Why do you guys hate icebox? Personally i love it very much as well as ascent. Haven and breeze are the worst map imo
Icebox was fun. There's a lot of creativity potential with the agents, but the meta loves to shoehorn Viper.
Haven gets very depressing to play. It's more repetitive than Icebox, and there's barely any creativity potential.
I would rather play any other map in the pool than Haven 3 or 4 games a night.
only reason why you say haven is stale is because its been out since beta and everyone plays it constantly so you have less potential to be tricky, but its still a relatively even map in terms of attack and defense and there is still a variety of agents that work on the map. it is also simply the most well designed map in the game
I honestly feel it's good to play Icebox in ranked because obviously 5 A 5 B. But even in pro scene things were shaking in Icebox as we are seeing more Harbor Gekko and some new stuff going on. Ascent on the other hand is just damn boring same agents same boring meta nothing's changed. So I would prefer Ascent going first but I understand why Icebox is hated and it's going out
A site has 10 different off angles on defender site with different elevation and distance that you have to attempt to clear if you want to get onto site. The entire site is cramped so flashes are less effective to clear the site, and so you're guaranteed to get peeked by at least two people the moment you try to push, it requires no intelligence, just aim diff.
Mid to b is almost impossible to take without getting lucky or a really good read.
B main is a long ass bottleneck where Jett or Raze or even omen can hold one of 5 off angles with an awp and be able to peek your team at least twice, and that's not to mention the 5 hiding spots that a viper with a shotgun can camp and that you have to waste half your team's utility to clear while avoiding the previously mentioned awp yellow. If you somehow manage to plant bomb, you have to pray to God your team has a harbor or sage or that someone isn't camping heaven the moment you start planting.
All rotates are slow as fuck and you can't ever get a good timing, especially if their sage walls off kitchen and or they have a kj with a shotgun perma holding tube.
There's no viable strategy other than to take aim duels, on both sides, and win. Its the map with the least strategy in the game--its that way in pro play too.