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Giving Soraka More Counter-Play

SC0RP10·11/20/2015, 12:46:26 AM·4 votes·857 views

The problem with Soraka's current 'w' is that it rarely puts her at risk to be used properly. Decreasing the range at which she can heal ranged champs will solve the problem. Soraka is probably at enough risk trying to heal a melee champ due to them being closer to the enemy.

Proposed changes.

  • Reduce Soraka's 'w' range to be 150 units (just spitballing, would need testing to find the best value) units when healing ranged champions and keep its 550 units of range when healing melee champs.
  • Buff Soraka's 'w' cooldown to be 2 seconds at all levels so that when she is in range of her 'w' it gives her a really defined high moment.
  • You can also give Soraka's passive more movement speed to help offset some of the range nerfs.
  • Another possible buff that you could utilize to help balance Soraka out is by increasing the range at which her passive kicks in.

These changes make Soraka more open to counter-play by allowing you to actually get in range to attack her when she comes in to heal her target and keeps her insane healing intact. Some of these changes could even be utilized to further define Soraka as the cross country, healing, ambulance, champ.

It may take only the flat 2 second cooldown on her 'w' to offset the range loss when healing ranged champions or it could take a combination of various buffs. Keep in mind that it would take a lot of experimentation and testing to figure out what changes would give the best counter-play/reward for Soraka.

9 Comments

Dominick Destine11/20/2015, 12:47:50 AM5 votes

Soraka is fine. She is just as powerful as the alternatives (Thresh, Blitz, Leona, Alistar, etc.)

Raping Soraka will utterly destroy the last remaining, truly viable non-tank defensive support (RIP Janna)

Duke Anax11/20/2015, 1:06:20 AM2 votes

Her heal range is quite short already. Soraka lacks mobility so healing anyone with mobility more than once can be quite difficult.

Also keep in mind that spell ranges are a lot shorter than AA ranges. Due to unit collision, your 150 range is actually impossiible to reach when trying to heal anyone besides Teemo.

She is actually quite vulnerable in combat, anymore and she wouldn't be able to heal in action at all and would be relegated to sustain duty only. And sustain is in fact were her problems lie.

Out of combat she can savely dump all her health on her team mates so they can hold position while she goes B to recharge. But you can't just nerf W because that would also reduce her combat ability. So I made a suggestion a while ago to move some of her Healing to her E:

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/EUs73lfk-sorakas-equinox-should-heal-for-equal-amounts?comment=0001

Deep Terror Nami11/20/2015, 1:20:24 AM2 votes

Have you ever even played Soraka? Her W range is insanely short...

dunkeroni11/20/2015, 1:16:13 AM1 votes

Soraka's W range is already low enough to force her near the fight. If you're any good at soraka, during a 5v5 you should heal enough to use up all of your health anyway, so it only takes 1 hit to kill her. If she's really staying far enough back AND still has enough health to survive an attack after a fight, then the enemy team didn't lose because of soraka. They lost because of other champion damage.

oinkwentmoo11/20/2015, 1:44:32 AM1 votes

She really just needs a number nerf to how much she heals. With Windspeaker's Blessing she just heals insane amounts.

Fashion Mage11/20/2015, 2:25:55 PM1 votes

Soraka's supportive potential should remain completely untouched; reducing the range on her single most important supportive ability would pretty much destroy her. You can't expect a backline healer to work at melee range. If she's too hard to kill, her potential to be tanky should simply be reduced, or if she heals too much while being tanky, then her ratios should be increased and her base values should be decreased.

Healers typically have two ways to survive: they either need to have range, or they need to be tanky. Tanky healers are a stupid idea because they're supposed to be priority targets (and I believe Morello/Vesh also said this when Soraka was being reworked), so the only form of survivability that's left for her is range. Take that away and she has no survivability, at which point literally every Soraka will just build tanky with Warmog's and sustain allies out of combat. Does that sound interesting to you? It certainly doesn't to me. Her heal range is already slightly less than that of an auto-attack, and it hurts her significantly, so it definitely places risk on her.