Soraka - What about mana and self heals?

q O y O p·Sep 29, 2015·1 votes·278 views

Personally, I would like to see a couple minor changes made to her kit to provide her that uniqueness she once had. Sure, she's a healer, but there are other healers already in game that seemingly serve a better purposes than her.

What happened to her ability to restore an ally's mana? Why was that removed? Also, what about her self- heals?

Could it be re-added in a similar fashion as her W works now? Perhaps adding the ability to give your ally mana if you cast Q on your ally. (90% of mana used to cast Q is given to ally) and if cast on yourself, heal yourself for 90% of the mana used?

Just a thought.

4 Comments

KrinuSep 29, 20153 votes

Er... she's the best healer in the league, by far. There are other supports with heals that are arguably better (Janna), but they're not better at healing.

That said, while I personally like the idea of broadening her appeal somewhat (she is my main, after all), she's already in a pretty strong place balance-wise. I think it'd be dangerous to throw too much extra power her way.

q O y O pSep 29, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Er... she's the best healer in the league, by far. There are other supports with heals that are arguably better (Janna), but they're not better at healing.

That said, while I personally like the idea of broadening her appeal somewhat (she is my main, after all), she's already in a pretty strong place balance-wise. I think it'd be dangerous to throw too much extra power her way.

I somewhat agree, however, it's extra power at her own expense. She loses out on her own resources to help an ally.

KrinuSep 29, 20151 votes

But for a back-line support (and let's be honest, even with her Q, Soraka is definitely a back-line character), the ability to boost the power of her team is basically boosting her effectiveness.

Being able to save your AD caster (Corki, Kog'maw) or even your standard ADC with poke (Caitlyn, Graves) from needing to conserve their mana at the cost of building an Athene's is really, really strong.

Sightless66Sep 29, 20153 votes

Sure, she's a healer, but there are other healers already in game that seemingly serve a better purposes than her

Not for healing, no. She's the best healer by a massive margin. No other healer can come even close to her numbers.

What happened to her ability to restore an ally's mana? Why was that removed?

To make way for other interesting mechanics. They've said they might do the mechanic again on another champion, but Soraka's new design worked better without it. Besides, she's strong enough that she would need a major nerf if they added the mana restore to her Q, and I can't think of anything I'd be happy nerfing to add the mana restore in. It just doesn't fit her kit anymore.

Also, what about her self- heals?

That was removed so her healing could be strong. When she could heal herself, she just became a battery in lane. If you couldn't completely break her in an all-in, then she quickly restored herself and her ally back to full strength. That potential meant that her actual healing numbers had to be severely limited. She was so safe as a healer that she wasn't allowed to actually be a very good healer. By adding in the health costs and forcing her to put herself at short range to heal over time and to also hit her Q to sustain herself, they added risk to her kit, and that risk means that they could increase her potential W healing by more than 800% (and that's without the higher AP ratio). This was what let her become actually good at healing. If she got easy self-healing back, she'd get her healing numbers gutted again, and I don't want that. I like being a strong healer.