Valorant Sage guide – 32 tips and tricks, best Sage wall boosts

Sage is the character with the strongest pick and win rate in Valorant, as things currently stand. Her unparalleled defensive abilities allow her to take on whole teams by herself, and her Barrier is likely the single most pivotal ability in the game. Learn how to turn your Sage skills up to eleven with our Valorant Sage guide, which will walk you through 32 practical top-tier tips covering all of her abilities and more.

You probably already know all about Sage’s four abilities, but let’s go over them again just so we’re on the same page:

	Healing Orb | Signature | 1 charge | Recharges every 35 seconds
	Equip a healing orb. Fire with your crosshairs over a damaged ally to activate a heal-over-time on them. Alt Fire while Sage is damaged to activate a self heal-over-time.
	Barrier Orb | Purchasable | 1 charge | Costs 300c
	Equip a barrier orb. Fire places a solid wall. Alt Fire rotates the targeter.
	Slow Orb | Purchasable | 2 charges | Costs 100c each
	Equip a slowing orb. Fire to throw a slowing orb forward that detonates upon landing, creating a lingering field that slows players caught inside of it.
	Resurrection | Ultimate | 7 charges
	Equip a resurrection ability. Fire with your crosshairs placed over a dead ally to begin resurrecting them. After a brief channel, the ally will be brought back to life with full health.

Now, let’s talk about what you can do with each of these abilities to turn Sage into a godlike force on any Valorant map.

1. The heal effect cast by Healing Orb lasts 5 seconds, which is enough to heal someone from 1 HP to 100 HP.
2. Though as Sage you can see the health bar of any teammate through walls along with their outline, actually casting Healing Orb on them requires line of sight. So if you’re too far away from your team you likely won’t be able to help them.
3. Right-click with Healing Orb to heal yourself if you are damaged. Don’t be afraid to use this if you’re the player most in need of healing on your team. Healing Orb is one of the main reasons why Sage has the highest win rate for 1v1 fights of any Valorant agent.

Above: a clip from the ESPN Esports Invitational final, in which pro player Mendo (as Sage) boosts his team above the enemy’s Sage Barrier to surprise the enemy team. Taken from Mendo’s Twitch stream.

4. There are a great many different uses for Barrier Orb during a round, but you only get one charge, so you must carefully choose how and when in the round to use it.
5. Using the ability key again while placing the barrier will snap the rotation to be adjacent or perpendicular to you. This allows you to cast simple walls faster than if you were confined to holding right-click to make precise adjustments to the wall’s rotation.
6. Melee attacks will deal bonus damage to Sage’s wall, giving players an effective but risky method of breaking through walls during eco rounds.
7. The barrier itself is divided into four sections, each of which can be broken independently of the others. But importantly, if you place the wall in a position where certain sections are considered invalid (for example, if they clip through a player or force them into an invalid position), the wall sections in question will break immediately.
8. The obvious method of blocking off pathways (perpendicular) is not always the most efficient method, as it only requires enemies to break a single section to get through. In certain situations, angling the barrier will ensure that enemies must destroy two sections to get through (as is the case in the below video, with the wall that blocks off double doors in Haven.
9. The HP of each section of the barrier decays independently, such that the maximum duration of a wall is 40 seconds. More damaged sections will dissipate sooner than less damaged sections.
10. Be aware that Raze can use her Paint Shells to fantastic effect if you and your teammates are bunched up close together behind a Sage wall.
11. You can use Barrier Orb to raise yourself (and your teammates) above the effects of a Slow Orb (whether yours or the enemy Sage’s).
12. When placing a Barrier across the entrance to a pathway, try to make it so that you could potentially be standing on top of the barrier at either side. The more places you could be, the less predictable your positioning.
13. As the attackers, if you can save your Barrier Orb until after you’ve planted the Spike then you can use it to block or hide the Spike from the enemy team (there are plenty of examples of this in the below video). But be aware that placing a wall too close to the Spike will invalidate sections of the wall and cause them to immediately break.
14. As you can see from the above clip, the best counter to a Sage wall is another Sage wall. If your team is blocked off, line everyone up and boost them above the existing wall. The enemy team will almost never expect such a swift and effective counter to their Sage wall.
15. You can combine Sage’s Barrier Orb with the abilities of certain other agents (Omen, Jett, and Raze in particular) to see and even fire over the tops of buildings.
16. As you can see, there are lots of clever and interesting ways to use Sage’s Barrier Orb, but you should never lose sight of the fact that in most cases the best use of the wall will simply be a well-timed block.
17. Check out the below video for lots of interesting and powerful Sage wall placements across all three Valorant maps.

To view the above video in HD, right-click and copy video URL into a new tab.

18. The slow effect lasts 8 seconds after the Slow Orb breaks.
19. Running and jumping through a Slow will make lots of noise, but walking through it will make no noise at all. It is, however, very slow.
20. Slow Orb makes for an amazing deterrent. Despite the fact that enemies can walk through without making noise, most players prefer to wait until the effect is over, which means you can buy yourself and your team time while placing at or retaking a site. You can even stack both Slow Orbs one after the other to lengthen the duration of said deterrent.
21. The Slow Orb will always attempt to cover the same amount of space, regardless of where it lands. For example, if you through it into a corner, it will push out further than usual in the opposite direction so that it covers the right area.
22. The effect of Slow Orb applies to air speed as well as ground speed, which means attempting to jump or bunny-hop through it will not help you.
23. The moment you leave the area of effect, you regain full movement capabilities. Unlike, for example, Brimstone’s Stim ability, the effect does not persist for a time after your leave the affected area.
24. You can throw the Slow Orb a great distance, which enables you to catapult the orb over buildings to affect a completely different area of the map.
25. The Orb itself can be bounced off walls, which is very useful for placing down a slow without exposing yourself to the enemy.

26. Resurrection is an incredibly important and powerful ability. When used at the right moments, it can completely alter the outcome of a round. So there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with using this ability correctly. It’s often a good idea to ensure your (and your revived teammate’s) safety by erecting a wall to hide behind while you use your ultimate.
27. It takes several seconds to revive the ally, and they can be shot and killed before the player regains use of their agent.
28. But despite this delay, the revived agent gets their 100 HP back from the instant the ability is first used, which means in desperate circumstances the revived ally can be used as an effective “meat shield” behind which you can fight.
29. You don’t need to win the round with a Resurrection. As long as you get value out of the ultimate, it’s worthwhile. If, for example, you use it during an eco round to wipe out three out of the five fully armed opponents, that would be an excellent use of Resurrection.
30. It’s best for teammates not to go too deep when fighting if they want to be resurrected by their Sage’s ultimate in case they die. It’s a good idea as the Sage to communicate this in certain situations, as this can dictate the best areas from which to fight so that your ultimate can be used more safely and easily.

31. Sage needn’t be a typical support character. She doesn’t have to be going around with the rest of her team healing someone the moment they get injured. She is actually extremely adept on her own, and has the highest 1v1 win rate of any character in Valorant, thanks to her self-heal and her ability to force good encounters using her Barrier and Slow Orbs.
32. If you’re playing as Sage, you have more utility in your abilities than pretty much any other character. So at times, it’s best for you to take the hit and forego the best weaponry and armor in order to keep your abilities well-stocked for the good of the team.

With that, we’ll conclude this Valorant Sage guide. But we’ve got plenty more to offer for any Valorant player looking to increase their skill and knowledge! Click any of the links below to head over to a different Valorant guide.