Can we give Soraka a love tap or two?

FistOfSharkiesha··2 votes·400 views

At the moment she's incredibly unpopular. The little power she has to keep her ADC alive in the laning phase doesn't mean much when up against incredible teamfighters such as Leona, Sona, and Braum.

Having % health costs means the more hp she has, the harder it is for her to restore that through her starcall. EX: She damages herself for 300 damage in warmog's build vs 200 in an AP build. Not only will she restore a lower amount with the warmog's starcall because of the lower AP, it will take much more health to restore that 10% HP cost. This pretty much locks her into builds without HP, and the first item she buys is the sightstone, which gives 150 health. I think it's pretty bizarre that Soraka has an entire section of items that are actually detrimental to the one thing she's good at, her sustain.

In addition to the above, the support builds are oversaturated with CDR. Soraka is probably the single worst offender of going over the CDR cap, thus wasting stats and making items less gold efficient. Soraka will get 10% cdr through her income item, and 5% through masteries. Then, she tends to build either a mana regen item such as item 3174 , or an item 3504.

Assuming she has boots, an income item, and a sightstone, she's at 15% cdr with 3 items left. Most of her remaining item choices have CDR on them, and she goes way over the cap in the case that she decides to upgrade trinket rather than grab a sightstone. item 3023 item 3110 item 3060 item 3190 item 3222 item 3050 . This is an issue for a few other mage supports but Soraka is the biggest offender and it's difficult to get around without just going straight up AP which cuts down on her already poor utility.

With this in mind, it would be really helpful if we made other items such as item 3083 viable on her. I don't think she needs the % true damage health costs because the cost will always be justified for her build. By this I mean, the more hp she has, the less AP she has, which will even out the cost to about the same as far as potential healing goes. Like I said, higher HP builds are harder to self-sustain, and heal for lower amounts. The only thing that would even out this % health cost was if she also sustained a % health from her starcall (with astral infusion's passive).

tl;dr Give her % health costs and give her % health heal from landing starcall, or don't do either. % health costs are overkill. Also reevaluating some support items CDR would be nice.

8 Comments

McSatan3 votes

Doesn't 'love tap' refer to really small nerfs?

DJ Di02 votes

As someone who plays her all the time in ranked she doesn't need buffs at all; she'd get nerfed before getting buffs.

She's unpopular simply because people underestimated her, but that's changing soon and more people are picking her up. She's easily a lot stronger than Sona.

As for her %health cost, no one is building straight health items on her, they build health regen item 3060 item 3190 item 3069 item 3065 item 3083 . I don't agree with what most people build, though, and go AP Support instead. With AP you can easily heal yourself to full with just 1-3 Q's while having extremely potent heals and decent damage on E.

http://i.gyazo.com/b0363581561442dbb05fae7637135cc2.png

UltraSceptile1 votes

She heals her adc from 1/5 health back to almost full in like almost 10 seconds, if you buff that she's going to get permabanned. Already horribly obnoxious to lane against, you can't buff her without making her legitimately broken.

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

Well you commented less than 5 seconds after I posted the thread so I guess thanks for leaving a comment without knowing what you were commenting on.

UltraSceptile1 votes

{quoted}

Well you commented less than 5 seconds after I posted the thread so I guess thanks for leaving a comment without knowing what you were commenting on.

I skimmed the whole thing and got the idea. Basically you want to give her a %heath heal on her Q to compensate for her %health cost on her W. I guess they could try it out on PBE but im just saying from experience of playing against raka the only hope you have in lane is if the enemy adc is stupid and repeatedly takes dumb trades, like dropping himself to 20% HP 3-4 times and forcing soraka to spam pots and Q and W to rapidly try to keep up. You mention soraka's main attribute is sutain, it's not anymore. Her main attribute is heal spamming allies while putting herself at major risk because she can do so. If you want to buff her Q, buff her silence, while keeping the huge heal on her W, I would say make her W cooldown unchanged by anything. A flat cooldown, maybe 5 seconds at max rank. Tank soraka running with max CDR spamming Q and W would be way too fucking oppressive. If we do that then I would think buffing her sustain would be reasonable.

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

She also explodes if you target her and has 0 mobility or peel to protect herself. Her entire identity is her self and ally sustain, and that's what I'm addressing in the thread.

Aeolian Melodies1 votes

Soraka does better and is piked more often than Sona in Diamond (ranked solo queue). Sona actually has a below 50% win ratio up there.

Tell me more about Sona's superiority.

Furthermore, having a build saturated with CDR is a problem that ALL non-tank supports must deal with, not just Soraka. Do you think Janna, Nami or Sona don't build similar items and don't face the same problem? Janna with item 3069 item 3190 item 3110 item 3504 is just as overcapped as Soraka with the same build.

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

And I don't disagree with anything you said. Please re-read my thread. I basically said what you did. I said Sona's teamfight is better (because of her AoE instant stun), and said that all mage supports suffer from a poor CDR saturated build path, just that Soraka's is the worst. Ardent censor is amazing on Soraka, but Soraka also needs more utility items like Twin Shadow than other mages because she lacks the sheer utility other supports have.

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