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How to keep your team safe with Skye in Valorant
Setting your team up for greatness while keeping them alive is a solid contribution to any team in Valorant. If that’s something you want to do, you can achieve that goal with Skye. Here’s how.
Valorant’s newest initiator, Skye brings a unique kit that comes stocked with flashes aplenty and a healing ability which will change how you attack each round in comp. With powerful entry tools, she won’t be your entry fragger, but instead will set up her team for quick point takes, getting information quickly, and concussing an unsuspecting enemy.
Skye can still thrive in 1 on 1’s despite not being able to heal herself with her trinket. You will probably be getting more kills off of guiding light than your allies will. Rewarding patience, good mouse mechanics and some good old fashioned creativity, Skye will be a great hero to take on as flashes begin to take center stage in Valorant after a series of buffs.
Regrowth (C ability)
Equipping a heal trinket, Skye can heal all her teammates in range and line of sight until her healing pool is depleted. Though she can’t heal herself, the ability is only two hundred credits and can put a team of one hit heroes up enough health to put up a respectable fight.
It’s not a quick ability, requiring multiple shots to fully heal a depleted health pool. It is slower than Sage’s healing and requires Skye to have the trinket equipped, and her team close by. Regrowth is able to heal two allies up to full health, or be distributed for less total health but more teammates healed.
Trailblazer (Q ability)
Skye sends out a tasmanian tiger to hunt down her enemies. With a limited line of sight, Trailblazer is good to check narrow corridors and high traffic entry points to quickly gather intel on the opposing team. Think of using it anytime you need to check a bad spot at low risk, like when retaking a site.
It has a timer with a very short field of view, but this ability earns its 200 credit price for the pounce ability alone. Left clicking in Trailblazer causes the predator to leap on their target, temporarily concussing them and doing a small amount of damage. If you can land it, it will set up plays and do Skye’s job of helping your team initiate a good fight. Move quick though, it can be shot just like any other deployable.
Similar to Sova’s drone, Trailblazer sets itself ahead of the pack by being faster. It has the ability to shiftwalk, gather information, concuss and even damage enemies. Even though Sova’s drone can see farther, it won’t be forcing enemies out of corners the way predator will. Of all the options available, sneaking with the predator probably isn’t the best bet., The five second timer, combined with poor visibility, means you want to be decisive when using it.
Running Trailblazer will make a lot of noise, so be prepared because, when landed, it will open up even the worst spots for your team.There is never a bad time to buy trailblazer. Anytime you can get an info gathering tool and a stun ability, you take it. The nearsightedness is a small drawback, and you will get more value using this one to check corners where that won't matter. While she’s not not an entry fragger on attack, Trailblazer lets Skye assume that role and help her team push.
Guiding Light (E ability)
Skye summons a bird that flies on her command and detonates, flashing all caught in its line of sight. For 100 credits, and stackable up to three times, guiding light is a solid ability that will help Skye’s team take space while wreaking havoc on the enemies and make them consider lowering their brightness. After deploying the hawk, it will set off in a straight line by default, ricocheting off walls if they are in the way. It opens up her versatility and shows what smart players can do when you choose to maneuver the hawk yourself.
Following your mouse, you can maneuver the hawk over boxes, then back under to avoid flashing teammates. You can sit at outside of different sites, and send a hawk over the walls to detonate as your team pushes from short. Skye can move while this ability is deployed, allowing her to follow up on her own plays. She doesn’t have to solely rely on others to play on what she creates.
A lot of the time, you can find good reasons to use all three flashes at the beginning of a round. To push a defense back, or halt a stall, Skye’s flash is quite overwhelming and makes it hard to spray and pray without good crosshair placement. With three, holding one in your pocket isn’t a tough ask, even though she has to play away from line of sight at first. Skye can absolutely win 1v1’s with a well timed guiding light.
Ultimate: Seekers
Ever have a round on defense where you’re holding the point and suddenly Omen smokes drop around you? And then a Brimstone smoke and maybe a Viper ult join the party? It leaves you sensing your impending doom as the enemy lurks under your nose, leaving you helpless, until your team rotates… IF your team rotates.
Well, fear no longer. With Seekers, an ultimate that absolutely hard counters smokes, you’ve got one of the best pushing ultimates in Valorant. A great tool to stall pushes on defense, Seekers really shines when you are looking to play on the attack. Four seekers, which Skye can track through walls, swarm away from her towards an enemy.
Once a seeker spots an enemy, it takes off on a mission, like Raze’s roomba, attacking the other player and nearsighting them, similarly to what Omen does with Paranoia. Seekers is great on the attack, essentially becoming a trading tool even while facing multiple enemies. They all have to focus either on a Seeker or you, and hope they don’t get nearsighted before they take you down.
If they happen to get debuffed, your team can clean them up, so make sure your squad knows to play around your seekers when they are out. Their secondary purpose is information gathering. It flies off in the direction of enemies when activated, but we don’t recommend using it to find enemies while on defense. It’s good to force a team off point on offense but, on defense, they have more utility taking back a site that was just planted on.
It’s a solid ability to post-plant, when you’re unsure an enemy will come from spawn, an offshoot or from your spawn. Deploying Seekers once the timer starts to countdown can give away how far the enemies are and which direction you should expect them to charge in from. Otherwise, Seekers should be used aggressively, followed by you and some teammates chasing them in, ready to trade.
Buy strategies
Guiding Light! Seriously, at one hundred credits per buy and stackable up to three, you can buy three flashes in round one, with a Ghost. No one else can do that and her flashes are already pretty good. You can also opt to buy a heal trinket or a Trailblazer if on defense
Map strategies
Anyone familiar with Breach will know where Skye should be at the start of every round. Place her near the back of her team on offense as she uses her long range flashes and Trailblazer to push out in front of your team. You will want to stay alive with Skye for at least the first skirmish to get value from her healing. With a low ult cost, try and pick up any stray orbs you can. Though it's slow, it is game changing.
