In Patch 1.07, Sage got a pretty serious nerf to her healing abilities that you can read all about here. The place she’s currently in terms of ability strength has led to the community asking if she’s still a viable pick in competitive play. We say yes.

Why Sage is Still Useful (to a degree)

Every ability-based competitive shooter needs to have a healer on every team. Until Riot Games adds another healer to the game, Sage is the only way most other characters can heal themselves and should still be picked. Even if her healing rates are laughable now compared to how they originally were, they are still healing abilities. So as a healer, she should still be picked.

The wall is a different story. When first cast, the wall has 400 HP and after a 3-second delay it gets 800 HP. This means that if you put the wall somewhere where enemies are always watching, like the middle of Split, they will likely take the wall down immediately. To circumvent this, a different character with visibility blocking abilities needs to be on the team. Phoenix or Viper’s walls are a good substitute for the ice wall even though enemies can spam through them since they’re not solid. The Slow Orb’s size was also reduced by 30 percent but since it’s used on small chokepoints, also like the middle of Split, the size difference should not affect its use.

Riot’s choices

What will Riot do now? The way I see it, there are two paths they could go down. One, they release a new healer with less combat-focused abilities like Sage’s wall and slow orb and more healing abilities. Two, they buff Sage’s healing again but they don’t make her as powerful as she was. Looking at the number of support characters that a similar game like Overwatch has, it’s likely that the first path is what Riot will choose.

What do you think? Is Sage still good enough to be used? Will Riot buff her or will they introduce a new healer? As usual, remember to follow us at Run it Back for all your latest news, extensive guides, and exclusive interviews in the world of Valorant.