VALORANT Map Pool Changes: January 2023

Hey all.

Joe “Pearl Hogbash” Lansford here on behalf of the Maps Team for an update on the next map pool rotation.

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.