I had the chance to test out VALORANT's new agent KAY/O as part of an early access event put on by Riot Games for press and influencers. After spending all day on Thursday playing and testing the new agent, I put together a short and sweet video guide going over KAY/O's kit and showing off some essential tips and tricks to give you a head start when he goes live next week.

Overview to KAY/O's abilities

KAY/O's kit is similar to a standard CS:GO full-buy in many ways.

He has access to two flashes and a frag grenade. The frag grenade explodes 4 times over 4 seconds.

His signature ability is called Zero-Point and gives KAY/O a knife that he can throw. The knife pulses an energy wave out from wherever it lands, including going through walls, making it hard to dodge for opponents. Enemies hit by the wave will be suppressed for seven seconds. When an enemy is hit, it will also notify KAY/O of who was hit, making the Zero-Point knife a great tool for intelligence gathering.

KAY/O's ultimate ability is called NULL/CMD and it puts KAY/O into an Overloaded state. While in this state, KAY/O sends out energy pulses every few seconds that will suppress enemies in a similar fashion to his Zero-Point ability, though it will not reveal that they were hit like the Zero-Point knife does. Also while in his ultimate, if KAY/O is knocked down he can be revived, making him the only revivable character currently in VALORANT.

Tips and Tricks for KAY/O in VALORANT

The frag grenade is a great tool for preventing a plant or a defuse for a few seconds. If you do use the frag for this purpose, keep in mind that it won't deal enough damage to kill an enemy who is at full health and full shields. So in theory, someone could still defuse through the Frag/ment grenade.

I found the most useful part of the Zero-Point ability is its ability to locate enemies without KAY/O having to expose himself to enemy fire. While its suppression of enemy abilities is also incredibly useful, the information you can gather about the location of enemies on a site is invaluable to you and your team.

Keep in mind that your ultimate reveals your location. Since the waves pulsate out from your character model, an astute opponent can very easily calculate where you are. So while the ultimate is powerful and will do a lot to limit your opponent's response, be aware that your ultimate is exposing your location to the enemy team.