Valorant Will Remove Breeze and Bind From Map Rotation, Split Shall Return

The Valorant Maps team posted an update about the next map pool rotation which will coincide with Patch 6.0 in January. Last year, Split was removed from Unrated and Competitive and it is finally set to make a return. Valorant developers implemented a 7-map policy in the past for Unrated and Competitive game modes which means Breeze and Bind will be removed from the map pool. Players can still play them in Spike Rush, custom games, and other game modes.

Why Bind and Breeze are being removed

Riot Games feels that Breeze 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 and the developers want to open up more play around teleporters and rethink executions on both sites.

Riot Games feels that learning new maps can be one of the toughest aspects of a tactical shooter and having a fixed number of maps in the pool can help players not feel overwhelmed with new maps coming out every few months.

Split was removed from the map rotation from competitive and unrated queues during Patch 5.0 (22nd June) and it is finally coming back. Here is a quick summary of all the changes that are going to happen in patch 6.0: 

• Next map rotation starts in early January with Patch 6.0

• Split will return with a few changes that will be detailed in the 6.0 patch notes

• Breeze and Bind will exit the map pool in Competitive and Unrated queues—no date set for their return

• Breeze/Bind will be available in Spike Rush, custom games, and other game modes

Joe “Pearl Hogbash” Lansford of the maps teams revealed that, “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.”

“We know some of you will be disappointed with these rotations but just like Split, these maps won’t be gone forever”, he added.