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@Riot Soraka Compensation?

xFrostKnightx··12 votes·1,419 views

So with the introduction of grievous wounds on a core Ad item. Will our "Healing focused" Support be getting any compensation for this indirect nerf? She was balanced in her own way, that she had no hard cc to lock down people with compared to Thresh/Leona/Nami/nearly all supports.

So with -40% healing on all AD champions now, Soraka takes a slap to the face. Can we see a buff which will put her back where she was before the introduction of this core item?

Say for example...
R: At rank 3, W now also removes grievous wounds before applying it's heal.

She pay's 10% Flat total Hp just to cast Astral Infusion. Now her healing will be -40% of it's strength because of an item existing in the game which is a mandatory item to build on any AD now to counter all the free lifesteal you put on Ad items.

Does Riot have any planned late game buffs to make up for this? or do you condone having an item in a game which "Literally" shuts down a champion's Kit just by buying it.

Not just Soraka. Vladimir and Swain even Aatrox are also punished and the "Core" sustain which their whole kit is built around is rendered pointless the second Mid game rolls by.

31 Comments

GigglingAngel10 votes

Dude ... have you not seen the new Healing mastery? Every time she heals someone, they'll gain 15% resistance and heal for 10% more or something. And she heals like every 3 seconds. If anything, she's been majorly buffed.

HyperSMB2 votes

{quoted}

Dude ... have you not seen the new Healing mastery? Every time she heals someone, they'll gain 15% resistance and heal for 10% more or something. And she heals like every 3 seconds. If anything, she's been majorly buffed.

This, so much this. This MORE than compensates, especially when you consider you are forcing someone onto an item just to combat you.

GigglingAngel2 votes

{quoted}

This, so much this. This MORE than compensates, especially when you consider you are forcing someone onto an item just to combat you.

Exactly. When you consider that Soraka can have a mastery that's practically made just for her and she doesn't need to build anything to have it ... I think that counts as compensation.

A Miss Fortune1 votes

She actually can heal every like 1 second, even less with 45% CDR if she wants to go that way.

Deep Terror Nami4 votes

If healers just got compensation for healing reduction items then there would be no point in having that item.

xFrostKnightx2 votes

I'm talking about Healers who's WHOLE entire kit is focused on healing.

Can you say to me, in 100% confidence that this one Core AD item will affect say Nami/Bard/Sona more than it will affect Soraka?

What do these champions have left without healing?

Nami has Hard CC, Q, R. She also has a semi-offensive heal which can deal nice damage with an E which boosts damage and slows. Bard can still Q, R. W gives movment speed (not that it's heal was weak already) and he has nice mobility. Sona can Aoe Stun with R. Still poke with Q, she can reduce enemy damage by a %.

Soraka. W is pointless to have now, E is a giant "stay away from this" circle, R is saved by having anti-grievous on it. Q can still poke and heal Soraka but if she's being attacked by an AD. GG, Q won't heal anymore.

Deep Terror Nami3 votes

Ya, and you wouldn't be buying that item for those that you're not worried about the heals...

xFrostKnightx1 votes

Have you seen the new lifesteal on almost all core Ad items? I'm not sure you have.

Deep Terror Nami3 votes

Oh god get your story straight. This is about lifesteal items now?

xFrostKnightx1 votes

That's the reason GW was returned or did that not occur to you?

IcyPepper4 votes

Soraka's ult removes grievous wounds, giving you a window of time to get around it. She's not completely gutted with grievous wounds.

Also, keep in mind that currently in PBE (I'm a tester now, woot!), there's a lot of lifesteal options. That balances out the whole grievous wounds business. If we had those changes without grievous wounds, Soraka would be gutted to hell for it. She does not need compensation for this.

Best Boop NA3 votes

The new masteries have some nice healing buffs. Personally I never liked the idea of grievous wounds being easily applicable, but what can we do eh?

Runic armour will make your tanks get a bonus 8%, and windspeakers blessing make them 10% stronger, and increase the resistances by 15%, so overall healers are actually getting buffed. The new item is still pretty nasty (and the fact that you dont have to sacrfise a item slot to get it, because it also gives armour pen) but it does a lot less damage than the other option, so it is overall sacrifice in damage for it. I would not mind if it was only to champs under a health percent like item 3165

overall heals are going to be stronger base, but easier to counter. It is a little odd, because riot has done a lot to make heals more combat oriented, and less just spam heals and go back to full and the fight again. The changes make healers stronger out of combat then in combat, so I am not sure what the reasoning is. Overall I think it is a little to soon to say anything major, all of the primary healers (soraka, sona, nami and taric) have above 50% win rates, so a small nerf should be fine.

xFrostKnightx1 votes

These ones? 18 point's to get this; (You can only get one T3 Keystone and these are in separate trees)

Windspeaker's Blessing: Your heals and shields are 10% stronger. Additionally, your shields and heals increase your target's resistances by 15% for 3 seconds when used on an ally other than yourself.

Bond of Stone: +4% Damage Reduction. While near an ally this bonus is doubled and 8% of the damage they would take from champions is dealt to you instead (cannot reduce you below 15% Health).

Windspeakers blessing is actually 6% increase (15hp gain for a 300Ap soraka) when in combat due to GW. Also Soraka tends to heal ADC/Mage sometimes Jg carrys when in a fight. 15% resistances give literally less than 15 flat resistance, ADC would only get 12 armour. Which does not make up for the -40% total heal.

Bond of stone is not in the "support" tree. That's more of the tanking/resistance one. But either way, 8% absorbed damage is not something you want on a squish Soraka support. (Leona would love it though)

Best Boop NA2 votes

How does lifesteal effect sorakas healing rate?

Duke Anax3 votes

The prominece of Lifesteal will encourage the use of Executioners Calling.

It's not an item that the enemy may or may not build against Soraka, it will likely be there anyway.

Krys Star2 votes

Yes and no. Although Grievous Wounds is back, and it's uglier than ever, it's 40% instead of 50% at least. It should take a while for carries to build this item, however, so it wont hit Soraka as hard until early-mid to mid game. That being said, Soraka's undeniably powerful at the moment. She does a pretty amazing job at what she does at the moment, which is keeping her allies alive.

She DOES need a bit of compensation buffs, but not as massive as Wish allowing Astral Blessing to remove all applications of Grievous Wounds immediately before hand. That's insanely powerful. What they can do for her is a hard choice, because it's hard to fix a healer in a meta where Grievous Wounds is mandatory by default. They could remove the mana cost on Astral Blessing, but her healing will still suffer to Grievous Wounds.

We already have the mastery, Windspeaker Blessing, coming out which increases outgoing shields and heals by 10% on top of providing allies with a 15% boost to their armor and magic resist (so long as it's not on yourself). That in itself will help Soraka, but really it's going to be very hard to help Soraka against a constant application of Grievous Wounds.

Base health regen reduced to 2.5 from 4.675 Health regen growth stat reduced to 0.5 from 0.7

They could revert those changes for starters, or just simply increase her health regen per level to 1.0 so that she's not suffering a lot from trying to keep her Grievously Wounded allies alive.

Zavern2 votes

Just her? All the supports that can heal that were shoved out of the meta because of tanks are now even worse off than before. With all the new LS options in the items and masteries any item that gives grievous wounds will be on every team.

Fashion Mage1 votes

This. The awful design that is GW doesn't just affect Soraka.

xFrostKnightx3 votes

But for her focus on healing, she pays 10% hp, with GW she will still pay 10% hp except she'll be healing less by mid-late game. She is the only support without high damage poke or hard CC.

Without healing, soraka is nothing. She lost a ton of her old kit strength to have it put into her being a walking heal. Other supports that have heals can Poke or Have hard CC.

The least they can do is make W unaffected by GW (dosnt have to remove it) or reduce the HP cost of W. item 3035 This item here, will be used by every AD to combat the Lifesteal disease that affects all Ad items. Kit's which lost all their strength for sustain (Swain is a core example) will be punised just for being played.

Fashion Mage1 votes

Yeah, that's true. I guess what I really meant to say was "The awful design that is GW doesn't just affect Soraka, although it affects her the most by far". :p

Raoul2 votes

But she is the only one who doesnt do anything but healing. Her Q is litteraly useless, deals low damage, you will never get the slow, and most times dont hit anything cause it takes so long to fall, its only use is to scare someone. Her E is a meh spell, a very small field with a silence on it, you will never get the root against enemys with half a brain.

She is ONLY picked for her healing, so take that away from her and you have a useless pick, a trollpick.

Think about it: Taric can stun, gives Armor, can tank and gives you bonus AD AP. Sona can boost your damage, your speed, shield you and has an AoE stun. Nami gives you speedbuffs, has an aoe Stun, gives you bonus attack power and has a long range AoE Knockup. Bard... ok, got me, I never really knew what bard does, I know he has that golden ultimate, but other than that... can make you go through walls...

Soraka... heals. Thats it.

Crett1 votes

Tanks can devote all 6 slots to armor and have 47% of it ignored with one item. Lots of injustice coming this preseason

Although I do think it's kinda pointless to make Soraka the exception to the exception. That's like making a champ who can CC an ulting Olaf, or a champ who takes reduced true damage

Duke Anax1 votes

I think the Windspeaker mastery (that she already has early game, before anyone get's GW) is a nice compensation, and her sustain (that can rarely be affected by GW) is quite strong already.

However I think she can get some buff to her clutch heal so i made a suggestion to add some healing to Equinox: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/EUs73lfk-sorakas-equinox-should-heal-for-equal-amounts

Penns1 votes

At rank 3, W now also removes grievous wounds before applying it's heal.

Because fuck counterplay lol. Soraka is already broken, lets just look at that as a nerf.

xFrostKnightx2 votes

She win's 52% of her games. You know who also wins 52% of their games? Leona Taric Sona Blitzcrank Annie

You also want to know the difference between Soraka and these supports? 4 of them won't be affected by GW. Meanwhile Taric and Soraka take a 40% nerf. I don't know about you but 3/5th's of champions have winrates above 51%. Which Riot has stated is the balanced win rate 48-52%. Do you think a 40% nerf to her heal by mid/late game will only drop her by 4%? Why play a soraka (who's not even an early game support) when you know playing her you are at a disadvantage just from selecting her and will lose nearly 50% of her strength (yet still pay %hp)

Also for good measure those who keep talking about "+10% heal/shield + 15% resist" Keystone with 300AP on soraka, that's a heal increase (after GW) of 22HP on W. With the +15% only giving 7.2 Armour after the new Lastwhisper (which is the item with GW on it).

That keystone will save Sona (because it affects shields too) so Sona is hit less, but she's got Strong poke and Hard CC, so she's not my #1 concern atm.

Penns1 votes

In S6 theres a mastery that increases your shields and heals by 10% + gives your ally 15% armor and MR after you healed/ shielded them. Id call that "compensation".

xFrostKnightx2 votes

You read the extra part at the end I mentioned right? a +22hp heal does not make up for -185hp healing lost. Does this still feel like "compensation" because last I checked a -163hp heal isn't compensation.

Penns1 votes

Was that part there before? I didnt read it lol. Whatever, Soraka needs a nerf anyway.

xFrostKnightx3 votes

People tend to hate Healers/Revives/Shields because it always makes that one guy get away with 10hp and you're dead.

This is why it's pointless to discuss this with people who are Bias in this topic and why so many people disagree instead of accepting facts.

Penns1 votes

I dont hate Soraka, shes just actually broken. https://i.gyazo.com/cbca488d90356c9563c3653748b4e1fe.png Veigar started his hype the same way, people just need to realize it lel

CasterGilgamesh1 votes

I feel the best small buff to Soraka is remove the mana cost of her W and reduce mana cost on her other spells other then that she will be fine early and mid game.they should also make the item work like the ap version

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