Jäger, Goyo, and the Problem With Pro-League
In the most recently released developer notes, Ubisoft clarified a quote that caused quite a stir in the rainbow community. The quote was;
“So, if professional players are not happy with our proposed features, then that means we are going in the right direction.”
Many Pro-League players and creators saw this as a very malicious quote. Their point kind of boiling down to, “Wtf, we are the reason the game is popular.” And for many reasons, they are right. The clarification presented by Ubisoft breaks down to, “These changes are because of you, and the entire community is going to be changed because you guys are gods.”
I am referring to the buff’s/nerf’s coming with the Year 5, Season 1.2 patch. The patch sees large changes to newcomer Goyo and monumental nerf’s to Jäger. There are a couple of other changes including Mozzie losing his super shorty, Buck trading frag’s for a claymore, and Ying becoming a potential nightmare with a more powerful gun AND fourth candela, but the changes to Goyo and Jäger stand out most to me.
First, Goyo is losing one of his explosive shields, dropping him from three to two volcàn’s. Immediately, this ban doesn’t make a ton of sense. Goyo is a largely an anchoring defender, having three shields to control sight-lines, and make choke points on site is essential to his play style. Goyo is very low in his pick rate, hovering around 10%, and with a win delta between -1.50% and -2.00%. He really isn’t upsetting the applecart. This nerf really puts Goyo in danger of being unusable in any serious capacity. The additional nerf to his TCSG12 and the loss of a crucial piece to his design; this will make players very weary of bringing Goyo. Castle with his added super shorty just seems much more powerful and there are many other operators that can trap walkways that are just better.
Jäger-main’s essentially lost an arm with his nerf. Ubisoft decided to slap him with a molasses-shoes, dropping from a 3 to a 2 speed and causing every player to undoubtably change their gameplay when using Jäger. The consensus on this is Ubisoft is trying to fight the toxic, roaming Jäger players that use his heavy-hitting gun and blinding speed to bully the enemy team, and honestly, I’m pretty happy with this one. I know that a lot of people will see this as borderline sacrilege, but Ubisoft has a point. If you don’t believe me think about how many times you have been abused by an opponent playing Jäger. It happens all the time and it sucks. Ubisoft has tried again and again to make Jäger a balanced operator. They have taken his ACOG added a new operator that does his same job to suck some attention away, and in every attempt… It. Has. FAAAAAILED. Jäger still has a pick rate in the 90’s and an insane win delta. This kinda seems like a design team that is fed up with trying to come up with new ideas.
The final component in all this is Pro-League. The real reasons a lot of these changes happen is because Ubisoft is constantly trying to create a fair playing field for Rainbow 6 at the highest level. The unintended consequence is that fans of the game have to deal with this as well. Goyo isn’t a problem in ranked, and you aren’t going to have somebody dummy you with him, but in Pro-League he sucks up a ton of utility and is frankly a little too strong.
This patch has caused many people to murmur about the idea of Pro-League being played under it’s own set of rules. The idea being that the maps, rules and operator nerf’s the pro’s deal with shouldn’t “impede” the game for the casual player. I think, this idea is fucking stupid. I want the casual and ranked games I play to be just as fair and balanced as the pro’s. You don’t play an organized game of basketball on a low-rim because you aren’t in the NBA, so why would you change the rules here.
Nobody likes changes, especially when they come to something you love. There are a lot of people that love being a toxic dirtbag and spawn-peeking with Jäger, I don’t feel bad for you. Everyone loses their mind when these patch notes come out, but the game is always just as good, or better afterward. So just give it a chance; the developers know what they are doing.