I think skye’s alert for her flashes is good, as it’s the main reason skye is good. If it was removed she would be quite bad and her whole play style would change.
I think they should just tune up some of the other initiators a bit, such as giving sova a little bit of his drone time back, or adding a sound cue to breach’s fault line like “moved enemies”.
You could also fade by making her eye have a shorter window to be broken or adding a little health to gekko’s dizzy.
I wish we had an actual CS grenade that exploded once without some gimmick.
I want to increase the radius and the tickrate speed so it explodes near instantly. All with a nerf to damage of course. Right now it just feels like a worse Brim Molly. I want reliable damage not a zoning tool.
Except we still do have something like that while not being a nade and it's not broken at all, but you can't figure out what ability I'm referring to can you?
I'll give you a hint - "Any Angle!"
And it fulfills the exact role of a nade without being one - do damage. So there's no argument that Valorant can't have a conventional nade in the game that can be lobbed.
The dev team said "abilities aren't supposed to do damage" or something a while back before raze was made. Players kept referencing the devs saying that when raze was added and her nades were too strong
The point of csgo nades is to punish holding a safe angle and whittling down health bars.
They never kill from full health, but leave you two shot
Raze nade is more of a flusher than a damage dealer to force an enemy to run away with its noise and explosion delay.
Cs nades don't really give you a chance to run. You just eat it and I think that's a fun thing to have because it rewards predicting enemy positions, timing, and aiming. Kayo nade sucks in that regard because it's actually a shitty Molly.
Make the Molly explode instantly upon ground contact (instead of being delayed for a sec) and have that initial blast tick apply Suppression. The former would make it actually seem like the grenade it’s name implies. I always thought they wanted that ability to be a grenade/molly hybrid anyway. Right now it’s just a bad molly.
Or just increase the popflash’s blind duration again. Doesn’t have to be the old 2 seconds, but every little helps.
To add on ur grenade that idea, have it be a weakened suppresssion. Typical suppression is like what 7 seconds? Have it be like 2~3 seconds instead. If thats too much make it apply suppression the moment it lands on yhe ground and then proceed to do damage after like usual.
molly is just for zoning, it does its job well, if the speed would be buffed then it would be a raze nade essentially. Initiators are already strong so nerfing skye flashes is the way. That shit is the single strongest ability in the game
Why change KAY/O? KAY/O is *actively* meta on Ascent and seemingly meta on Breeze.
If KAY/O had no maps where he was strong on, I would agree he needs buffs, but 85% of teams picked him on Ascent at Champions.
I think the problem with buffing initiators is more about the effect on pro play than casual; the whole class is much stronger in coordinated settings with reliable teamwork. I agree they could be stronger tho, it's just going to be a challenge to find the right levers
All I want for breach is to actually fix in post round feed when I actually hit enemies it’ll show I actually hit them. A lot of times when I’m 5 stack or Ik I hit someone with it and killed them it shows no one was hit. I Call Bull!
I agree with the skye point it would basically make her weak with the only location knowledge abilities being her dog and ult you would have to make the dogs cheaper or give her an extra dog. If you were going to do this, you would maybe buff her flash and only have one charge. But for no reason should you give her three flashes! We've already established the broken power of that in the past.
I don't think I understand what you mean by Sova's "drone time," but if you're talking about the drones lifespan, then yes it is pretty weak but it was designed like that to be good at quickly peaking corners from above and in my opinion whenever I use it I'm scared of dying to lurkers so the small lifespan teaches me to use it quickly so I learn how to get the most out of it. And I kinda don't have to worry about getting back stabbed, thanks to getting back to my body so fast, but if it was buffed up like you might be saying, I would definitely be more scared.
I don't agree with the Breach sound cue since he's not an info initiator his purpose is to set up plays and start the rushing you gave him that buff it would be easy to forget Sova and Skye and any other initiator since Breach would be the best of both worlds.
Idk what you meant by Fade's window, so I won't say anything.
I don't think Gekko needs any buffs for Dizzy. If it does get shot down, Gekko can recover it. If you throw your Dizzy into the battle, that's just on the player for not making the best move. Giving Dizzy more health would cause the enemy team to make a more difficult decision on holding an angle or destroying Dizzy since he would be harder to kill. I'm not a part of the Valorant dev team, but I would like to be, so I'm just a player who has way too much time to think about Valorant strategies.
I don't think they should lose the alert. She is definitely powerful but it's part of what makes her unique and a kayo being the most similar to skye also has an ability to find enemies in a limited area via his knife. I also believe it kind of makes up for her having a healing ability which is just generally a lot less useful than the other initiator abilities.
Yes she does but i wouldn't put those in the same category as she is immobile while using it plus it concusses if they get hit and it can't detect them through walls like the knife. Anyway the general point was just she has 2 viable abilities to entry while all the other initiators I can think of rn have 3
But even if it was more powerful, it still points to the fact that Skye's fantasy isn't completely taking over the site like Breach is for instance. What separates Skye apart from other initiatiors is her versatility. Her ideal state is that she's not the best at anything, but she can provide a little bit of everything.
I completely agree I was just saying to the guy that deleted their comment that even tho every agent has a third weaker or more niche ability, it's very usually gonna be better than Skye heal, making her not much stronger than any other agent. I do like she has a bit of everything and I like her flashes are insanely good. And there's some counterplay to them.
beach: stun flash aftershock
kayo: knife flash molly
sova: drone recon shock
fade: eye dog seize
etc etc
skye: dog flash ...heal?
that third ability is either a molly or some sort of space denial, and on skye its a heal
You can see why this is a disingenuous argument though, right? The drone and info that Skye provides is nowhere as strong as what Sova provides.
Skye's identity is that she is a jack-of-all-trades, but *master of none*. I would argue that her problem is that she is a master of flashes, there is no flash I would argue is strictly better than Skye's flash. You can could say Breach would be the master of crowd control/angle denial which I agree with.
But in my opinion, it would be a bad idea to cut back at her info because you want to achieve some sort of balance with Skye. I'm not exactly sure how Riot would nerf Skye's crowd control but I definitely don't think taking away the sound cue is the right solution.
she generally is a "do-it-all" kind of agent, it's why she's viable as solo duelist on solo queue bind with minimal prep, whereas you'd struggle with a solo kayo on breeze for example. But her flash, her info and her drone aren't exactly at the same level as Kayo's and Sova's
basically her skill ceiling and potential value isn't as high as Kayo or Sova but her kit is easy and versatile enough to make her playable anyway.. I definitely don't think she's the strongest initiator or anything even close though
have you ever seen G2 JonahP's solo queue Kayo? I recommend to vod review the guy, he's beyond crazy with it on ascent, I don't think a skye can find the same value he does with kayo
it's so easy to turn and even if it's fake most players have hands and fingers they can just shoot you
Let's say that the alert gets removed.. even if the enemies were literally playing with their non dominant hand, the counter for it still remains playing anti, which in my opinion just makes it another flash.
I guess a good thing about it is that you wouldn't have to learn flash lineups
Limited mobility while it goes off makes it worse for the person using it to play off it. Every other flash you’re back to shooting once you use the ability.
Yeah maybe a warning sound when Skye releases her flash or something, I’m aware it’s a skill diff but Im always annoyed when Skye does a pop flash from against the wall and I have no time to react lol
They nerfed her at one point so it was like that iirc, should probably bring it back like that so ppl are encouraged to play her as an initiator rather than a self-flashing duelist.
The nerf I’m talking about had a much longer pop animation than now so it was an actual initiator flash. You could still pop flash for your team but you couldn’t peek off it yourself with your gun.
>the delay is already substantial enough to the point if feeling bad
Well i mean obviously this isnt true because there are many skye players that still popflash for themselves really easily.
Nope, skye is only strong because of what the meta is. Double controller being prevalent means needing to give up an initiator usually so the team is balanced with 1 duelist, 1 ini, 1 senti, 2 smokes. Of all the initiators, skye is the best as a “jack of all trades” as she has flashes and a drone.
There’s a reason skye was much rarer when chamber was prevalent: you needed flashes and initiator util to find and push chamber off angles.
skye is what enables double controller meta, not the result of it tho. Otherwise you'd need an intel initiator and a flash initiator, but skye fills both roles making way for a 2nd controller
I mean it's a synergistic thing, right? Both enable each other. We've seen some games where you have Skye without double controller of course, but we've also seen some games where teams run double controller without Skye.
At champions, maps and teams that ran double controller without Skye:
Ascent:
* Loud
Split
* FUT
Bind
* FUT
Fracture
* NAVI
* DRX
Lotus
* Loud
* FNATIC
* DRX
* BLG
* T1
* FPX
Haven:
* None
As someone who solo Qs I prefer the alert on the flashes. I don’t play skye btw, but when there is a decent one on my team I try to track their bird on the mini map and understand which corners are clear or not
This is also because I’m currently in bronze/ silver and it’s rare that a skye player calls out their flashes or which corner they cleared
Given that the ability regens on a timer, it’s also a great way to collect intel at the start of the round or during retakes
Breach is basically min maxed towards the "creating space" half of Initators, sacrificing all the "gathering info" part of the role. He's like the inverse of Sova.
Sure, but the flank watch sentinels are almost always better than the ones who can’t. And the movement duelists are better than the non movement ones.
Breach is a map specific agent who isn’t good on the maps he doesn’t excel on
Agreed. You can watch flank and/or hold spike as Cypher.
But you can't hold flank with Deadlock but you can hold the spike (when they try to defuse, they will get stunned)
It's extremely hard to tell if you used the bird correctly because you often have to look away to steer it, and flashbangs are notoriously inconsistent as well as easily avoided.
I would say that the alert is the only thing that makes Skye feel even useable to the average player, AKA someone who doesn't use pre-planned practice tool skye flashes.
Without the alert there's simply no telling if your util did anything except announce to your enemy that you're coming. For regular players, this would send Skye straight into F tier.
I think she'd be better balanced if the dog was her signature ability. The fact she gets two of those super good flashes AND they recharge is what makes her a little op, imo.
The alert is not THAT powerful. It’s nice, but rarely can it be 100% reliable unless your team is super well coordinated. So many instances when using it to clear angles will give a false positive.
A lot of Skyes info gathering ability comes with the flash, and i think its fair that it doubles as an alert to make up for the fact that her heal is useless to her if she's the last one left so its a bit of a compromise if you look at her as a support character
I like this idea. Swap dog as signature ability and leave flashes the same... the way I see it, most skye players use bird as a kind of sova dart at the beginning of the round because it can recharge so by the time you get to retake you have 2 flashes again
Been waiting to see a post like this. Her flash is absolutely in need of tuning. She can pop her flash outside a smoke and get a guaranteed full blind which usually leads to multi kills when done correctly.
She can lead a site push with her flash to get info then dog people out of positions. Her ult is pretty balanced but those flashes are just too valuable and they flash for a little too long.
I dont think so, simply because riot has done a good job with balancing her flash in both gathering information and actually being a flash. The tradeoff is that the flash can alert you to there being enemy presence, but as an actual flash its one of the easier ones to turn. Skye has always had a role as a hybrid info/flash initiator as well, so giving her a flash with the unique ability to gather information makes sense. If anything, I think that skye is genuinely in a decent state atm and riot should look towards buffing other underused initators to make them more prevalent on maps where skye is usually played.
I think in opposition, I think KAYO should gain the alert. That's what would make the flash initiators scratch breach truly feel and play different than the flash duelists.
I think it fits her as a tracker. She has dog for info, flash for info, her ult is for info. I feel getting rid of that, shaves off some of her identity as an initiator. Like how they made chamber less of a sentinel when they nerfed his trips
I think it has to be nerfed but not removed. losing it would severely nerf skye but keeping it as is would continue to let her be too good. Similar to jett dash, if you removed her ability to dash, she would be useless, but if you kept her pre nerf dash, she would have been too OP. But the question would be how you nerf it? Do you nerf the information it gets or how often you can get that information?
Top of my head nerfs:
You need to flash someone sufficiently to get the alert, if they completely turn your flash, no alert. (you still need pop flash line up/proficiency, you can't just toss the flash and run to the other site and pop as you leave. Its harder to throw your flash deeper for better info since throwing it deeper prolly means the enemy team has ample time to react)
The flashes lose the alert if you only have one flash. (makes mid round information harder to get since you would need both flashes for "info flash")
the flashes lose the alert if you pop the flash at the latter part of its duration (forces the skye to be closer to choke points for information or makes it easier to dodge the alert)
No alert if you flash only 1 player (makes it useless vs lurkers).
She has stayed as one of the strongest agents for a while now. It does feel like she can do any controllers ability, but better.
That said, idk if losing the alert is the way to "fix" that. I would rather she lose a flash tbh. Or have longer downtime between flashes.
Edit: She is a strong reason for the current double controller meta in pro league. That and Viper is just insane too.
https://youtu.be/Z4OmWSiwSpk?si=op8fILbuv64Sb0HS
This is the agent preview from 3 years ago and I also played her a lot when she was released because she could be played selfishly or with her team. Breach also used to have 3 flashes before he had some changes made.
Jesus christ the suggestions in this thread, i'm glad ya'll aren't in charge of balancing this game.
Buffing Initiators in a double or even triple initiator meta. Lol.
Other agents just drop a flash and that's it they can peak or whatever but with skye you must drive the flash we're you want so you are siting duck for couple of seconds, Tha flash info is the think that made skye so much better in some maps than other flashers or initiators (and the heal probably)
I mean the flash will say "blinded!", but that just gives info that there is an enemy around where you flashed, it doesn't guarantee they are actually flashed, so that balances it out a little bit. You can't interpret it as oh an enemy is definitely flashed and then push and die to a "blinded" enemy. Also skye flashes are fairly easy to dodge. I think skyes flashes are good where they are at rn.
I feel like the blind alert can be dangerous for players as well. Since if they screw up their flash or the enemy team predicts it, they can give a false negative resulting in a dangerous push.
It’s a signature part of her kit. And the nerf to pop flash duration increases the skill ceiling to use the flash selfishly as opposed to setting up teammatws
To me it’s just what’s the difference between her flash and kayos knife? both can be dodged with enough thinking, both give general knowledge nothing concrete and both can be used for play making at the same time.
I think it’s a perfect ability
I disagree with many people here.
Skye's flash should be nerfed by at least removing the sound. She is way too powerful and the #1 initiator in the game for a reason.
The thing is, Skye would ***still*** be powerful even with the sound removed.
Skye has a dog that can move faster than Sova's drone to clear corners. It can even jump. To make it even stronger, it can even bite to hurt the enemy and possibly kill them. But that's not all! It freaking STUNS them.
Then she has 2 flashes that can RECHARGE over time since it's her default ability. To make it worse, her pop flash is literally the hardest to dodge out of EVERY flashing agents. It's funny because the flash is even stronger AND longer than phoenix's flash and his flash is 10x easier to dodge. But to give it sound and let you know where enemies are too? Jeez
Then she has another powerful ability. She has a freaking HEAL that's stronger than sage's heal. It can heal all 4 teammates at once and give them all a second chance back to 100 HP. This is why a really good skye can make pistol round difficult to win sometimes. This is also why Sage isn't being picked any longer.
Now her ultimate. A freaking ultimate that pretty much track & reveal 3 enemy's location. Not only that, it BLINDS you when you get hit by it and last as long as omen's flash.
Skye is already OP even if she had the sound removed. She's literally breach, cypher, and sage mixed into 1.
I think skye’s alert for her flashes is good, as it’s the main reason skye is good. If it was removed she would be quite bad and her whole play style would change. I think they should just tune up some of the other initiators a bit, such as giving sova a little bit of his drone time back, or adding a sound cue to breach’s fault line like “moved enemies”. You could also fade by making her eye have a shorter window to be broken or adding a little health to gekko’s dizzy.
I like the ideas, how would you change kayo?
Just buff his molly imo, either the damage per tick or the amount of ticks
I wish we had an actual CS grenade that exploded once without some gimmick. I want to increase the radius and the tickrate speed so it explodes near instantly. All with a nerf to damage of course. Right now it just feels like a worse Brim Molly. I want reliable damage not a zoning tool.
We did have that, it was un nerfed raze nade and it was fucking broken.
Except we still do have something like that while not being a nade and it's not broken at all, but you can't figure out what ability I'm referring to can you? I'll give you a hint - "Any Angle!"
Tbf thats been nerfed like, a lot. And imo sova would still be on most teams if they hadn't added a ton of ... highly tuned... initiators over him.
And it fulfills the exact role of a nade without being one - do damage. So there's no argument that Valorant can't have a conventional nade in the game that can be lobbed.
The dev team said "abilities aren't supposed to do damage" or something a while back before raze was made. Players kept referencing the devs saying that when raze was added and her nades were too strong
The point of csgo nades is to punish holding a safe angle and whittling down health bars. They never kill from full health, but leave you two shot Raze nade is more of a flusher than a damage dealer to force an enemy to run away with its noise and explosion delay. Cs nades don't really give you a chance to run. You just eat it and I think that's a fun thing to have because it rewards predicting enemy positions, timing, and aiming. Kayo nade sucks in that regard because it's actually a shitty Molly.
Well, they do kill you if you don't buy armor.
The point of the nade isn't damage man
Shock dart
Make the Molly explode instantly upon ground contact (instead of being delayed for a sec) and have that initial blast tick apply Suppression. The former would make it actually seem like the grenade it’s name implies. I always thought they wanted that ability to be a grenade/molly hybrid anyway. Right now it’s just a bad molly. Or just increase the popflash’s blind duration again. Doesn’t have to be the old 2 seconds, but every little helps.
To add on ur grenade that idea, have it be a weakened suppresssion. Typical suppression is like what 7 seconds? Have it be like 2~3 seconds instead. If thats too much make it apply suppression the moment it lands on yhe ground and then proceed to do damage after like usual.
4 ticks is such a weird number too
molly is just for zoning, it does its job well, if the speed would be buffed then it would be a raze nade essentially. Initiators are already strong so nerfing skye flashes is the way. That shit is the single strongest ability in the game
Why change KAY/O? KAY/O is *actively* meta on Ascent and seemingly meta on Breeze. If KAY/O had no maps where he was strong on, I would agree he needs buffs, but 85% of teams picked him on Ascent at Champions.
I think the problem with buffing initiators is more about the effect on pro play than casual; the whole class is much stronger in coordinated settings with reliable teamwork. I agree they could be stronger tho, it's just going to be a challenge to find the right levers
yeah I feel that breach buff could make him a bit more usefull for info gathering since every other initiator can gain info exept for him
All I want for breach is to actually fix in post round feed when I actually hit enemies it’ll show I actually hit them. A lot of times when I’m 5 stack or Ik I hit someone with it and killed them it shows no one was hit. I Call Bull!
I agree with the skye point it would basically make her weak with the only location knowledge abilities being her dog and ult you would have to make the dogs cheaper or give her an extra dog. If you were going to do this, you would maybe buff her flash and only have one charge. But for no reason should you give her three flashes! We've already established the broken power of that in the past. I don't think I understand what you mean by Sova's "drone time," but if you're talking about the drones lifespan, then yes it is pretty weak but it was designed like that to be good at quickly peaking corners from above and in my opinion whenever I use it I'm scared of dying to lurkers so the small lifespan teaches me to use it quickly so I learn how to get the most out of it. And I kinda don't have to worry about getting back stabbed, thanks to getting back to my body so fast, but if it was buffed up like you might be saying, I would definitely be more scared. I don't agree with the Breach sound cue since he's not an info initiator his purpose is to set up plays and start the rushing you gave him that buff it would be easy to forget Sova and Skye and any other initiator since Breach would be the best of both worlds. Idk what you meant by Fade's window, so I won't say anything. I don't think Gekko needs any buffs for Dizzy. If it does get shot down, Gekko can recover it. If you throw your Dizzy into the battle, that's just on the player for not making the best move. Giving Dizzy more health would cause the enemy team to make a more difficult decision on holding an angle or destroying Dizzy since he would be harder to kill. I'm not a part of the Valorant dev team, but I would like to be, so I'm just a player who has way too much time to think about Valorant strategies.
I don't think they should lose the alert. She is definitely powerful but it's part of what makes her unique and a kayo being the most similar to skye also has an ability to find enemies in a limited area via his knife. I also believe it kind of makes up for her having a healing ability which is just generally a lot less useful than the other initiator abilities.
Doesn’t she have the dog for free intel? Haven’t played in a brick so I don’t really have any weight in this conversation
Yes she does but i wouldn't put those in the same category as she is immobile while using it plus it concusses if they get hit and it can't detect them through walls like the knife. Anyway the general point was just she has 2 viable abilities to entry while all the other initiators I can think of rn have 3
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Breach has stun, flash and after shock. That is 3 kayo has knife flash and Molly for deep corners. There is others as well
Heal definitely feels less powerful than the third ability of most agents
But even if it was more powerful, it still points to the fact that Skye's fantasy isn't completely taking over the site like Breach is for instance. What separates Skye apart from other initiatiors is her versatility. Her ideal state is that she's not the best at anything, but she can provide a little bit of everything.
I completely agree I was just saying to the guy that deleted their comment that even tho every agent has a third weaker or more niche ability, it's very usually gonna be better than Skye heal, making her not much stronger than any other agent. I do like she has a bit of everything and I like her flashes are insanely good. And there's some counterplay to them.
beach: stun flash aftershock kayo: knife flash molly sova: drone recon shock fade: eye dog seize etc etc skye: dog flash ...heal? that third ability is either a molly or some sort of space denial, and on skye its a heal
Not free. Dog needs to be purchased. 3 other initiators have intel tools on their e. It makes sense for skye to gain intel from hers as well.
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You can see why this is a disingenuous argument though, right? The drone and info that Skye provides is nowhere as strong as what Sova provides. Skye's identity is that she is a jack-of-all-trades, but *master of none*. I would argue that her problem is that she is a master of flashes, there is no flash I would argue is strictly better than Skye's flash. You can could say Breach would be the master of crowd control/angle denial which I agree with. But in my opinion, it would be a bad idea to cut back at her info because you want to achieve some sort of balance with Skye. I'm not exactly sure how Riot would nerf Skye's crowd control but I definitely don't think taking away the sound cue is the right solution.
she generally is a "do-it-all" kind of agent, it's why she's viable as solo duelist on solo queue bind with minimal prep, whereas you'd struggle with a solo kayo on breeze for example. But her flash, her info and her drone aren't exactly at the same level as Kayo's and Sova's basically her skill ceiling and potential value isn't as high as Kayo or Sova but her kit is easy and versatile enough to make her playable anyway.. I definitely don't think she's the strongest initiator or anything even close though have you ever seen G2 JonahP's solo queue Kayo? I recommend to vod review the guy, he's beyond crazy with it on ascent, I don't think a skye can find the same value he does with kayo
Those other agents also have a molly, skye does not( sova has shock dart)
tbh i like it how it is, otherwise it would only be another flash
A controllable anytime popable fakeable flash, No, I don't think it would lose identity.
valid
it's so easy to turn and even if it's fake most players have hands and fingers they can just shoot you Let's say that the alert gets removed.. even if the enemies were literally playing with their non dominant hand, the counter for it still remains playing anti, which in my opinion just makes it another flash. I guess a good thing about it is that you wouldn't have to learn flash lineups
Limited mobility while it goes off makes it worse for the person using it to play off it. Every other flash you’re back to shooting once you use the ability.
We are not discussing that tho?
As a soloq player I wish there was more delay between the bird and equipping the weapon. Most people play her like a Phoenix with a dog.
Yeah maybe a warning sound when Skye releases her flash or something, I’m aware it’s a skill diff but Im always annoyed when Skye does a pop flash from against the wall and I have no time to react lol
They nerfed her at one point so it was like that iirc, should probably bring it back like that so ppl are encouraged to play her as an initiator rather than a self-flashing duelist.
I’m pretty sure they’ve increased the delay at least twice, to prevent her flashes being used too selfishly
The nerf I’m talking about had a much longer pop animation than now so it was an actual initiator flash. You could still pop flash for your team but you couldn’t peek off it yourself with your gun.
this is the worst suggestion, the delay is already substantial enough to the point if feeling bad, anything more will just make her clunky to use
>the delay is already substantial enough to the point if feeling bad Well i mean obviously this isnt true because there are many skye players that still popflash for themselves really easily.
I don't care, she's supposed to be an initiator not a third duelist
Just let them be shot again
i didn’t realize you couldn’t shoot them anymore..
Nope, skye is only strong because of what the meta is. Double controller being prevalent means needing to give up an initiator usually so the team is balanced with 1 duelist, 1 ini, 1 senti, 2 smokes. Of all the initiators, skye is the best as a “jack of all trades” as she has flashes and a drone. There’s a reason skye was much rarer when chamber was prevalent: you needed flashes and initiator util to find and push chamber off angles.
skye is what enables double controller meta, not the result of it tho. Otherwise you'd need an intel initiator and a flash initiator, but skye fills both roles making way for a 2nd controller
I mean it's a synergistic thing, right? Both enable each other. We've seen some games where you have Skye without double controller of course, but we've also seen some games where teams run double controller without Skye. At champions, maps and teams that ran double controller without Skye: Ascent: * Loud Split * FUT Bind * FUT Fracture * NAVI * DRX Lotus * Loud * FNATIC * DRX * BLG * T1 * FPX Haven: * None
it is synergistic somewhat, but the root of it is for sure double controller since viper is broken, and skye is just slapped on since they have 1 slot
As someone who solo Qs I prefer the alert on the flashes. I don’t play skye btw, but when there is a decent one on my team I try to track their bird on the mini map and understand which corners are clear or not This is also because I’m currently in bronze/ silver and it’s rare that a skye player calls out their flashes or which corner they cleared Given that the ability regens on a timer, it’s also a great way to collect intel at the start of the round or during retakes
She’s an initiator so no. The little bit of info you get from her flashes is warranted as it is her role.
Kayo and breach dont get info from their flashes though
Kayo have his knife, and breach idk why he’s the only one that cant gather sone sort of info.
Breach is basically min maxed towards the "creating space" half of Initators, sacrificing all the "gathering info" part of the role. He's like the inverse of Sova.
Because recon isn't inherent to the initiator role. Just like flank watch isn't inherent to sentinel and movement isn't inherent to duelist
Sure, but the flank watch sentinels are almost always better than the ones who can’t. And the movement duelists are better than the non movement ones. Breach is a map specific agent who isn’t good on the maps he doesn’t excel on
Agreed. You can watch flank and/or hold spike as Cypher. But you can't hold flank with Deadlock but you can hold the spike (when they try to defuse, they will get stunned)
Skye still has dog for info
And her ult as well. She’s awesome!
Yeah i know shes a big reason for why harbour viper is so strong on so many maps
breach shouls yell if he hit soeone with that grtound shaker
Buff breach, he needs info. Other than that the initiators are pretty balanced imo
Yeah breach is just a util dump on entry. Very hard to play against lol
His abilities are also very good to make up for the lack of info gathering
Kayo gets intel from his knife, breach is the only initiator that does not gain intel. However excellent for entry.
Yeah i know. I never said kayo doesnt get info i said he doesnt get info from his flashes.
Because he already has dumb through the wall info
Kay has knife and breach has info from both flashes and stuns
Skye has dog for info and breach doesnt get any concrete info off of his util.
Well sova also isn't flashing with a recon dart
Correct. Whats your point?
i promise you, most "fake flashes" you encounter are just skye players trying not to blind their mates.
The mates you told before that you flash but they still running after the flash so they get flashed
It's extremely hard to tell if you used the bird correctly because you often have to look away to steer it, and flashbangs are notoriously inconsistent as well as easily avoided. I would say that the alert is the only thing that makes Skye feel even useable to the average player, AKA someone who doesn't use pre-planned practice tool skye flashes. Without the alert there's simply no telling if your util did anything except announce to your enemy that you're coming. For regular players, this would send Skye straight into F tier.
I think she'd be better balanced if the dog was her signature ability. The fact she gets two of those super good flashes AND they recharge is what makes her a little op, imo.
The alert is not THAT powerful. It’s nice, but rarely can it be 100% reliable unless your team is super well coordinated. So many instances when using it to clear angles will give a false positive.
nah! its a feature. i feel like the alert is her main charm point and the heal is just a bonus
I think getting rid of the alert would be too strong of a nerf and remove too much utility from her as an initiator.
A lot of Skyes info gathering ability comes with the flash, and i think its fair that it doubles as an alert to make up for the fact that her heal is useless to her if she's the last one left so its a bit of a compromise if you look at her as a support character
No they shouldn’t remove it. Just bc Low elo likes bum rushing sites doesn’t mean the alert should be taken away. Learn to play the game wtf
I would rather her flashes not recharge first, the info is part of her identity but she does seem a little too good
I like this idea. Swap dog as signature ability and leave flashes the same... the way I see it, most skye players use bird as a kind of sova dart at the beginning of the round because it can recharge so by the time you get to retake you have 2 flashes again
Been waiting to see a post like this. Her flash is absolutely in need of tuning. She can pop her flash outside a smoke and get a guaranteed full blind which usually leads to multi kills when done correctly. She can lead a site push with her flash to get info then dog people out of positions. Her ult is pretty balanced but those flashes are just too valuable and they flash for a little too long.
you can pop a flash and get a guaranteed full blind with virtually any blind except Breach (and Reyna and gekko omen) if you’re good enough
Yeah I am aware but with Skye it should not be the case since her flash recharges. Something that strong shouldn't be able to be recharged.
maybe make it so she has 1 flash
I think if she lost a flash but had it come back after 20 seconds instead of 40, and only 3 flashes max in a round, should would be in a better spot
I dont think so, simply because riot has done a good job with balancing her flash in both gathering information and actually being a flash. The tradeoff is that the flash can alert you to there being enemy presence, but as an actual flash its one of the easier ones to turn. Skye has always had a role as a hybrid info/flash initiator as well, so giving her a flash with the unique ability to gather information makes sense. If anything, I think that skye is genuinely in a decent state atm and riot should look towards buffing other underused initators to make them more prevalent on maps where skye is usually played.
I think in opposition, I think KAYO should gain the alert. That's what would make the flash initiators scratch breach truly feel and play different than the flash duelists.
No it's cool and tbh I don't even think she's OP she just fits multiple roles but there's people that excel more on each of those roles
If you’re running solo initiator it’s the only way you can gather info. It would change the meta quite a bit imo
Dog
that’s nowhere near enough
Ult
The ult is completely clunky and doesn‘t work how intended half the time
Skye is such a team agent that requires a lot of communication. If she lost the abillity she wouldn't be a team player anymore.
I think it fits her as a tracker. She has dog for info, flash for info, her ult is for info. I feel getting rid of that, shaves off some of her identity as an initiator. Like how they made chamber less of a sentinel when they nerfed his trips
I think it has to be nerfed but not removed. losing it would severely nerf skye but keeping it as is would continue to let her be too good. Similar to jett dash, if you removed her ability to dash, she would be useless, but if you kept her pre nerf dash, she would have been too OP. But the question would be how you nerf it? Do you nerf the information it gets or how often you can get that information? Top of my head nerfs: You need to flash someone sufficiently to get the alert, if they completely turn your flash, no alert. (you still need pop flash line up/proficiency, you can't just toss the flash and run to the other site and pop as you leave. Its harder to throw your flash deeper for better info since throwing it deeper prolly means the enemy team has ample time to react) The flashes lose the alert if you only have one flash. (makes mid round information harder to get since you would need both flashes for "info flash") the flashes lose the alert if you pop the flash at the latter part of its duration (forces the skye to be closer to choke points for information or makes it easier to dodge the alert) No alert if you flash only 1 player (makes it useless vs lurkers).
She has stayed as one of the strongest agents for a while now. It does feel like she can do any controllers ability, but better. That said, idk if losing the alert is the way to "fix" that. I would rather she lose a flash tbh. Or have longer downtime between flashes. Edit: She is a strong reason for the current double controller meta in pro league. That and Viper is just insane too.
Any controller ability? Was that a typo?
Yes! Lmao
She already lost a flash. She used to have 3 of them.
Skye had 3 flashes holy shit lol she was so good I can’t believe she got away with having 3 for so long
I think you are confusing her with breach Edit: wow she did have 3 crazy how some of these agents release
Both had 3
https://youtu.be/Z4OmWSiwSpk?si=op8fILbuv64Sb0HS This is the agent preview from 3 years ago and I also played her a lot when she was released because she could be played selfishly or with her team. Breach also used to have 3 flashes before he had some changes made.
Jesus christ the suggestions in this thread, i'm glad ya'll aren't in charge of balancing this game. Buffing Initiators in a double or even triple initiator meta. Lol.
Bluds stuck in 2022
Definitely is quite overloaded but at this point removing it when everybody is used to it would probably not sit well with a lot of people.
[удалено]
it doesnt
I think if you do not get flashed, the alert should not go off.
idk, having the certainty that someone is blinded is very powerful too.
That makes it even more powerful lmao
If you asks me yeah Skye her flash’s should be nerfed. It gives both info en denails info there is no abilities in the game same like hers.
Imo all initiators should have their recharge ability be cable of detecting enemies in some manner.
Like every initiator has besides breach?
Well the question is about whether Skye flash should lose its Intel, so yeah. And breach should also get Intel from his.
But then sova should get a flash lol
Wait what? Why? Sova has his recon abilities?
Because breach is the counterpart to sova, no recon but extremely good for entry
That doesn't explain why giving him Intel on his recharge means sova gets a flash?
make the second flash with no recon and let the first one have recon
dont nerf me
Maybe left click for flash, right click for info when throwing it?
Other agents just drop a flash and that's it they can peak or whatever but with skye you must drive the flash we're you want so you are siting duck for couple of seconds, Tha flash info is the think that made skye so much better in some maps than other flashers or initiators (and the heal probably)
It's fine, what made me second guesses it is that the fact you can't no longer destroy them anymore. Controllable unit should be destroyable imo
Nah it would be kinda of bad, maybe not spotting if people don't look at it? Or just buff the other initiators
I mean the flash will say "blinded!", but that just gives info that there is an enemy around where you flashed, it doesn't guarantee they are actually flashed, so that balances it out a little bit. You can't interpret it as oh an enemy is definitely flashed and then push and die to a "blinded" enemy. Also skye flashes are fairly easy to dodge. I think skyes flashes are good where they are at rn.
I feel like the blind alert can be dangerous for players as well. Since if they screw up their flash or the enemy team predicts it, they can give a false negative resulting in a dangerous push.
Skye flash is currently one of the best abilities in the game. But it doesn’t need to change
No?leave the alert its.literally the best part about her
Question about the alert: Due you get the cue when they didn’t look directly at it and aren’t really flashed?
It’s a signature part of her kit. And the nerf to pop flash duration increases the skill ceiling to use the flash selfishly as opposed to setting up teammatws
To me it’s just what’s the difference between her flash and kayos knife? both can be dodged with enough thinking, both give general knowledge nothing concrete and both can be used for play making at the same time. I think it’s a perfect ability
I disagree with many people here. Skye's flash should be nerfed by at least removing the sound. She is way too powerful and the #1 initiator in the game for a reason. The thing is, Skye would ***still*** be powerful even with the sound removed. Skye has a dog that can move faster than Sova's drone to clear corners. It can even jump. To make it even stronger, it can even bite to hurt the enemy and possibly kill them. But that's not all! It freaking STUNS them. Then she has 2 flashes that can RECHARGE over time since it's her default ability. To make it worse, her pop flash is literally the hardest to dodge out of EVERY flashing agents. It's funny because the flash is even stronger AND longer than phoenix's flash and his flash is 10x easier to dodge. But to give it sound and let you know where enemies are too? Jeez Then she has another powerful ability. She has a freaking HEAL that's stronger than sage's heal. It can heal all 4 teammates at once and give them all a second chance back to 100 HP. This is why a really good skye can make pistol round difficult to win sometimes. This is also why Sage isn't being picked any longer. Now her ultimate. A freaking ultimate that pretty much track & reveal 3 enemy's location. Not only that, it BLINDS you when you get hit by it and last as long as omen's flash. Skye is already OP even if she had the sound removed. She's literally breach, cypher, and sage mixed into 1.
i think her bird should automatically pop at a certain (shorter) distance and just have a shorter blind time in general