Ubisoft’s Rainbow 6 Siege has been getting a lot of attention lately and if you have been keeping an eye on Esports, chances are you have heard of this title. Rainbow 6 Siege has developed such a following that it is being featured in this summer’s DreamHack. Before you try to get ready to compete in this heart pounding, non-stop action tactical shooter, here are 15 tips and secrets from the Pros.

1. Know the Maps Inside and Out

No literally know the maps inside as well as outside. There have been many plays made in the Pro League that would only work if you know the map. If you know where the enemy team is going to try and attack from you might be able to shoot through a barricade and get a quick head shot for an early round kill, while they are still outside. Really this tip is first on our list because it sets up the rest, because without it you will be useless to your team and you will get flanked….a lot.

2. Always Have At Least One Defender on Cams

During the start of the action phase you should always have a defender watching and cycling through cams. While they are doing this they are calling out where the attackers are going and what the most likely avenue of approach is for the ensuing push. Once the attackers make entry inside the building then an Echo or Pulse can take those duties since the attackers will be taking out every security camera they can find. Also note that it is important to know what cameras are destroyed, as it might give a clue to where attackers might be coming from.

3. Defend Multiple Floors from Your Position

An Example of Defending One Floor Below (Courtesy n3rd’s Steam)

In almost every Pro League match you will see someone get a kill from a floor above or below their position. This is where the map knowledge comes into play again. In Rainbow 6 Siege you can open up murder holes through floors, ceilings, and walls to engage opponents. If you know their location or a suspected avenue of approach you can shoot through the surface or throw a nitro cell up on the ceiling above you and if you time it right you can kill your opponent on the next floor. Really this game is all about cutting off the opposing team’s avenues and no better way to do that than engaging a player from an angle they are not expecting.

4. Exercise Tactical Patience

If you watch any Pro player they are always cool under the clutch. There are no sporadic movements or just rushing in because they are the last one on their team. Everything is still calculated to give them an advantage in some other aspect of the game besides for numbers. Part of that tactical patience is to stay hidden if you are trying to clutch a round for your team common sense tells you that if they do not know where you are then they cannot fix and flank you. This tip, much like the first one, will pertain to most other tips.

5. Use Your Drones

Drone Used in Terrorist Hunt to Scout Enemy Positions

Slow your game down and use your drones. Using the #4 tip you can push your drones forward to clear your pathway or scout enemy positions for your teammates. When you are using your drones try not to move them the same way that you are going to move. Meaning do not move your drone through the same hallway or door that you plan on using. Opponents can obviously see and hear your drone and that can cue them in on where you are trying to go. Use your drone in a deception tactic. Have it come into a room from another door or window to throw your opponents off. You might be able to even make them move their position. These are only a couple of tips when it comes to using drones. Watch this video featuring Penta’s Fabian as he talks about how to use your drones.

6. Don’t Put Your First Drone in the Same Spot as Your Teammates

During the Prep Phase of every round you will mostly see everyone trying to find that “God like” drone spot in the objective room. The problem is the defenders are going to find those drone spots and destroy them….which renders them absolutely useless to your team. Don’t get me wrong having a drone in the objective room is not a bad idea and you should have one in there. However, there are other rooms that you can put that drone if you are trying to make entry through that room.

7. Move Constantly On Defense

Do not stay in one place for very long especially if you are roaming. The other team is constantly making call outs based on drones or engagements. If you get a kill and you can move, you should be moving, because your now eliminated opponent is telling his team where you are. You do not have to move far, to like another room or floor, though that is great if you have that rotation. Even just out of that spot so someone else cannot pre-fire you and make an easy 1 for 1 trade. It is all about rotations, rotate out after an engagement to keep the attackers on their toes. Plus, it will slow their tempo down enough that they might run out of time.

8. Setting Up Windows on Defense

When you are on defense knock out the bottom panel of the barricaded windows. This will only work on windows whose barricade extend down past the window. What that does is once you hit the barricade twice an attacker will go to knock out only a small portion and end up taking down the whole barricade. This exposes them and you should be able to get an early kill. The other bonus is that because most single barricades break after three hits, once you hit it twice you will be able to vault through the window without having to tear it down using a crowbar, giving your position away. You only hit the bottom panels because an attacker will not be able to tell the panels are missing from his side.

You Can See That This Window’s Barricade Would Have Extended Closer to the Floor. These Are the Ones to Prep.

9. Pre-Fire Suspected Enemy Positions

Whether you are on defense or attacking you can always use this, it is a tip that you should implement into your repertoire. Any time you suspect that an opponent is peeking from or in a certain position you should pre-fire that spot. The intent is to fire right when your barrel clears the cover you are behind and land that head shot before your opponent has time to react. This can be done when you are clearing a room or even when an opponent is peeking through a window or doorway. If you know or suspect that you are going against a Blackbeard, pre-firing might not work the way you want it to since you are going to have to destroy his face shield, which takes about three shots.

10. Communicate With Your Team (Make Call Outs)

This tip might seem pretty obvious, however, these are pro tips. It is not all about shooting like a pro, you also have to communicate like a pro if you want to be a good team. You might be a great player, but if you do not have a team that is in sync you are not going to be as effective. Pinging an enemy position does not count as communication, it counts as a mistake when your opponent finds your camera or drone and now you lost that advantage. Penta Sports’ Pengu talks about how his teammate was already eliminated, but was still on the cameras helping him with call outs (watch video here). The result was Pengu getting 4 kills and Penta winning a critical round. If his teammate would have just quit and starting tweeting about how he was going to throw his mouse through the monitor then it could have been a different story.

11. Adjust Your Settings and Find Your Sweet Spot

There is no perfect or magical setting that anyone, even the pros, can tell you. Everyone is different, however, higher sensitivity usually leads to faster movements allowing you to be faster….in theory. What you definitely should not do is shift your sensitivity all the way from 3 to 10 (max), unless you plan on shooting at clouds or doing a complete 360 in .01 seconds flat. If you find that you are not compensating enough for your shots and coming up short of your target, slowly increase your sensitivity by 1 or 2. Try that sensitivity for a few matches and see how you like it and if you still find after a while that you are doing the same thing then keep increasing slowly until you find that sweet spot. This is the same for if you are trying to go down in sensitivity, although not as common, but it still happens. Be sure to adjust all your settings to best set you up for success. This includes sound, controller vibration, and brightness. Adjust everything you can in order to get comfortable in the match, again this is personal preference.

12. Warm-Up Before Playing Ranked

Before you start trying to climb out of bronze and head for diamond in ranked, you should warm-up. You can warm up by playing casual mode or playing terrorist hunt. Most pro players and popular streamers will warm-up playing terrorist hunt. Terrorist hunt is preferred since you do not have to wait for the matchmaking and worry about playing an actual match. Terrorist hunt is easy, load the map choose your operator, and just focus on your aim with dozens of AI enemies to eliminate. That round didn’t go so well? That’s cool, load the level again and keep running it until you are comfortable landing head shots in your sleep. A tip from popular Rainbow 6 Siege Streamer “Yo Boy Roy” is to switch your fire rate to semi-automatic (single shot). This will force you to land one shot at a time instead of spraying a burst around the head area. Once you can start landing single shots then bursts should be easy.

13. Play the Angles

Everything in Rainbow 6 Siege is about getting the advantage. It is not all about out gunning your opponents, this is not Call of Duty, Rainbow 6 is very tactical in nature. The whole point about being tactical is to gain an advantage, landing your shots is just batting cleanup and finishing your kill. The kill actually starts seconds or even minutes before you actively engage your opponent. The start is getting the right angle to where you think you will begin to engage. There is a good video series on YouTube (click here to watch) where the narrator shows you gameplay from the Pro League matches and the angles they used and other tips that the pros are using. He then will go into a custom game and show you how to setup the angle and how to most effectively use it.

The key to angels is how tight you can make it and how far away are you (longer line of sight is better). You should not be holding an angle on the other side of the hallway. You might be behind cover, but the angle is pretty wide open and your opponent might still be able to counter. Angles should ideally be through a layer of material. What I mean is that if you make a small hole in a wall that, then, looks into the entrance of a room. For instance, take the map Border. If you are on the South balcony on the second deck there are two windows. If you make a hole in the left window you can see through to a breakable wall on the other side room. Make a small hole in that wall and now you have an angle, which gives you a tactical advantage, looking into Offices.

Here is a Very General Use of an Angle That Someone Opened Up Overlooking Stairs.

14. Make Multiple Spots to Peek, Not Just One

If you are one that loves to get under people’s skin then you more than likely love to spawn kill attackers. When you are setting up your peek spot over-looking the spawn make multiple holes in different barricades that face the attackers. This will force them to check multiple spots and you have a higher chance of success than if you just made one spot. At that point they would only have to check the one instead of multiple.

If You Were Going to Spawn Peek From These Windows Open One Spot on the Left Window and One On the Right.

15. Permanent Practice Makes Perfect

Talk to any Pro League player about how you can get better at the game and they will most likely default to one answer. “Just keep playing the game, you can only get better if you play.” This is true, but hard to grasp for most. You look at a headline of an article or video and it says something like “Get Better at Rainbow Six Siege with These Tips.” You think to yourself, yes if I read or watch this video than I will become a pro player and make diamond in no time. Sadly, this is not the truth. In order to be an expert in a certain field some studies suggest that you need to put in 10,000 hours in order to be an “expert”. That is a lot of time, and carpal tunnel, to spend on one thing. However, most Pro League players that have been around since the beginning have probably exceeded that. Pengu has commented that he had 8 accounts in diamond. 8…even though he is a professional that is still a lot of time, and that is one season alone.

Reading this article, I hope it gave you some tips for improving your game and overall allowing you to have a better experience. This article or any other is not going to give you Matrix like powers to download skills required to be a pro. It is still going to take time and more experience. If I can leave you with one thing it is just to keep playing and keep what tips work for you and put away ones that do not and most importantly have fun.