PUBG Update – New Sanhok, Ranked Season & PCS 2 Qualifiers

The end of July is shaping up to a big one for competitive PUBG and the game as a whole. The new PUBG patch features a full Sankhok redesign, a bunch of quality of life improvements and a whole new PUBG ranked season. Additionally, Vikendi enters the Ranked map pool together with gliders and fresh new footsteps.

Let’s look at all the changes that should be important to you and close it off with all the progress at the PCS 2 Qualifiers for North America and Europe.

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Sanhok redesign and Survivor Pass

Sanhok finally got some love and received a full redesign top to bottom. The map still has the same geo-markers but the landscape and feel of places have changed drastically. The terrain is now lusher and filled with greenery, creating a snakes paradise. The dreaded rocky mountain gets smoothed out stopping all the nightmare-ish rock circle endings. Quarry gets a concrete barricade making it a playable area and not No Man’s Land. The top right corner gets a more playable area in the form of an airfield with glider spawns and the docks turn into a Party Zone. Finally, Boot Camp gets a full redesign making it a less deadly landing endeavor.

The changes impact the existing Sanhok meta drastically. If you plan to hot drop into Sanhok on Day 1, keep these pointers in mind:

• The grass is tall and full of terrors
• The Mountain is only safe for scaling down the north side, every other mountainside is open area
• Quarry is the new camper heaven with holes and rock edges for the most dedicated statues
• More people will come from Airfield area than ever before
• The new Ruins and Bootcamp are not instant death zones
• You can drive over the rivers

For a solid view of the new map check out Chocotaco’s new video from the Test Servers.

Payback

Payback is the name of the new PUBG Survivor Pass coming with tomorrow’s patch. Players will once again quest and level-up to claim unique Sanhok themed weapon skins and apparel in-game.

Leveling up the pass will also feel faster this time around with PUBG deciding to increase the passive daily XP gain to 7200. Pairing this with all the new missions would mean getting level 100 is less of a grind than before.

PUBG Ranked Ladder Reset

The new season also means a soft reset of the ranks from ranked play. A soft reset means the game resets your rank to zero but does remember where you were last season. This means players that achieved high ranks will be placed fairly high on the ladder after their placements, while our golds and silvers will go back right where we were last season.

There is however a change to how points are awarded in each Ranked match in the new season. Instead of only counting Kills, Damage and Personal Placement, PUBG has decided to shift to team placement and progressive ranking. This means even if you utterly suck and being carried by teammates you still get those sweet Chicken Dinner points regardless. This should result in way more “boosting” happening this time around.

A more positive change is the progressive points being awarded for killing higher-ranked players. This should encourage all the people that go prone when they read Ibiza and Clib in the ticker to get up and take the fight.

Finally, Vikendi makes its way into the PUBG Ranked Map Pool to add even more diversity of landscape and play style to ranked games.

Once again, there was no news from PUBG Corp about Solos/Duos becoming ranked categories. Better luck next season guys.

PCS 2 Qualifiers NA & EU

In the end, we look at PCS 2 and the progress made by amateur squads towards reaching the pro scene.

On the North American side of things, the teams participating in PCS 2 are known for a while now. First up Carnage, Dodge, Duel, Clueless have retained their slot for PCS 2 after finishing in the bottom 8 of PCS 1 and fighting the gauntlet to remain in the top competition. The rest of the PCS 2 teams are all coming from the NA Challenger Series.  Additionally, WildCard Gaming and Team Clueless dropped their rosters, but the players will still compete under new names, Veritas and Gang Gang Orangutan respectively.

Meanwhile, multiple roster swaps happened ahead of PCS 2. Most notably, Magno “Pr0phie” Ramos retired from competitive PUBG to pursue a career in Valorant, and was replaced by James “TGLTN” Giezen in the Susquehanna Soniqs. Radiance on the other hand reinforced their roster with legend Laurynas “Gaxy” Rudys.

The European qualifiers on the other hand are still hot. Over 450 teams signed up across the three European qualifiers. We are down to 64 in EU West, 32 in EU East and 32 in MEA. In the end, only 6 from West, 4 from East and 3 from MEA will make it into the PCS 2.

Based on recent performances across all three qualifying regions, we can predict at least a few likely qualifier participants.

• RedZone, Where Team, ADEPTS, APEKS, mforce, Bystanders and Sniip Team all look like solid contenders from EU West.
• BetterLuckNxTime and PCS 2 (Wanderer, Kemba7 and Maxiz0r) are likely the hottest contenders from EU East.
• Digital Athletics, Besiktas, 1907 Fenerbahce and ETiGETesports are the favorites in MEA.

The EU Qualifiers continue on July 23rd and more info is available at the StarLadder PCS2 PUBG page. The PCS 2 Qualifiers are too amateur-ish for esports betting odds to be available. The earliest date for outright betting on PCS 2 and PUBG should be the 1st of August when the groups for the main event are known.

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