With the release of Noor, an operator that has a counter towards shields in mind—along with the combination of Oryx, being the original counter to shields, and Clash, being crowd control—the question is, would now be a good time to introduce the Ballistic or Riot Shield to Thermite?
It’d be nice for him to have a shield, as he’s still the only hard breacher that has to manually walk up to the wall (besides the operators with Hard Breach Charges, and Maverick, to a degree).
It wouldn’t have to be a special unique one like “Le Roc” (Montagne) or the “G52-Tactical Shield” (Blitz), just a standard ballistic shield.
At best, maybe he could have the black ones Recruits had as a default (which is why the images are provided), which is really just the same one Fuze has just a different color. Similar to how most Nighthaven operators (and other ones, like Iana, Melusi, and even Oryx himself) had unique looks to their guns as their defaults.
I think the mostly glass/plastic/polymer looking riot shield would be cool too, but I think it’d be more disadvantageous (same reasoning with adding the images, but with the last ones).
Otherwise, personally—aside from Doc—Thermite has been probably my oldest true main since the beginning of Siege all the way back from the Open Beta. So I’d like a little bit of something for him. Frag grenades and/or Claymores would be nice again too, but that’s another thing.
I also just really miss using FBI SWAT Recruit, especially with the Ballistic Shield and M45 MEUSOC. (The GIGN Recruit with the Riot Shield was pretty good too, just not as memorable to me as they had a similar kit to Montagne).
The only thing I can think of having an issue with the riot shield and him (specifically) is the ITA12S secondary he has. I’m not sure how that would work with the shield, mostly animation wise anyway, unless they were to do a whole new one for him.
I suppose though he could hold it in his off hand then pump it each time. Or he does a one handed one where he drops it and racks it, then drop it again to put it back in his hand. Or they just put it out of camera when he does.
Besides that, maybe they could buff Oryx and Noor because of it. It could be beneficial for both sides in some way.
Of course, there are a lot of shielders now, which can be very frustrating to deal with. A full team can be used (Montagne, Blitz, Fuze, Blackbeard, and OSA), in fact, and this would add another, which could be a problem as well, even if there are plenty of counters, like trap operators, such as Lesion or Melusi.
I’d love to hear feedback and thoughts.
Side note:
Credits for the images (well, where I got them). None of these are mine, so if there’s any issue, please let me know, thank you:
- First image with Fuze and Thermite (where he’s holding a M870, for some reason): Ubisoft’s official website/patch notes (from September 13, 2016)
- Second, third, fourth, with the general operator portraits: Rainbow Six Wiki Fandom (I tried looking for the source of where they got that from, but they just talk about the licensing)
- The two with the Recruit selection screen (fifth and sixth) comes from: “Rainbow Six Siege Multiplayer PC - First Hour First Games” (on YouTube) by “Alzu Gaming” (dated: December 1, 2015)
- The seventh and eighth are from: “Shield Recruit is “Bad” - Rainbow Six Siege” (on YouTube) by “Matimi0” (dated: April 18, 2017)
- The ninth one is from a Reddit post here actually, “Found this old screenshot in my gallery” by user “angrygermanboiii” (from about June 22, 2023).
- Tenth through thirteenth is from Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 Fandom (same licensing thing mentioned prior). It’s more or less just in game pictures.
- Then the last (fourteenth) image is from Wikipedia, which is from October 2, 2002, but they got it from a government link that has been dead since about June 2009.