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Soraka design philosophy and balance discussion

Miko Ryukudo·11/6/2014, 12:27:47 AM·3 votes·1,234 views

This is my opinion of course, but to me, Soraka is the worst healer in the game currently and here are my reasons why:

  • She is the only support with a heal that can not target themselves with their healing ability.

Star call being her only way of healing herself, besides using Wish feels awful. It is a really slow skillshot, despite having a decent size radius. I have a hard time hitting champions with it in almost every situation. To top it off, it only heals you if you hit champions. Why can't this ability at least give you a lower healing return for hitting enemy minions? If somehow a falling star sucks the life out of champions to replinish your health, it makes no sense to not get anything by hitting minions or neutral monsters.

  • She is the only support with a primary healing spell that uses a cost of HP and Mana.

This is the most confusing part. Why does it have a dual gating? Astral Infusion costs 10% maximum HP as well as scaling mana cost from 20 up to 40 mana. The healing values are good in early game, but this drastically reduces her ability to do things in early laning phase because she has to juggle 2 costs between 2 abilities to stay in lane and be meaningful. Her other abilities cost 70 mana + and the optimal way to play her is to ward , stand back and heal.

  • Late game her Astral Infusion feels really lack luster in healing department because it feels like a death trap.

Why does this ability have a 2 second cooldown at rank 5? You can't realistically use this ability a ton unless you are landing starcalls on multiple champions with a great amount of HP regen. If anyone builds HP or if you have a tank on your team, you will practically kill yourself trying to give them a meaningful amount of HP back. To me this feels like a mistaken identity to be a tank heal bot, versus a light ap utility support. The problem with it being %max HP per cast, building HP wont help. I feel like I need a warmogs and spirit visage to survive extended fights and hp regen is very expensive for a support.

I really don't feel like this is what Soraka was intended to be. The idea is alright, the abilities seem like a great utility support, but why does the cost of her primary ability for what you would pick her for make her behave more like Vladamire? Soraka wants so badly to be a great healer and has all the tools to do it, but the way her Starcall and Astral Infusion work together hand in hand makes her job freaking hard.

I get it, this is all about choice. You don't want Soraka to have point and click abilities with 0 counterplay. You don't want Soraka to instantly erase damage in a single cast. You don't want her to give back metric tons of mana. I like her kit, honestly I do, but how are you the definitive healer of the game when you are literally killing yourself to heal your team? As the game goes on longer and longer, the more hp your allies have, the more dangerous it is to actually heal them.

Please explain to me why Soraka isn't a fallen Goddess anymore and is now a vampire.

To fix this, I suggest:

  1. take away the healing aspect of Starcall (Astral Infusion passive) completely, lowering the mana cost of Starcall a little
  2. Take away the HP cost of her Astral Infusion and bump up the cooldown and manna cost, while giving Soraka the ability to cast Astral Infusion on herself.

-or-

  1. Give diminished healing return for hitting minions/monsters with Starcall. Or heck, give her a boost in hp/5 regen based on how many minions she hits instead of a flat value.
  2. Add to Salvation passive that if you heal an allied champion under 40% HP that you do not pay the health cost for Astral Infusion. If she heals an ally and they are still under 40%, the %hp cost of Astral Infusion is negated still till you heal them past 40%

I personally like the latter of suggestions. The first set make her act more like old Soraka. The second set allows her to use Starcall more effectively to keep herself alive without having to risk wiffing her entire ability to just hit champions to get any hp return. Not to mention, the changes to Salvation would make the whole rocket ambulance shtick feel a lot more meaningful.

18 Comments

EffectFX11/6/2014, 1:16:08 AM3 votes
  1. She can heal herself, you're just required to hit someone with your Q, which is not hard.
  2. And? For how absurdly powerful her heal is I'm fine with the cost.
  3. Build some AP.
  4. Soraka is strong right now
k wìx11/6/2014, 1:17:32 AM2 votes

I agree on some of your points - I think Starcall is really easy to hit with, and she's turned into less of a healing bot and more of a threatening poke in the lane - I like this change and I think it plays out very well for her in lane - but I do agree that it goes against her fundamental 'concept' as a basic healer.

I propose the following change for Starcall:

Soraka calls down a star at a target location, enemies standing in the point of impact take magic damage and allies standing at the point of impact heal slightly. Starcall takes more time to fall the farther the ability is cast.

Magic Damage: 70 / 110 / 150 / 190 / 230 (+ 35% AP) Healing Effect: 50% of Magic Damage Enemies standing in the center take 50% increased damage.

This adjusts her kit quite a bit - she loses the small snare effect, but keeps her damage on the spell and its unique effect, and this would allow her to cast the spell at HALF effectiveness on herself and her allies if needed. Even better, during tight skirmishes, if she can land a sweet Starcall that involves 4 or 5 players, the healing gets EXTREME!

Might be a bit OP, maybe add a few seconds to the Cooldown at each rank to compensate, but I would love to play this Soraka - what SAY you?!