Apex Legends Valkyrie guide abilities, tips and tricks
Master Valkyrie's abilities with these tips and tricks for Season 10
Want to learn how to master Bangalore and her abilities in Apex Legends? Valkyrie was Season 9's addition to the Apex Legends roster, and she brought some of the most powerful abilities we've yet seen in the game. You should have a read of our Valkyrie tips and tricks below if you want to master her high skill ceiling.
We cover each of Valkyrie's abilities in great detail on this page, with stats, tips, and strategies galore. We also talk a little about Valkyrie's backstory to catch you up on how Respawn have started to blur the boundaries between Apex and the Titanfall series.
On this page:
- Apex Legends Valkyrie abilities
- Valkyrie tips and tricks
- Valkyrie Passive tips: VTOL Jets
- Valkyrie Tactical tips: Cluster Missile
- Valkyrie Ultimate tips: Skyward
- Apex Legends Valkyrie backstory
Apex Legends Valkyrie abilities
Valkyrie has access to three abilities: VTOL Jetpack (Passive), Missile Swarm (Tactical), and Skyward Dive (Ultimate). She's also a Recon Legend, which means she has the same additional Passive as Pathfinder, Bloodhound, and Crypto which allows them all to scan Survey Beacons to reveal the next ring location.
We'll cover each of these abilities in great detail below. Just know that these abilities synergise to make her one of the deadliest third-partying Legends out there, able to reach unexpected vantage points and approach the fight from surprising angles.
Valkyrie tips and tricks
We'll go over more specific tips and tricks with each of Valkyrie's abilities below, but here are some more general bits of advice that you should take with you into Season 10.
- Don't be selfish. Valkyrie has powerful team repositioning potential, so try to be a team player and use her abilities for a team push, rather than going on an all-conceived solo mission.
- Consider your aerial abilities carefully. You may feel as though flight is your ally, and it is in many ways - but you're also very, very vulnerable if you overuse your Jetpack. See below for more details.
- Sometimes, the simplest answer is the correct one. Valkyrie has possibly the flashiest abilities we've ever seen in Apex, but don't forget that this is a gun game first and foremost. Don't feel like you always have to use your abilities to give yourself the best chance of victory.
Now let's dive deeper into Valkyrie's toolkit with a look at each of her abilities in turn, starting with her Passive.
Valkyrie Passive: VTOL Jets
Description: Double-Jump to initiate VTOL Jetpack, allowing Valkyrie to fly. Fuel is limited but refills over time. Also, while skydiving, all enemies in range that she has line of sight to are highlighted to Valkyrie and her teammates.
VTOL Jets, or Jetpack, is the core of Valkyrie's ability kit, giving her the unique ability to lift off from the ground and fly for a short time. There's no distance-based limit to how high she can soar above the ground, but her fuel reserves (shown on the right of your screen) dwindle quickly and only start recharging after a significant delay, so the Jetpack will need to be used sparingly.
Respawn have made sure to add a fair amount of counterplay to Valkyrie's Jetpack ability too. For one thing, the Jetpack is very noisy and therefore gives away her position as she flies. For another, she won't be able to make quick movements to change direction while flying, so she'll be a fairly easy target while in the air. And for a third, you won't be able to pull out your gun (or indeed any grenade or healing item) while the Jetpacks are engaged, which is a huge - but probably necessary - negative aspect to this Passive.
Valkyrie Passive tips:
- Valk's Jetpacks will only start recharging 5 seconds after you hit the ground. This is true whether or not you use up all your fuel.
- Get into the habit of only using your Jetpack for short bursts. It's often not worth spending it all to fly high into the sky.
- You can quickly toggle your Jetpack on and off in order to bounce along at roughly the same height through the air. A bit like mid-air bunny-hopping.
- Use your Jetpack in a tiny burst to quickly momentum-shift. You can use this as part of many other movement techniques, such as backwards-sliding, tap-strafing, and bunny-hopping.
- You're an easier target while flying than you are while falling. Don't expect to be hard to hit if you keep using your Jetpack.
- When fighting in close range around cover such as a tree or pillar, you can fly high upwards and continue to dodge around the cover before falling down upon the enemy, or escaping.
- You can't pull out weapons or use items while flying, but you can fire your Cluster Missile.
- Holding down your Cluster Missile (but not firing it) will drastically cut down the rate of fuel consumption while flying. Useful for wrongfooting an enemy during a fight or escape attempt.
- When high in the sky, cut off your Jetpack with a small amount of fuel left. Just before you hit the ground, use Jetpack again to cushion your landing and you won't suffer from any fall stun.
Then we get to Valkyrie's additional Passives. First is her Recon Passive which all Recon characters get, which allows her to scan a Survey Beacon to reveal the map's next ring location. Second is far more interesting and powerful: while skydiving (whether deploying from the dropship at the start of the game, or using a Geyser or Jump Tower, or using her Ultimate), she and her teammates will gain some additional Titanfall-esque HUD elements which allow them to highlight enemies within range that they have line of sight with.
This highlighting is more like Crypto's Passive than Bloodhound's scan: Valkyrie can't see enemies through walls with this ability, but she'll see a green triangle around any nearby enemy that she can see, allowing her team to position themselves effectively while dropping.
Valkyrie Tactical: Cluster Missile
Description: Fire a swarm of mini-rockets that damage and disorient the enemy. Cooldown: 30 seconds.
Valkyrie's Tactical is clearly meant to synergise very nicely with her Passive glide. Cluster Missile will unleash - you guessed it - a cluster of 12 missiles towards the targeted area on the ground in a 4x3 grid pattern. These missiles don't deal much damage but they act in the same manner as Bangalore's Ultimate rockets, stunning and disorientating anyone hit for a short while.
The damage potential is more comparable to Fuse's Knuckle Cluster than to Bangalore's or Gibraltar's Ultimates. But the slow and disorient effect makes it extremely potent at halting a push, putting an enemy team on the defensive, halting a revive, and so on.
Valkyrie Tactical tips:
- Enemies hit by multiple rockets will be dealt 25 damage for the first rocket, then 3 damage for every additional rocket (2 for Fortified Legends). The stun effect is refreshed with each instance of rocket damage, but it doesn't stack.
- Whether in the air or on the ground, you can fire your rockets and then immediately turn away and move while they're still firing. The rockets will still end up where you targeted.
- The rockets land and explode a row at a time, just like Bangalore's Ultimate. So if you need an immediate effect, try to land the first row directly on the enemy.
- The stun and disorient effect is less potent than an Arc Star. It's more like the effect of Crypto's EMP Ultimate. You'll need to act very quickly to capitalise on the stun.
- While Cluster Missile can be fired a surprising range, there's very little point using it at this range. You need to be close to the target in order to capitalise on the effect, so unless the enemy is one-shot, save your Tactical for closer-range engagements.
- Holding down your Cluster Missile (but not firing it) will drastically cut down the rate of fuel consumption while flying. Useful for wrongfooting an enemy during a fight or escape attempt.
Valkyrie Ultimate: Skyward
Description: Press once to prepare for launch. Teammates can interact with Valk to join the launch. Press again to launch into the air and skydive. Charge Time: 120 seconds.
Skyward forms the linchpin of her playstyle as the ultimate third-partyer. This team-repositioning ability will act as a mobile Jump Tower: wherever you are on the map, as long as there is nothing between you and the sky, you can propel your teammates up into the air and initiate a skydive.
Skyward allows for some incredibly powerful repositioning, and it synergises well with Valkyrie's passive highlighting of enemies while skydiving. The downside is that you're fairly vulnerable while flying straight upwards into the air, much like a player escalating a Jump Tower; and if you're damaged during the wind-up phase of the Ultimate, then the ability will e cancelled and your charge level set back to 75%.
Skyward rivals Octane's Launch Pad as the ultimate tool for getting in and out of trouble. There's also great benefit in the idea that a team won't be able to easily follow you if you use it to escape, because it doesn't leave anything behind that the enemy can use (unlike Octane's Launch Pad).
Valkyrie Ultimate tips:
- Once you reach the height limit of Skyward, you will initiate a skydive where you are the Jumpmaster. Like normal, your teammates can peel off from you and land separately.
- The height you reach as Valkyrie in Battle Royale is approximately 120% the height of the average jump tower. But in the Arena, your max height is capped to be significantly lower.
- If one or more of your teammates doesn't hook up to your Skyward Ultimate, be aware just how incredibly split you can become if you don't stick to them. Skyward isn't the best tool for going on one-woman flanks, because it's just too overt, much like Loba's bracelet.
Apex Legends Valkyrie backstory
Let's finish up this guide with a recap of Valk's story as we know it so far. And it's a story that got a lot of Titanfall players excited when she was first teased, because it turns out Valkyrie is the daughter of Viper - an enemy pilot the player has to kill in Titanfall 2.
In Titanfall 2, Viper was part of a mercenary group called the Apex Predators, led by the pilot Kuben Blisk. Viper was a pretty shady guy from the player's perspective: he and his group were hired by the really rather evil IMC to try and destroy the planet Harmony - the home of the freedom fighters the player is fighting for, and some 40 million others. He is eventually killed by the player.
Turns out, Viper had a daughter. Her name is Kairi Imahara, and she becomes Valkyrie. The above Northstar video illustrates part of her childhood. She longs to be a pilot like her father, but Viper forbids her from becoming one as it is too dangerous. Undeterred, she hijacks his Northstar Titan and flies it around for a while until she's shot down and enters a tailspin, from which she is rescued by her father.
In the present day, after Viper's death, it is revealed that Valkyrie has tracked down the mercenary commander Blisk, who she sees as responsible for her father's demise. They have a good talk, some of it at gunpoint, and Blisk hammers her with the words: "He [Viper] knew what he was fighting for. Do you?"
Filled with renewed purpose, Valkyrie recovers her father's Northstar Titan wreckage and (with quite a lot of help from fellow Legend Rampart) repurposes it, turning it into her new wingsuit which she'll take into the Apex Games.
That's just about everything we know about Valkyrie in Apex Legends. For more details on the other Legends, be sure to check out our best Apex Legends characters page!