Breeze, the Map Americas Played Most, Drops Out of the Pool, While Its Replacement Abyss Has Been Played on Just 5 Maps Worldwide — Recounting Stage 2's 528 Maps

The four regions' Stage 2 totaled 528 maps

Each event page on VLR.gg shows how many times each map was played at that event. Adding up the four regions gives 528 maps. Pulling out just the two maps that were swapped gives the following.

Breeze accounts for 65 of the 528 maps, or 12.3%. Abyss accounts for 5 maps, or 0.9%. With a seven-map rotation in use, Stage 2 is drawing to a close with one of them at 12% and the other under 1%.

Reliance on Breeze varies by more than sixfold between regions

Americas is the only region where Breeze is the most-played map. Close to one in four games was played on Breeze, a heavier skew than the most-played map in any of the other three regions. In EMEA, by contrast, it sits at 3.7%, tied with Abyss for the fewest. Even under the same name, Stage 2, the ground each region was fighting on was quite different.

The only Abyss on record is 5 maps in EMEA

Patch 13.04 landed on August 18. At that point Stage 2 in China and Americas was still running, and EMEA was midway through its playoffs. All 5 Abyss maps come from EMEA, and there is not a single one in the other three regions.

At the same time, Breeze has continued to be played in official matches after the patch. The China Stage 2 grand final on August 23 ran four maps — Lotus, Split, Breeze and Summit — with Breeze as the third map. On the same day, Abyss was played in EMEA. The map pools on the event side did not switch over at the same moment as the patch.

There are four weeks until Champions Shanghai

Champions Shanghai starts on September 24 and runs to October 19, with 16 teams and a $2.25 million prize pool. If the post-13.04 rotation is applied as is, the teams there will bring in Abyss, on which only 5 maps of official-match experience have accumulated, and drop Breeze, on which 65 maps have.

The region hit hardest is Americas. The map it played most in Stage 2 disappears entirely, and in its place comes a map on which it has 0 official-match experience. EMEA, conversely, becomes the only region holding live data on Abyss, even if it is only 5 maps.

That said, which map pool Champions Shanghai will use could not be confirmed as of this article. The above assumes the post-13.04 rotation is used as is.

On the counting method

The figures use the per-map play counts shown on the agents page of each event on VLR.gg. In all four regions, the sum of the per-map counts matches the total map count on the same page (EMEA 134 / Americas 112 / Pacific 120 / China 162). Shares were calculated by dividing the play count by the total number of maps.

Note that the per-agent counts on that same page returned 120 for every agent in Pacific this time — the same as the total map count — and were not in a usable state as values. This article therefore uses only the per-map totals.