Rainbow Six Siege’s new defender has a gadget that can heal and revive

Rainbow Six Siege has introduced a new type of healer to the meta.

Over the weekend, Ubisoft officially revealed Thunderbird, the new operator coming to Rainbow Six Siege with Year 6 Season 2. Thunderbird is a defender from the Nakoda nation (North American First Nation), and she’s the main component of the new operation, dubbed North Star.

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Thunderbird’s main gadget is the Kona Healing Station, which heals not just allies, but enemies as well, so long as they’re close to the device. Healing is similar to Doc’s pistol, meaning it could potentially act as an overshield that dissipates overtime. The Kona Healing Station has to recharge after every shot, and can be picked up and redeployed by Thunderbird.

More interestingly, the Kona Station can actually revive DBNO players. A downed player would have to manually trigger this process by crawling close to the station.

Thunderbird herself is a a high-speed, low-armour operator who has the choice of the Spear .308 assault rifle or SPAS-15 shotgun as a primary weapon, and the Bearing 9 or Q-929 as a secondary.

As with every new Siege operation, North Star also introduces a new map rework, this time for Favela. The reimagined map should be easier for players to memorise, thanks to navigation and layout updates.

All of this arrives tomorrow on Siege’s test servers, alongside a few other gameplay updates. Those include the new armour system, which converts armour into traditional HP. Players will also be able to test another major change coming with North Star, and it’s the ability for dead players to use gadgets. This means attackers can continue using their drones, while some defenders will be able to operate their gadgets after death.