Do you feel so guilty every time Sage yells, “Do I have to do something?” allin Valorant? Technically, it’s not your job to break through enemy lines and shoot first blood in FPS gaming, but you have no choice. Valorant’s “middle seat mom” is a jack-of-all-trades; Riot gave us a soft-hearted healer, and we got an aggressive Battle Sage from him.
In the current Valorant meta, Sage does it all, and it’s refreshing to have a non-duelist Agent take over the game. In the Ascendant ranks, Sage is the second most picked Agent with a stellar win rate, proving that duelists are no longer the key to winning; players will prefer a support agent if they have a viable set of tools.
Despite the statistics, Valorant does not have another agent like Sage. No other support can bring healing and bring back the dead. In order to have a balanced roster, one of the three Valorant Agents planned for 2023 must be a healer.
Valorant needs more variety
Valorant has seven core abilities that cover almost every agent: Smoke, Molotovs, Stuns, Information Gathering Devices, Movement Tactics, Crowd Control Devices, and Healing. There are at least three options for every power except healing.
Sage’s heal is perfectly balanced but powerful, while on the contrary, Skye’s heal is powerful but not viable compared to Sage’s. The Initiating Agent can heal his teammates, but his dwindling oxygen tank of Mysterious Healing Juice isn’t enough. Even Skye needs a sage, which means to keep her alive, you have to choose another healer. Now, Skye’s large healing tank surely makes up for her inability to heal herself, but she’s still a poor choice for solo play.
Because of this, Sage’s presence overshadows Skye’s, resulting in poor playing time for the latter. Why would someone in a quick ranked match choose Skye? Sure, it’s a smart choice in a full stack or pro game, but it falls short in a brutal ranked race.
Skye might be a decent healer, but she doesn’t compare to Sage, and that has nothing to do with her cooldown abilities. Considering all of this, Valorant’s healing protocol lacks variety. Sage is the last and only option for hybrid players, and that’s not exactly a good thing.
Resurrection would be an advantage.
Naturally, resurrection is Sage’s unique power, just as Omen is the only agent capable of teleporting. But adding another steer to the fray would be great now that Sage is almost three years old.
Sage fits right into brutally ranked Valorant, but five stacks higher, players choose Sage for his revive abilities. Again, she is the only option. Kay/o’s revival almost never helps as the war machine often finds the riskiest and most exposed places to die, making its core impossible to repair.
No one else in Valorant is capable of doing what Sage does, so she will always outperform her fellow healers, unless Riot develops a similar medic: an agent who is autonomous and allows players to create their own style.
But it’s also worth noting that having more than three single Sage-type healers in Valorant could lead to a similar disaster. If a five-stack Duelist isn’t already a pain, the entire healer lobby is going to be a nightmare, but that’s still not reason enough not to add variation to the protocol.
Riot has confirmed that Valorant will get a starter and a room in 2023. Hopefully our room is a wise fool, or at least has an indiscriminate healing pool.
Episode 6 isn’t easy, so if you want to hit Radiant in Valorant, you need to get the best Valorant reticle code to get an edge over your enemies!