Maverick buffed in Rainbow Six Y5S3 update to compete with new gadget

While Operation Shadow Legacy shipped major changes to Thatcher and added Zero, there’s been one Team Rainbow operator overlooked ⁠— Maverick. The hard breacher is getting a big buff in the Y5S3 update to help him compete as the new hard breach gadget enters the fray.

Maverick, in the right hands, is one of Siege’s best operators. His blow torch is the most versatile hard breaching gadget. It can’t be Bandit tricked or denied by a Mute. However, its power comes at a cost ⁠— it’s extremely hard to use.

You can often waste more gas canisters than you need trying to open hatches or walls, especially if you are a Maverick novice. Obviously, losing this efficiency can quickly turn Maverick from powerful to inadequate.

With five canisters, the margin for error was really small. The devs have noted this though, and are looking at giving him a bit of a buff to make him easier to use at all levels of play.

“Currently, Maverick needs 2.3 canisters to open a hatch with the Suri Torch. The previous number of Gas Canisters left very little margin of error to open two hatches, even for pro players,” the devs stated in an August 17 blog post.

• Read more: The best loadout, tips and tricks for Zero

Obviously, the easiest way to fix this is by giving him another gas canister, and that’s exactly what Ubisoft is doing. Maverick now has six gas canisters instead of five. This will give him a margin of error of 1.4 canisters, instead of 0.4 canisters.

“By increasing the number of Gas Canisters at his disposal, we would like to give him a slight Presence bump in the Casual player spectrum.”

Obviously, the increase won’t allow him to open more hatches. However, he will be able to create extra sight lines if he so chooses with the extra gas. Plus, if you make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world.

“This change will not allow Suri Torch experts to open more than two hatches, which was already the case in Y5S2. However, resource management should now be easier to handle for everyone.”

• Read more: Everything you need to know about the Chalet rework

It couldn’t have come at a better time. Eight operators were given a new secondary hard breaching gadget on attack, which could be used to break open hatches and walls. With breaching seemingly easier than ever, making dedicated operators more appealing is a must.

This change has also been coupled with a significant rework to how reinforcements work, specifically hatches. Each hatch will have a health pool of 1,000,000 HP, with each device doing a different amount of damage. This will mean if you screw up a Maverick torch, or a Hibana charge, you won’t have to start all over again to open up the hatch.

The damage each device does can be found below:

• 1 Exothermic Charge: 1,000,000
• 1 Hard Breach Charge: 1,000,000
• 1 Selma: 500,000 (two needed to break open hatch)
• 1 X-Kairo: 250,000 (four needed to break open hatch)
• 1 Breaching Torch impact: ~8.7k (around 115 impacts)

Operation Shadow Legacy is a huge update for Rainbow Six: Siege. The new attacker joining the fray in Zero, aka Sam Fisher, and the Chalet rework are only the tip of the iceberg. You can find out about all the changes here. They’ll be available for testing for the next few weeks on the TTS before being shipped to live in mid-September.