Its safe to say that Grim is the weakest operator in all of Siege. From his gadget to his utility, his underwhelming weapon selection, all of it contributes to make the least desirable operator in the Attacking roster. I have a basic model of how I view operator balance, a 2×2 grid that takes gadget strength and kit strength into account. Grim looks sad in it.
Ideally the strongest gadgets are limited by weak utility and guns while the weakest gadgets have stronger kits. This creates a balance between primary gadgets and the rest of an op’s kit. If we put Alibi on here, we’ll see that the strength of her kit, including the guns and utility, balances out her rather weak primary gadget.
Prismas are not all that useful. They have very little impact on the overall round and that’s OK. Alibi’s value comes from being a 3 speed with a great gun, a secondary shotgun, and very useful secondary gadgets. I’m glossing over the AA12 shotgun but rest assured, like every other shotgun I think it’s viable. This creates a powerful but not broken operator that has a strong kit to compensate for a weak gadget.
Grim has nothing going for him. But nothing constructive comes from generalizing and refusing to show work, so let’s go into specifics.
Gadget:
The start of Grim’s troubles is the Hive Launcher. It’s a very weak gadget. It had an unclear purpose, trying to be a hybrid between a flankwatch and execute gadget, and this made Ubisoft play it very safe with its power level. I prefer the devs playing it safe to releasing blatantly overpowered operators, but that also means when they miss the new op really suffers.
To briefly summarize, the Hive Launcher is a gadget which Grim equips instead of his gun. It takes around 1 second to equip and has 5 Hives. The Hives release a swarm of bees in a small area. Any Defenders in this area will be live pinged for a short period of time. The Hives have a short delay between being fired and activating and are bullet proof, but not explosive proof.
By trying to be both a flank watch gadget and useful for executes, the Hive Launcher accomplishes neither. The duration and effect of the bees is too little to meaningfully protect flank and the nature of the gadget makes it too dangerous and too weak to be used over other execute utility.
By being a temporary presence, the bees do not give the same safety that other flankwatch operators like Nomad and Gridlock provide. On top of that compared to the other gadgets, the Hive Launcher doesn’t do much to dissuade Defenders from continuing the flank. Airjabs knock Defenders prone and Trax Stingers deal damage, both provide very loud audio cues and put the Defenders in a state of disadvantage for attempting to flank. Grim doesn’t do any of that.
The Hive Launcher only provides the live position of the defender. That alone isn’t enough to stop Defenders from flanking, assuming you timed shooting the Hive right in the first place. There’s plenty of aggressive players who will ignore getting live pinged to keep flanking. It’s simply not enough of a disadvantage compared to other flankwatch ops. If the intent is to have Grim be a flankwatch op, he needs something more permanent and significant than live info alone to disincentivize flanks.
As utility for clearing out Defender power positions and cutting off rotations, the Hive Launcher is lacking. To start, the area the bees affect is too small to fully cover many parts of maps that may have been meant to be cleared.
Beyond the AoE being so small, using the gadget is extremely dangerous. Grim has to pull out the gadget, a long process that feels even longer in game, and then peek into the room he wants to clear. He has to peek into the angles he’s trying to clear with utility without his gun. I cannot understate how dangerous this is for Grim. It’s a massive risk and guaranteed death if the Defender gets aggressive and peeks. It’s better for Grim to take the heads up gunfight at a slight disadvantage over trying to use his utility.
The Hives are also bigger than you think, meaning you have to peek out that extra half inch to avoid unintentionally hitting nearby walls with it. Ops like Zofia have ways to clear out ops without peeking the dangerous angles. In her case she bounces the concussion mine off a wall. Grim has no such luxury, and makes him extremely reliant on coordination with teammates to simply not die while using his gadget. Thermite is probably the only other Attacker as vulnerable while using his gadget but also gets much more value out of that risk. Opening a reinforced wall is > kind of clearing a small area of the map.
Gun:
The 552 is a good gun. It’s one of my favorites. That said, it’s a middle of the pack weapon. The issue comes from the fact that Grim has no high powered optics to go with the gun and no alternatives. To put it in perspective:
Grim is the only Attacker to not have access to a 1.5x scope.
Sure, Ash and Iana have the R4C and ARX respectively. But in both cases the ops have access to the G36C which does have the 1.5x. This gives players a choice when playing these ops, the better gun or the better optic. There is no choice with Grim.
Grim won’t even be played for his guns. IQ also has the 552 but with a 1.5x and a more useful gadget.
Secondary Utility:
Grim has the weakest secondary utility in the game. Breach charges and Claymores are the default “we don’t want an overtuned op” utility. Grim has nothing going for him so this is an unnecessary precaution.
It’s understandable why Ubisoft is hesitant to give Grim any type of grenade, the Hive Launcher is already 5 pieces of utility burn, but that still leaves utility like the Gonne-6 and the hard breach charges.
By having no notable secondary utility at all, Grim literally provides no value to his team because his gadget is so underwhelming and he fails to make up for it in weaponry or secondary utility. He is a poor pick from whatever perspective you take: gadget, gun, or util.
My Fix:
If I had the keys to the castle and could change Grim to be more useful here’s what I’d do:
Gadget:
- Increase the AoE of the bees. This is the first and most necessary change Grim needs. The bees simply don’t cover enough space unless you really commit to peeking dangerous angles. Even then, that has you face peeking part of the room you’re trying to clear with utility. Putting the cart before the horse and all that. This doesn’t have to be a huge buff to the AoE either, just a foot or two would be enough to make the Hive Launcher drastically more effective.
- Speed up the gadget. Grim cannot act off his own gadget because taking out the Hive Launcher takes too long. Speed up how quickly he equips the launcher or make it an underbarrel launcher like Buck’s shotgun. Something so the guy isn’t so dependant on others to give his gadget value.
- Crazy Option: Enable a toggle for the Hives to go through walls or bounce. This way Grim players can use map knowledge to safely fire the bees into important parts of the map without peeking into them. Zero can shoot his cams through soft walls and Zofia/Tachanka can rebound their gadget off walls. Give Grim the ability to toggle that kind of ability and he becomes much more safe while using the gadget.
Gun:
- Just give it a 1.5x at least.
- You can give more powerful optics like the 2x or 2.5x, but at the very least a 1.5x is mandatory.
Secondary Utility
- Being conservative: a Gonne-6
- Less conservative: Hardbreach charge
- Hardbreach + Gonne-6
- Getting crazy: Smoke/EMP grenades
- Crazy: Flashbangs or Frags
If Grim does get frag grenades, that will have to come with the understanding that having such a rare piece of utility will drive his pickrate up because of the frags and frags alone. Given how data driven balancing the developers are, this has to be understood lest we get wild balance changes because of Grim’s “improved” pickrate.