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A Soraka passive change suggestion

ora·10/3/2014, 11:40:20 PM·14 votes·1,477 views

First off, I'd like to say that I'm genuinely pleased with this rework. Soraka now feels like she has meaningful decisions and impact (do I heal my teammate at the risk of being too low to survive a gank? how many people can I silence for maximum effect?) However, in order to do most of this, 2 things must happen that are hurting her gameplay:

  1. She must survive to be meaningful - no good cc means her contribution comes from her hps (healing per second), which means she needs to stay alive and heal more
  2. She is punished for building hp, leaving her extremely squishy (and usually not even at the full amount of her meager hp, if she's doing her job)

This leads to smart opponents just focusing her immediately, where she has no instant peel or protect, and then dies and is useless for the fight. Options to mitigate this (hourglass, GA) are inhibitively expensive for a support, and so aren't a good counterargument.

So, she needs something to allow her to have a meaningful contribution throughout a teamfight, while staying in the thick of it with little defensive stats, with no reliable self-protect. Seeing as the general consensus is both that Soraka shouldn't be killing herself trying to heal allies (she's currently forced to be in the thick of a fight and harm herself to do her job), and that an aoe heal would leave little counterplay (no aoe heal burst on death, as seen in another thread), how's this for a suggestion:

#Passive: Salvation (Alt Title: Celestial Overload)

When Soraka is dealt lethal damage, the stars recognize her sacrifice and imbue her with power for a short time. During this time, the stars overwhelm her power to sustain her life, disabling and rooting Soraka but allowing her to cast her heal (W) for no cost. Soraka can only sustain this overwhelming power for 3/4/5 seconds before her time is spent and she dies.

This gives Soraka a Karthus-like passive, allowing her to continue healing for a short while, but unable to follow her teammates if the fight moves. This resolves the issue where she is focused first, as if you kill her first she has a few seconds where she can heal at will, making a small area around her dangerous to fight in with her high hps healing. It also allows for the counterplay of keeping her teammates out of her reach, a harder task then just leaving Karthus' range but balanced by her smaller w range.

As an added bonus, this passive also ties in with her lore, where the stars took their power from her as punishment for doing harm, as now they can reward her for giving everything to saving people from it. Additionally, this could add the opportunity for more lore wrt Karthus, seeing as he revels in death and Soraka in life, and they have similar-yet-opposite kits (global death laser vs global heal laser, invuln damage passive vs invuln heal passive). They become thematically antitheses of each other, and with the recent changes in lore, could be added (comparatively) easily.

#TL;DR - Soraka dies too fast in teamfights or isn't as useful, so give her a heal-ey Karthus passive Thoughts?

EDITS: Fixed a reference to karthus ult where I meant passive

9 Comments

YGW Caspie10/4/2014, 4:10:49 AM4 votes

This inspired me to think of another passive idea to move Soraka into a more "pure support" archetype that helps enforce her "To Heal and Protect" motto. Also before you freak out and say what about the bananambulance passive, I didn't add it here because I personally think it would fit better as a passive on her W: Astral Infusion and her current passive on her Astral Infusion I think would fit better as a passive on her Q: Starcall. Essentially this means Soraka is exactly the same as the rework except she becomes a super support every 3 mins when low health. Also, numbers are placeholders and just there for a quick example.

#Passive: Celestial Contract

When Soraka is below 5% of her max health she becomes invulnerable for 1 second and transforms into a celestial being for 5 seconds exchanging her damage on her abilities for new bonuses. (180 second cooldown)

Starcall: While celestial each enemy champion hit by Starcall heals Soraka, increased by 2% for every 1% of Soraka's missing health and enemies in center of starcall are stunned for 2 seconds.

Astral Infusion: While celestial Astral Infusion has no cost.

Equinox: Enemies in zone are slowed for 30%

Wish: Can be cast even when under the effects of hard crowd control.

EDIT: For Clarity when I say exchanging damage I literally mean her abilities do no damage at all while she is in her passive form, and visually she would look different in passive form.

eztarg3t10/4/2014, 1:43:09 AM4 votes

I'm not entirely sure about the passive but I would like to talk about this lore.

I don't believe the stars are by any means 'angry' with Soraka. After all, if they were really upset, they probably wouldn't be coming to her aid at all when she calls them. If they are angry I would put it at parent level of angry. They may be upset but they are still going to help Soraka.

Also I would argue that the stars didn't take away her powers, she just fell out of enlightenment. I would argue the stars are more worried sick for her and care for her safety. So seeing her die may not put then in a great mood. I don't know, I just like to think of the stars being parents to Soraka. She is called the starchild, after all.

PokladnicaZla10/4/2014, 6:50:32 PM2 votes

Something like this would be really useful on her.But wouldnt that erase one of her main weaknesses ?Well that would be the case,but that can be fixed by giving her a delay on it. Still great suggestion.Hope you get a Redpost.

P.S . I think you meant to say a Karthus-like Passive,not ultimate.

Flemman10/4/2014, 9:50:02 PM2 votes

To be honest, for me, all she needs is a global "warning, ally bellow 40% health" indicator not tied with the speed up range passive. (and one for her too till she can heal herself with ult)

if I'm bot lane, I still want to be able to heal my toplaner when he go below 40% health in an efficient way (cause use ulti if he is 41% health will cause a big loss of healing power)

Now we need to use the approximation of the sidebar or look top ourselves and lose vision of bot lane action, it's like fighting against the game for me.

Maybe, a change for clarity would be color modification of the actual indicator? (red if below 40%, yellow if below 40% and in speed bonus range)

FantasySniper10/5/2014, 8:36:57 AM1 votes

Nice idea, it could work so long as she had the effective range.

As for your reasoning, she doesn't really die that easily since her [E] silences, her [Q] slows, then heals herself, and the [E] can root. Not to mention what your team is capable of.

Also: Her lore is that the Stars stopped guiding her, they didn't take away any power.

PainWoLove10/3/2014, 11:49:48 PM1 votes

i like this idea... she is pretty useless in team fights if the person your pumping your weak heals into dies ure next because ure now at 50% hp with no cc or escapes, and no sustain

Deep Terror Nami10/3/2014, 11:56:24 PM1 votes

As much as many of us would love some changes to her, anything major is impossible, and futile to even bring up. Riot wouldn't rework a brand new rework. Is a good idea, though.