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Maybe the answer for fixing Soraka is... going back.

Raoul··125 votes·7,012 views

Hear me out here. Dont worry, I am not talking about bringing back mana battery Soraka, cause even as a since Beta Soraka main, I admit that giving out free mana pots was a stupid idea. Especially in todays game...

I am talking about her heal.

Most of you might not know this, but back in the Beta days, Soraka did not have a burst heal, but a healing over time spell.

As I see it, the main problem with Soraka today is, that her healing power makes engages pointless, since she heals every damage done in no time. Negating Poke is the same with all healers, but only Soraka can give the ADC like 5000 HP while he is under attack.

This power is right now not healthy for the game, and limits what can be done with Soraka, leading to her having a shit passive, and medicore at best Q and E spells, cause her heals are so strong, RIOT cant allow the rest of her kit to be good.

But healer IS what she is, she would not feel like herself if she wouldnt be able to heal damage.

So, my suggestion for her would be the following:

When casting Astral infusion, Soraka links herself to an allied Champion, think of it like Karma does with an enemy, and has to stay in a certain area within this Champion. The link stays for like 5 seconds, and every second the Champion is healed for a small amount. This version would solve her burst heal problem, while still making her a healer.

Also, by taking alot of power from her Healing that way, RIOT would be free to rework or buff her other abilities.

I would like to bring her armor buff back in the game somehow, I liked that aspect on her.

127 Comments

Bonipherus25 votes

Someone just went through and downvoted every comment except the one at the top of the list and its response... that's not suspicious Quepha cough

IcyPepper41 votes

And I just upvoted all of them to negate it

>:D mwahahaha

Transgressor23 votes

I have no problems with Soraka being how she is at all :/ Does that make me bad, dumb or anything?

I just don't see any problems with her really. If the problem is her negating all the damage you're trying to push through, why not focus her instead? And after all the dumb nerfs, the heal is all the niche she pretty much has. Not to mention nobody buys grevious wounds.

Raoul10 votes

grevious wounds do not work on her heals. only on self heals

Transgressor19 votes

Self heal being the passive she gets from hitting you with Starcall, effectively ruining her sustain.

Just saying.

My Waifu Vanilla6 votes

That requires you to be in range of her to hit her with an AA to apply the grievous wounds to begin with......which is very hard to do when Starcall vastly outranges most ADCs and has a very accurate range in anything close to the range of an ADC (not hard to hit the ability at like 550 range out of its 800 max). The other problem with Soraka is late game she has 0 mana problems late game so she can just throw Qs out like candy and hope to hit one on two people and that just fueled the past 3 heals she used thus negating all of your poke. The third problem is the fact she is actually incredibly difficult to kill when she is in the middle of her team due to the decent amount of self-peel she has, if you try to assassinate her she can easily just throw a silence zone under her feet and laugh at you as you die to the rest of her team and if you aren't an assassin and try to chase her down she has a very accurate 50% slow for 2 seconds at close range that is on a 2.65 second cd or somewhere around that number.

Transgressor23 votes

It's not like her Starcall takes an eternity to land and has low range. It's not like Starcall is one of the most telegraphed abilities in the game right now. As you said, her mana issues gate her early game extremely, focusing her down wouldn't be much of a problem. And what ADC are you playing that needs to get in Starcall range to trade? Vayne? And you can't tumble out of it? Well too bad I guess?

Early-mid game, healing her allies actually costs her ALOT of mana and HP, which is a pretty nice window of opportunity to engage on her. A pretty nice tactic is trying to trade with the ADC to bait Soraka into healing, effectively fucking herself hard enough to be hard-engaged on.

I can't argue with the point-blank slow, the shorter the range the faster Starcall lands. But the thing is her silence is extremely unreliable and you can just walk out of it like nobody's business. It also works on ticks, which makes it prone to bugs thus rendering it ineffective. And Starcall, if built support, only helps with heals come mid-late game and does negligible damage.

Lastly, if everyone focused her and she outplayed and baited, why can't we attribute that to a skilled player? It's not like you could've been outplayed or anything, Soraka is just broken.

Honestly I think this is a problem with the state of the game, not Soraka in herself; power creep and mobility run rampant. We've gotten used to those, and the only 2 champions(Sona Soraka) that give no fucks about those 2 problems are getting shit on by various different opinions.

Just my 2 cents on this.

It Hertz When IP4 votes

You forgot Nami . She also gives no fucks.

Transgressor9 votes

https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/905357_417916984970108_615483365_o.jpg

Squarefighter4 votes

It's not like her Starcall takes an eternity to land and has low range. It's not like Starcall is one of the most telegraphed abilities in the game right now.

Just dodge the spears, bro

Transgressor17 votes

http://d2ws0xxnnorfdo.cloudfront.net/meme/547617

Hello I am Bird6 votes

Just dodge the pink wards.

darkmatchwaldo7 votes

As someone who's played a lot of Soraka i can tell you, starcall is VERY VERY VERY easy to land. All you have to do is zone the enemy ADC with it. You know exactly where they have to step to CS so you can force them to choose between getting the CS or taking a starcall directly to the face. I usually max it instead of my heal and build some AP/Mana regen first, the damage it does early is stupid. If you play her right you can be the worlds most annoying poke mage that has the best healing in the game.

Negligible damage? Tell that to the item 3504 item 3285 item 3117 item 2045 item 3135 item 3069 build, that Q hurts like a bitch when you land it in the center. You can pretty much nuke an ADC from half health with one Q and it has like a 3 second CD at this point. Don't underestimate the Banana.

Transgressor3 votes

For whatever reason, in my region players have mastered orb-walking more than they've mastered actually cs-ing in the first place. So good luck landing those pinpoint Qs.

The best you can do is catch them badly positioned and punish them with your silence and then perhaps fire a starcall. Secondly, why would I take a item 3285 over item 3116 and item 3135 overitem 3050?

Given I'm shit elo, the players here are actually bad. Given they are bad, they're extremely unpredictable doing the dumbest things at the dumbest possible time. This gives you no window of opportunity to take advantage off. You try to zone dodging the hooks and stuff, thinking your enemy will try to punish you inside their wave or whatever, but all of a sudden they literally blow everything they have at you the moment you go back to your minions. I've been hooked into 3 people only to EQ point blank range, silencing and rooting everyone into a wombo combo from my team; i walked out of it using my item 3069 and just started casually healing the back line. This kind of eratic behaviour makes it hard to dictate the game based on strategic decisions. So I just play it safe and poke whenever possible. You'd think the adc would chose between getting harassed or farming? Well fuck that logic, they will take the harass AND the farm, then they will melee you inside your minions while their support zones your own ADC which heals, and then you exhaust the over-extended idiot who wastes summoners inside a MF ultimate and dies anyway. After which he flames the support, which has flashed straight into the jungler who just happened to pass by bot at the time.

darkmatchwaldo2 votes

Well i build the raw ap item 3285 item 3135 because i play at shit elo (s5) and most of the time i have to carry my ADC, both damage wise and sustaining. I can't really depend on them to do anything so no point in item 3050 and i wanted the movespeed more than anything on item 3285. My logic was "if i build movespeed i'll go CRAZZZZYYYY fast with my passive" which you do, you can fly into a fight ready to turn the tides. The extra AP helps heal them for a butt ton of health and the ludens proc on starcall helps with the damage. Before the NA servers moved closer to the east coast i played at a steady 150 ping and could still nail Q's all day but that's probably because i played nothing but Soraka for like a month. The whole erradic behavior thing is kinda why the poke mage full AP raka works, nobody expects the afk healbot to be harrassing you nonstop up in your face.

ModKnightsKemplar2 votes

I actually ran into your post on an Illaoi board, and I think my response to you is the same...

This isn't about balance. It's about game health. Soraka has frustrating patterns. Very few people think she's "opop," but she's not fun to have in the game. That's a fundamentally different problem than being op.

Transgressor3 votes

Soraka to me is neither OP nor frustrating to play against.

She has 1 niche left to her thanks to players like you who strongly voice their unpopular opinions about her, and that's to infuse her HP to teammates. Soraka has no frustrating patterns, on the contrary, her niche is what puts her in a precarious position every-single-time, but for whatever reason since the preseason started, everyone decided to stop taking advantage of her weakpoints and doesn't even buy grevious wounds alltogether. The number of QQ posts has geometrically increased since the pre-season patch compated to S5, coincidence? I think not.

It's just that this is the greatest time for players to profitably bitch, meaning they take advantage of a time when everything is going down to shit, to join the bandwagons for free upvotes. It's just that complaining about stuff is much much easier and gains free upvotes, compared to actually spending time to improve in the game which in itself earns you nothing to boast about on the NA Boards.

There are far more cancerous abuse cases in the game, there are far FAAAAAAAAAR worse champions that completely stomp "game health", there are champions with FAR WORSE frustrating patterns than Soraka. How about we fix those monumental fuckups instead of sputting the last nail in the coffin of Soraka's identity?

JedenVojak11 votes

Soraka's main problems are a lack of reliable spell damage, lack of defensive utility, and long cooldown silence - not her heals.

Raoul9 votes

All these problem exist because her powerfull heal doesnt allow her other abilities to be good.

JedenVojak7 votes

I miss her armor heal. And the mana gift.

Duke Anax11 votes

What exactly is wrong with you?

I'm a Soraka main and I never fealt that her burst heal was her problem, if anything it feels lacking, Her Burst is all in the ult and you can only use that once. Her Infusion needs to be used repeatedly, so it's already an over time process..

And I already feel oppressive when I have the time to use my heal repeatedly and that's what you want to emphasise? The most boring, most annoying to play against part of Soraka; stay back and sustain your teammates between fights.

Big Lincoln10 votes

dot heals are cool and i want to see them in the game

Raoul8 votes

Well, overall I belive a HoT is way easier to balance ^^

JedenVojak17 votes

Actually the lead designer previously stated that a HoT would be literally horrible for the game and it's something they never want.

Anidan4 votes

Y'know.. I could actually see it being bad for League. In DotA, there are a few HoT abilities, but also in DotA, the very vast majority of abilities don't scale, whereas in League abilities have to scale. A HoT would be an absolute nightmare to balance in League, because it'd be too weak and unnoticeable, or it'd be too strong and a champion reliant upon sustained damage would have very little chance of ever killing the champion.

Or alternatively, it'd have a high base and really low scaling to dissuade building tons of AP on the champion, which would make sustaining the lane really easy; or it'd have low bases and feel miserable to use unless you piled on high amounts of AP, which is bad considering a HoT is likely to be on a support.

HoTs sound like hell in League..

JedenVojak6 votes

The reason he gave was while burst healing can be very exciting and impactful with a HoT the interaction becomes mostly mindless as the general tactic with a HoT is to just keep it up as much as possible.

Rympha2 votes

Volibear what about his passive? HoT?

Ariel the Cruel2 votes

Shen Yo.

Cloud27310 votes

Soraka has unreliable CC. She can't just point and click on someone like other supports can and stop someone in their tracks. And aside from her ult, she can't heal herself either, unlike Sona, Nami, or Bard. Yea a smart Soraka won't get caught easily, but if you catch her she has no escape. Healing truly is all she has. Might as well let her be good at it.

It Hertz When IP10 votes

Because she has no direct self-heal, she's vulnerable to poke and being all-in'd, yet you want to change her heal to require her to stay close to the ADC to get the full heal effect? Not to mention pray to whatever God a star wanderer follows that creep block wouldn't prevent her from remaining close to her ADC? And God forbid her ADC get displaced away from her, breaking the tether prematurely.

This would straight-up get her killed with alarming frequency and drastically cut her healing output.

Quepha9 votes

Why can't people just kill Soraka instead?

Raoul16 votes

As a Soraka player, I can tell you that Soraka can actually protect herself pretty good, if the player behind her is not stupid. if you are not an Assassin, you will have a hard time, and if you are an Assassin... well, you just used all your ressources to take out the support...with the rest of the enemy team, including ADC and Burst mage standing there being really pissed because oyu just killed Soraka... And belive me, in that 1 for 1 trade, your team is losing more.

sreggad5 votes

I love how people get genuinely angry at the enemy team for killing Soraka.

SpecterVonBaren5 votes

While it might be because I'm a Support main, I'm always genuinely angry when the enemy team kills our support (Unless said support is an asshole).

sreggad3 votes

It might be the other reason for me. Being the support main. I rather be focused and let my team survive to kill them as support, but I can say even in aram. If you kill the raka you will suffer the strength of the sun. To the point on ARAM game the enemy team had someone leave and I just kind of screwed around till they attacked me or attacked the raka. Other than that I was just letting them kill everyone else.

Subject 59 votes

How to remove Soraka from the game:

Vi Rengar Nocturne Fiddlesticks Amumu Galio Annie DrMundo LeeSin Olaf Garen Darius Illaoi

Names 40 more champions

Soraka has a choice, burst heal with full AP and go squish.

Or full tank with slow heals compared to her AP self. Seriously though, she isn't a problem. The problem is common sense. Soraka gets picked and the enemy team is like "I want to Graves jungle." Literally, nobody thinks about team composition. Ever.

Penta Penguin7 votes

Engages are pointless especially when you focus Soraka who can't burst heal herself and then you clean up because it's a 4v5 when the healer has nobody to heal and your team has a real support

"soraka main since beta"

Rendath7 votes

I thinkk she's alright as it is. She's fun to play on, and not super annoying to play against (i'm looking at you, blitz). When I adc against a Soraka, I just poke Soraka instead. She's squishy and she can't heal when she's low. It works for me.

OperationDEEZ15 votes

I was thinking kinda like a reverse fiddle drain.

Raoul7 votes

You mean making it a channel, rooting Soraka herself in place?

Partholonian5 votes

I think they should first wait a patch or two to see if they overnerfed her into complete trash. She's still immobile and squishy, and that is a dangerous thing to be in this game.

DrOinkleBerry5 votes

World of Warcraft PvP was always pretty humorous, because the strategy always came down to "Which Team Kills the Enemy Healer First." And for some reason, people tolerated that. But in League, for some reason, everyone hates the living crap out of dedicated healing. Personally, I don't understand the problem. If Soraka builds to solely have giant heals for her team, then she is easily erased if you catch her out even a teensy tiny bit. The only way for her to not be erased is for the enemy team to play "Protect the Soraka" game, but that leaves the VIP damage dealer(s) on their team out in the open and unprotected as well, rendering the strategy somewhat pointless (which is why it works best with a champ like Kog'Maw, who kills everyone if protected). Alternatively, if Soraka builds to not be erased by the enemy team, then her heals and damage become less reliable to a noticeable significance.

So then, how exactly is she unhealthy with such obvious weaknesses? Is it only because people find her annoying? I'm not sure that's a justification to say she is unhealthy at the moment, but I could be wrong.

Audiomancy4 votes

I've never really had a problem laning against a Soraka.

Then again, I main MissFortune and Jinx , so switching between between the ADC and the Support (or just hitting them simultaneously) is kind of my thing.

Maple Crusader4 votes

Seems like people don't understand concept of kill the medic. Soraka can only protect herself from so many things. She's not mobile and it hurts her to even heal people unless she ults.

HandheldBrandon4 votes

This is the same argument people had about her back when they buffed her heals and nerfed her mana. People cried about her negating poke and such the problem is you pick soraka for that exact reason to have a safe lane. People back then straight up said "Nah bruh" and people now may say the same thing but the fact of the matter is people complained about Soraka making lanes boring but in this day and age we have ADC's putting out assassin level burst and assassins doing double that so a Burst healer is absolutely fine in my book.

PaladinNO3 votes

I prefer just focusing the Soraka first. Against any other duo composition, I (support main) just poke them both when I can, but with Soraka, I want to keep her dead or at too low HP to be of use without serious risk to herself.

CasterGilgamesh2 votes

This is not the way to do it something like this does not work.....

Wumachine1 votes

I think the worst part about new raka is that with warmogs and spirit visage her health regen is something ridiculous like 700 - 1000 hp/5, meaning she can spam w completely negating the counterplay (10% health cost) that riot gave her to balance the 2 second heal.

Photos of Ghosts3 votes

700 per 5? Garen with those and his passive on gets 200 at BEST, and Raka has one of the lowest regens in the game.

Wumachine2 votes

you are very very ignorant, Garen can easily reach 1500 hp/5 with warmogs and spirit visage...

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