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Thoughts and Discussion: Soraka

Stacona··3 votes·692 views

Please keep an open mind and do not let your bias views cloud your judgement.

Let's get into things:

~ Soraka is a healer. This is hard to make right, specifically in a PvP game, since you want to uphold to that dedicated healer identity, but needs interactivity with the opposition to be healthy for the game and not frustrating to play again. Currently Soraka is rewarded too heavily with being passive, the health cost actually adds to this, its better to have an "invisible" health cost where Soraka plays with her opponent and just focus on cooldowns and/or mana for the balancing aspect. ~ ~ This is not remove all passive play, but have it where she feels more active rather than sit 5 miles back behind everything in the fog of war spamming heals; there needs to be some kind of realistic way to kill the healer (biggest threat) which rewards the Soraka player for proper play, positioning, and decision-making rather than always being safe.

~ Soraka be fun to play; and equally fun to play against, specifically removing that super frustration factor of playing against Soraka whenever she is currently strong in that patch. This means Soraka could get buffs rather than always nerfs once we fix the frustrating to play against issue. We can do this by giving Soraka rewards for being active and aggressive, and less rewards for playing super passive and safe and completely out of sight; again does not mean complete passive play removal.

~ Soraka has no skill expression, besides for a well-timed silence. I do want Soraka to remain as an easy champion for new players, but let's form her into something that teaches players a thing or two about the game as well as allowing for better skill expression so that there is a real difference between a Soraka newbie and level 7 mastery Soraka / Master/Challenger tier Soraka play.

~ Scrap Soraka's current kit and work from the ground up. Create something that plays off Soraka as a star child and a dedicated healer, personally I would love to see Soraka more of a battle cleric, but at the very least focus with making a dedicated healer not frustrating to play against.

CONCEPT KIT! THIS MEANS NUMBERS AND ABILITIES ARE ALL ROUGH EXAMPLES; (numbers especially mean nothing - just a vague, general idea)!

Movement: 340 units per second

Illumination of the Night Sky (Passive): Allies that have not received healing in the last 8 seconds will receive 50% increased healing from Soraka one time, 100% increased healing for Wish.

While Soraka stands still her vision radius is increased by 25%.

Star Call (Q): Cooldown: 0.5 second; Cost: 30 mana + 1 Star; Range: 1000 / 125 units Soraka calls down a star to the target location dealing 40/50/60/70/80(+30%AP) magic damage and applying Star Light on struck targets for 1.5 seconds, which reveals them. Star Call against Star Light inflicted enemies reduces Sunlight Burst's current cooldown by 15%.

Enemy champions or epic monsters inflicted by Star Light and basic attacked by Soraka consumes Star Light to heal Soraka for 9/18/27/36/45(+120%AP) health over 3 seconds.

Passive: Soraka stores a Star every 12/10.5/9/7.5/6 seconds, up to a maximum of 3 Stars at a time.

Sunlight Burst (W): Cooldown: 40 seconds; Cost: 90/100/110/120/130 mana; Range: 600 units Soraka summons a beam of sunlight to her location healing allies around her for 120/150/180/210/240(+100%AP) health, including herself, and applying Star Light's healing to struck allies if it is currently in effect on Soraka. This slows down struck enemies by 20% for 3 seconds, increases to 80% against enemies with Star Light applied.

If Sunlight Burst hits an enemy champion or epic monster then 60/65/70/75/80% of the cooldown is refunded, plus 5% for every enemy champion struck beyond the first.

Dark Star (E): Cooldown: 24/22/20/18/16 seconds; Cost: 80 mana; Range: 550 units Soraka creates a dark zone around her for 1.5 seconds which silences enemies within.

After 1.5 seconds the zone will collapse and deal 60/90/120/150/180(+90%AP) magic damage to champions, if struck enemies had Star Light applied to them then they are stunned for 1.5 seconds.

Wish (R): Cooldown: 180/150/120 seconds; Cost: 100 mana; Range: Global / 250 units Toggle: Soraka channels in place for up to 5 seconds, can be canceled early, replacing her mouse cursor into a special star healing allies under it for 50/75/100(+40%AP) health per second. This healing ignores grievous wounds and can heal untargetable and invulnerable allies.

Wish cannot heal Soraka.

17 Comments

Moooose32 votes

She's very easy to kill

Soraka is never that strong.

Her silence is huge as is her positioning. It is very easy to tell a good soraka from a bad one

Basically this entire thing is pointless and she's fine as she is.

Stacona1 votes

Another Soraka main being bias and having clouded judgement.

ryona2 votes

{quoted}

Another Soraka main being bias and having clouded judgement.

https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=stacona

lol

Would you rather want this guy spouting an opinion about Soraka?

Or this guy

http://www.probuilds.net/guide/show/NA/2251270691/40862789

https://na.op.gg/summoner/userName=sakugabooru

Moooose32 votes

I play thresh lol. Maybe you're just bad? There doesn't have to be a hidden bias behind why anybody would possibly disagree with you. You're just wrong.

Acheron162 votes

Cant really agree with the notion that Soraka is passive.

In laning phase, sure she kinda is, but outside of that she needs to fish for Qs in order to properly heal, since her W heals is pretty weak compared to the HoT on her Q and the health cost becomes prohibitive if she doesn't use her Q.

Death by Glamour1 votes

I do like what you have suggested but that q range... isn't that a bit much? I have been thinking for a while what her old W would have been like with a targeted Q.

What she has become is just a mess. A champ which requires you to purchase an item to play against or if playing her a champ who is countered by 800g

Stacona1 votes

its a skill shot, and I tried to have the power to feel connected to close range combat and have it divided into one-thirds in damage more-less. I think having Soraka feel more like she plays within her AA range rather than way outside of it, not completely remove outside AA range combat, but really make the close range combat as a healer the priority (this way the enemy can deal with her and give Soraka back some more power).

I just noticed I forgot to give a passive to this; it won't be the same movement speed passive since her ultimate is a global for clutch saves (I want Wish more than a point a click AoE heal; makes it more interesting, and paint-brush ability will be fun to use while keeping it easy to use).

Death by Glamour1 votes

they were going to give her a double passive, the move speed and AP gained from your MR/armour

Siegfriedx11 votes

800g? She is countered by a summoner spell anyone can pick.

Death by Glamour1 votes

apples and pears

ignite has a hefty cooldown were as that item inflicts GWs on an auto

HeeroTX1 votes

Most of her kit seems fine, what about changing her W like this: Astral Infusion: (Added) spell is channeled over 1 sec, during this time any damage applied to the target of Astral Infusion is applied to Soraka instead.

This allows Soraka to maintain her healing power outside of combat, but puts her at much higher risk IN combat.

Stacona1 votes

We want Soraka to be in combat, not out of it, her frustrations is when she is out of combat healing - if we have her focused on being in combat for benefits then it reduces frustrations against her. Also focus on low base values and high ratios encourages squishy Soraka, also high impact Soraka is more fun for players than tank-low-impact Soraka as well.

We don't want things that discourage Soraka being aggressive, we want to devalue the out of combat and passive play.

HeeroTX1 votes

"Out of combat" in my suggestion means both Soraka AND her heal targeted are pulled back into a "retreated" position. It would allow say Raka & the adc to heal under turret like Garen passive, but make her activities IN combat more risky.

Example: Lane is Soraka + Ashe If Ashe takes damage from enemy Caitlyn, duo has two options

  1. Ashe and Soraka both pull out of AA range and Soraka heals Ashe. This allows Ashe to continue to get exp but costs cs, but less than if she recalls
  2. Ashe stays in range while Soraka heals her. This allows Ashe to minimize the impact of the damage by keeping in combat BUT Soraka is now more vulnerable to Caitlyn's poke. Thus risking either giving Cait a kill or possibly necessitating an earlier back from Raka.

In late game, the danger is MUCH more pronounced because burst damage makes it MUCH more likely that Raka is forced to "martyr" herself for the adc by eating the damage while healing if her heal target stays in combat rather than backing off. This allows Soraka to maintain her "medic" identity, while increasing the "counter" window for opponents. One of the biggest problems with Raka right now is that she can heal with minimum risk to herself, this change would completely negate that advantage.

Stacona1 votes

Health cost on the heal was always a bad idea because of what gameplay pattern it encourages, and being too hard to balance, we want Soraka to interact with the enemy to reduce frustrations.

Encouraging Soraka to sit even further back is a bad idea and makes the problem worse, not better.

Soraka needs to be both squishy and massively gimped for going tank items, and need to interact with the enemy in order to be healthy for the game and allow her to be a high impact healer.

Siegfriedx11 votes

Very strange changes. Also soraka is the most aggressive champion, not passive.

Death by Glamour1 votes

depends on the matchup

try playing agressive into a blitz/thresh/leona/ali

Siegfriedx11 votes

Specially aggressive against those you said.

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