Looking at Lotus - One Month Later

First Impressions - Two days after release

My first impression of this map was that it was huge. I thought it would be a mix of Pearl and Haven, with lots of areas to cover and three sites to keep track of. The more I played, I realized that the map wasn’t as big as I initially thought. This at least meant that rotations would be quick.

I played Lotus for two days when the patch first came out, and I didn't really care for it. I had no idea what agent to play every time I was forced to play it. I constantly felt like I couldn't do anything no matter which side of the map I was on. This was the only map where I felt I forget how to play the game.

Attacking

I felt like this map was harder to attack on because of how many corners we had to clear. Our group tends to split sites which meant that we were repeatedly picked off one by one and saw too many 1v4s.

During our games, we could not take C… ever. B was a coin toss, we couldn’t really take site, but we could get some kills off of the two people that seemed to ALWAYS peak B to attacker site. And finally, A was the best site out of the three for us. Our best game was when we were 4 stacked with a rando as our 5th. They sat back to watch B while the rest of us pushed toward A. One of us would hold an angle while the others would push towards the door. We might have still lost, but hey, at least we were finally able to get a point.

Defending

I preferred defending on Lotus… until the attackers hard-rushed a site. As defenders on a three-site map, our team was spread thin, but luckily the small size of the map let us try and flank. Defending was pretty rough at the start because nobody really knew where to sit or the best places to watch.

Since at launch, Lotus was only available through Swift Plays, we never really got too far after swapping sides. Somehow, we seemed to get placed as Attackers at the start of a lot of our matches, therefore, we didn’t get a whole lot of practice at being defenders for Lotus.

Looking back at Lotus now

Now that I have been forced to play more Lotus, I can begin to finally feel like I remember how to play this game.

I honestly think that the biggest difference between now and then was that people learned how to play the map. Now, there is a sense of familiarity, enemies' moves are more predictable, and I certainly know some better places to watch for each of the sites.

Having thrown myself into this map due to it joining the competitive pool, I think I can say that I somewhat enjoy it (or at least hate it less). Nowadays, my friends and I can at least try to take any of the three sites on attack, and we have now become comfortable defending any site.

I now think that instead of C being a terrible pick for attacking, which it still kinda is, it can be your best option. After going A multiple times, it seems like defenders tend to stay off C and position themselves where they can rotate quickly to either A or B. This makes C an easy target and you can catch the defenders off guard. My group has done this a few times, we will attack A a few times, then when we wanna switch it up, we send a single person to make noise A while everyone else rushes C. By the time the defenders realize and rotate, we've already planted.

This strategy has caused me to defend in the hallway that connects B site and C site, this is comfortable because I can hold the entry hallway from attacker site to B, and if need be, I can still be the first defender to get to C because the rest of my team is scattered more towards A site.

I have gained an appreciation for the ability to quickly rotate to a different site. In many other, larger, maps, it always felt like a blind rush to get to the other site. Larger maps with only two sites mean that defenders always know where you are going to go when rotating. A small map with three sites means that we can rotate and the defenders have to at least half-ass-check an empty site before getting to us.

Even though this map still isn’t my favorite, I think I will come to enjoy playing on it more as soon as I find a good selection of agents. I still cannot comfortably play Raze here, but I have gotten used to playing Reyna and Kay/O, so at least I’m getting time in on my backup picks.