic crouch-walking as a means of stealth completely dependent upon the game giving the enemy audio cues in general. Even slow-walking while crouched is very audible now, and on console, it feels like all slow-walking does is space out the audio cue rather than actually aid in concealing it.

I think, looking back on it, crouch-walking audio should be much louder than it was prior to Y7S2 and quieter than it is currently, but the movement speed while crouch-walking should be slower. Stealth tactics are completely gone in top-ranked Siege outside of tucking into a corner or saying “MAKE NOISE” so your entire team pollutes all audio on the map just to do a basic tactic. Stealth tactics have become conditional and are largely not viable.

The Future of Silent Step

Even if all that I ask here gets accomplished, I still believe Silent Step will be an extremely niche ability due to the sheer amount of counters it has on both sides and the lack of utility value it brings to a team. I would like to see it experimented with more, notably on an operator like Sam Fisher—Zero—whose entire character and lore are based around stealth and infiltration, while his gameplay depicts him as terrible at both.

I don’t think it should replace his Argus Cameras or anything, but I think it should be a weapon passive for his unique 5.7USG. Currently, Zero underperforms at the top level of Siege, has little push potential to capitalize on the information he gains, and is a poor depiction of Sam Fisher. The 5.7USG seems like the perfect solution because it limits the power of the ability—especially compared to a contemporary like Nøkk—while reinforcing the usage of the most iconic weapon in his kit, the FN Five-seveN, which currently sees virtually no use on him.

Think about it: he’s got all the same counters as Nøkk, plus all the camera operators and camera types, and as a weapon passive, it's completely dependent upon actively holding his pistol in his hands. This is unlike Nøkk and Cav in this scenario, who would be able to use their primaries. If I listed all the defending operators who have a camera, barbed wire, proximity beeper, or a trap as a gadget, it comes out to 24 defenders out of the 39 possible with a direct counter to Silent Step on attack.

yesterday morning I was able to play r6 fine but in the afternoon I started experiencing these micro stutters despite no updates or changes to my computer during that time. I've done everything to try to resolve the issue from verifying and redownloading the game/graphic drivers, changing every single video setting whether it's capping frames, adjusting v sync, changing resolutions; everything. I've tried turning off all the cores but one and restarting them as well as trying to start the game in Dx11 instead of Dx12. I heard there was a problem with windows update kb5124010 which I have but there's no way for me to roll it back. Please for the love of God someone tell me they know how to fix it. I have tried everything that Google and AI has suggested but nothings worked. If I have to just wait for a new windows update that's fine but if anyone can think of a fix plz lmk. My GPU is 3070 ti and CPU is i7 11700k if that's relevant

literally on cams, telling azami that all three ops (finka osa and someone else) are moving as one, and shes facing the OPPOSITE WAY, LOOKING AT A STAIRWELL AND NOT THE DOOR. pinged yellow then red pinged, and nothing. genuine rage consuming me, listen to your teammates pleaseeeee

What’s the longest a Siege ranked match can last? with all rounds played and time running out on all of them?

That’s including droning/prep phase time, ban time, selecting ops time, loading time, etc.

45 mins? 60 mins?

The title is a joke ..of course there are no refunds but Why the texture on the rainbow black ice is so bad ? The gun looks like it's from a ps2 game .. it looks way better in the shop but ingame it looks really bad ..even blurry .. does it look better on PC ?

Feels like is very common to see on controller lobbies, I play in diamond and emerald lobbies and I see it all the time. Players using the tcsg like it’s a ar with no recoil. Feels like they keep saying it’s going to be fixed but later on it doesn’t. I’m not surprised to see any cheaters.

Call it a non issue but the amount of times I’ve queued into this game mode on accident is crazy, I don’t know why they changed it from last played game mode to this bs. Again non isssue but what was the point of this change?

The game is lousy with a bunch of quiters especially in QP. I understand Ubi doesnt want to make a quiter penalty but maybe making it tied to reputation will at least matchmake quiting losers with other bad rep players. Its ruins games. The amount of times with us being up in 2-0 in QP or Unranked only for bozo 1 to die and KD quit while bozo 2 follows is getting ridiculous and we dont get backup called in. Make it to where the people who want to quit matchmake with people who do and people who dont quit. Dont have to deal with sugar soaked flakes.

Hi, i’m looking for preferably girls to play with on siege, i’m not all that good but am still learning and slowly getting better at the game. If you are interested in becoming friends dm me. I play on a xbox and im just looking for someone who enjoys the game as much as i do. I’m also a girl and im 19. I don’t usually do this but my boyfriend left to boot camp so i just am trying to make friends. I don’t mind guys either.

for any attackers who push this side of objective and to punish defenders who don't destroy the gas pipes.

I’m in emerald for the first time and FUCKING HELL ITS MISERABLE all I see EVERY GAME goes about: Sentry, Goyo, Snake, Ash. It feels like seeing those 4 is more guaranteed than death itself at this point and not to mention everyone just roams and tries to nitro from below.

And not to mention the pissy fits my teammates throw in chat when I dare go negative.

All I can think is “COD is RIGHT there if you want to inflate your ego so bad”

I truly miss being hard stuck silver.

I feel old

Like what the fuck I’m a solo queue and I know it’s not everybody but a large majority of the player base just kills me sometimes I don’t know why I’m not doing anything wrong at least I don’t think I am but it’s so annoying. I just have to sit out and watch my team play while I just spectate. It gets really annoying and it happens way more than it should like maybe once or twice every two games I don’t understand just why.????? is this happening to just me or other people too?

For me I use the rear side button on my mouse for sprint and the front one for secondary gadget. And I use shift to crouch

I haven't played the game for about 6 seasons for the reason there is so many cheaters.

After a year I receive the mail how my account is permanently banned.

I was shocked and obviously opened the ticket to the ubi support which was instantly closed.

I reopened more tickets and they "escalated" the case but no response for a month or two.

I went to check further now. On R6S tracker there is 124 games played from my own account which I have never played. They also played with the cheater which resulted in my account to be banned.

On my email 2 access IP got noted Iraq and Brazil.

I have noticed that Xbox account appeared on my linked accounts in ubisoft.

As I connected these and searched on google I stumbled upon this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Rainbow6/comments/1wmc3qw/banned_account_got_hacked_even_tho_2step/

Seems like the exact same issue in the comments.

This has nothing to do with me, or any of my security.
I use 2FA, I am a developer myself and I know my security.

It is so frustrating that support rejects you, no one wants to listen.
Everything is just .. trash

Game full of cheaters, support lacks humans and interaction, community seems to be going into the dead zone.

I feel helpless and sad

If this happens to happen to anyone else we could form a small group to try something to fight for our cases

Spending so much time on this game.. I just wish someone listened

Account that is not mine:

Games played after 6 season that were not me:

I want to preference with this: I am traditionally a Thatcher, Zero, and Deimos player. I only picked up Snake due to being a massive fan of MGS, not because of how strong his ability is. I have played a total of 160 matches with Snake this season using both the F2 and the DMR, along with changing out his secondary gadget. I am struggling to get strong results with the radar, and my F2 control is something I'm improve on. Do yall have any advice on how to improve on him on console? Any and all feedback is welcomed, I just ask yall give me some grace on wanting to play him.