cloudberry [#41]
I think Vyse's popularity thus far (or lack thereof) is a great indicator that Skye can get her recharge back, or maybe even a shorter one than what she had before, without reinitiating the Skye meta.
Let me explain.
Flashes that doubled as information gathering used to be so overpowered that it wasn't really worth considering playing any other initiators. However, Vyse's flash gives you about as much information, you can place it in positions a Skye flash could never consistently reach, you can swing off it without needing to reequip your gun or readjust your crosshair placement OR you can instantly activate it from the other side of the map, and you can even reuse it after 20 seconds instead of 45—and all that isn't consdering the fact that this is on a sentinel with a trip, so you have room in your comp for another agent that you wouldn't've had if you played Skye because you'd've needed an info sentinel such as Killjoy and Cypher.
I understand the agent's new, and that we've only seen offseason tournaments being played since her release, and that people aren't gonna be as good with her as they are with Skye. But if the flash alone warranted Skye a 56% pickrate at Champions 2023, and Vyse fills that role (with a better and more frequent flash, mind you) in addition to another necessary role that she covers as well, then not seeing Vyse being picked by any team other than T1 so far (correct me if I'm wrong), then that's enough evidence to me that Skye can have her cooldown back (maybe even a 30s one instead of a 45s one) without being a dominant initiator in the game, even with Bind, Split, and Pearl in the map pool. And honestly, I don't think she'll be considered more than she already was on any map other than Abyss, which is a map whose meta isn't clearly defined yet anyway.
(If you're wondering why this was so long, I was gonna make this a thread but decided to just drop it here instead 😅)
The thing that made skye's flash so strong was that it was so versatile as both a killing tool and an info tool.
The nerf reduced the abilities scope so that skye sat in more of a middle ground between selfish play (pop flashing) and info gathering.
It caused players to get smarter about their utility instead of "oh but it'll recharge in x seconds", this is also why gecko has been so strong, its almost impossible to not get value when he has twice the utilnof other agents.
Anyway to sum up, vyse isn't that popular because she's locked into a specific playstyle and most ppl didn't mesh with it. Skye is perfectly fine where she is and the flash helped overall health of the game. The upcoming gecko changes will likely reduce the amount of times he can use util either by extended cooldown or a switch to non rechargables.
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