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Valorant Pros Talk Bringing Split Back to the Map Pool

By Ralston Dacanay

What's the main thing you would want to see changed with Split before it returns to the map pool?
What's the main thing you would want to see changed with Split before it returns to the map pool? / Riot Games

It's been over three months since Split was removed from the tournament, Competitive and Unrated map pools in Valorant.

At the start of Valorant Episode 5 Act 1, Riot Games revealed its decision to remove Split from queues — one that didn't have all that much to do with the Tokyo-based map itself. The main reason Riot Games decided to remove Split from full-length settings is that it wanted to preserve its 7-map pool for tournament best-of-5s while adding Pearl into the mix.

As such, because of factors that was said to have included player sentiment, time since release, past and future planned updates, what the map brings in terms of strategic variance, as well as where Pearl fits into all of it, Riot landed on Split. Though it did also added that it is "pretty sure it will be back sometime in the future" and "even with some tweaks."

DBLTAP spoke with several of the game's best players from OpTic Gaming, FunPlus Phoenix and 100 Thieves during the Valorant Champions 2022 group stage to get their thoughts on a simple question: What's the main thing you would want to see changed with Split before it returns to the map pool? Here's what we found.

As a Cypher main himself, FPX Dmitry "SUYGETSU" Ilyushin revealed that the removal of Split especially didn't sit right with him, and there were other maps that should've gotten the boot instead.

"To be honest, Split is my favorite map because I'm playing Cypher," SUYGETSU told DBLTAP. "I had too many cameras, I had because Split was deleted, so I'm not sure that Split should like [have a] rework. It wasn't like, [a] ‘top one map we should rework.’ I saw this like more with Bind or Icebox. More talking about Icebox, because it's [a] map where you're going to one site after going to the other site and you don't know what to do. It's more [of a] rotating map so no one loves this map. About Split, I [wouldn’t] change anything, to be honest."

Similarly enough, 100T William "Will" Cheng felt the same about Icebox, going as far as to say that he hates that map "with a passion" because "it's so boring."

In terms of what he'd like to see with Split, Will mentioned that another route from the B Garage area could be something positive.

"Honestly, I really liked Split," Will said. "Maybe the only thing they could really rework is maybe B. Maybe adding like an extra entrance for attackers to be able to attack from, but I don't know. That might make it a little too attack-sided."

Lastly, OpTic Jimmy "Marved" Nguyen explained how he'd to see a lot of the rat spots removed Split, especially as someone who prefers the "more regular maps," unlike Fracture.

"The mid is really weird," Marved said. "The choke points are very small in general, maybe they can change it up a bit, make it a little wider, change the sites up a little bit. I mean all maps in general, the sites are pretty small except for the A site on Split, which I kind of like, but there’s not really a lot of places to play on the site so I just hope they add more things that you can hide behind. Things like that."

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