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The state of Soraka right now

Axerito·12/9/2017, 11:14:03 PM·7 votes·3,684 views

Greeting Summoners.

After some time I realized that Riot really dislikes Soraka and wants her to be as irrelevant as possible. Let me explain it why I think that way.

Firstly, she has gotten only nerfs for like 2 years now. The most devastating one was the 6.19 one which DOUBLED her rank 1 W cooldown from 4 to 8 seconds. Compare that to Janna who got literally buffed by Riot when she got dominant exactly one year later.

Secondly, she has nearly no lore. The only thing we have is an updated client bio which does not explain anything. Her Universe bio is still a Warwick related one which was promised to be replaced shortly after his rework but we still have a sacred grove story even today.

Thirdly, she was neglected in Star Guardian event. Legendary skin spot was stolen form her (a STARCHILD) by Ahri and she got literally 0 (ZERO) lines in a Star Guardian story when every other character got at least few words to say.

Fourthly, player suggestions were not listened to when adjusting her base stats for preseason. She got a generic 8 armor when huge majority of Soraka players were running health (for Warmog build) or health regen (to have better sustain in lane) on their yellows back then.

Let's also not forget that future Forbidden Idol items nerfs are aimed mostly at Janna/Lulu/Karma but will hurt Soraka the most. She relies heavily on them to bypass that 40% healing reduction from Grevious Wounds which nearly every class has now access to. This problem is nonexistent for shielders because shields cannot be lowered and can be spammed off cooldown with little resorce usage compared to Soraka's heal.

Will Soraka get any love from Riot? Her pretty high winrate in recent months was possible only thanks to good or even broken items which were keeping her alive. Without them she will be pretty much dead with a kit nerfed over and over without any compensaton buffs. Her state when enemy buys an Executioneer's Calling can be compared to being permamently exhausted as an ADC or other damage dealer.

But I think Riot is okay with that because they listen to people's rants about her being "unfun" and "boring" so in their opinion she can be left in a shitty and very conditional (will enemy ADC get ExeCall or not?) state compared to other enchanters. This makes me very sad because Soraka is my favourite champion but every time I play her I feel that I would do much more when playing as any other enchanter because their kits have way more inherent power than Soraka's.

[sg-soraka]

28 Comments

xPhantomDancerX12/10/2017, 4:30:14 AM7 votes

She's a shit champ, period.

Sneed12/9/2017, 11:20:34 PM7 votes

delete soraka upvote if u agree

Rushy12/9/2017, 11:28:02 PM5 votes

A Soraka main complaining about grievous wounds? Unheard of...

shicky9712/9/2017, 11:41:03 PM4 votes

I think a sizable chunk of the league player-base would agree with me when I say:

  1. Soraka has a play-style that discourages enemies from interacting with you in lane, which does in fact make her a bit frustrating to play against.

  2. If anyone deserved the legendary in the Star Guardian event it was Syndra, not Soraka.

  3. If you enjoy a champ and are good enough at them, then you can make them work even if Riot hates them. e.g. The dedicated Mordekaiser mains you may have seen on the boards.

zark198912/9/2017, 11:30:44 PM3 votes

I dominate with Soraka. Reasons Rito loves her... 1)She has the best dance in the game (apart from Nidalees pole dancing) 2)Her global healing ultrasound 3)Her Silence ALSO deals damage and its instant 4)She has a lot of skins

The only thing I would like to see Riot change with her is her passive. The range on her passive is tiny and it makes it almost useless if you're trying to help someone. Other than that, I think she's great and i'm mastery 7 with her.

ulie love12/10/2017, 12:02:39 AM3 votes

As a very active soraka player, if you are losing games as her I feel bad for you

Master Noct12/10/2017, 3:56:19 AM2 votes

As a Raka main on multiple accounts, the problem I see is people don't tend to build those two great items that actually screw her healing over.

item 3165 and item 3033 . There might be more but I don't particularly remember right now. You buy any of these two (or both if you wanted to), hell, they aren't even the same UNIQUE passives! You could just try and stack them!

The deal is the game is leaning towards a more damage heavy environment so even if you can heal people, it doesn't feel as good as before. I mean about all her spells got cooldowns doubled and power halved. But hey, we can buff that lovely lethality. (Which they're nerfing again, hopefully, as shown on PBE). We can buff all the damage items actually, why not?

And being on the PBE, I also saw they were messing with support healing items (item 3504 ,item 3222 ,item 3107 ,item 3174 even if you're into that), and nerfing them AGAIN. So basically any kind of healing support goes out the window while you see 20x more Brand supports, 15x more Full AP Lux supports, etc. I mean hell, if you wanted to let everyone deal butt-tons of damage, at least keep the healers viable in some way.

Sure, you might say, but if we buff healers, they'll become too strong again. The problem is everything else was stronger about always. Look at Yasuo, barely touched, and getting a BUFF out of all people (I mean Skarner coud use one, maybe Naut, maybe I don't know, anyone else?) He's viable in three fucking lanes. THREE. At this point, you might as well not play healing supports since you're barely providing any sustain since your spells have been gimped so hard.

Thiadel12/9/2017, 11:40:18 PM2 votes

I've never felt that Soraka is too weak in the past two years I've played (so yes, I was around before they changed her W). To be fair, that nerf was worthwhile because no one ever died and where's the counterplay to that one? If you feel your performance is lackluster, look to your build or play-style. Mikael's a horribly situational item to begin with though a good idea against Malz, Morgana, or anyone else with an extended hard CC.

I tend to rush Athene's--more healing on top of your healing. Locket, so I can keep my team alive long enough for my W to come off cooldown or for them to life steal. Pairing Redemption with Locket gives you that extra few seconds of team-fighting. Sometimes I'll still build Censer if I'm paired with an attack speed ADC. Basically there are quite a few ways to play her, just the decisions rest in what type of utility you want to be.

The only time I feel completely useless is when my team goes 5 overall kills to the enemy team's 20, and I'm sitting at 0/2/5 and unable to do anything to affect the game by that point since the enemy team outputs more damage than I can heal. Feelsbad.

As for the Star Guardian event, yes, I whole-heartedly agree. Soraka should have been the Legendary skin, but Ahri's the more popular champion.

Lore is apparently a continual cycling of "this is new, this one's been done, we need to fix this one now, but THIS ONE gets a music video!" They'll get to it eventually.

As for previous runes, I actually ran mana and mana regen runes alongside my yellow armor runes. No health runes whatsoever.

DepressedTomoko12/10/2017, 5:01:26 AM2 votes

I think the champion sucks. Squishy, cost of safety is geared towards higher cooldowns (E) and your health pool (W) High cooldown on global, yet weak, ultimate (R), a shitty passive (Psure I'm wasting time doing the ()) Q that gives very little compensation regeneration for her w costs, skillshot, have to be closer in range (you're a squishy) to have higher chances of hitting it. Her w cd level 1 was doubled so you wouldn't get the best of both worlds being able to Max q and have a 4s cd heal. Opened more opportunities for sorakas who afkd in turret to let their adc be punished. W max forced lane safety, q forced poke. It would be absurd to have a scaling heal rank 1 have a 4s cd when ur spamming 200 damage at the enemy in skillshots slowly restoring back your health.

TL;DR Squishy and high costs and cooldowns for everything. Champ sucks.

VoraciousX12/10/2017, 12:08:43 AM1 votes

They probably didn't want to encourage people into building Warmog's Soraka because she's a friggin enchanter not a tank, so they gave her armor. Soraka never seems to be a terrible choice, you probably just like playing her like a super tank heal bitch and while that's an option, it's not her intended playstyle. It's also probably one of the most unfun things to play against because you're supposed to kill the healing support but when you can't kill her it's just ridiculous. I'm not saying Soraka needs to be in the dumpster, but she doesn't need that playstyle to be endorsed by Riot as the go-to. Heck, I play nuke Soraka by maxing Q first in lane and just poking them down where they're so discouraged to even go in that they just stay under tower eventually to be dove or go back for us to push in the wave with no contest. You don't need to heal when your ally is full health because the enemy can't even lay a finger on them. Ahri was the only one who got voicelines for the SGs, because she was the only 1820 skin(though SG Soraka looks pretty amazing).

Terozu12/10/2017, 10:55:48 PM1 votes

To be fair SGSoraka is supposed to be mute.

Raxistaicho12/10/2017, 4:11:17 PM1 votes

Hey, speak for yourself about that SG skin. Soraka's was easily the best of the recent set and she at least still acts like herself. Ahri's a completely different character and I hate it.

Kats Pajamas12/10/2017, 4:52:02 PM1 votes

Equinox has an 80% scale if you can double hit it.

A humble 450 base damage at max rank, outdamages Katarina's entire combo in base damage at max rank with 1 ability. It has 925 range, anything over 700 is cheese.

You complain about the Silence buffer, but silence is an incredibly powerful ability that has even been phased out of some parts of the game because it is too broken(IE:Kassadin). Soraka's Silence is the most manageable, most reliable, easiest to target and one of the most rewarding abilities in the game to land. It's also AoE. This is basically peanuts that it takes 1/10 a second to apply the silence, when it is the best one. This 'silence issue' happens with every Silence too, not just hers, and she still has the best one.

Her E cost 10 more mana than Starcall, and most Soraka have no issue spamming this and missing everything all lane phase, when they could just blow up the other team more reliably with instant silence every time it's up. The cooldown gets much shorter, and the root doubles in duration from leveling it.

Leveling heal is pointless btw. Idol gives max rank heal the equivalent of 30 ap. The entirety of it's ranks is about 250 ap against it's own scale. If you need to heal more than every 2 seconds, you're going to run out of HP in 10 seconds. Because it's 60% AP scale ap is far better to use to boost your heal, and leveling heal will increase it's mana cost, this will sack your early game mana for nothing. Q also gives a 30% AP bonus to your heal at rank 1 when you land it and this scales to 50%. The main issue with Soraka is her abilites scale 300% with AP, and none of them build anything other than an Ardent and call it good. You would be in this group, except you sometimes don't even build Ardent. Mind Blown. With a Ludens and a Liandries she can almost 1 button Penta. Most of your games, you have 0 ap...This is bad.

Some perspective from a damage dealer.

Shadora Fawn12/10/2017, 5:02:04 PM1 votes

I agree though there has been a huge lack of love for my raka bae recently the only thing i dont agree with is the boring or unfun thing but im a die hard raka fan soooooo ..... ya there is nothing better than watching the enemy rage quit or saving top or jungle from losing a fight with raka <3 Soraka Forever <3

Raydn12/10/2017, 5:52:52 PM1 votes

I also main Soraka and I've pretty much thought this exact thing. If they had items to reduce shielding I wouldn't be so annoyed, but with having Thorn mail also giving grevious, and any ad champ buying grevious for a measly 800 gold, Soraka and any melee ad champ that has built I'm sustain loses most of their healing for cheap items. Edit-- When people stack TONS of grevious items, I'm almost always forced to just build AP just to stay relevant. Often times getting flamed for it. Like, I'm going to be more useless if I don't get AP. Executioner's isn't that bad because it forces you to engage in small skirmishes, but the other grevious items reduce healing for way too long for how much they reduce.

peachysusi12/10/2017, 3:36:30 AM1 votes

why would you wanna pay more for a legendary skin? star guardian soraka is already a good skin so why does it matter? lol.