October has been an absolute nightmare for VALORANT developers. Following the release of the Icebox map and agent Skye, RIOT still has some convincing to do.
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The initiator agent Skye was deployed worldwide in the first week of November. Even before landing on live servers, Skye was already receiving negative feedbacks from community veterans. Her primary abilities formulated a series of debates among players. In terms of capabilities, Skye fits between Sage and Breach. However, the primary issue with Skye is not her abilities but her effectiveness.
Finding a specific role to fit Skye in a competitive team is difficult. Recently, Breach received a buff, which increased his flash timing from 1.75 seconds to 2 seconds. In addition to that, Sage is already a better healer than Skye, being able to heal teammates from a far greater distance. Of course, both agents have their downsides, but that doesn’t alter Skye’s current status.
According to Blitz.gg, Skye packs a 3.8% average pick-rate in the rank pyramid. Skye’s low presence on ranked matches clears many confusions about her efficiency. Through Patch 1.11, Sentinel agent Cypher and Killjoy underwent substantial nerfs, which makes the situation more complicated as they no longer pose a severe threat to initiator agents or duelists.
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Nevertheless, the newly released map Icebox is also drawing cynical attention from the VALORANT community. On top of that, Skye’s introduction has been quite shaky due to the stability issues with Patch 1.11. However, a fair amount of players are also trying to fix Skye as their primary agent.