Valorant Skye: Everything we know about Valorant's next Initiator agent

Who is Valorant Skye? Valorant's new agent has the team's best interests at heart, channeling her healing powers to keep the squad healthy, while calling upon her animal companions to hunt down enemies. Her protective instincts make her look like a strong addition to the roster, and she can even take control of a fearsome tiger to attack opponents.

Skye's powers draw from the natural world, and the potency of her abilities may just give Sage a run for her money. It's about time Valorant got a new healer, and so far, her skill set appears to strike a good balance between support and aggression. Here's everything we know about Valorant Skye, including her abilities, when she's coming, and more.

When does Valorant Skye release?

Valorant Act 3 is well underway, having launched on October 13. It introduces a new battle pass, map, and skins, but we'll have to wait a little longer to meet the roster's new healer agent, Skye. You can harness the powers of her loyal creatures to do your bidding on October 27.

Valorant Skye abilities

While we're yet to meet the new agent in Valorant, Riot has shared a few clips of her abilities in action in the Skye abilities preview below. Here are Valorant Skye's abilities:

• Regrowth: Channel to heal allies within radius. (C)
• Trailblazer: Control a Tasmanian tiger to concuss enemies (Q)
• Guiding Light: Summon a hawk that blinds. (E)
• Seekers: Summon Seekers to nearsight enemies. (X)

Taking a closer look at the trailer, we can see that Regrowth can be toggled to heal multiple nearby allies. All you have to do is make sure that your teammates are standing within her green circle. Their health bars are visible in the top-left of the screen as well as underneath each agent, and it looks as though it only takes a few seconds to patch them up to full HP. Strangely this ability doesn't heal Skye at all.

Skye's Trailblazer ability sees her summon a Tasmanian tiger, which she can then control. While in tiger-form her vision is greatly reduced, making it impossible to see enemies that are standing far away. When the tiger strikes an enemy it inflicts an AoE concuss effect. While concussed your vision is compromised, turning everything grey and blurry, which makes it difficult to attack opponents. However, the tiger can be eliminated before it attacks. It looks like it takes four body shots from a Classic pistol to stop it.

Enemies can also put an abrupt halt to Skye's Guiding Light move. This ability summons a hawk that can blind enemies, but it can be shot out of the air—three Classic pistol shots will do the trick. You can curve this around corners (similar to Phoenix's Curveball move) and it blinds targets upon activation.

Skye's ultimate is called Seekers. This move summons up to three seekers that gravitate towards enemies to nearsight them on contact. Judging by the preview footage, Seekers looks especially valuable on bomb sites as the orbs can travel around corners. Not only can you see where the Seekers are heading, which may give away enemy positions, nearsighted enemies will be disoriented as your team storms onto sites.

Valorant Skye trailer

Valorant's Skye reveal trailer (below) begins with a remote conversation between Sage and Skye as Skye treks through a forest that appears to have been partially destroyed by a fire. The two are discussing a blue lightning storm that's swirling overheard—a strange phenomenon that's reportedly occurring across Valorant's world. Few details have been shared about Skye's background, but as mentioned in a Kotaku AU interview with Valorant's senior game designer, Max Grossman, she's described as an "Australian eco-warrior".

The reveal trailer also gives us a glimpse of how the new agent slots into a squad. The video shows her working with Brimstone and Killjoy to storm onto a bomb site and plant the spike. Skye even manages to heal her squadmates while the spike is being planted in preparation for the enemy team to attempt to retake the site. Her Seekers ultimate also shows how skillful players will be able to hunt down opponents, catch them off guard with her abilities, and then secure follow-up kills. It'll be interesting to see how Skye shakes up the meta upon her arrival as her moveset looks powerful, even when she's operating solo.

How to unlock Valorant Skye

Skye isn't available just yet, but Riot is likely to stick with their regular system for unlocking new agents. Once Skye is listed in the Agents menu, select her icon and choose View Contract to begin earning XP and working towards unlocking her. If you'd rather unlock Skye immediately, you should be able to buy her contract (unlocking Tiers 1-5) for 1,000 Valorant Points ($9.99/£9.99).