Soraka is more broken than ever before
Let's break this down:
- Her Q:
- She is graced to have 11.5 mana/5 seconds regen as a starting point effectively making her Q, now which only costs 40 mana per cast, 30 mana per cast at level 1. And it only gets cheaper as she levels and gets items.
- The Cooldown is reduced to 5 seconds at all ranks, 5 being its old max rank cooldown.
- The slow was made to be activated by the full area of the Q, not just the center, A slow which also is one of those rare non-decaying slows at a solid 50% for 2 seconds at rank 5.
- Her W:
- While the healing mechanics have been changed and reduced, the potential amount to heal is not any less effective. It saw a flat 40 point drop and a 20% ap drop at rank 5, but it gained a 20% ap ratio at rank 1, making early healing a lot more potent. In addition to her Q being spammable and although it is not instant, it does heal for quite a bit while not taking a lot from her to cast it at early ranks. 80 +(60%ap) for 3 seconds is a fairly large amount to heal with at rank 1 (soraka being level 1 at minimum, 2 if she has her Q) in addition to having its short cooldown (4 at lowest rank, and 2 at max). Lastly, with 45% CDR being possibly, and with Windspeaker's Blessing and Runic Armor, her healing potentials skyrocket allowing her to potentially heal each member of the team at max rank W with 35% CDR or more while also granting them bonus armor and magic resist. Costing 40% max health, and 240 mana, this should normally not be spammed for health concerns, but when she lands a Q or Ults, she makes up the missing health in no time, not to mention that regardless of how much of her 4 second rejuvenation period is left, the allies get the full amount (5 seconds at max Q).
- Her AP Scalings:
- Normally, AP soraka was not really her main build path (uness mid), but with numbers like these(60% at all levels on her W, 10% on her Q's Rejuvenation passive), AP isn't quite as bad, especially from Ardent Censer. She also does not suffer too greatly from health deficiency since Eye of the Oasis / Eye of the Equinox now combine her 2 items she normally builds (support trinket and SightStone) and gives her health and health regen. This allows her to get 1 additional item earlier and have 1 extra item slot overall, making her have the opportunity to get some AP items earlier than normal.
- Her new combo:
- If soraka uses Starcall (her Q) behind an enemy champion (which is safe since it has a max range of 800, higher than any ADC's basic attack range) and then uses her E right behind that, she forces the opponent to chose either you advance, or you get rooted since the Q slows at its full AOE, making it easy to trap people on her E. Also both abilities are of equal size and Her E is a instant cast ability, meaning you have next to impossible odds of beating its cast time with a flash or an ability. Also at a range of 925, it can be cast from where she cast her Q, and still cut off your retreat since you are slowed for 2 seconds by a fixed 50% at Q rank 5.
- Her ability priority:
- Typically you would get starcall and max W, though now since you rejuvenate others at a fairly good rate for rank 1, you can max Q first for the damage increase, self rejuvenation amount increase, allied rejuvenation time increase, and slow increase for no additional cost.
- Her compatibility with CDR:
- Since she has a 5 second cooldown at all ranks on her Q, any CDR puts her even lower. So at 20% CDR her cooldown matches her self rejuvenation period of 4 seconds. Any more than 20% CDR makes the buff permanent as long as she keeps landing Q's (god help us all during URF when she has no mana constraints and 80% CDR making it a 1 second ability). 45% puts it at 2.75 seconds of cooldown while still at a fixed 40 mana per cast.
- Itemizing:
- The issue is that many items that give CDR also have high mana/health regen passives as well as AP or other benefits all for a pretty affordable cost for all the gold she earns from her starting trinket (coin, shield, or spellthief's) and masteries.
- Ardent Censer
- Athene's Holy Grail
- Banner of Command
- Morellonomicon
- Mikael's Crucible
- Zeke's Harbinger
- Locket of the Iron Solari
- Spirit Visage - really OP on her for self regen
Idea's
- Make her Q not be at a fixed mana/CDR. Maybe work them around something like Kog'maw or Kassadin where additional uses cost more, but have a low base cost. This keeps the spamming option available but negates the cheapness of cost to cast that it has now.
- Make her W only apply the regen for the remaining duration of her own, but have next to no cool down (still can't spam because of the 10% max health cost each cast) This would help with her current ability to keep her teammates in a continuous state of regeneration.
- Make her unable to scale with CDR on her Q, since she slows for 50% for 2 seconds. At 45% CDR, that leave .75 seconds between end of slows, and her next cast (counting travel time which is anywhere from .25-1 second would be 1 second total at shortest distance and 1.75 seconds at longest)
- Remove the movement speed buff on her Q so she is more at risk when casting it at closer range. Basically right now she can just walk up, cast that nice .25 second or somewhere in between that and 1 second travel time Q, and then run away regening health.