The new E is different. You are right that it isn't for damage, but sadly it's too easy to walk out of it for it to be a good CC spell either. Right now it's basically a shut up Katarina's ult spell. I'm not sure the hard CC really belongs in soraka's kit either. The silence yes, but the root just doesn't feel right on her.
She needs some kind of zoning tool. Having a champion with no CC, no mobility, and no defensive tools would be far too easy to kill. Zhonyas would be far more mandatory than it already is, and I despise how common that item is already. If she isn't going to have CC on her E, then she needs something on her Q or a replacement on her E, otherwise she loses a lot of skill ceiling in addition to becoming far too one-dimensional and easy to counter.
I'm not sure riot would do this for one reason: they don't want her to build health anymore. No building health was something they explicitly talked about in the rework. I'm not sure if they are willing to relent on that or not.
That's fair. I think they're concerned (and legitimately so, in my opinion) about her becoming too hard to kill. If her kit offers strong healing like it does now, having a lot of tankiness on it can lead to some pretty unhealthy gameplay. I mean, remember early in her rework when her passive actually reduced her armor and her MR in order to increase her AP?
Despite that, I still feel that avoiding large health pools on her is a relic of when she didn't use her health to fuel her abilities, and when she was far tankier innately than she is today.
Shrug!
One thing I really wanted riot to do for her rework was to basically split her in to two champs. As in make a new champ based on one half and turn soraka into the other. They really needed someone based just on the martyr theme and reworked completely around that and they needed someone else based on the old soraka but not as toxic: a utility mage/healer who's not really a pure support healer or a pure mid.
I'm really not sure if the two paths idea would work properly, but I'd be happy to see riot try it.
Mmm, that's possible. I'm not sure that League needs another utility-focused support mage - we just got Bard and Tahm after all - but there might be room down the road.
As I understand it, though, the martyr theme came about as a byproduct of needing to give her healing a cost that wasn't so easy to counter as mana and they realized that it fit well with Soraka's "mortal goddess" story background. The core issue - that healers are inherently toxic in games designed like League - remains, and the only reason it's remotely fixed on Soraka is because she really doesn't heal that much; she just moves damage around. She takes damage from her carry, and then she hands it back to the enemies that dished it out via landing her Q.
The proposal of "why not just get rid of the middleman and have her literally give her life to her carry" was, to me, just a logical extension of what they've already done... with the added side effect of not making me hate myself every time I'm forced to buy a support item with bonus health on it because it trashes my efficiency.
I'm going to be honest here. After seeing both versions of soraka I can get why some people like the martyr healer. She heals a ton of damage now. However I don't think her kit is ever going to be right. I feel like when riot did the martyr champ, they tried to create a new champ, but in a way soraka is still too soraka. They kept her identifiable (I can still use her well enough) but I think the new heal needed something all of its own to support it. Riot wants her to be a martyr healer ATM, but she still wants to be the old Soraka in order or make the new idea work and to fulfill riot's stated goals. I mean I look at that kit and it's begging me to spam Qs and drive the other team under tower.
Ah; I only played her briefly pre-rework. I liked her, but she was a bit undertuned (for balance reasons) and it was a bit rough to work with her as a result, so I spent more time playing Kayle instead. To me, the post rework Soraka is the only one I've really known.
Right. But thanks to her lane, she's largely stuck using the worst items for her kit. I feel like she's meant to be a utility mage with healing more than a pure support or a pure mid. However based on the kit and how it works, it's numbers are wrong for a mid and the mechanics and lane realities are wrong for the support riot wanted out of her.
Tell me about it! You want armor? You get bonus health. You want support items? Hope you like being overbudget on CDR, plus bonus health. You want AP items? They're too expensive for your support budget and a ton of them have bonus health to boot. You want magic resist? Hope you like bonus health!
This is really my motivation for asking for a mini-rework on her. I hate going to the shop, buying a mandatory support item (hi, sightstone) and feeling like I've nerfed myself for doing it.
I'm not sure what kind of support soraka is supposed to be. Her W is what people focus on, but her Q drives her kit. Based on the kit and not the lane, she feels like someone who's meant to be artillery who zones you and works via sieging/poking. I see her W is less about high sustain so much and more about maintaining the siege and letting your poke comp work against the other team's poke comp. She's got sustain, but the sustain is dependent on her Q. Her Q is a mage's spell and that's the heart of her kit.
Honestly, I think it's the interaction between her Q and her W that drives her kit. Without her W, her Q is just a really really bad version of Karthus' signature spell. Without her Q, her W is basically an extra health pool for her carry. Her E, on the other hand, feels tacked on to make her useful in teamfights and to make Soraka players feel like they have a snowball's chance in hell to live through an ambush.
I'm not going to lie about my feelings when I say I think that putting her lane sustain into her Q was a wonky idea at best. I can see they wanted to encourage aggression but I think overall it didn't work out. I agree something will need to be done about the sustain if they did something with the mana cost. Still, I'm not exactly thrilled riot linked her Q and her W like they did.
Mmm. I'll be honest, I didn't give it a ton of thought initially, but now that you point it out, I can definitely see some of the issues. Short of redoing her Q and E entirely, though, I'm not sure I see a good way to address the issue.
Right. Back in S3 and early S4 before she became toxic she was a viable niche mage. The problem is her S4 rework turned her into a champ that half the players were using as a solo-lane bully and the other half of her players where playing her super passively. I feel like in her current state, she's too close to that passive champ who can't solo and who can't be aggressive at all. While it's possible to hit a Q, your Qs are too expensive and do too little damage for their cost.
I actually had a great match versus Ryze the other day in top lane. I ran OOM first, but Ryze had no sustain, and her Q hits remarkably hard early game due to the high base damage. He ended up getting forced out of lane too often to farm reliably. Late game I fell off hard, though, since her ratios are garbage as a support.
That's sort of why I wanted to see her changed up a bit; if her support-factor scaled with health and her mage-factor scaled with AP I think she'd be an interesting selection.
First of all, thanks for responding.
Hey, I love talking this stuff over! I do tank theorycrafting over on WoW; these sorts of discussions are my bread and butter ;)
