We may earn a commission when you buy through links in our articles. Learn more.

Rainbow Six Siege’s most popular Attacker doesn’t actually need a nerf

Ubisoft's latest set of Rainbow Six Siege Designer's Notes has players worried an Iana nerf is coming, but they should actually find comfort in the stats shared

Rainbow Six Siege Iana Y7S4 stats nerf: an image of the Attacker from the FPS game

In a similar fashion to other competitive multipler experiences, the topic of balancing changes is everpresent in the Rainbow Six Siege community – and calls for buffs and nerfs are often spurred as much by Ubisoft’s own analysis and statistics as it is the players’ experiences. The somewhat recent concerns among this shooting game’s playerbase that a Rainbow Six Siege Iana nerf is imminent is a prime example of this. However, even if she’s regarded as one of the best Attackers available right now, the same statistics that highlight her popularity can also be used to justify why she’s just fine in her current state.

Ahead of Rainbow Six Siege’s Y7S4.2 title update and the release of a new set of patch notes, Ubisoft has released another edition of its’ Designer’s Notes – a blog post that aims to explore the current state of the game statistically and explain any upcoming changes.

As you will be able to see for yourself below, when looking at a graph that compares Attackers’ pick rates and their win rates in Rainbow Six Siege (when not banned), Iana is something of an anomaly. She’s easily the most popular Attacker in Rainbow Six Siege right now, and her win rate is erring on the stronger side when compared to her peers.

However, taking a moment to actually look at the values on Ubisoft’s graph (which has been uploaded to Reddit with Iana highlighted by user ‘StQuentinScar‘), you can see that Iana isn’t really that much of an outlier when it comes to the best options to climb the Rainbow Six Siege ranks.

She’s definitely losing the Frag Grenades from Rainbow6

Iana is boasting the same rough win rate as Maverick, Dokkaebi, IQ, Twitch, Amaru, and is a lot lower than Finka. Sure, she’s one of the more successful Attackers – but, you do have to take into account that she has a pick rate of over 60%. Even if the win-rate is a percentage, it still means more players are using her – so, the chance that those players are going to be better and win more is higher.

But, if you’re not quite tuned into Rainbow Six Siege as you think you should be and you’re unsure as to why Iana is as popular as she is, allow us to explain. Not only can Iana gather information without putting herself in danger, thanks to her Gemini Replicator, she’s also offers potent attacking options with two Frag Grenades and the ability to use both an assault rifle and the Gonne-6 hand cannon as a secondary weapon.

So, you can certainly see why some Rainbow Six Siege players are worried about Iana getting nerfed – and why some want her to be nerfed. However, she’s really not that far away from the cluster in terms of win rate when you look at the aforementioned graph. Sure, she’s the most popular Attacker by a mile, but is that Iana’s fault or the fault of the other Attackers for not being as appealing to play? You could even argue that it’s the Defenders’ fault for not offering a good-enough counter.

Rainbow Six Siege is one of the biggest esports games in the world and one of the best competitive FPS games out there; balance is everything. So, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens with Iana in future updates. Right now, though, we don’t think Iana mains have anything to worry about.