New Rainbow Six Siege Patch Dials Down Pulse and Semi-Auto Shotguns

Rainbow Six Siege's next update, version 4.1, arrives later this week, and we have the full patch notes.

4.1 primarily focuses on bug fixes and balancing. The two major balance changes affect Pulse certain shotguns. Pulse's gadget now has less range (nine meters instead of 13) and he can no longer quick-swap away from it (increasing the delay before he can shoot from 0.4 seconds to 1.2). These changes are being made to compensate for the buff he got in a recent patch.

"The previous update that we did on Pulse's Heartbeat Sensor not only made it more comfortable to use, but it also made him stronger since the frequency of the heartbeat detection updates became higher," the patch notes state. "Combined with the fact that it was possible to switch extremely fast from the Heartbeat Sensor to the main gun, this made him too strong--our gameplay stats and the community feedback made that very clear. "

The other big adjustment comes to semi-auto shotguns, with the primary goal being to reduce their effectiveness at long range. Damage at short range and medium range is being decreased about 25-30 percent, while shots fired at longer ranges will be about 10 percent more spread out than before. Valkyrie's SPAS-12, Caveira's SPAS-15, Frost's Super90, and the M1014 (which Castle, Pulse, and Thermite all use) will be affected.

"Our intention is to make semi-automatic shotguns carry out incredible damage at short range, but lessen their impact significantly from medium to long range," the patch notes say. "The damage falloff from the original damage output will now be more noticeable. At longer ranges, the accuracy of the shots will also be harder to predict with precision, as players will have less gradually less control the further away they are from their target."

To further explain what these changes mean, Ubisoft released the chart below to illustrate how each of the affected guns will handle (as well as the Saiga 12K, which is unchanged). It's accompanied by a note pointing out that damage is per-pellet, with each shot consisting of eight pellets.

Following a large round of quality-of-life changes in the last patch, this update adds one more, making the red X that indicates a dead player in the HUD more prominent.

The remainder of the patch deals with bug fixes, addressing slower-than-intended movement speeds for operators with shields, an Xbox One crash when finishing a Hostage Rescue match alone, and more.

Update 4.1 launches for all platforms on Thursday, August 25. You can see the full patch notes on Ubisoft's website.