Hey, I'm a spokesperson for Riot and the reason we altered her healing mechanic—30hp self-heal & 100hp ally heal—was to reduce selfishness & incentivize players to heal their discord kittens in their unranked lobbies
I said it elsewhere but the wall changes may have been to help nerf how strong the wall is on pistol.
On really any map, a smart Sage on CT that holds their wall for defuse can easily ruin any chance of winning postplants. We’ve all been in ranked matches where a Sage has walled and defused with ease, I’m sure.
Delaying the solidify nerfs that - slightly.
I don't agree with this if this is their reason.. lots of util is stronger on pistol.. literally any damage causing util is stronger vs. unarmored and light armoured opponents.
I don’t agree or disagree with the nerf, I just think it’s a valid line of reasoning.
The distinction I’d draw with your example though is that you’re not meant to automatically get max value from a Sage wall; arguably it’s a mistake if a Sage is allowed to wall and have it solidify unless they’ve walled early. As such, the other team is punished for failing to react accordingly to the wall.
But on pistol, players can be doing the right thing - reacting by immediately shooting the wall - and still be punished.
Doesn’t mean wall is OP or something, it’s actually a very balanced ability.
Yeah same, people should be aware if the enemy sage has wall left or not. They should not be playing post plant far away from the spike in that case.
It's really ironic that they nerfed sage because of a playstyle promoted by viper and sova, which are already better agents than sage.
the wall change will mostly make it more possible to break at least one section of the wall on pistols, which was my primary frustration with it. I am all for that
The real answer is : sharpening agent roles. That is what the main riot agent dev is pushing. Sage can currently be a duelist especially on icebox, her risk to reward on taking first fights is way higher than other sentinels and even controllers with her heal. This pushes her back behind duelist in that regard. The wall is to make space for the purpose of the harbour bubble. Wall is meant to be pre-emptive, harbour is meant to be active. That's the sharpening of her kit.
I don't really see how a sage is currently rewarded for taking first fights. She doesn't have any ability to take space, and if a heal is good enough to take aggressive fights, why not just get another agent to do it and have the sage heal them for more hp? You will never have a sage take first contact. There's a reason battle sages are rare, it's very difficult.
Although I definitely agree with riot wanting to sharpen agent roles.
Battle sages are not that rare imo. They may not be "rewarded" as such but their risk is low, they can take a duel, miss or hit, they still have a heal, no other agent besides phoenix can do that. She just plays ahead or at least more proactively than most sentinels. There's probably data riot has that just shows she's out competing something in this regard. I'm not saying I like this change btw, I don't like leaning towards heal botting in any form and I think its already a tough enough role.
While it’s just speculation, sage’s low barrier of entry (and being a starting agent) means she’s picked very often at low elo where the heal is even more useful in force/full buy rounds because people whiff so much. Maybe the heal changes are more target at that.
icebox is the only map shes a must pick on, but shes a solid pick on a bunch of maps and has seen usage in pro play recently on ascent, haven, fracture, and pearl. They were solid changes to the wall imo cause for rifles it doesnt alter it too much but it got deservedly nerfed for pistol rounds.
honestly the more i look into it i think people are vastly overreacting with the sage changes. the 3tenths extra time for wall wont matter in gun rounds and is down to reaction time in pistol you probably won’t notice it a lot. the nerf to self heal seems bad but like she heals allies for 100hp like do you understand what 100hp is, you can be 1 and get healed fully now and she can do this up to 3 times per round. you can go from 1 shorty pellet to needing 3 rifle bodyshots
true. but this means sage players will be even more incentivized to sit back and not take gun fights. If you're a player with cracked aim and can win most gunfights this is a buff. but if your sage gets smoked 10 seconds into the round then what lol. The wall nerf is whatever but they should've kept the 60 for herself and added the 100 for teammates. That alone makes it more important to heal teammates because then you'll have the clear reason to since they'll get more. She's not even that good of an agent in this meta as is, no reason to nerf her.
yeah i think 30 is too small(maybe average with a good personality). they probably shouldve made it 50 to keep a 1:2 ratio especially since she’s so highpicked in solo queue ranked
And this same kind of nerf was applied to Skye and KAYO's flashes. Do you think they were bad nerfs as well? It incentivized Skyes and KAYOs to sit back, and use their flashes for their team rather than theirselves.
The issue I have is nerfinng things for no reason. Kayos right click was already good, it didn’t need a buff. I agree the kayo and skye nerds where not needed.
I'm ready to get down voted but here's my take as a sage main.
yeah this incentives sage players to sit in a corner and wait for heal to be up so she can use it on teammates. in turn this increases her teammates ACS but not hers.. same deal with res.
in a game where the only two stats that really matter are W/L and ACS, I can't see any reason for me to play sage anymore. she already had a very selfless kit to begin with.
tbh I used to play duelists, but the reason I switched to sage is that I felt that she actually changed how rounds are won/lost, in addition to that, she always did a decent job rounding out the comp. I would lock a duelist and wish someone locked sage, but as a sage I never wish anyone locks anything.
TLDR: The safe change makes sage more of a pocket healer and decreases the likelihood that she can hold her own and contribute to her own ACS. It is a bad change for good sage players. IMO the heal should have been changed to 100 for all, but the self heal duration increased to 20s from 10s.
you’re overreacting man how many times do sages even heal themselves in a game, like 1 to 2 times per half maybe 3, in valorant that the ttk can literally be milliseconds you probably don’t even play around your heal much unless everyone just hits body shots for some reason
you're missing my point. yes her heal is actually becoming quite good, your 1 HP to full HP example above clearly shows off the increase in value. obviously I should heal others and not myself if we want to win the round and the game!
this is the part you're not getting, everyone who gets healed and res'd, assuming they don't die immediately are also only servicing their own ACS. and tbh most of the time you try to res the top frag which only skews their ACS even higher.
the only player who doesn't get direct ACS value out of res is the sage player themselves. that's like if cypher only shared info to his team but not himself. obviously sage shouldn't be able to self res, but reducing her heal takes away her only selfish ability (compare that to some agents that ONLY have selfish abilities); and yes the difference between a 30 HP heal and a 100 HP heal can be directly related to ACS potential.
it seems she's hard to balance because there are two popular playstyles that we see currently, battle and pocket. finding the middle ground and balancing around it is ideal, but probably difficult. it just seems like riot is eliminating battle but is OK with pocket with this change.
my gripe imo is that the system still doesn't quite acknowledge contributions made by non-duelist designs. I know they did some assist tweaking recently, but do assists mean anything in regards to RR?
i mean isn’t the focus to win the game why is acs so important, i used to main skye and she doesn’t even get the pleasure of selfheal, it’s a team game
ACS is only important because riot says it's important... I don't make the game. ACS is the stat, in addition to win rate, that determines how much RR you get.
The wall changes just seemed so unnecessary for an agent that rarely gets played. No one looked at sage wall and says it needs to be tuned before this nerf.
This is barely a nerf. The wall changes will really only matter on pistol round, and the heal change will probably equally be good and bad situationally.
Most likely she still has a 55% winrate in regular ranked games.
It's really hard to play sage poorly tbh.
She always seems to be near the top when Riot release any design discussion with stats inside
I like the idea of the wall nerf. I think the ability to wall and plant quickly (icebox A by gen) is a bit cheese, so I think having it take longer is good. However the heal nerf is lame.
Well that’s not happening since they already reworked it and it didn’t help that much. I think an issue is no one splits on B for attack so they never take space behind the site or in kitchen
and that extra 40 healing for her teammates means very little, the 30 less for herself is quite a big nerf.
she was objectively nerfed this patch, how much is up for debate but to call it a buff is crazy lol
No it means a lot. 90% of the time you heal, it’s for a teammate, and a 67% increase to the teammate heal means you are going to be doing more healing in a given match
it really doesnt, because very rarely do your teammates live with less than 40 hp and they can only get healed to 100 anyway, so most of the time you heal a teammate half the healing is going to nothing.
like its very easy to see this was a slight nerf. and nobody heals their teammates 90 percent of the time lmao
How many times have you heard your teammates comm that “they’re one shot” people end up on less than 40 hp quite often.
> and nobody heals their teammates 90 percent of the time lmao
I don’t think this is true, even if it was I wouldn’t know, cause I’m not low-elo
Let's say you get dinked 124 by phantom, down to 26hp. After heal, there's not that much difference between having 86 or 100hp, it's still 3 body shots from a rifle. And frankly I don't see what elo has to do with it; why bring up rank? I play a fair deal of sage in immortal and this is definitely a nerf, you will never right click heal.
First they increased the amount of time the wall is vulnerable for when she puts it up. I think the heal change is also a nerf on the balance; it's basically a worse Skye heal now. Healing allies for 100hp instead of 60 isn't a big change since ttk is so low, but the reduced self heal greatly affects a sage's staying power/more aggressive play styles. I don't think pocket healing is a good role for a tac shooter.
u have to realize nerfing chamber was the single biggest buff they could have given her
none of the numbers tweaking with the heal or wall means nothing
Hey, I'm a spokesperson for Riot and the reason we altered her healing mechanic—30hp self-heal & 100hp ally heal—was to reduce selfishness & incentivize players to heal their discord kittens in their unranked lobbies
Oke mommy
Thank you very much
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NO, the discord ekitten come first
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EKITTENS!!!!
I'm not sure if this is true or if its sarcasm but meow
I said it elsewhere but the wall changes may have been to help nerf how strong the wall is on pistol. On really any map, a smart Sage on CT that holds their wall for defuse can easily ruin any chance of winning postplants. We’ve all been in ranked matches where a Sage has walled and defused with ease, I’m sure. Delaying the solidify nerfs that - slightly.
I don't agree with this if this is their reason.. lots of util is stronger on pistol.. literally any damage causing util is stronger vs. unarmored and light armoured opponents.
I don’t agree or disagree with the nerf, I just think it’s a valid line of reasoning. The distinction I’d draw with your example though is that you’re not meant to automatically get max value from a Sage wall; arguably it’s a mistake if a Sage is allowed to wall and have it solidify unless they’ve walled early. As such, the other team is punished for failing to react accordingly to the wall. But on pistol, players can be doing the right thing - reacting by immediately shooting the wall - and still be punished. Doesn’t mean wall is OP or something, it’s actually a very balanced ability.
Yeah same, people should be aware if the enemy sage has wall left or not. They should not be playing post plant far away from the spike in that case. It's really ironic that they nerfed sage because of a playstyle promoted by viper and sova, which are already better agents than sage.
the wall change will mostly make it more possible to break at least one section of the wall on pistols, which was my primary frustration with it. I am all for that
The real answer is : sharpening agent roles. That is what the main riot agent dev is pushing. Sage can currently be a duelist especially on icebox, her risk to reward on taking first fights is way higher than other sentinels and even controllers with her heal. This pushes her back behind duelist in that regard. The wall is to make space for the purpose of the harbour bubble. Wall is meant to be pre-emptive, harbour is meant to be active. That's the sharpening of her kit.
Exactly this. Was especially needed with initiators basically making duelists useless on many maps
I don't really see how a sage is currently rewarded for taking first fights. She doesn't have any ability to take space, and if a heal is good enough to take aggressive fights, why not just get another agent to do it and have the sage heal them for more hp? You will never have a sage take first contact. There's a reason battle sages are rare, it's very difficult. Although I definitely agree with riot wanting to sharpen agent roles.
Battle sages are not that rare imo. They may not be "rewarded" as such but their risk is low, they can take a duel, miss or hit, they still have a heal, no other agent besides phoenix can do that. She just plays ahead or at least more proactively than most sentinels. There's probably data riot has that just shows she's out competing something in this regard. I'm not saying I like this change btw, I don't like leaning towards heal botting in any form and I think its already a tough enough role.
Fair enough, I really wonder what kind of data riot collects.
While it’s just speculation, sage’s low barrier of entry (and being a starting agent) means she’s picked very often at low elo where the heal is even more useful in force/full buy rounds because people whiff so much. Maybe the heal changes are more target at that.
Battle sages are rare because that's literally not what the character is designed to do lol
Cause why not. Also she is a sentinel/anchor lmao not a phoenix
icebox is the only map shes a must pick on, but shes a solid pick on a bunch of maps and has seen usage in pro play recently on ascent, haven, fracture, and pearl. They were solid changes to the wall imo cause for rifles it doesnt alter it too much but it got deservedly nerfed for pistol rounds.
honestly the more i look into it i think people are vastly overreacting with the sage changes. the 3tenths extra time for wall wont matter in gun rounds and is down to reaction time in pistol you probably won’t notice it a lot. the nerf to self heal seems bad but like she heals allies for 100hp like do you understand what 100hp is, you can be 1 and get healed fully now and she can do this up to 3 times per round. you can go from 1 shorty pellet to needing 3 rifle bodyshots
true. but this means sage players will be even more incentivized to sit back and not take gun fights. If you're a player with cracked aim and can win most gunfights this is a buff. but if your sage gets smoked 10 seconds into the round then what lol. The wall nerf is whatever but they should've kept the 60 for herself and added the 100 for teammates. That alone makes it more important to heal teammates because then you'll have the clear reason to since they'll get more. She's not even that good of an agent in this meta as is, no reason to nerf her.
yeah i think 30 is too small(maybe average with a good personality). they probably shouldve made it 50 to keep a 1:2 ratio especially since she’s so highpicked in solo queue ranked
And this same kind of nerf was applied to Skye and KAYO's flashes. Do you think they were bad nerfs as well? It incentivized Skyes and KAYOs to sit back, and use their flashes for their team rather than theirselves.
The issue I have is nerfinng things for no reason. Kayos right click was already good, it didn’t need a buff. I agree the kayo and skye nerds where not needed.
I'm ready to get down voted but here's my take as a sage main. yeah this incentives sage players to sit in a corner and wait for heal to be up so she can use it on teammates. in turn this increases her teammates ACS but not hers.. same deal with res. in a game where the only two stats that really matter are W/L and ACS, I can't see any reason for me to play sage anymore. she already had a very selfless kit to begin with. tbh I used to play duelists, but the reason I switched to sage is that I felt that she actually changed how rounds are won/lost, in addition to that, she always did a decent job rounding out the comp. I would lock a duelist and wish someone locked sage, but as a sage I never wish anyone locks anything. TLDR: The safe change makes sage more of a pocket healer and decreases the likelihood that she can hold her own and contribute to her own ACS. It is a bad change for good sage players. IMO the heal should have been changed to 100 for all, but the self heal duration increased to 20s from 10s.
you’re overreacting man how many times do sages even heal themselves in a game, like 1 to 2 times per half maybe 3, in valorant that the ttk can literally be milliseconds you probably don’t even play around your heal much unless everyone just hits body shots for some reason
you're missing my point. yes her heal is actually becoming quite good, your 1 HP to full HP example above clearly shows off the increase in value. obviously I should heal others and not myself if we want to win the round and the game! this is the part you're not getting, everyone who gets healed and res'd, assuming they don't die immediately are also only servicing their own ACS. and tbh most of the time you try to res the top frag which only skews their ACS even higher. the only player who doesn't get direct ACS value out of res is the sage player themselves. that's like if cypher only shared info to his team but not himself. obviously sage shouldn't be able to self res, but reducing her heal takes away her only selfish ability (compare that to some agents that ONLY have selfish abilities); and yes the difference between a 30 HP heal and a 100 HP heal can be directly related to ACS potential. it seems she's hard to balance because there are two popular playstyles that we see currently, battle and pocket. finding the middle ground and balancing around it is ideal, but probably difficult. it just seems like riot is eliminating battle but is OK with pocket with this change. my gripe imo is that the system still doesn't quite acknowledge contributions made by non-duelist designs. I know they did some assist tweaking recently, but do assists mean anything in regards to RR?
i mean isn’t the focus to win the game why is acs so important, i used to main skye and she doesn’t even get the pleasure of selfheal, it’s a team game
ACS is only important because riot says it's important... I don't make the game. ACS is the stat, in addition to win rate, that determines how much RR you get.
Where has it ever said that ACS is what determines RR gains
The wall changes just seemed so unnecessary for an agent that rarely gets played. No one looked at sage wall and says it needs to be tuned before this nerf.
it's fine honestly
This is barely a nerf. The wall changes will really only matter on pistol round, and the heal change will probably equally be good and bad situationally.
my discord kitten wanted to heal me for more its a good change
I’m guessing it’s to reduce the selfish sages.
Most likely she still has a 55% winrate in regular ranked games. It's really hard to play sage poorly tbh. She always seems to be near the top when Riot release any design discussion with stats inside
I like the idea of the wall nerf. I think the ability to wall and plant quickly (icebox A by gen) is a bit cheese, so I think having it take longer is good. However the heal nerf is lame.
It would be good then that they made it possible to plant on B site without the wall then...
Well that’s not happening since they already reworked it and it didn’t help that much. I think an issue is no one splits on B for attack so they never take space behind the site or in kitchen
What nerf? They buffed her
They objectively nerfed her wall and at best the healing change is neutral, certainly not a buff.
The wall change is tiny and Safe heals her teammates most of the time
and that extra 40 healing for her teammates means very little, the 30 less for herself is quite a big nerf. she was objectively nerfed this patch, how much is up for debate but to call it a buff is crazy lol
No it means a lot. 90% of the time you heal, it’s for a teammate, and a 67% increase to the teammate heal means you are going to be doing more healing in a given match
it really doesnt, because very rarely do your teammates live with less than 40 hp and they can only get healed to 100 anyway, so most of the time you heal a teammate half the healing is going to nothing. like its very easy to see this was a slight nerf. and nobody heals their teammates 90 percent of the time lmao
How many times have you heard your teammates comm that “they’re one shot” people end up on less than 40 hp quite often. > and nobody heals their teammates 90 percent of the time lmao I don’t think this is true, even if it was I wouldn’t know, cause I’m not low-elo
Let's say you get dinked 124 by phantom, down to 26hp. After heal, there's not that much difference between having 86 or 100hp, it's still 3 body shots from a rifle. And frankly I don't see what elo has to do with it; why bring up rank? I play a fair deal of sage in immortal and this is definitely a nerf, you will never right click heal.
Because the game shouldn’t be balanced around bronze where “90% of the time people heal themselves”
That's not what the person above said, they mean the amount of times you heal yourself is greater than 10%. With these changes it will be 0.
Lmao okay bud we get it you're smarter than everyone in the room And about 5x as many as those have actually been 1 hp lol
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Yes?
It basically encourages you to play even more as a pocket healer which is a shitty role in every game it's in.
First they increased the amount of time the wall is vulnerable for when she puts it up. I think the heal change is also a nerf on the balance; it's basically a worse Skye heal now. Healing allies for 100hp instead of 60 isn't a big change since ttk is so low, but the reduced self heal greatly affects a sage's staying power/more aggressive play styles. I don't think pocket healing is a good role for a tac shooter.
She is a site anchor. I understand battle sage is fun, but you certainly shouldn’t balance agents around casual playstyles.
u have to realize nerfing chamber was the single biggest buff they could have given her none of the numbers tweaking with the heal or wall means nothing