What if I told you that the most exciting change in Rainbow Six Siege Operation Shadow Legacy is not Sam Fisher's debut? Don't get me wrong, he's great, but this update is packed with little features and quality-of-life changes that will dramatically change the way you play the game.

maps have been banned, a new scope equivalent to lenscraft, a reworked Thatcher, and new secondary gadgets that make Nøkk and Amaru hard-breathers; ACOG has become a rarity, Ping is more useful, and Chalet is now a great The Siege era is changing.

If you haven't played Siege in a while, check out this list of the best operators in Rainbow Six Siege, updated for Year 5 Season 2.

I've enjoyed all the map reworks Ubi has done over the past year, but nothing has made a better first impression than the changes introduced in this update to Chalet. As with the rework of Oregon in Season 1, there is a massive effort to add new rotations on and between bombsites without adding unnecessary rooms or changing the identity of each site.

A highlight for me is the snowmobile garage/wine cellar downstairs in particular. These rooms are now connected by an extended blue hallway in addition to the old connector route, giving the defenders cover against attackers pushing down the library stairs. The wine cellar itself has been converted to an open, doughnut-shaped layout, giving the anchors room to breathe, while keeping the same angle easy to breach.

I was also impressed with the renovated master bedroom/office area. That miserable exterior balcony with the metal railing. Gone is that, replaced by an indoor solarium with a new staircase leading to the trophy room on the first floor. Gone too is the thin side balcony, but you can still access the windows by rappelling. Nice.

Old Chalet is a quirky launch map, so it's refreshing to see that basically every complaint I can think of has been addressed in some way. I look forward to trying this map in a more competitive environment.

Ubi has done little with their small collection of weapon sights over the years, but Shadow Legacy simultaneously drops four new scopes into the mix and completely reworks who gets what. No operator is untouched.

In particular, with the introduction of 1.5X, 2X, and 3X, Ubi has more ways to encourage certain play styles. From looking over the new sighter options for each operator, it appears that Ubi is placing more emphasis than ever on the ACOG (now called the 2.5X scope to reflect the magnification). There are still very few offensive weapons that can use this scope, and most of them rely on assault rifles with low rate of fire, such as Sledge's L85A2. Currently, most assault rifles are capped at 2X scopes. Depending on your preference, this can be taken as either a nerf or a buff: 2X scopes do not allow you to see farther, but they have a wider FOV and allow you to see a nice, crosshair-shaped sight picture.

And Ash's R4-C remains holographic. Sorry.

On the defensive side, almost any SMG can be fitted with the new 1.5X scope. This is a pretty big upgrade for good SMGs that were previously stuck with holographic, like the T-5 SMG in Lesion. Defender SMGs previously equipped with ACOGs have also been converted to 2X scopes, with the exception of the MP5's 1.5X (the spawnpeakers have earned this) As for 3X scopes, only Twitch, Dokkaebi, Buck, Lion and Blackbeard's DMRs have them (The 3X scope is a long-range, effective weapon. This is a range bonus for weapons that are effective at long range.

Previously, weapon sights seemed to be consistent from weapon to weapon, but this balancing pass reveals that Ubi is balancing according to the operator. If the same rifle means that Sledge can use the ACOG but Thatcher can't, then so be it. All in all, this could shake up the gun meta significantly.

Hard breaching used to be an exclusive club of two or three attackers, but the new Secondary Hard Breaching Charge is a medium-sized hole in that trend. This square foothold can open a hole large enough to jump or squat through, or to crack open a reinforced hatch. It is a very useful secondary gadget. For this reason, Ubi is limited to five attackers: Nøkk, Amaru, Capitão, Ying, and Montagne.

Is it necessary to operate dedicated hard-breaching players like Thermite, Hibana, and Ace? According to Ubi, one of the goals is to make hard breeches less important for a balanced team. Currently, jumping into a serious match without hard breeches in every round is a definite disadvantage.

Dedicated bleachers are still great for big site pushes, but they are no longer the only option. With this new gadget, you can poke through key hatches and walls. It's a smart meta-shift on Ubi's part not to add new mechanics to the game, but one wonders what the balance will be once everyone has this gadget.

Capcan Mainers, you can finally catch your breath. In Shadow Legacy, defenders now share a single pool of 10 reinforcements. This means that one roamer can run upstairs and reinforce four hatches while Kapkan focuses on setting traps; no more pinging around the last section of wall while Ela ignores pleas for reinforcements. Finally, I could do it myself. This is truly a beautiful thing, and I was genuinely impressed the first time I saw it (I've been in this since March).

Why didn't this happen years ago? Of course, the shared pool also opens up the possibility of trolls wasting more than their equal share of reinforcements, but it's a pretty high-effort/low-payoff tactic that I doubt will become common.

Ubi has finally completed the reworking of Thatcher that he started over a year ago. From Shadow Legacy, his EMP grenades only temporarily disable defender gadgets, never destroy them. Cameras, Gu mines, ADS, and even Bandit batteries. It's a well-timed nerf, given that Thatcher has recently been Ranked and more likely to be banned.

This is an obvious nerf for Thatcher, but not the most important one. When jamming a Bandit on the wall, stopping the Bandit's battery adds a new step to the Bandit trick: when the EMP runs out, the Bandit will have to choose between picking up the battery and replacing it or shooting it; when the EMP runs out, the Bandit will have to choose whether to pick it up and replace it or shoot it.

Pinging has undergone a meaningful change for the first time in almost five years: in Ping 2.0, ping transmissions are now contextual based on what you are seeing. When you send a ping to any gadget, an identifying icon is now displayed for all teammates to see. If the pinged gadget is a primary tool, like Maestro's Evil Eye camera, Maestro's identity is also revealed.

Ping 2.0 is a great start, but I'm not sure it meets what fans actually wanted: an expansion of Ping's command list to cover communications normally limited to voice/text chat. I would love to have a symbol on the wall that means "break through here" or a Ping alert on the stairs that says "I hear footsteps"; Ubi said earlier this year that this is just the first iteration of Ping 2.0, so maybe one day it will happen.

Ubi has made Ranked and Unranked map assignments a bit more random and eliminated in Shadow Legacy. Instead of loading onto a completely random map, both teams each have the right to veto one map from a random pool of three. The last remaining map is chosen. I like the idea of using map bans to avoid maps that have already been played several times that day, but I'm worried that it might actually be counterproductive. Spectator-pleasing maps like Clubhouse and Oregon may always get votes against Outback and Coastline. I like these maps too, so it would suck to see them get pushed down in play rate by the most popular maps.