Operation Neon Dawn is the last season that year 5 has to bring to Rainbow Six Siege, and it does not disappoint. With a new defender, a reworked Skyscraper, needed operator balancing and quality of life changes. This season has a ton of cool stuff to talk about so let’s get to it!
Introducing “Aruni”
New to the Rainbow Six Team is Aruni, a defender from Thailand that works with Nighthaven. She was a former detective for the Royal Thai Police (RTP). She worked her way up to the top as an oustanding detective at the RTP. But during an operation in Bangkok she nearly got killed, and so her police career ended. During her recovery, she got approached by “Kali” form Nighthaven. Their access to advanced prosthetics and technology probably had a major influence on Aruni into joining forces with Nighthaven.
Surya Laser Gate
Aruni developed a non-lethal version of the Surya gate. As requested by her when joining team Rainbow, they enhanced the defensive capabilities of the gate. With some help from “Maestro” they improved the gate to make it more lethal. This means any projectile or unwanted personnel going through the gate will be burned to crisp or left with 2nd to 3rd-degree burns. Aruni can deploy her Surya Gate on walls, hatches, windows, and doorways. After the gate has been triggered it needs to recharge and will go offline after a short window. To reactivate the gate any defender will have to shoot the device after it’s recharged to get it back online. As a defender, you don’t need to be afraid to get burned. If a defender gets close to the gate, it will deactivate and let the defender through. But any projectile that you throw through an active Surya Gate will trigger the effect and destroy the projectile.
Loadout
For the first time in Rainbow Six Siege, the defender will have access to a marksman rifle. Aruni will have the Mk 14 EBR (Dokkaebi’s rifle) at her disposal. If you aren’t a fan of this hard-hitting rifle, you will also have the option to take the P10 RONI (Mozzie’s primary). A fully automatic P10 pistol in a RONI carbine conversion will definitely do the trick, because of its high fire-rate and minimum recoil. For her secondary, she comes equipped with the PRB92 (Capitao’s secondary). This loadout combined with her gadget will make Aruni a force to be reckoned with.
Reworked Skyscraper
I think we can all agree that this map needed some improvements competitive wise. And in my opinion, they have done a great job reworking this map. Everything still feels familiar yet every room plays so much better. With new connections and hallways at the dragon statue on the second floor and an optimized and revamped first floor, with a restaurant. This map feels very refreshing while keeping a competitive playstyle. During my time playing I had loads of fun finding fun ways to hide to scare my opponents where they least expected it. This map went from one of my least favorites all the way to the top of my list.
Balancing of operators
Neon Dawn also brought some changes to existing operators like Hibana and Jäger. Firstly Hibana her gadget got a welcome change. She can now switch between shooting 6, 4, or 2 X-Kairos at a time. This means she will be able to make greater use of her X-Kairo’s and be more creative with the use of it. As for Jäger his ADS, there will now be a 10-second cooldown between the projectiles it destroys. This change will make Jäger his utility denial more balanced. But what I think most players have been waiting for is the rework of our lord and savior Tachanka, with his new shumika launcher and his trusty DP27 lmg that will be his primary weapon! You will be sure to shred some attackers with this beast. I think I can safely say that the lord is back in business and he is looking for trouble!
Other changes
Here are some changes that might have gone under the radar, but definitely not unimportant. Firstly you have the new text-to-speech option, so you don’t have to read your chat to read call outs from your team. You can also play with the chat size and font to make it easier to get that crucial info in that 1v5 moment.
Conclusion
Operation Neon Dawn is a great final season to the already great Year 5 of Rainbow Six Siege. The new content does not disappoint and will definitely stir up the meta in my opinion. Aruni will be a valuable addition to the Rainbow Six team and I can’t wait to see how players will make the best use of her gadget and explore the familiar yet refreshing Skyscraper. The quality of life changes are also very welcome. All together I think this makes for yet again a great season, and I’m very excited to see what Ubi has to bring us in Year 6 of Rainbow Six Siege.
