Valorant: Quick look: LaAw’s Sage (Bind, vs. Team ONSCREEN)

Notable buys

Round 1 and Round 13 (pistol rounds): Classic, Light Shields, Sage C

The generic buy on a pistol for most players is going to be Ghost and maybe a couple of ability slots, but: Sage wall is $400, so you can’t do both. Bottom line is if you’re going to play Sage, you probably want to get used to how the Classic handles, because she’s forced into making this move more than any other agent.

One small thing to note here: he actually does use the alt-fire to get a one-hit headshot and win a clutch in Round 1:

This appears to work reasonably up to a 11-metre range or so (i.e. pretty much effective Shorty range); anything more and a headshot misses all three (and triple-body shot does the same as headshot damage — 78).

Round 2 (eco): Ghost, Round 4 (deep eco): Sheriff, Round 6 (eco): Sheriff

Just to emphasise that this isn’t some LaAw-specific thing where he weirdly likes the Classic; he still is swapping it out at the earliest provocation. Sheriff is pretty straightforward — it’s the great equaliser against teams on a buy with its ability to one-tap at up to 30m, it’s not really Sage-exclusive though she takes up positions on D that work nicely with it.

Nothing else particularly stood out. Vandal or Spectre on every buy, you’re generally not going to get much out of other guns on her, she doesn’t really have anything tools-wise to help her out there and doesn’t want to be taking the forward/cramped positions that enable them anyway.

Positioning — D

This is by far the most typical angle: generally near the back of A site, looking towards short, can look towards long if need be, can always escape from a rush. This is one of the things that’s different about Sage compared to most other agents — you very rarely want to ever be in a position where you’re the first one dead, because with how her heal and rez work, it’s a far greater loss to your team on D in particular than pretty much anyone else.

Of course, good players follow the orthodoxy, great ones know just how far they can push it, and LaAw will make moves — in particular, he’ll sometimes push up on A short in particular (or check A long), but it’s always as part of a cross, usually with CREA^’s Omen (who can give smoke/blind coverage if needed):

…but, he’s rarely going to push all the way through. Funnily enough, the play of the game was actually this from opposing Sage L1NK (also a top-tier player), where he did this and got a 4K:

…but a) it was rifles vs. pistols anyway, b) it rather speaks to how unusual it is for a Sage to push through like that.

One interesting play was in Round 11, where they have three on short and he’s sat holding his wall the entire time to prevent a rush if they go down a man:

In general, though: either you’re partnered up, or you’re looking to play for the retake.

Abilities — D

Initial impulse with the wall, like every ability, had people popping it way, way too early, like seconds into a round. People are out of that habit now for the most part, but still tend to think they often approach it in the wrong way, particularly on D. It can sometimes be useful for blocking off a rush, but generally not; there are so many other abilities that do that as well or better, including one on Sage’s kit itself. By my count, I saw it used as such once in this game, on short A immediately after two entry kills by LaAw and CREA^:

LaAw will generally do one or both of the following with it:

a) Split the site, particularly on A.
b) Get a nice boost.

A couple of nice examples in this game:

This wall behind box doesn’t split the site, but gives a VERY valuable boost. What the best teams have started to do on Bind A (and there’s a LOT of this from fish123, the core that they’re playing in this game) is to pretty much give up on securing the ‘long’ side of the map — instead, they look to take the corner of site closest to short, plant there (using truck as great natural cover), and defend from there; this boost can let you pull off a nice one on them.

Another nice site-splitting wall that also was a handy boost over smokes into apartments.

Generic on-the-fly B-site boost.

In terms of special orbs, this was the main one:

This’ll come down roughly here about 3 seconds before you reach door (with knife out):

Positioning — O

The same general principles do apply here, but you have a bit more licence to play forward if you want for a few different reasons (positions aren’t as set, with a decent team there’s always an opportunity to trade, defending players don’t have to move, etc.). LaAw is one of the more aggressive Sage players that I’ve seen in pro in this regard, and will happily take a role very near the front, as he did a couple of times (particularly on A short, since they need to get the wall up quickly there anyway):

He’s rarely the full-on entry, but he’s near the front of the pack, and his movement tends to dictate speed/movement on the way in.

Abilities — O

Mostly went towards A site. For the wall:

This is the inverse of what I was talking about with regards to the state of A site. You get that wall up, you secure apartments, and it’s an uphill struggle for another team to stop your plant and/or retake. Note that the gap there isn’t necessarily intentional; you don’t need to be too precise with this wall (indeed, you probably can’t), you’re just looking to seal off the little bit here:

This does end up meaning that LaAw pretty much doesn’t use the wall to boost on O; it’s just purely for blocking sightlines. The one time I saw it used on B was a seal on the left side coming in from Long, and it ultimately didn’t really work out there.

For orbs, these are the spots, standing at A short:

These will hit apartments and the area of the site that LaAw typically stands in on D respectively.

Other notes

Fun game.

I’m really interested to see how all of LaAw, L1NK, and ScreaM do as we go into 1.0/release/whatever. I chose LaAw for this over L1NK or ScreaM because my impression has been that, while the other two have generally put up bigger numbers, I tend to feel like for L1NK and ScreaM in particular, it’s just because they’re excellent riflers, and would do that on most other agents; the impression I get is that LaAw has a better grasp on the agent itself, and as Sage rides the Riot nerf train, I’m really interested to see how he does going forward (be that on Sage or on other agents).

P.S. Turn off noclip.