Breeze was reintroduced into the competitive map pool, and among the ton of changes that were introduced, Hallsl at A site was completely closed off. Now, in the 8.01 update, the developers have decided to revoke that change and open Halls, resulting in a massive meta change for Breeze. Let’s dive further into this change and prepare ourselves with the best strategies to deal with this new change.
Why the changes?
From what I understand, Riot wanted minimum action in the tunnels and to use more of the other places on the map, especially B site. But clearly, this change completely altered the way A-site was played and almost removed the A-site lurk meta. With changes to the mid-section as well, rotations and lurks almost took forever, and reopening the halls section was one way to deal with it. With both ends now connected, players from both sides now have to make sure they get information from halls as well.
The Halls Defender Meta.
Opening the halls section of the map now requires a sentinel agent to commit to A-site. You could straight up use a Sage or a Cypher wall at the start of the round to completely block off access to the doors. Unlike the two agents per site and one watching the mid-section, now you have to watch mid and halls with equal importance. It’s ideal to stick to watching the mid-section and leave halls monitored with some kind of utilities like trip wires, alarm bots, or even a turret.
With well-positioned smokes, defenders can now sneak their way into the back of A-main, constantly being a flank threat. Also, when players have to back off and play for a retake, getting early control of the halls allows for a much smoother retake by pinching the enemies from multiple sides.
Attacking Strategies
For attack, showing presence in the halls is where the new tactic lies. Smoking off critical parts of halls forces the defenders to constantly stack and watch doors. This gives a ton of opportunities for the attackers to make plays. Fakes and lurks are what the changes to halls is all about.
You could smoke the middle of the halls at the very start, make some noise, and completely fake your way into B-site. Or you could go the other way around and show presence at B-site while someone lurks all the way up halls into the defenders’ spawn. Timing plays a critical part when trying to scale up. If defenders are straight up using utilities to watch halls , players would have to wait it out or ensure to attack that space aggressively with multiple players rather than the regular lurk meta.
Controller Agents are Key
To deal with certain utilities like alarm bots and turrets, smokers have to time their smokes perfectly to help the agent trying to scale up halls . Just smoking doors the right way would straight up force agents to give up halls and play site. While controllers might not be the best agents to lurk, their involvement in helping a lurk agent scale up is very crucial.
When you fight in this space, be ready to deal with the new generation of outlaw players. The long stretch in halls was always considered an AWPer’s paradise. The long halls always rewarded scoped weapons well, and with the newly introduced outlaw, it is going to dominate this section of the map. I wouldn’t be surprised to see players trying to hold the whole mid and halls with just the outlaw.
I’m pretty stoked about this new change personally; the opportunity for lurks in a huge map like Breeze is once again going to be game-changing.
