Skye is the new Valorant agent set to arrive shortly after the Act 3 release date. The Aussie eco warrior boasts an intriguing mix of abilities ranging from reconnaissance and support, to direct initiator skills that will get her and her team moving through the map with ease.
For Sage mains who’ve been struggling since the recent nerfs, Skye’s arrival means you finally have an alternative pick if you want to heal wounded teammates, but that will not be your primary role. Instead, Skye excels at starting off attacking manoeuvres thanks to her Q and E abilities, both of which offer a small amount of recon, but can also be turned into disorienting attacks once you’ve found a target.
Skye even has some clutch potential thanks to her ultimate, which sends out stealth drones that hunt enemies across the map and blind them – this can make a huge difference in a 1vX fight, allowing you to get a plant down or simply gain intel on where the enemies are positioned. Join us as we walk through all of Skye’s abilities, what they do, and how they interact with other Valorant characters and their abilities.
E: Guiding Light
Cost: 100
Equip a hawk trinket. Fire to send it forward. Hold fire to guide the hawk in the direction of your crosshair. Re-use while the hawk is in flight to transform it into a flash.
This is Skye’s signature ability so you always start with one charge of this, but you can buy two more.
This is effectively a flash that Skye can bend around corners, giving you much greater control over where it detonates and how long it travels for. The hawk also gives out a screech if it successfully blind someone, which gives your team intel so that you can swing around the corner and get a free pick. The hawk can be shot out of the air, so there, which will also provide some intel.
Q – Trailblazer
Cost: 200
Equip a Tasmanian tiger trinket. Fire to send out and take control of the predator. While in control, fire to leap forward, exploding in a concussive blast and damaging directly hit enemies.
We don’t have exact damage numbers yet, but it looks like this isn’t a round-altering amount of damage. Like Guiding Light, this can also be shot at and destroyed while active. It’s also worth noting that while controlling this ability the spirit animal is nearsighted, so you won’t be able to get a read on any long lines of sight, however, clearing out corners is easy enough. This is the kind of ability you’ll want to use to clear out close corners – just have a teammate moving behind it ready to pick up a free kill.
C – Regrowth
Cost: 200
Equip a healing trinket. Hold fire to channel, healing allies in range and line of sight. Can be reused until her healing pool is depleted. Skye cannot heal herself.
We don’t have data on the health regeneration time per second or for the radius of the healing pool, but it seems the pool is large enough to cover most of a site, and the health regeneration is slightly slower than Sage’s healing orb. This is great if you’re stacked up on a site and absorbing a lot of pressure from the enemy team – simply have Skye bring everyone back up to health after shock arrows, boom bots, and paint shells have come through.
X – Seekers
Equipe a Seeker trinket. Fire to send out three Seekers to track down the three closest enemies. If a Seeker reaches its target, it nearsights them.
This ability is really great for securing a plant if you don’t have the numbers advantage – it’s also great to pop before bursting onto site. The fact that the Seeker drones will simply get to work means you can focus on taking gunfights and clearing corners.
And that’s all of Skye’s abilities in Valorant. Her loadout appears to be very suffocating, but, with the exception of Regrowth, all of her abilities can be countered by shooting them, so she shouldn’t be too tricky to play against. We’re very curious to see where she will land on our Valorant tier list and whether she’s a viable Sage replacement.