Breeze: the new Valorant map
Looking for some fresh air? Riot Games unveils a new map for Valorant: Breeze !
Patch 2.08 will bring a brand new map to Valorant. Far from the icy expanses of Icebox, Agents will now fight on the sunny beaches of the Caribbean islands. This is a map that is very open, even more so than Icebox. It's very much about long distance battles. There are very few obstacles and objects that could be used as cover.
Global architecture
If Icebox was an open map, its architecture was built around 3 parallel lines. Breeze is more like 4 wastelands with many winding and interconnected paths. It will please Sniper players on these spaces, as well as players who like contact and its corridors. Depending on the economy or the strategy of a team, the map should be played in many different ways.
Breeze has two different sites:
The site A is in the middle of a large area, around two small pyramids. The Spike can only be placed in the flooded area below. There are two accesses for the Attackers. The first one is the exit of a large corridor, the second one is a double door which is reminiscent of the one in Dust 2, on Counter-Strike. The Defenders can hide behind the pyramids, but they lose the advantage of height. There is also a small wall, and a stack of crates.
A particularity of Site A, is that it can be reached through a heavy door. Like Ascent's iron curtains, the Breeze door is opened by pressing a switch. However, it's very slow and heavy. You can't shoot through it, it can't be destroyed, and it makes a lot of noise.
The site B is much more closed. The Spike must be placed on an elevated area at the foot of a tower. There are only 3 ways to access the site: directly from the Defender's spawn, after a very small corridor coming from the mid and from different junctions coming from the Attacker's spawn. Once on the site, the confrontations walls offer shelter. On the other hand, there are a large number of small interconnected corridors between Site B, the Attacker's spawn and mid. There's likely to be a lot of chasing around.
Finally, the Mid is the largest area of the map. Like Site B, it is built around a tower and offers few shelters. It's directly connected to both sites. The Defenders benefit from an elevated balcony to watch the passages from one side to the other, but the crates at the foot of the tower offer relative safety to Attackers.
There is a very long corridor between mid and A site. On one side of the corridor, you can fall back to middle through a one-way hatch (Sova's arrows and various drones can also pass through the hatch). At the end of the corridor is the armoured door leading to site A. Otherwise, it's just a very long corridor which, if not offering any shelter, has no windows. It can therefore be crossed without the knowledge of all the players who are not inside.
How do you play on Breeze?
Good question! The areas are open, but full of very interesting angle holdings. Such large areas allow teams to use their imagination in the use of their abilities.
Indeed, it will be necessary to use smoke or walls to progress from one area to another without danger. In this respect, one can imagine that the most creative players of Sage and Viper will be able to have a great time. The rest of the time, Sova's arrows, Killjoy's turret or Cypher's camera will keep an eye on the comings and goings of their opponents.
In the end, it's the rotations that will be the most complicated. The two sites are very far from each other and at this little game, only the defenders have almost direct access from one point of the map to the other.
Breeze will be available from Wednesday 28th April, but most influencers have exclusive access to the map for just over 24 hours. Feel free to check out on Twitch to see the map in-game.
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