KAY/O Valorant Agent Guide

KAYO valorant agent is the 16th agent to be released into Valorant and the fourth initiator to enter the game. KAY/O is a special type of initiator though as he has both two flashes and a knife that gives him info on how many enemies are in a 15-meter radius. KAY/O is one of the most unique agents that shares a ton of similarities with duelists. KAY/O comes equipped with scanning utility, flashes, and suppression to force a fight on his terms.

KAY/O Valorant Agent Guide

This battle bot is built to stand against the best team comps and is extremely versatile which is easily one of his main strengths. At the end of this guide, you’re going to have every tool you need to pick up this robot yourself and perform with ease. To master other Agents in Valorant check our Valorant deadlock agent guide, Valorant agent Gekko, and Harbor Valorant agent guide.

KAY/O FRAG/MENT

The FRAG/MENT is KAY/O’s Valorant ability and it is an Equipable Molly-like ability that when landed will last four seconds and tick four separate times, it can be left-click thrown to cover large distances or lobed with right-click to clear out angles close to you. The FRAG/MENT ability does 25 to 60 damage per tick depending on where you’re standing inside of its radius, so keep that in mind while using this KAY/O ability.

KAY/O Valorant

Let’s go over the ability strengths as it functions a bit differently than a standard Molly. The FRAG/MENT does a lot of damage, dealing near-lethal damage in the Center of its radius and this means that can be reliably used to finish off opponents on low health and is great as a deterrent to block off choke points that the enemy is trying to push through.
KAY/O’s FRAG/MENT ability is also amazing at flushing, sometimes better than standard molly because of its huge radius and its ability to hit players underneath where it lands, so if there’s an enemy trapped in an angle then you can throw your ability to force them to either take a panicked fight with you where you will be ready or sit in the FRAG/MENT and just lose.
Remember: It can damage enemies in hell at A Site on Ascent. If retaking and you spot someone hiding, use FRAG/MENT.

Lineups

Another great application is using the KAY/O Frag to stall the post plant by utilizing lineups or by just throwing it at the spike when you hear the tap. This isn’t as good as the other mollies as it only lasts 4 Seconds but you still use Valorant KAY/O’s FRAG/MENT ability if you’re trapped behind a smoke or want to knock a few seconds off the spike.
Post Plant lineups and throwing this ability at the spike don’t need to be nearly as important as the radius is so massive on the Fly lineups are super easy. A small tip is that it is nearly impossible to diffuse the spike half once this Molly is thrown. The spike takes 3.75 seconds to diffuse at half so if you land a perfect molly then it could just save you the game.

kayo Lineups

KAY/O’s Val FRAG/MENT ability is quick killing Molly variant and it’s great for quick damage and lots of pressure with the amount of area that it covers. It functions great in wider areas where standard mollies usually fall short due to their small radius. KAY/O’s Molly isn’t the greatest in the category of stalling and damaging mollies but it does have its place in its small quirks that set it apart from others in the throwable set of abilities.

KAY/O Flash/Drive

FLASH/DRIVE is the ability you’ll see talked about most often as it’s quite powerful and extremely versatile. All it is a flash an ability that simply blinds the opponent and teammates. It can be chucked with a left click and lobbed with a right click, enabling a multitude of different ways to flash yourself and your teammates.
Valorant KAY/O’s Flash has a huge amount of freedom as it’s one of the only flashes that has a wide array of lineups you can learn to make completely Unreactable flashes meaning that you have perfect flashes that are impossible to turn from, allowing for great setups with your team or just by yourself.

KAY/O Flash/Drive

Note: KAY/O FLASH/DRIVE has a 1.6-sec windup time for primary fire and 1 sec for alt fire, providing the enemy with less time to react compared to other flashes.

How far the flash is being thrown into the enemy’s perspective?

It’s important to recognize how far the flash is being thrown into the enemy’s perspective. If you throw it too far then it’ll go past the angle, give the enemy player a lot of time to react to it, and sometimes it’ll be so far into the angle that it won’t even flash them.

Properly throwing KAY/O’s Flash

It’s simple, you want to practice this a bit but all you have to do is get the flash to pop up as close to the angle as possible, doing this will allow you to complete a half turn. Turning the flash and peeking at the angle that the enemy is holding, gaining the advantage on the angle you flashed and killing any players who were in bad positioning.

Corner Pop Flash

It’s good as standard flash, simply because it flashes anyone that’s staring at the angle that you are about to peek. Rather than guessing where the enemies are, you’re simply making the angle that you’re about to peek safe.
This is a bit tricky when you start but this is much better than banking them off walls, giving the enemy an eternity to react to flash. It’s also much better than throwing Kayo’s Flash too far into the angle causing the Flash to not even blind the opponent.

kayo Corner Pop Flash

Remember:
⦁ Close to the corner wins you the fights
⦁ Follow up the flash with a peek
⦁ Pre-aim the possible angle that the enemy is holding
⦁ If you don’t have lineups or aren’t flashing for your team, use the corner pop flash as a standard way to flash using KAY/O

Timing of KAY/O’s Flash

There is a timing to these flashes that you’ll get a feel for yourself. Right-click flash pops after 1 second, Left-click flash pops after 2 seconds. Mastering these timings is going to allow you to flash and peek with the flash, Un-peek as the flash, and re-peek the flash. Timing is everything. While you follow the flash after the throw you can also get information about the enemy’s position.

KAY/O Zero/Point

ZERO/POINT ability is KAY/O’s signature ability that resets on a timer of 40 seconds. This is Valorant KAY/O’s primary clearing ability and is the reason that KAY/O is a bit weaker in some areas than a good portion of initiators with drones as you don’t need direct vision on close angles.
It is more effective when thrown to corner areas. If an enemy is detected, you can hold only one angle and wait for that enemy to swing. ZERO/POINT once thrown is going to display the number of enemies detected in the radius. The radius does go through walls so this can be helpful to prevent it from getting shot.

KAY/O Zero/Point valorant

On top of displaying the players in the area, it also suppresses them for a total of 8 seconds. This can be great for a few things so let’s check out attack first.

On Attack

On attack Landing, KAY/O Val ZERO/POINT ability also known as KAY/O knife on the opposing Sentinels will turn off all their trip wires, aimbot, etc. This allows for a much easier sight execution and it’s also great for determining how many players are on a given site at any moment.
Lineups are great for KAY/O knife also as it can optimize the amount of site it covers can optimize the position to a point where it’s very hard to shoot. Another great use for this is taking away weapon abilities such as Jett knives, Chamber’s operator, or even Raze’s rocket. This can be great if you’re trying to attack a site that the players are holding and forcing them to use a weaker gun in turn giving you the great window opportunity to hit the site.

On Defense

At defense, you’re going to generally see players knife outside of A Main or B Main at the start of a round to gather information for their team helping to determine where the attackers are planning on hitting. Do be aware that at the higher levels, players will catch on to your knife timings pretty quickly, so you must be staggering your timing of the knife and mixing up where you’re throwing it.
Don’t just knife outside to be man at the start of the round, or every round. The enemy team will catch on if you play it like this and take advantage of it by faking pressure or waiting out the knife. If you catch five players outside of A Main then it’d be smart to move a player towards A to help if you catch one or two with the knife outside of A but still have Presence at B Main.

kayo on defense

KAY/O knife is an essential tool in his kit and it’s amazing for general intel gathering. It can also be used to help shut down a push. Preventing the enemy players from using their utility to help them push onto the site effectively. Unfortunately, this replaces a standard initiator drone which isn’t an amazing, trade-off but the knife has its perks and shouldn’t be slept on.

KAY/O NULL/cmd

The Final ability of KAY/O Valorant is the Null Command which will give him the overloaded effect which increases his fire rate by 15% giving him a 10% buff to reload speed and 10% to his recovery speed. This ultimate lasts for 12 seconds pulses once every 4 seconds and has a massive Radiance that’s going to expand and suppress any players caught in it, preventing them from using any of their abilities.
This is going to allow KAY/O to go into a down state rather than dying, in which you will get 850 HP on the ground and be revived by a teammate if they hold their interact button on you for 3 seconds uninterrupted.

kayo valorant guide

CMD is amazing for execution as it allows you to completely shut down any Sentinels that are caught in your radius, helping your team on the site almost worry-free. Alternatively, it’s amazing for retakes as it allows the same fast retakes while suppressing the enemy team allowing you to also two lives if you go down in a safe position.
It’s even great at shutting down pushes. If you’re stuck in site and want to buy your team some times then you can completely disable the enemy’s abilities and essentially act as a drone after you get down, letting your teammates know all their positions.
A Null Command is a very simple ultimate, it’s very powerful for executes, retakes, and holds. A large drawback to this, that we have to talk about is it’s very easy to pinpoint exactly where KAY/O is when his ultimate is going off.
Make sure that you’re not using this in a 1v1 or any situation where the enemy isn’t aware of your position and this is the only drawback to KAY/O’s ultimate. This means that it’s great when used in large chaotic pushes and retakes rather than 1v1 gunfights.

Outline

KAY/O is an insanely fun and effective agent to play. KAY/O’s Dynamic playstyle of both being able to flash and gather information for his team and also having that opportunity to make solo plays, makes him one of the personal Favorite agents to play but don’t expect life to be so easy. His Utility will very long time to master, especially flashes, they are extremely long both for yourself and your teammates but be sure to learn some lineups as well as get the time down so you never flash yourself.

Conclusion

Valorant KAY/O being a fourth initiator in the game can be used as a defacto Duelist. For gathering the information ZERO/POINT is the best tool to utilize. KAY/O FLASH/drive can be underhanded to have devastating effects as a single play. To prevent enemies from using any of their abilities, KAY/O NULL/Cmd is one of the best ultimates in Valorant. when killed during his ultimate, KAY/O can also be revived and it will make it stronger. Ascent, Breeze, and Icebox are the kind of maps where KAY/O will shine brighter by using its abilities.

FAQs

Where is KAY/O from Valorant?

KAY/O is created by the humans of an alternate timeline to fight against Radiants in their Human and Radiant War.

What is the lore behind Kayo?

KAY/O is a cybernetic from an alternate timeline several centuries in the future in which radiants and humans have gone to war.

What does KAY/O do?

KAY/O is a machine of war built for a single purpose: neutralizing radiants.

Do you think Valorant needs another initiator?

I personally don’t really see the need, every agent within their role has a good enough spot in the meta and none of them are really falling too far behind. Adding another one would maybe make the game imbalanced again but then that could be fun as well.