Rainbow Six Siege Tier List: Best Attackers & Defenders, Ranked

The operators your team runs can win or lose a round in Rainbow Six Siege. This means having the best attackers and defenders in Siege on your roster can prepare you to carry any team you need. Of course, it can be hard to tell at a glance which operators are good and which need a few more buffs to be viable. Let’s go over the best attackers and defenders available in Rainbow Six Siege.

Best Attackers in Rainbow Six Siege

Let’s first go over the best attackers in Siege. Their goal is to get inside the building and either complete their objective or kill all the defenders lying in wait for them. Normally, the object of a Siege game is to defuse one of two bombs which involves planting a defuser on a site and defending it for a set amount of time. With those goals in mind here are some of the best attackers.

Ash

Ashe is a staple character from the original roster of Rainbow Six Siege and a name that any siege player knows well. Ashe is great for a rushing play style, with the advantage of catching the defenders before they even manage to set up and kill them all before they can tell what is happening.

Ash does this by being in the three-speed category of operators and having the ability to blow up a non-reinforced wall and rush through as soon as it explodes. If you can perfect your aim and reaction time, Ash is a great attacker to have. Since she is part of the original cast of operators, you won’t need to break the renowned bank. Instead, take advantage of quick renowned farming methods to get her like you would with other operators.

Thatcher

Thatcher has had the highest ban rate of all attackers for the last few seasons and it is well warranted. While he might not be the champion of fragging like Ash is, he is unparalleled in team play. His EMP grenades will destroy or disable any electronic gadgets within their explosion radius and clear up a push for your team.

Need a gadget removed from a reinforced wall? You could either try to find an angle to shoot the gadget out or throw an EMP grenade at the wall and get rid of it. His EMP grenades can even disable the sights and lasers on enemy weapons for a short amount of time, which might not do much but it could prevent them from hitting your teammates right in the head with their first shot.

Jackel

Jackel is the bane of any roaming defender. If you step on the ground as a defender, Jackel will be able to track you from where you were up to 90 seconds prior. While he only gives a few pings and then leaves you alone, it can easily ruin a roamer’s flank or catch out a lurking defender. The only operators that can prevent his tracking ability are Caviera with her Silent Step or Mute with his Jammers.

He is so oppressive that he is the most banner operator right after Thatcher. Not only does he mess with defenders off-site but he can even push a defender in cover on-site out of it by pinging them. No one wants to stay in the same spot when everyone knows they are there. Staying in a spot that attackers know you are in will either get you a well-cooked grenade or pre-fired.

Iana

Drones are an attacker’s lifeblood. They allow attackers to safely scout out an area without risking getting shot themselves. However, an attacker only has two drones and if you miss seeing a defender with the drone you might never know they are there. That’s where Iana comes in.

She can send out a holographic replica of herself that can move freely for about 20 seconds that looks and moves just like her. This is a great scouting tool and it can bait out defenders as they will always want to shoot her clone just in case it is the real deal. The best part is that the clone is only on a cooldown even if it gets destroyed so you can do this infinitely until you are sure that it is safe to push in.

Zofia

Zofia is the closest definition of a one-man army operator that you will get in Rainbow Six Siege. She has it all: a decent gadget, decent stats, and a decent weapon. While nothing about her is outstanding, she can work well in almost any situation.

If you need to push into a site quickly, you can fire your stun grenades to disorient the enemies and push in fast. She can quickly open up holes in un-reinforced walls with her grenade launcher. She can even frag well if you put the best attachments on her weapon. If you don’t know what you need in a round, you can always safely pick Zofia and know that you can do well with her.

Best Defenders in Rainbow Six Siege

Looking at the Defender’s side of the roster, you have a few choices. A defender’s goal in the game is to kill all the attackers or wait out the round clock by delaying the attackers as much as possible. Defenders want to set up in spots and hold them down rather than slowly pushing and clearing and this can be seen with some of the better defender operators.

Valkyrie

Valkyrie’s gadgets make her a great addition to any team that communicates with each other. Her ability to place extra cameras around the map in places attackers might not check is perfect for letting the defenders know what the attackers are doing, encouraging your team to play around them. Throwing her cameras into small gaps in objects will make them much harder to spot as the attacker need to watch where they are pushing more than clearing every nook and cranny of the map for cameras.

This is where team communication comes in. Just having a defender sit on cameras and tell other defender information provides a huge bonus to the team. Telling someone when an attacker is about to swing a door gives them the best chance of winning a fight. You can combine her cameras with her Nitro Cell to set up sneak traps for the attackers to walk into as well.

Maestro

While Maestro’s cameras might not be as sneaky as Valkyrie’s cameras, they are much more useful in a different way. His bulletproof cameras allow you to place them in plain view of the attackers and they can’t do much about it. They could waste resources destroying them or they can wait for you to open the lens to zap them and try to shoot them. Other than that, there isn’t much that can be done about them.

These Evil Eyes are much more useful for being placed in wide sightlines either in a site or in an area attackers will gather in. That way you can provide plenty of intel to your team and distract the attackers with a zap while a teammate peeks at the attacker to claim the kill. While you won’t be getting many kills with the Evil Eyes themselves, you will get plenty of assist points for your zaps.

Mute

With all the buffs Mute has received over the years, he is a formidable defender to go up against. What started as an operator with drone denial has slowly been buffed to being one of the best operators to counter attacker gadgets in the game. His Jammers can block most tracking effects as well as any other electronic gadget the attackers might throw toward you.

The only thing you have to fear as Mute is what Thatcher is going to do with his EMP grenades as they can easily remove your Jammers. However, there has been talk about changing Thatcher’s gadget and when they do, Mute will become even stronger than he already is.

Melusi

Melusi’s gadget was a terror for attackers when she was first released. So much so that if an attacker saw a Melusi Banhee the way they were pushing, they would turn around and find another way. Not only does her gadget slow down attackers and disorient them if they try to shoot, but it also provides an audio queue to let you know someone is within range of the Banshee so that you can peek and kill.

While her gadget is now much more vulnerable to being destroyed, it is still very useful in knowing when an attacker is pushing from a specific direction. With that information, you can set up to try to win the peek battle with them or get aggressive and try to push them and catch them off guard.

Azami

Azami is one of the better duelist defenders in Rainbow Six Siege. She has a decent set of weapons that can help you easily win most aim battles and she can set up any aim battle to be on her terms. At the start of a round, you will have three throwable Kiba knives and you will slowly gain more as the round progresses. Throwing a knife will expand out a bulletproof barricade that needs to be meleed or blown up to be destroyed.

While you could use this to block off windows and doors, those will quickly be taken down leaving that to be your last resort option. The strength of her gadget is from letting you set up sneaky angles to peek attackers through or give yourself cover whenever you need it. Combine this with her SMG being one of the easiest to control in the game and you have quite the gunfighter here.

The best operators in the PC and console versions of Siege vary greatly from the best operators in Rainbow Six Siege mobile. It should also be noted that every season many operators are receiving buffs and nerfs that can either bring them into or out of the meta. Just because your favorite operator is not the best in the game at the moment doesn’t mean that they can’t be the best next season.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC.