Rainbow Six: Siege Ember Rise: Amaru Breakdown

Rainbow Six: Siege’s newest offensive Operator has a fun gadget.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Amaru is fun. Her character design is great, and her gadget is an absolute blast, with a hilarious animation when viewed from the outside (you look like you’re riding in Wonder Woman’s invisible jet).

That said, her kit is not the most practical one out there.

Rainbow Six: Siege Ember Rise: Amaru Breakdown

Garra is a two speed, two armor character, giving her balanced stats. Honestly, this is not the ideal setup for the rest of her kit, which values being up close and personal. I’d rather have the 10% extra speed of a three-speed character than the 10% extra armor.

The Garra Hook is, of course, her standout feature. It is a rocket-propelled grappling hook with four uses, and an eight-second cooldown between uses. This is mostly irrelevant, truth be told; the chance of you using the hook even twice in a match is pretty slim since you can’t use it to flee from indoors. Once you’ve engaged, leaving is more difficult to use the hook to re-engage elsewhere. It also leaves you helpless while in flight and for a few moments afterward, making it a risky move, though you do get the “free” kill if you use it to blast open a window and then get propelled into someone on the other side, similar to traditional “hot breaching” with a Breaching Charge.

Everything up to this point is fine. two speed, two armor is decent and I like Operators with a similar setup like Zofia quite a bit. But Zofia has guns I like. Amaru…does not.

Her first primary weapon is the G8A1 light machine gun. It is in my opinion IQ’s best gun, and it’s also pretty bad. IQ’s weaponry is notoriously bad to make up for how effective the rest of her kit is in competitive, but the G8A1 is workable at least.

I’ve logged a fair bit of time with it and it’s not the worst weapon I’ve ever used. No, that honor goes to her other primary: the Supernova shotgun that Hibana and Echo get. Boy, I hate this gun. It has the stopping power of the M590A1 (the shotgun the SAS Operators use) without the primary redeeming feature of it: the fire rate. It is without a doubt my least favorite gun in the game.

Secondaries are a bit more promising though.

Amaru has the choice of the ITA12S and SMG-11 secondaries.

The ITA12S is the secondary shotgun that Jackal and Mira get to enjoy, and I’m quite a fan of it. Good stopping power even though it has a terrible range, it makes a decent complement to the G8A1.

The SMG-11 though arguably makes a better primary than either the G8A1 or Supernova (definitely more than the Supernova). It never fails me when playing Smoke, and excels at the ranges Amaru can engage using the Garra with its high fire rate plus decent accuracy and stopping power.

Her secondary gadgets are nothing special, with the relatively standard choice of Breaching Charges or a Claymore. I’d tend to favor the latter, since the Gara fills about half the use of the Charges already, but they’re definitely good indoors.

All told Amaru looks like an Operator that is going to live and die on how people figure out how to properly engage with the Garra. I can see how on certain maps that blitzing strats could become very prominent if the right team comp and grapple points are found.