Soraka Mini Rework
Heyo, just wanted to pop in and discuss a couple Soraka ideas that I have been mulling around for a while. While Soraka has been doing quite good recently (specifically in the last 2 patches) I want to address some of her pain points, specifically her in lane interaction, low skill cap, and interaction with Grievous wounds.
Riot has openly stated that they want Soraka to be a more interactive lane opponent, however the Q changes she received (Removing her Q center, and lowering the reward for hitting multiple enemies) pushed her in the exact opposite direction.
Soraka has also historically been difficult to balance around Grievous Wounds. To function in games with it she becomes too powerful in games without it. My goal is to provide a fairly net neutral power shift that allows such items to weaken her without invalidating her while also increasing her skill ceiling through decision making and raising her skill cap by bringing back her Q center.
Please note that I am not attempting to make her a skill intensive champion, I believe that simple and easy to pick up and learn champions should have a place in League, but I also think that rewarding players for their skill is a good thing and pushes them to grow.
Q Starcall: Damage Lowered From 70 / 110 / 150 / 190 / 230 (+ 35% AP) to 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+ 30% AP) Slow Reduced From 30% to 20% New(Ish) Effect: Enemies hit by the center of the circle take 30% more damage and are slowed by 35%. New(Ish) Effect: If at least one enemy champion is hit by the center the healing from Soraka's rejuvenation buff is applied instantly.
If a Soraka plays exactly as she does now, only hitting the edge of her Q and backing off, she will receive the same healing but do slightly less damage. On the other hand if she hits the center of her Q she is rewarded by doing slightly more damage and receiving the heal instantly (Which actually means that if she is full HP and bullying you then you can poke her as she walks away and she wont heal it off).
Note that the instant heal doesn't stack with multiple champions hit, the change was done for a) clutch situations and b) because Riot mentioned how dots feel weaker and need to be stronger to compensate. By providing an instant heal Soraka players get a strong positive mental feedback that hitting the center of the circle is good, which is good without actually buffing the champion until she gets her Q CD below 4 seconds, and even then it is only a buff if she hits champions on CD.
Another note is that since she still receives the Rejuvenation buff (including the speed) but gets the heal instantly she can still pass it off to allies as normal, with the heal being over time regardless.
W Astral Infusion:
CD Lowered to 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 From 8 / 6.5 / 5 / 3.5 / 2 Cost Lowered to 10% MAXIMUM HEALTH + 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 MANA From 10% MAXIMUM HEALTH + 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 MANA Heal Lowered to 70 / 90 / 110 / 130 / 150 (+ 40% AP) From 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 / 200 (+ 60% AP) New Effect: Targets Healed by Astral Infusion become immune* to Grievous Wounds for 3.4 seconds (Scales down with CDR)
Okay now now, before you all rage and question let me explain. First of all I added the * for a good reason. Personally I think this will probably need to be changed to "Reduces the effects of Grievous Wounds by X%" but that is a testing thing (All these numbers are just guesswork, balancing via number tweaking isn't really my forte) The point of this change is 2 important things:
First of all the Immunity* applies after they are healed. This means the initial heal is still halved, and thus makes Soraka less effective against burst and assassins. However when it comes to healing a single target (which is meant to be Soraka's forte) she will become far more effective.
The second point is that the duration scales down with CDR, similar to Taric's passive. Doing this will ensure that Soraka can only keep the buff up on one person, and she has to constantly expend health and mana to do so. By stacking CDR her rate of healing goes up, but the frequency with which she has to heal to grant immunity goes down. She also cannot even access this permanency until rank 4 W, which means that her in lane healing will be the same, although her ult will be more effective vs early Grievous Wounds on the target she healed.
This drastically hurts Soraka's ability to "be everywhere, do everything" while enhancing her single target healer aspect.
An alternative W idea: Same as before but her W heals apply a stack of <insert generic healing buff here> which lasts 5 seconds and stacks up to 5 times. Each stack provides a 20% reduction in the effectiveness of Grievous Wounds.
Grievous Wounds before/after values:
Q: Same self heal, double rejuvenation buff on allies.
W no wounds: Scales from 10% less healing up to 25% less healing and the scaling reduced to 2/3rds of what it was.
W vs wounds: Scales from 75% more healing down to 50% more healing with the scaling being increased by 1/3rd (Keep in mind this doesn't work unless Soraka has at least 4 ranks in Q)
R: Same heal unless target was healed by W recently (any rank) in which case heals for twice as much.
Looking at them again the heal probably needs another hit to it's flat scaling at higher levels but the focus here should be on the concept.
#Anyways: Discuss!
