Buck is one of the most popular operators in Siege. Seen as almost identical to Sledge, the Canadian had a near identical kit. A strong gun, a primary gadget for soft breach, and the all important frag grenades. For most of Siege’s lifespan this was the loadout for both soft breach ops. Both Sledge and Buck were in such good places balance-wise that they almost never got touched, save for Sledge losing the SMG-11. They filled an important role in teams but were essentially interchangeable, so picking a Buck or Sledge became a matter of preference more than anything else. Unfortunately for Buck, in 2020 Ubisoft forcibly tried to differentiate the two soft breach ops. Buck lost his frags, first for claymores and then for hard breach charges, and he lost his ACOG for a 1.5x scope. These changes made Buck take a massive hit in popularity especially because Sledge wasn’t changed in the slightest. Now, almost 2 years later Buck is finally in a good place.
The biggest issue Buck had was that in almost every use case that he was needed, Sledge was better. Both ops excelled at applying vertical pressure. The only situations Buck was preferable was for opening lines of sight at a slight distance or applying vertical pressure from below. But opportunities where applying pressure from below was more effective were few and far between. On top of that, the allure of frag grenades cannot be understated, even before the purge from the last update. Only having access to claymores or flashbangs meant that Buck didn’t have steller secondary utility that was more worthwhile than Sledge’s frags. Claymores are essentially filler gadgets when Ubisoft doesn’t want to give an op powerful utility and flashbangs are good, but not necessary on your vertical op. Add in that the Buck couldn’t clear any of the destructible utility himself and this made him nothing more than a worse version of Sledge in almost every possible situation. AT BEST he was as good of an option as Sledge. In the end, Ubisoft’s aggressive changes to Buck’s kit made it so that he wasn’t good enough to be used over Sledge, who had access to better optics, better secondary utility, and a similar primary gadget.
Coming back to the present, things have changed for the better. In his current iteration, Buck still applies that vertical pressure with the Skeleton Key but also uses his wealth of secondary utility to fit whatever needs the Attack has. Having gained a Gonne-6 and hard breach charges, Buck went from being the poor man’s Sledge to a viable operator in his own right. Sledge may have those all too valuable frag grenades but Buck is much more flexible. The choice between flashbangs and hard breach charges lets him adjust to the Defense without completely changing operators and the most recent addition of that Gonne-6 gives Buck some much needed utility clear. Add in that Sledge lost the ACOG scope and all of a sudden neither soft breach is better, just different. Before Sledge was the clear favorite simply because of how many options he presented. Optics-wise he offered a greater variety from the ACOG to the 1.5x, whereas Buck only had the 1.5x. Secondary utility wise the frag grenades were simply too valuable, and now he has other value with the secondary EMPs. However, the choice between Sledge’s secondary utility and Buck’s is no longer cut and dry as it used to be. Now teams have a real choice between the two operators whereas not taking Sledge was actively throwing the game 9/10 times.
Given the prominence of Iana and Nøkk, 2 of the 4 ops with frag grenades, Attackers aren’t forced to run Sledge for explosives and in certain situations Buck is preferable because of his utility clear. This also creates room for personal preference to come into play for players as well. Both the C8-SFW and L85A2 are undeniably good guns, but they are very different from each other. Players now have a real choice between the two that isn’t heavily affected by optics and clear advantages in utility. Seeing as how Buck has finally made it back into the competitive meta to some degree, it’s safe to say that Buck is finally in a good place again and damn is it good to see.