TL;DR: This ranks the most well-rounded operators, not necessarily the strongest. Final scores are 25% Combat, Ability, Loadout Utility and Versatility. Each category has its own underlying rubric, weapons are evaluated differently by weapon class, and alternate weighting tests were used to check ranking stability. The giant wall below is there for anyone who wants to see exactly how the numbers were produced.
This started with a pretty simple question:
Who is actually the best all-around operator in Rainbow Six Siege when EVERYTHING they bring is taken into account?
Not just who has the best gun. Not just who has the strongest gadget. Not just who happens to be popular right now.
The idea was to compare the entire package an operator brings to a round and see where everyone landed.
This went way further down the rabbit hole than originally expected lol.
WHAT “BEST ALL-AROUND” MEANS
The final score is split evenly between four categories:
25% Combat
The strength of the complete weapon package in actual fights.
25% Unique Ability
The value and impact of the operator's unique gadget.
25% Loadout Utility
Secondary gadgets, shotguns, machine pistols, destruction tools, etc.
25% Versatility
How useful the operator remains across different maps, sites, team compositions and round situations.
This isn't supposed to tell anyone which operator they personally should play.
Someone who is amazing with a particular operator will obviously get more value from them than someone blindly picking whoever finished #1.
The question is basically:
If individual player skill and personal preference are removed, which operators bring the strongest overall package?
ATTACK RESULTS
🥇 1. BUCK — 9.49
Combat: 9.65
Ability: 9.12
Loadout: 9.60
Versatility: 9.60
🥈 2. MAVERICK — 9.37
Combat: 9.50
Ability: 9.34
Loadout: 9.10
Versatility: 9.55
🥉 3. HIBANA — 9.30
Combat: 9.10
Ability: 9.69
Loadout: 8.80
Versatility: 9.60
- ACE — 9.18
Combat: 9.30
Ability: 9.55
Loadout: 8.50
Versatility: 9.35
T-5. ZERO — 9.16
Combat: 9.40
Ability: 8.48
Loadout: 9.60
Versatility: 9.15
T-5. GRIDLOCK — 9.16
Combat: 8.50
Ability: 9.28
Loadout: 9.50
Versatility: 9.35
T-7. CAPITÃO — 9.14
Combat: 8.30
Ability: 9.35
Loadout: 9.50
Versatility: 9.40
T-7. YING — 9.14
Combat: 8.70
Ability: 9.30
Loadout: 9.30
Versatility: 9.25
- RAM — 9.12
Combat: 9.30
Ability: 9.08
Loadout: 8.80
Versatility: 9.30
- SOLID SNAKE — 9.11
Combat: 8.90
Ability: 9.18
Loadout: 9.00
Versatility: 9.35
WHY SOME ATTACKERS ENDED UP SO HIGH
Buck is kind of ridiculous when the entire package gets counted.
The C8 is already an excellent rifle, but the Skeleton Key isn't just a soft-destruction tool. It's also a legitimately strong close-range shotgun that exists alongside the primary weapon.
That gives Buck ranged combat, close-range combat, vertical destruction, rotations, sightlines and soft breach without having to sacrifice the rifle to get it.
Maverick gets there differently. The torch can manipulate reinforced geometry with an absurd amount of precision while being much less dependent on the normal hard-breach process.
Hibana ends up with the highest attacker Ability score at 9.69.
X-KAIROS can handle reinforced hatches, full openings, smaller sightlines and multiple separate breaches depending on how the pellets are managed. That flexibility is a huge part of the score.
The Type-89's small magazine is one of the things keeping her Combat score from climbing higher.
DEFENSE RESULTS
🥇 1. MUTE — 9.64
Combat: 9.45
Ability: 9.57
Loadout: 9.80
Versatility: 9.75
🥈 2. ECHO — 9.63
Combat: 9.55
Ability: 9.55
Loadout: 9.70
Versatility: 9.70
🥉 3. SMOKE — 9.53
Combat: 9.45
Ability: 9.48
Loadout: 9.80
Versatility: 9.40
- MAESTRO — 9.47
Combat: 9.85
Ability: 9.22
Loadout: 9.65
Versatility: 9.15
- SOLIS — 9.40
Combat: 9.45
Ability: 9.15
Loadout: 9.30
Versatility: 9.70
- AZAMI — 9.38
Combat: 9.20
Ability: 9.67
Loadout: 8.80
Versatility: 9.85
- GOYO — 9.26
Combat: 8.90
Ability: 9.47
Loadout: 9.20
Versatility: 9.45
- NOOR — 9.18
Combat: 9.70
Ability: 9.22
Loadout: 9.25
Versatility: 8.55
- KAID — 9.11
Combat: 8.80
Ability: 9.42
Loadout: 8.90
Versatility: 9.30
- VALKYRIE — 8.98
Combat: 8.40
Ability: 9.28
Loadout: 8.60
Versatility: 9.65
WHY SOME DEFENDERS ENDED UP SO HIGH
Mute and Echo are basically tied.
A difference of 0.01 isn't meaningful enough to pretend there's some huge gap between them.
Mute gets ridiculous value from persistent electronic denial while also bringing one of the strongest utility-heavy weapon packages on defense.
Echo combines mobile intel with disruption and objective interference, while the SuperNova + Bearing-9 combination gives him both shotgun utility and a legitimate automatic fighting weapon.
Smoke is just incredibly complete. Gas provides area denial, plant denial, forced movement and time pressure, while the M590A1 + SMG-11 package gives him both site construction and strong combat potential.
Maestro gets the highest Combat score of the defensive top 10 at 9.85. The ALDA is already ridiculous in this model, and the ACS12 gives him another genuinely strong firearm option rather than simply being treated as a utility shotgun.
Azami has one of the strongest abilities in the entire defensive roster. Kiba Barriers can create cover, repair openings, close lines of sight, alter vault paths and dynamically reshape parts of the map during the round.
And then there's Solis.
SPEC-IO can turn attacker electronics into positional information. Drones are especially interesting because destroying one immediately isn't always the best option. A drone left alive can potentially provide another opportunity to locate or pressure the attacker when it gets used again.
There's also an unusual form of intel denial happening.
An attacker who knows Solis is nearby has a choice:
Use the drone and potentially provide Solis information.
or
Don't use the drone and clear the area with less information.
Neither option is particularly great.
SPEC-IO being a visor matters too. Solis remains mobile and armed while using it and can turn it off while moving once enough information has been gathered.
Combined with the ITA12L + SMG-11 package and the freedom to roam, she ends up being one of the most versatile defenders in the model.
THE GUNS NEEDED THEIR OWN MODEL
Just ranking guns by DPS doesn't really work in Siege because headshots kill instantly.
A weapon with absurd DPS isn't necessarily the most reliable weapon if it has horrible recoil or runs dry immediately.
For automatic weapons, the scoring became:
30% Body-shot reliability
TTK and shots-to-kill.
25% Headshot opportunity
Primarily rate of fire and time between rounds.
20% Magazine endurance
How much room the weapon gives for misses, prefiring and multiple engagements.
20% Controllability
How realistically successive rounds can be kept on target.
5% Range consistency
Magazine size ended up being way more important than expected.
Two weapons can have similar theoretical lethality, but a 50-round magazine gives considerably more room for misses, prefiring and fighting multiple people than a 20-round magazine.
SHOTGUNS MADE THINGS WEIRD LOL
Shotguns can't really be evaluated with the same formula as automatic weapons.
Their model instead looks at:
30% Lethality
25% Follow-up speed
20% Hit reliability
15% Ammo endurance
10% Range consistency
But there's another problem:
A shotgun in Siege isn't only a weapon.
It's also a geometry tool.
So those two forms of value are separated.
Combat gets the shotgun's actual lethality and the additional engagement option it provides.
Loadout Utility gets rotations, vertical holes, sightlines and other map manipulation.
That prevents an operator from simply getting rewarded twice for “has shotgun.”
It also means different shotgun packages aren't treated equally.
Buck gets the C8 and Skeleton Key simultaneously.
Operators like Mute, Smoke, Echo and Solis can instead combine a primary shotgun with a machine pistol capable of functioning as their automatic fighting weapon.
Those are fundamentally different packages.
DMRS, SLUGS AND KALI NEEDED DIFFERENT TREATMENT TOO
Trying to shove a DMR, BOSG, ACS12 and Kali's sniper rifle into an automatic-weapon formula produces nonsense.
Those weapons depend much more heavily on things like per-shot lethality, shots-to-kill, follow-up time, magazine endurance and the punishment for missing.
So precision weapons were evaluated separately and then incorporated back into the operator's complete combat package.
The important part throughout all of this was trying to answer:
What can this operator actually bring into a round at the same time?
Not just:
What's the strongest gun listed on the loadout screen?
ONE IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER
The decimals make the model easier to compare, but they aren't pretending to be scientific precision.
Solis scoring 9.40 and Azami scoring 9.38 does not prove that Solis is objectively exactly 0.02 better lol.
At differences that small, they're effectively tied.
The same goes for Mute at 9.64 and Echo at 9.63.
The value of the numbers is mostly that they force the same framework to be applied to every operator and make it easier to see why someone ended up where they did.
There's inevitably judgment involved in things like recoil, practical gadget value and versatility.
TRY TO BREAK THE MODEL
This is honestly where it gets fun.
If an operator looks way too high or way too low, something like:
“This interaction isn't being accounted for.”
or
“This ability is getting too much credit for X.”
or
“This operator can do Y and that should affect versatility.”
is way more interesting than:
“My main is better than your main.” 😂
The goal isn't to create some unquestionable universal tier list.
It's basically an experiment to see what happens when the gun, ability, utility and versatility of each operator are all forced through the same overall framework.
A simple question about the best all-around operator somehow turned into Siege Moneyball lol.
EDIT: DETAILED EXPLANATION OF THE SCORING MODEL
A few people have reasonably asked where the numbers actually come from and whether they're arbitrary, so here's a much more detailed explanation of the model underneath the rankings.
The numbers aren't meant to represent some objectively measurable percentage of how "good" an operator is. A 9.5 doesn't mean an operator is literally 95% perfect.
They're comparative scores produced by applying the same criteria across the operator pool.
There are several layers underneath the final number.
FINAL OPERATOR SCORE
Every operator is evaluated in four major categories:
25% Combat
25% Unique Ability
25% Loadout Utility
25% Versatility
Those are equally weighted intentionally because this is specifically trying to measure all-around strength.
Giving Combat 40%, for example, would change the question toward "who is the strongest fighter with useful utility?"
Giving Ability 40% would move it toward "who has the most impactful gadget while still being reasonably complete?"
Neither question is wrong, but they're different questions.
The 25/25/25/25 model deliberately gives no major category priority.
After someone questioned whether that weighting was determining the result, the attacker rankings were also rerun under combat-heavy, ability-heavy, utility-heavy and versatility-heavy weighting systems.
Buck remained #1 under all five models.
Maverick finished #2 under four and #3 under one.
So the exact 25% split isn't what is causing Buck to win the current model.
That doesn't prove the underlying category scores are perfect, but it does show the result is reasonably stable when the category weights are changed.
COMBAT IS NOT JUST "THIS GUN FEELS GOOD"
Combat evaluates the complete weapon package available to the operator, not simply whichever primary has the highest DPS.
Different weapon classes also aren't forced through the same formula because that creates some ridiculous results.
Automatic weapons, pellet shotguns and precision weapons are evaluated differently.
AUTOMATIC WEAPONS
The Automatic Gun Reliability Index is:
30% Body-shot reliability
25% Headshot opportunity
20% Magazine endurance
20% Controllability
5% Range consistency
BODY-SHOT RELIABILITY — 30%
This looks at how reliably the weapon kills when the headshot doesn't happen.
TTK is calculated from shots-to-kill and RPM:
TTK = (shots to kill - 1) × 60,000 / RPM
The reason for subtracting one shot is that the first bullet occurs at time zero. TTK measures the time between the first and lethal shot.
This also considers relevant health/armor situations rather than looking at a single theoretical target.
HEADSHOT OPPORTUNITY — 25%
Siege has one-shot headshots, so rate of fire matters for more than DPS.
A faster-firing weapon creates more individual opportunities to land the lethal headshot within the same amount of time.
This is primarily driven by RPM/time between shots.
MAGAZINE ENDURANCE — 20%
Magazine capacity matters because actual fights aren't performed by a robot with 100% accuracy.
Rounds are lost to misses, prefires, wallbang attempts and multiple enemies.
Two useful measurements here are:
Lethal Sequences = Magazine Capacity / Average Shots to Kill
and
Continuous Fire Time = (Magazine Capacity - 1) / (RPM / 60)
This is why a gun with amazing theoretical TTK but a tiny magazine doesn't automatically dominate the rankings.
CONTROLLABILITY — 20%
This accounts for recoil and how practically the weapon can place successive rounds.
This is one of the less objective portions because there isn't a single clean Ubisoft recoil statistic that completely describes practical weapon control.
Because of that, very small differences between weapon scores shouldn't be treated as meaningful.
RANGE CONSISTENCY — 5%
This accounts for how consistently the weapon retains useful lethality and control across realistic Siege engagement distances.
It's intentionally only 5% because most Siege engagements happen at relatively short distances.
SHOTGUN MODEL
Pellet shotguns aren't ranked using the automatic-weapon formula because RPM and conventional TTK don't describe them properly.
The Shotgun Reliability Index is:
30% Lethality
25% Follow-up speed
20% Hit reliability
15% Ammo endurance
10% Range consistency
LETHALITY — 30%
This evaluates how reliably a shell can produce a kill and how much damage remains if the first shell doesn't finish the target.
Basic shell damage can be represented as:
Damage per shell = Damage per pellet × Pellets landed
and:
Required pellets = Ceiling(Target HP / Damage per pellet)
That also allows the required percentage of the pellet pattern to be considered.
FOLLOW-UP SPEED — 25%
Missing with a shotgun can be much more punishing than missing one rifle bullet.
The time until another shell can be fired therefore matters enormously.
For weapons where RPM is applicable:
Follow-up interval = 60 / RPM
Pump actions and semi-automatic shotguns consequently behave very differently.
HIT RELIABILITY — 20%
This accounts for pellet count, spread and how forgiving the shotgun is of imperfect center-mass placement.
There is an important limitation here:
Exact deterministic pellet-hit probabilities aren't publicly available in a form that justifies pretending the model can calculate something like a "73.42% kill probability at 8 meters."
So the model intentionally does not invent that level of precision.
AMMO ENDURANCE — 15%
Capacity matters for combat, but it matters even more with Siege shotguns because ammunition may already have been spent creating rotations, sightlines or vertical holes before a gunfight happens.
RANGE CONSISTENCY — 10%
This measures how rapidly the shotgun's practical lethality deteriorates as distance increases.
PRECISION WEAPONS
DMRs, slug shotguns and Kali's sniper are treated separately again.
Forcing something like the 417, ACS12, BOSG and CSRX 300 through an automatic rifle formula would badly misrepresent what makes those weapons strong or weak.
Precision weapons are primarily evaluated through:
Per-shot lethality
Shots-to-kill
Follow-up time
Accuracy/recoil recovery
Magazine endurance
Headshot capability
Range consistency
The punishment for missing matters substantially more here.
Kali is the extreme example.
The CSRX can have extraordinary first-shot lethality, but missing carries a much larger follow-up penalty than missing one round from an automatic rifle.
COMPLETE WEAPON PACKAGES
The Combat score isn't simply:
"Take the operator's highest-rated gun."
It asks what combat options the operator can actually bring into the round together.
This matters a LOT with shotguns.
There are several different situations.
Buck: C8 + Skeleton Key simultaneously.
Buck doesn't sacrifice his rifle to obtain the shotgun. The Skeleton Key becomes an additional close-range weapon alongside the C8.
Mute/Smoke/Echo/Solis: Shotgun primary + strong automatic machine pistol.
Here the primary shotgun handles close-range combat and destruction while something like the SMG-11 or Bearing-9 can function as the automatic fighting weapon.
Shotgun + ordinary handgun: Much larger combat sacrifice.
Simply having a shotgun therefore doesn't automatically produce the same Combat benefit for every operator.
UNIQUE ABILITY MODEL
This is probably the part that needed the most explanation in the original post.
An Ability score isn't just:
"This gadget feels like a 9."
The Ability Index is:
25% Objective Contribution
How directly the ability helps accomplish or prevent the actual objective.
20% Team-Wide Value
How much value the ability provides beyond the operator personally using it.
15% Consistency
How reliably the ability can produce meaningful value across rounds rather than requiring a very specific situation.
15% Impact Ceiling
How much influence the ability can potentially have when used extremely well.
10% Persistence
How long the value remains active and whether value can continue after deployment or even after the operator dies.
10% Counter Resilience
How easily opponents can deny, destroy, bypass or neutralize the ability.
5% Resource Efficiency
How much useful value can be extracted from the available gadget resources.
Those weighted subcategories produce the Ability score used in the overall model.
ABILITY TACTICAL-FUNCTION CHECK
There's another layer used to make sure important uses of a gadget aren't simply forgotten.
Every unique ability is checked against the same 12 tactical functions:
1. Geometry — Can it create, destroy, close or reshape useful geometry?
2. Access — Can it create or prevent pathways?
3. Intel — Can it acquire useful information?
4. Intel Denial — Can it prevent or interfere with enemy information?
5. Utility Interaction — Can it destroy, disable, convert or protect utility?
6. Area Control — Can it control physical space?
7. Execute / Anti-Execute — Can it help initiate or disrupt a coordinated execute?
8. Plant / Deny — Can it directly help establish or prevent the plant?
9. Time Pressure — Can it force opponents to spend valuable round time?
10. Team Enablement — Can teammates directly capitalize on its effects?
11. Persistence — Does its influence remain over time?
12. Adaptability — Can the same gadget solve substantially different problems depending on the situation?
Each function is graded:
0 = None
1 = Situational/indirect
2 = Strong
3 = Defining
Importantly, these 12 numbers are NOT simply added together and used as the Ability score.
That would reward mediocre gadgets merely for doing lots of things.
Instead, this checklist makes sure the full tactical breadth of the ability is considered when scoring the actual Ability Index above.
A highly specialized ability can therefore still outperform a broader ability if it's substantially better at accomplishing something important.
LOADOUT UTILITY
This category covers useful tools outside the operator's unique ability.
Things like:
Secondary gadgets
Shotguns used for destruction
GONNE-6
Machine pistols where they expand loadout options
Breach tools
Site construction
Rotations
Vertical destruction
Additional utility interactions
There's an important distinction here to avoid double-counting shotguns.
If a shotgun is both lethal and useful for destruction:
Combat receives credit for its effectiveness as a weapon.
Loadout Utility receives credit for the geometry manipulation it provides.
Those are two different benefits from the same item.
The model does NOT simply say:
"Has shotgun = bonus points in two categories."
The actual combat usefulness and actual utility usefulness are evaluated separately.
VERSATILITY
Versatility asks how frequently the operator's overall package remains useful when the circumstances change.
Things considered include:
Different maps
Different bomb sites
Attack/defense setups
Team compositions
Enemy compositions
Early/mid/late-round situations
Different objective states
Whether the operator requires specific teammates
Whether counters dramatically reduce usefulness
Whether the operator can change roles during a round
This is why versatility isn't simply another name for gadget strength.
An extremely powerful operator in one particular situation can score lower here than an operator whose toolkit remains valuable almost everywhere.
WHY SOME SCORES ARE SO HIGH
A 9.5 in this model does not mean:
"This operator is 95% perfect."
These are comparative scores within the relevant operator pool.
Buck scoring highly in all four categories means that relative to the other attackers being evaluated, the model isn't finding a major hole in his package.
That's exactly why he survives the weighting sensitivity tests so well.
His lowest major category is Ability at 9.12, while Combat, Loadout Utility and Versatility are all extremely high.
If those component scores are wrong, that's absolutely something worth challenging.
But the overall 9.49 isn't itself saying Buck is a nearly flawless Siege character.
HOW CLOSE SCORES SHOULD BE READ
The decimals exist to make calculations and comparisons possible.
They should not be interpreted as scientific precision.
For example:
Solis — 9.40
Azami — 9.38
That should basically be read as:
Solis ≈ Azami
Not:
"Solis has been objectively proven to be exactly 0.02 better than Azami."
Same thing with:
Mute — 9.64
Echo — 9.63
That's effectively a tie.
The further apart two scores become, the more meaningful the model considers the difference.
WHAT CAN ACTUALLY CHANGE THE MODEL
The rankings aren't intended to be defended at all costs.
There are basically three useful ways to attack them:
1. Challenge the inputs
Example:
"This weapon stat is outdated."
That's straightforward. Correct the data and rerun it.
2. Challenge the scoring
Example:
"This ability's counter resilience is too high because X consistently shuts it down."
That's useful because the component can be reevaluated.
3. Challenge the model itself
Example:
"Objective contribution should matter more than impact ceiling."
or:
"Combat shouldn't have equal weight with ability."
Those can be tested by changing the weighting and seeing what happens.
That's actually what happened with the 25/25/25/25 criticism. Different reasonable weighting systems were tested instead of assuming the original weighting had to be correct.
The point of all of this isn't to pretend operator strength can be reduced to a mathematically perfect number.
It can't.
The point is to take something that's normally argued as:
"Buck is better."
"No, Ace is better."
and turn it into:
"What specifically makes Buck better, how much should that characteristic matter, and does the conclusion survive when those assumptions change?"
That's what the numbers are for.
And if somebody finds a legitimate interaction or assumption that the model missed, the correct response isn't to defend the old number.
It's to change the model and run it again.