Going to make a longer YT video explaining this all in detail once I get back to the states from India, but for now I'll post a simpler, compact version of why Patch 5.12 put the final nail in Skye's coffin and nobody seemed to notice.
Everyone’s already given their two cents on the major changes in this patch, how Chamber is now dead, Killjoy is set to make the comeback of a lifetime, and what Sage’s place will be in the future, but nobody has talked about Skye at all, which is kind of concerning because it almost seems like nobody even noticed she's pretty much a dead agent.
First of all, Skye's pickrate over the last few major tournaments, from Masters Berlin to the recent RBHG3 has fallen from 58% to 16%, despite there not being a significant nerf to her this whole time. The only map teams ever played Skye was Bind, and even in mid-high elo ranked (D3+), the only maps you would ever see Skye on is Bind and Breeze, with some Haven sprinkled there. The only time Skye was picked in RBHG3 outside of Bind was once on Pearl, courtesy of C9 getting humiliated by T2 EU team FOKUS and losing the series, so not a great track record.
This happened due to both a change in overall playstyle and an initiator power creep. As teams changed from the simple Sentinels-style 5 man site hits to more defaults and split pushes, utility became more important, the reason why double duelist died, and why Skye started to explode in popularity in the first place. But as executes got more and more complex, teams started to favor Kay/O and Breach over Skye for flashes, and the introduction of Fade pretty much killed the viability of Skye's information, as the Prowlers and Nightfall eclipsed the Dog and Seekers, and the information given by flashes has always been unreliable.
The one area where Skye's flashes were better than any other was pop-flashing through smokes and walls, but popflashing with Skye and Kay/O got hard nerfed with patch 5.07, lasting only 1 second. Kay/O doesn't really have a problem with this, since his long flash is still really good, and with the proper lineup you can make it work like a regular underhand from before, but Skye's long flash is slow, easy to dodge, difficult to coordinate compared to Kay/O's and Breach's, and make a noise when it travels, unlike Kay/O's, and much louder than Breach's, which gives enemies a better opportunity to play antiflash.
Her heal seemed to be her saving grace, but once again, Sage's is just better now as a team heal, since it heals for full on a teammate, you get it back after 40 seconds, and you can instantly fight once you cast the heal, unlike Skye's where you have to have it out for a while, resulting in less opportunities than Sage to heal your teammates.
So her heal is worse than Sage, her dog is worse than Fade/Sova, her flash is worse than Kay/O, Breach, and even Phoenix now, and her ultimate is worse at taking sites than Fade's and giving info than Cypher's. Can't get worse right?
Bind and Breeze are going to be gone, which are her two best maps. On top of this, a nerf with Chamber will lead to a rise in Killjoy, especially since her ult is much harder to break now. A rise in Killjoy means more teams will want to have agents that can counter her, namely Kay/O with his supress, and the fact that his molly can still break the ult if placed correctly (60 damage max for 4 ticks = 240 dmg, 1x multiplier, KJ ult has only 200 hp) only adds to his benefits over Skye.
Skye did get changed in the new patch, but I would say it hurt her more than helped. Sure, you can buy heal+flash+light shield now on pistols, but her dog is still really good, and apart from pistols, I don't see how a change to the prices of Skye's heal and dog will change anything, if anything, it will only make gun rounds harder for Skye, since most people would rather have a dog on a gun round rather than a heal.
Skye's last hope at coming back literally relies on if the new map is a Skye map and I really hope Riot does something to fix this, I just wanted yalls thoughts on this and any proposed changes that I can put in my video. I also have another post I'm gonna make sometime later about why I expect agent compositions to get really stale and repetitive with the new changes. That's all, thanks for reading if you did read, have a great Christmas everybody.
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