Riot’s rumored VALORANT Episode 8 map shuffle is leaving the community dumbfounded

VALORANT’s maps play a huge role in shaping its meta, but not all maps are created the same. Players tend to have preferences, so when recent leaks teased Riot’s potential plan to remove Haven over Ascent from rotation in Episode Eight, the crowd naturally didn’t take it well.

On Dec. 28, prominent VALORANT leaker ValorLeaks revealed a possibility that in Episode Eight, Riot might remove Haven to accommodate Icebox in the competitive map rotation. “This can change in an instant,” they stressed in a follow-up tweet. But that wasn’t enough to stop the community-wide stir.

While most of the community was ecstatic about Icebox’s return, VALORANT players, including esports athletes, couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that Haven might be removed for it—when Ascent should have been the clear choice for removal, in their eyes. 

“Anyone that plays this video game understands how boring and one dimensional Ascent is,” a tweet from Alexander “Zander” Dituri—former IGL for M80’s VALORANT team—reads.

Expectedly, almost every player in the community echoed Zander’s opinion. “Please keep Haven and take out that shitty, mirror comp piece of one dimensional ass cheeks of a map Ascent right now,” NAVI content creator SoMarcus’ tweet, among several other anti-Ascent tweets and Reddit comments, reads.

Launched in Episode One, Act One, Ascent is an iconic map, best known for its paper-thin structures and for popularizing the Sova-Odin meta. It isn’t exactly a bad map, in my opinion, but it has been nurturing a stale meta, which definitely calls for a rework. In esports, players are tired of seeing the same old team composition—Jett, Sova, KAY/O, Omen, and Killjoy—on Ascent. While some teams do experiment with Viper, Harbor, Astra, Reyna, and Skye, most pro-Ascent games in recent times have been recording mirror comps and predictable styles. The map needs to take a turn toward interesting if Riot wants players to keep enjoying it.

Haven, on the other hand, is a much more balanced VALORANT map than Ascent, although I believe a little rework couldn’t hurt. I’m not a fan of Haven’s A Short and B site, but I’m a bigger critic of Ascent’s overly defender-favoring, paper-thin features. Haven is a popular map among esports teams and has hosted some of the most riveting professional VCT matchups we’ve seen so far, while Ascent is just… boring—unless it’s Paper Rex with their quirky comps. It’s a no-brainer that a decision to rework Ascent first would have been better. 

Riot is yet to confirm the map rotation changes in VALORANT’s Episode Eight, so there’s still a faint chance for the leak to be wrong—you might want to take the leak with a grain of salt for now.