Dear Riot, I'd think that Soraka needs another rework if she's going to be healthy

This post is coming from someone who used to main soraka.

In her last rework, I get it that you were trying to make her support lane less passive while virtually killing her ability to go into a solo lane anymore.

The problem is, she's still as passive as ever despite being the best healer in the game. For people not aware of gameplay design, that's not a great combo. You need the good healers to be more exposed or you run into issues like EVE online has with its space priests.

I think removing her mid/top viability was a bad decision because if you want her to do more than sit back and heal, she needs to be both encouraged and rewarded for fighting. While her Q rewards her for fighting, her new heal discourages her from fighting as does the Q's mana costs. Since I can't poke with me E anymore, there's not much reason to go in and mix things up as any damage I take reduces how much I can heal my ally. Not being able to self heal reliably further discourages me from trading as my health bar is my main healing recourse. As long as she has her current healing mechanic, I think that she's going to have this toxic passive farm lane mentality.

Let's look at her numbers form platnum+ games as that's where riot tries to balance champs.

1. She's a great healer. I think that in a vacuum, her raw healing numbers are great. He healing ability counters an damaging AP mid like brand, lux, zyra, vekkers, or annie showing up in lane by reversing all that damage they bring to the game when supporting. As someone who plays sona, I kind of want to cry when I see how little sona heals compared to soraka. Unfortunately this isn't a vacuum.
2. She's got a high win rate. This means nothing by itself. However add in the fact that she's got one of the lowest death rates despite her healing mechanic and that leads me to believe that she's a little too safe. Not dying is one of the best ways to win a game and it's clear she's not dying very well... despite not having reliable peel, and no mobility, and a healing mechanic that makes her easier to kill, and dealing no damage.
3. = bye bye second biggest weakness in soraka's kit. Heal someone, step back, recover quickly, and repeat. I remember her rework was supposed to discourage her from building HP, but as of now, building HP is the smartest thing you can do on her. Add in something like a mikeals or an athene's and you can play a pretty passive game with all your sustain.
4. Her common final build is . There's virtually no AP in this build. After season 4 began, I remember riot saying they wanted most AP supports to build about 200 AP. She's picking up ardent for the mana, cdr, and passive. Her most common build makes her a champ that just sits back and heal.
5. The fact that she's trading bigger heals for utility also means that her players aren't even bothering so much with dealing damage at all. Another sign she is too passive. They aren't valuing AP because they aren't using it for her Q or E, the base heal on her W and R is enough for them.
6. Q is supposed to be a damage spell that also fuels soraka's engine. Players aren't caring about using it for damage and just want the self heal from it. Only the 10% that wins the most cares about more damage.
7. Soraka has one of the lowest amounts of gold per game for a support. This means that she isn't able to kill minions anymore, in addition to the fact she almost never KSes. Put these things together, and she is both a passive champ playing in a passive lane.
8. Yes she has a lot of assists but I think that can be partly attributed to the fact she can get an assist from the other side of the map if her ult is up.
9. Soraka's mana costs are frankly too high for a pure support, especially on her Q. If she were a mid and rushed a tear or RoA, that'd be different, but she's not. The highest win rate of soraka players have her leveling her Q last. That furthers the idea that she is played too passively and the mana costs on the spell are too high. Support soraka rushes a sightstone and a talisman so you aren't getting enough mana early to play more actively.
10. Soraka's current kit and costs requires her to be very careful about using her Q and her W. Q takes too much mana when you start leveling it and W costs too much health. This forces soraka to play too passively.
11. Standing back and basing when you are low on health is not a fun or engaging playstyle for soraka players.
12. Trying to focus a soraka that is standing back and healing isn't fun for the other team.
13. The soraka supporting you never hits a Q, the other team's soraka always hits their Qs. This is annoying as can be considering both of you need her to hit the spell to do her job.

I think that if you add everything up, you've got a champ that is still too safe and too passive. I think taking all of the bully stuff out of her kit while giving her a healing mechanic that forces her to play it too safely is turning her into a champ that's overall unhealthy for the game.

Changes I suggest:

1. Making her heal from her Q did not encourage soraka to be less passive. It also doesn't scale well enough to encourage her to build AP. It needs reworked. It also has a mana cost that is way too high for her lane. You either need to lower the costs or increase the damage so she can go mid/top.
2. The damage on healing allies is forcing her to play too safely. Not being able to self heal with your W is forcing her to play too passively. I think she needs biggish healing numbers, but the current method isn't promoting healthy game play. I'd suggest a modified version of her old W. Give 10 AR and 10 MR per rank for 3-5 seconds, while someone has that armor buff they heal X health per second and soraka can self cast it. I also suggest decoupling it from her Q.
3. I think soraka needs solo lane viability in order not to be completely passive but she needs to keep her global heal and her lack of mobility. Her biggest weakness should be difficulty against people who can go all in on her and burst her down. This means there needs to be a careful balance between her healing and her damage and ATM it's a little too much on the healing side.
4. Soraka lost a lot of poke when you guys changed her E. She also lost the mana gift. Soraka's new Q doesn't make up for her old E and her old E was free in terms of mana cost and the new Q isn't. She needs more reasons to be aggressive if you want her to have a healthy playstyle. Her E isn't very satisfying to use unless you catch a katarina or vekkers ult. People rarely get snared as well so you almost need to cast it on someone who was already stunned.

I think that if riot wants soraka to be a healthy champ, they need to remember she's a /mage. That's where her kit has always wanted her to go... someone who isn't a pure support but is a mostly support/niche but viable solo laner. I think that if riot made it so that soraka is able to mix it up more often, she'd be a more fun champ to play and a more healthy one as well. Right now her kit is gating her too much.