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Preemptive concerns regarding the Soraka changes

BottleCapster·1/29/2016, 6:16:35 PM·17 votes·2,460 views
1/28 PBE Update

Okay so we were told to be on the lookout for some changes to our favorite banana empress, and they're here (Almost)!

So far, I'm a bit concerned, particularly in how this is going to manifest in changes to Soraka 's aggression cycle. For anyone who doesn't want to bother looking at the changes here's a quick summary:

Soraka's Q no longer has a sweet spot and does 30% slow to the whole area rather than 30-50 in the center Self Healing is now on Q, and returns as a new status called alignment which restores Hp/Mp over 5s ** W Heal value lowered to 70/100/130/160/190 from 120/150/180/210/240 ** Alignment can be given to allies with a refreshed duration using W

So, first let's be a little positive here, because no need to be super gloom and doom just yet. Soraka now has her mana restore back (yay?) And her healing should be a lot less oppressive now. Her self-healing is now DoT giving you more room to kill her, and her Q>E combo is a little easier to capitalize on.

Boy wasn't that positive! A core aspect of the original soraka's kit is now available, but here's where my trepidation really sets in. The HoT on her Q, and the massive hit to her W.... Now Rito i see what you wan't to achieve here, making soraka play aggressively to give good healing to her allies...but there's just this one teensy issue. Soraka's w, STILL COSTS 10% MAX HP. You've made her heal much more expensive, gut its base healing, and massively hurt her aggressive playstyle with shorter range on her Q, the loss of its sweetspot damage, and the fact that her self-healing is over, hmmm, 5 seconds?

In an average game, soraka will be dishing out heals constantly, and the goal before this was that she uses her Q to maintain her health and keep up with her health costs. That is after all why she has a martyr heal to begin with isn't it? While I appreciate that you guys want to give her back her mana-restore mechanic, you've gutted a lot of her offensive play for it, and then forced her to fight with her gimped leg so that her healing isn't ass... 50hp at level 1 is a big deal.... And let's not ignore the fact that Alignment is given to allies. Hopefully there are more changes coming to her over the cycle to make this not murder her, But how do you expect soraka to maintain her own health if she's giving away the only healing she receives outside her ult, and then forcing her to eat away at 10% of her max health on top of it?

I want to be able to just sit in my chair and wait for the changes to fully go up so I can have a more informed opinion, but I think its worth talking about even this early just what direction you want soraka to take, and how you expect her to function? So what do you all think...Are these changes worth the mana-restore mechanic? Do you think this is the right direction for her, and do you have any concerns about it? Because Raka's my girl and dear lord these changes scare me.

Heimerdinger

54 Comments

Water Breathing1/29/2016, 6:59:04 PM7 votes

I don't like how you need to give up your self heal buff in order to continue healing people, it punishes Soraka for healing. She will have no way to regain her health back if she is actually doing her job.

For those that think it is a good change and "you can wait it out and give it for a full duration" are probably forgetting the health cost on W is still a thing, so to "transfer" the buff over you STILL NEED TO GIVE UP THE HP YOU JUST RECOVERED by pressing w, so there really isn't a gain.

Wiretap1/29/2016, 6:24:45 PM6 votes

If they lower her healing they should lower the cost. Or just revert her back to season 3(wishes don't come true)

ModKnightsKemplar1/29/2016, 7:02:40 PM5 votes

Yeah, they're not thinking about this. It's a buff to her solo play, and it seriously hurts her as a support.

I think this martyr heal mechanic was never the way to go, and making it even more difficult to get the same amount of healing just pushes her even further away from an attractive option for support. Taric and Sona both already give more reliable healing, imo (if less in magnitude).

I already quit playing Soraka because of that. When I pick a healer, they ought to be able to heal without having to land slow-moving skillshots that put them in harm's way. Just my opinion. These changes make it worse, not better. Still won't play her.

Smegma1231/29/2016, 7:08:51 PM3 votes

You know what would be crazy? If she had a spell which steals allies HP into a special shield - it doesn't shield damage, but she uses this shield to heal OTHER ALLIES

MINDBLOWN

Duke Anax1/30/2016, 1:44:40 PM2 votes

Easiest solution I see here: make Alignment stack.

That way she can be rewarded for hitting several champs with one Q like before or for hitting several Q in succession. She can also give stacks to her allies without loosing all of her own.

Adalore1/29/2016, 6:35:58 PM2 votes

do keep in mind that she is healing herself , with potentially the majority of the duration of alignment before giving it their ally.

In best case they will change it to give the ally a full duration alignment while letting soraka not worry about base case efficiency by not giving up her own instance of alignment.

But yes, the intent is to make "BACK LINE SORAKA" less proper bullshit, requiring soraka to actually interact with people to keep the marksman in lane alive.

BastionKross1/29/2016, 6:53:03 PM2 votes

The answer here is simple: Play her in a solo lane.

Think about it. In a solo lane she never has to put a point in her W, since the healing is now part of her Q. And if she never grants alignment to an ally, she gets both HP and mana sustain for harassing with Q. Q now does damage and slows in a fairly large area, making it easy to bully melee champs.

While I agree it's sad that the League's premier healing champion is better off not actually healing anyone in some cases with that W nerf, at least Soraka will have a place in a solo lane instead of disappearing into the fog of supports that aren't Thresh and Leona. Honestly, I thought the "heal by sacrificing %HP" mechanic was uninspired in the first place. Maybe they'll actually get rid of it and give her a light rework if things don't work out.

Valderis Vandala1/29/2016, 8:59:46 PM2 votes

Man these Soraka changes just keep getting worse, first the self heal moved to her Q and now its turned into a heal over time that gets moved over to someone else. And that gutting of her heal numbers, dang man, paying 10% life for a heal of 70, and late game her base was already so damn low but now its only 190.

Is this gonna get worse before it gets better? XD I feel sorry for the Soraka mains. What is Riot even aiming for with this?

Celeste Benal1/29/2016, 10:34:36 PM2 votes

Let me see if I have this right.

Starcall will do the same base damage in a smaller AoE (nerf). Enemies in the center no longer take increased damage ( a nerf). The slow got nerfed to a flat 30%. But it now effects all enemies within the entire AoE, rather than just the center (buff). And finally the cost got buffed to 60 flat. So I can spam it more, and I don't have to choose between self-heal and remote reps, which is cool.

The passive heal that she had on W is moved to her Q, is now an HoT, and it will also restore mana (once again). The base damages are a bit higher and will scale on AP, but not be adjusted by missing health. The HoT will also be given over to an ally if she heals them while it is active on her.

So I can spam damage, slows, and heals with one spell? Sounds good.

Astral Infusion loses its passive (see above). The base amounts are hugely nerfed to 70/100/130/160/190 from 120/150/180/210/240. However, if Soraka heals an ally while she has the new Alignment effect active, it will be transferred to the healed ally with a refreshed duration. So the actual amount healed will be the base amount plus the alignment amount plus the AP scaling, which has remained unchanged. So total base healing will be 70+30/100+45/130+60/160+75/190+90 = 100/145/190/235/280.

So the first two levels are nerfed, and the next 3 are buffed. The trick is to heal your ally as close to the end of the Alignment duration as possible so that you both gain as much as possible from it. In practice, people will miss the duration either long or short. So they won't get the full potential heal amount. In combat, you will likely just want to spam it as much as possible without regard for the Alignment passive. But still, getting that first buff transferred will still be preferred.

It also means I don't have to level W at all to get full self-heal and damage. But to heal others I do. This could allow Soraka to go midlane and harass the hell out of people while ignoring their harass. People like Jhin or Zed. Because she can drop dat E on their head and nullify a bunch of their ability damage while she moonwalks out. She should also be good to gank for since she can support the jungler well with AoE spell damage, heals, slows, stuns, and silences.

Please don't forget Windpseaker's Blessing. +10% on your shields and heals.

Or she can just build full-on CDR+tear item, max Q, and blast people across the mouth because her cooldowns are insanely short. Ofc, her waveclear is kinda ass. So who knows? Much experimentation will follow. Maybe she will be able to jungle. She will have sustain and AoE clears on a short CD from level 1.

Nikoyopu1/30/2016, 2:33:27 AM2 votes

I personally don't like these changes. In my opinion they enhance the risk of playing her while increasing her toxicity. In other words they make her more dangerous to play while making her worse for the game.

The reason is that the return of the mana mechanic makes her super-sustain even worse. That is something which is going to be really annoying to try and deal with. But the changes also make her less safe making it easier to kill her in teamfights… Soraka's specialty is team fights. So this will make an already Nunu-like laning phase worse while decreasing her usefulness in the game overall.

Now this is the opinion of someone who relatively rarely plays soraka 'cause I'm just not a huge fan of her playstyle. But if these changes go through it will enhance what I hate most (the laning phase), while gutting her skillshot (I have to admit I love the sweetspot mechanic), and weakening her late game. This would remove my reason to pick this champion at all.

Nogrim1/30/2016, 7:40:41 AM2 votes

i have hated playing soraka (my main support) since they took her silence/mana heal away, so far from the look of this i won't be wanting to play her at all anymore. on the upside this seems to be the year they mess up everything i enjoyed about league so at least they are making it easy for me to leave...

Calabok1/29/2016, 6:19:18 PM2 votes

The changes are fine. It will bring her back down and in line with the rest of the real support champions

gg git diff1/30/2016, 1:06:16 AM1 votes

I just want that sweet spot back on the Q.

Super satisfying to hit it.

ForgottenLuck1/30/2016, 1:08:07 AM1 votes

I'm just sad to be honest I love raka yet riot always tries to kill her

Earthlord Jazz1/30/2016, 1:49:48 AM1 votes

My personal opinion: Lower the health cost of her heal to 5% health, increasing by 1% for each additional heal within 6 seconds up to a max of 10% health cost

CrazedPorcupine1/30/2016, 2:16:19 AM1 votes

http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay-feedback/hixpVPZu-actual-feedback-on-soraka

My thoughts after playing the New Soraka.

VDc0zCqe0w1/29/2016, 7:00:04 PM1 votes

You could max Q and poke hard now, i'm not sure it will work, need to test.

Partholonian1/30/2016, 2:28:16 AM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Pierrot Forte,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LzBbAK4m,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-01-29T18:16:35.428+0000)

Hopefully there are more changes coming to her over the cycle to make this not murder her, But how do you expect soraka to maintain her own health if she's giving away the only healing she receives outside her ult, and then forcing her to eat away at 10% of her max health on top of it?

Take advantage of the duration refresh by letting it tick on you for 3-4 seconds and then healing (unless your ally needs the heal urgently, of course). That and Coin.

Aezanthya1/29/2016, 9:05:07 PM1 votes

Those are pretty heavy nerfs lol.

and adc don't need mana regen anyway everyone and their mother build reaver.

smh

The Last Ballad1/30/2016, 2:59:41 AM1 votes

I like the idea of giving people mana, and it makes sense for it to be on the w. But I think it should not transfer the healing that you receive. And if the self heal is on the w while the mana transfer is on the q, then you have a choice of whether to level your q or your e second, instead of the obligatory w-e-q level order. For instance if you have a caster adc, then you can go for the q second, but if you have agressive spell slinging enemies, then the e would be better.

Lady Hammerlock1/30/2016, 12:44:49 AM1 votes

It also is way way smaller