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Joe “Pearl Hogbash” Lansford from Riot Games took to their blog to bring some both exciting and disappointing news to the Valorant community. The big fun announcement is that the community will be receiving a new map rotation in January, which plans to bring back a fan-favorite map — Split.
The disappointing news is that we have to lose two maps for some time. The maps that will be getting switched out are Bind and Breeze. This is part of Riot Games’ ideology of keeping the game fresh by swapping in and out maps. This allows players to not get too overwhelmed and really get focused and learn the maps that are in season. This is a smart move, to be honest, but it is always sad to see a map leave, however, the good news is that it’s not forever. These maps will continuously be rotating, so for the time being let’s get hyped for Split’s return.
The blog post goes into more detail discussing the changes they made, why they chose Bind and Breeze, and much more. Check out the full blog post which details the reason behind the map rotation down below:
Last year, when we announced the temporary removal of Split, we went over our decision to maintain a 7-map pool at all times in the Unrated and Competitive queues. You can read a detailed description of our thought process in that article, but TL;DR too many maps to learn can feel overwhelming and doesn’t give some of you the opportunity to really go deep on any one of them.
SUMMARY
- Next map rotation starts in early January with Patch 6.0
- Split will return—with a few changes!
- We will detail those in Patch Notes 6.0
- Breeze and Bind will exit the map pool in Competitive and Unrated queues—no date set for their return
- Breeze/Bind available in Spike Rush, custom games, and other game modes
WHY BIND AND BREEZE?
Again, if you want to know why these maps instead of others, we talked a lot about the thought process for our map pools in the article linked above. Please take a look there for our broad approach if you need a refresher.
To begin, Split is back! We know a lot of you were sad to see this one go, so we’re very happy to bring this back to you all (with a few updates as well…) Not a lot to add here really. Lots of you wanted it back and it makes sense with the other pool shifts. We’re looking forward to seeing how everyone plays the map with all the new Agents and meta shifts that have happened since Split left the rotation.
For Breeze, we feel like this map has some room to improve in terms of Agents and team comp diversity, as well as some opportunities for simplification of the space. And for Bind, it’s mostly about strategic diversity. We’d like to open up more play around the teleporters and potentially rethink how teams execute, and defend against executes, on both sites.
We know some of you will be disappointed with these rotations but just like Split, these maps won’t be gone forever.
Riot Games went into detail yesterday stating that the team is currently looking into nerfing Chamber yet once again. The list of changes of been posted looks pretty significant. His specials have been slightly altered, the damage has lowered, and general stats have been balanced out. Hopefully, this fixes the issues for the community as it is very annoying to have an overpowered character. Make sure to check out the full list of patch notes coming to Chamber’s nerf right here!
In related Valorant news, there are rumors circulating that the hit shooter title might be making its way to consoles soon. There have been some job postings at Riot that have us believing that the epic hero first-person shooter title is coming our way. However, take the news with a grain of salt as there is no hard confirmation if it will or not. Learn more about the speculation rumors for Valorant coming to consoles right here!
Valorant is currently available to download for free on PC. How do you feel about the sudden changes coming for Chamber? Let us know your thoughts down below!
