Valorant KAY/O Tips And Tricks - A Must Know

Defaulting

Ascent is the most default map where there is an A site, a B site, and a Mid with a way to split A and a way to split B. In running some defaults as KAY/O, using your knife early in is worth it; you can adapt it as you decide what the enemy team is doing.

However, using it on pistol round early is a good idea, especially since you have no idea how the enemy will play and if you just instantly shut down a rush or determine that nobody is there, which is valuable information.

Saving Knife

The times when you want to hold on to your knife are when the enemy team is playing is extremely slowly. So, the reason why you want to hold on to it is that it does not help us much. You might spot one, you might spot two, but in the end, they might not do anything.

Maybe, they are always playing a default, and therefore you spot to a main that doesn't tell you anything because they are still working mid and B. So, saving this knife for a more opportune time can be a lot more appealing.

The other time you want to save knife is when you see key ultimates. Times where there are key ultimates are like with Raze when she pops showstopper but doesn't have any more of it left, so it gets canceled.

Usually, that takes quite a lot of time to build up, and if you can cancel it out, that is just huge value for a free ability. Next is Chamber, as her op is very crucial. When you are in a one-on-one situation with Chamber, you will often find that Chamber might have an op, and you don’t really want to peek it.

If you catch them off guard and they do not expect you to throw the knife at them, you can easily kill them easily because they will be in the animation of putting away their operator and needing to pull out their gun.

Most times, Chamber does not even have a gun behind it, and they will just have the classic because they popped off and maybe dropped for their teammate. This is a very common thing to do, so if you think ahead, you can set yourself up for plays that get you easy kills.

Default Knives

Defaulting a knife early in the round, one should only sometimes want to do it toward the same place. While it is good to do it toward the site you are defending, you want to be adaptable and flexible, and KAY/O is a very strong flex agent.

Instead of always throwing it a main, sometimes tossing one toward tiles is very helpful in ensuring somebody is there or nobody is there. Basically, if no one’s tiles, you don't need to worry as much about some mid-hit because it doesn't really make sense.

If you want to hit Mid and you don't have any tiles presence, you should unite tiles and see if nobody is there, which will provide tons of information and help you decide your plan.

Flashes

In this part, we will let you know when one should use right-click as well as left-click flashes. Left-click goes way further, so it is a lot better at supporting your teammates. For example, if you have a teammate that is pushed up, you can toss a flash high so it does not blind them but blinds anyone who might be on the other side.

The other thing to note is that you can actually go with them and might want to be the first one ahead, tell them you are flashing so they can look away. After that, you can just pop the flash, turn around, and can swing behind it.

Now, let us talk about the left-click flashes and the multiple things one can do to take full advantage of them. The most basic left-click flash is just to throw it at your enemies and hope that it blinds them.

This strat could work, but if you want to see it from your own perspective, if you see a flash bouncing around on the ground and taking a long time to explode, you will probably look away or start backing out of the line of sight of your danger.

If you are going to flash them directly, right-click is generally the way to go because it takes less time for them to react, and you can be much closer, so after the flash pops, you can swing.

If you are throwing your flash from far away, chances are that you are not going to make it in time after the flash pops to be able to swing in time, and they might be unblinded, especially if it is not a direct flash.

The trick you can do with your left-click flash is “bait forward.” So, throwing it behind you and swinging after it, it flashes behind you, so you will see that you weren’t flashed at all, and it might bait the people to look away.

When they see the flash hit, they will reflexively look away, and you swing out at that moment, giving you easy kills. Even if someone were to swing after it, they would see the flash and turn away. It gives you a window to come out and kill one of their teammates.

Moreover, when they turn back, the flash still pops, and they will turn blind, meaning that there is a solid chance for you to get a kill. However, this is not the best flash because a lot of the time, when someone is playing counter flash or not, everyone is looking at the flash.

For example, if you do an early A main, there could be players on the other side of some walls that haven’t even got there. Their teammates might get flashed, and they just swing, and they have no threat to them because they were never in the line of sight of it, and they never saw the flash so that they won’t get faked out.

In most cases, you will find that right-click flashing is a lot better, so you can throw it toward them, which is not really recommended. The basic idea is to throw the flash behind you so you can easily look away from the flash much easily.

Let us now talk about how a player can get the perfect pop flashes with KAY/O in Valorant. The best way to learn the internal timer for throwing pop flashes is that you want to understand that, ideally, you would like your flash to pop on the left side of some walls.

That way, any player on that side will have very less time to react before the flash pops. The likeliness of them dodging this attack is minimal, and the likeliness of you getting a kill is maximized.

Knowing the basic minimum distance will allow players to understand when to throw flashes. Practicing your flashes will make one a way better KAY/O, as you get a lot of kills from people who are just full-blown.

Smoke Clearing

If you want to hit a site, smokes are one of your best choices because it allows you to get as close to the site as possible and have your flash get maximum value while the defenders can’t see you if you are inside the smoke.

So, if you see a smoke, you walk into it, you are going to pop flash out, and swing out with your entire team also in the smoke, so you guys all flood out at the exact same time. Now, let us talk about some smoking-clearing etiquette because, as a KAY/O, you will be pushing into smoke.

One thing you can do is to just flash inside the smoke and walk through, so it is pretty simple. Although, most of the time, it is not worth it and is a waste of the flash, and if you are trying to pop flash out of the smoke, it will let your enemies know your move.

If the defender hears a flash in the smoke, they are going to be wary, and there is a likely chance they will end up running through with a flash. The next thing to do is to clear the smoke manually.

Ideally, you would like a teammate with you, and you are probably not clearing a loan, so that way, you can at least trade if someone is inside. However, the way to clear smoke is to avoid sticking your gun in and just walk through the smoke.

That is going to get you killed because your gun is going to show before you see anything. You will be outside the smoke, your gun barrel will be pointing inside the smoke, and the guy inside will see that and just shoot you and kill you.

The right way to do it is if you imagine the smoke coming out as a ring once you throw it. You look to the side, come in and swing your mouse in. This way, the gun barrel is not showing, and once you come in, you can see that your entire body and your gun show simultaneously.

It is less time for people inside to react to it and, therefore, a higher chance for you to get the kill. In the end, clearing a smoke on your own is very hard, which is why if you can, you will have a teammate with you, and then when you get to the edge, you can pop flash out.

Also, let’s talk about how players can use two flashes effectively because one should think a little differently when you have two flashes instead of one. When you have one, a lot of the time, you will just end up right-clicking because that is your only flash and hence your only advantage you can use in a gunfight.

Using it as a right-click will give you the most amount of value because you can swing right off of it, and you have a more likely chance of getting the kill. Many left-click flashes might flash someone; you cannot capitalize, so you waste your flash, which is why right-click flash is a bit better.

However, when you have two, and the scenario is that you likely won’t get another chance to use your second flash. The chances of you using your second flash on a retake are pretty much gone.

Once you get on a site, there won’t be much time to pull out your flash again because you are fighting the players on site. So, how do you make your success chances of retaking better?

Instead of always just right-clicking and the last flash not doing anything, you will use both. So, tossing one over a wall and then immediately flashing right after that so, because the first one takes way longer, you will have the time to pop flash through immediately after.

So, after the first one flashes, the second also immediately flashes, and in this way, you get more coverage, a more likely chance of getting kills, and not dying because more people are likely to be flashed, and you don’t waste your second flash.

Molly

Now, let us talk about KAY/O’s molly or fragment grenade. You are going to need this, like most mollys, to clear certain angles that you do not want to deal with. You can learn molly lineups which is not really necessary.

However, KAY/O molly isn’t the best molly as it doesn’t last very long and acts in four pulses. So, you can dodge in between the pulses, and you wouldn’t take any damage. Using it whenever you can find value is the idea.

So, if you do not want to clear the vine and there is a possibility there could be an enemy, just throwing it there to be clear is great. When you are running out A, if you just throw it toward Heaven, that will give you just enough time to scale outside before the molly fades, and therefore it is going to be much more dangerous than just swing.

Basically, whatever value you can find, just use it there as a way to stall. It does not really have much more value on top of that but if the enemy has a KJ, then save it for that. However, generally, it is not something that you want to be focusing on and saving as much as possible. The flash has the biggest potential.

What Makes A Good KAY/O?

The most important part about being a good KAY/O is understanding what you need your knife to do. Many people will simply search for maximum value, but that is different from what the idea of the ability should be, and there are a lot more times that the information matters more than the actual suppression.

So, if you are a KAY/O that waits, for example, if you wait for footsteps so that their knife will actually suppress something. While that is good, in a lot of cases, that is not true.

Imagine a scenario where it is a 3v3 situation you are on A site and have a teammate at mid, defending, and you have another teammate defending B site. So, you are trying to hold but have no idea where the enemy is.

Now, you can save the knife until you have until you hear smokes coming up, and you throw the knife against it. In this way, the enemies might be suppressed, maybe they have one less smoke or something like that.

However, at that point, you are playing a 1v3. In this specific instance, the idea is not the maximum value and does not make any sense. Had you thrown the knife way earlier, the moment you knew you had no information, your roommate from mid would have rotated to A to help you, and then your teammate from B would have rotated earlier.

Rather than knowing too late, it is understandable that suppressing them doesn’t stop the enemies from coming to the site but getting the information will help you hold the site.

Knife Tips

The more places you could throw a knife and have it be effective, the better it is, but it is usually unnecessary because a lot of the knives you want to throw are self-explanatory. Throwing knives that have a maximum radius that covers everything tells a player less information.

However, limiting the range sometimes helps a lot because now you know that there is one person specifically on one half of the site. You can go as far as throwing your knife through which you have essentially cleared an area.

As for knives on the attacking side, you might want to approach the topic differently. You want to clear certain angles and make it awkward, so on Ascent, a lot of times, it would be cat.

You throw the knife in the middle, it doesn’t make anyone who wants a swing cap very comfortable. Firstly, it is because you know that they are there, and second is that if it is like Chamber, he won’t be able to tp.

Use your utility to best suit the type of playstyle that you have as well as the best sort of strat that your team is doing.

Ultimate Tips

Now, it is time to tell you about the Null command, i.e., KAY/O’s ult. There are a few ways to use it, one of which is to get close and then pop the ult, suppressing everyone in the range, and the other is to pop it right off the barrier. Which one is better?

If you are going against the Viper, then most of the time, it is better just to pop it right off the barrier. This is because the moment you catch the Viper in, she is unable to at all, so the orb and the walls never go up.

She is unable to molly the choke to stop you from pushing out, so she is basically just screwed as she has no abilities, has no way of stalling, and all she can do is hide now. So, on Breeze, where they play the bomb site, Viper will get ulted, orb never goes up, so you just have to free B line onto the site.

Moreover, you don’t even have to deal with being vulnerable from her molly. Now, in terms of dome smokers, it might not be as good because a lot of dome smokers have a significantly longer range.

Viper generally plays around her utility, but in terms of Brimstone, Omen, and Astra, most times, they can be playing farther away therefore, the smokes can still come up. So, for those reasons, you should walk up closer.

That way, when you pop the O, even if the smoke comes out, you will probably beat it before it goes down, and your team will come out behind you. You might be wondering about how to use the ult on the defensive side.

You should pop your ult when you are hearing enemies, but your team is out of position. This is a way to patch the boat before sinking because you lost the pick, and they just want to capitalize on it.

This is a really good way to use your ult, and rather than just waiting to retake, you can just pop it early and stall the enemies. Basically, the main goal with your null command is to try to hit a timing with it, so if you are going against dome smokers, you want to hit them before they have activated their abilities.

There might be times when they can be super quiet and might catch you off guard but not always, and if you can hear them ahead of time, you can pop it early and buy time for your team to rotate. Therefore, your chances of holding the site are way higher.

Playstyle

Want to know how you should be playing as KAY/O to gain full advantage of him? Ideally, you want to be playing around anywhere there is a doorway or some sort of wall you can pop flash behind.

This way, you can hide, wait for some sort of sound cue, pop flash, swing, and get easy kills. The next is if you can be somewhere close to a choke point, that is good because now you can support and stall your team by modeling the choke as well as getting information toward the main ways to hit the site like A main or B main easily.

However, it is not recommended to use KAY/O as a site player because sometimes he is a lot better as a retaker than he is as a site anchor. This is because if you think about the door smoke that was explained before, you just pop flash out, swing out, and kill whoever is on site.

That is a pretty solid way of re-entering onto site after you have lost it. Now, although they are running out, if the smoke is thrown, you can pop flash and fight with your teammate. After that, you can come and shoot your enemies in the back of the head, and your teammate comes out.

After that, you just bottle them at the choke. KAY/O’s priority here will be to either defend the site with the site anchor or to leave the site and play for retake. When you don’t have a command at times, you will find that it might be better just to save it for retake if your teammates are stuck, meaning that they either got naded out or picked immediately.

As for aggressive or defensive styles of play, you can alternate between both. So, the defensive style would usually be waiting off utility, so if you have a Chamber trip for cap and a main control, you can just wait near it.

Wait for the Chamber trip to come, some sort of notification will be told, and then you just pop flash and swing off of that. You can also just be playing as a site anchor, but for obvious reasons, you want to be playing around your best kind of utility which in KAY/O’s case is his flash.

As for aggressive maneuvers, that is still doable, but you should generally sway on the site. However, if you are confident with your aim, then taking aggressive fights is, at times, okay. KAY/O is one of those agents where it's not the worst if he dies.

This is because he is not a smoke agent, he does not have heal, and he is not a primary opper. Moreover, his information is good, but his point is to be almost an entry out of a lot of cases because his flash is so good.

So, on the attacking side, you could be the first one in which you are just clearing everything. You pop your ult, and you are running in because if you die, you can get down, you run into smoke, you pop, flash out you swing.

KAY/O can do all of that, but he can also be the supportive type of knifing early at A main, running up, popping ult, flashing once, flashing twice, molly toward Heaven, and then running out after that.

Since he can do both, it really depends on the team it your teammates already have double duelists or raising a jet your necessity to do the aggressive playstyle is less. You can be that supportive kale but a lot of the meta right now is double initiator and triple initiator.

In that case, it is going to seem a little bit more viable to be the aggressive player. You might not be a duelist but you are one of the more aggressive initiators.