Can we talk about Soraka, the league's "#1 Medic"?

So, I was reading some old threads about Soraka. She's the embodiment of a 'pure healer'. I completely agree. She's a neat support: one of the few the enemy SHOULD consider prioritizing, at least that's her potential. She has easily defined pros: She has the best single target heal (Actually, let me check... yeah, still beats Bard by 10 base and 15% AP). She has a great ultimate, if you have the awareness for it. Her passive lets her get into lane if her adc is really in need, though it doesn't always means she arrives on time. Her AOE silence into stuns is very rewarding if you can land the second part. And Starcall DOES give her some sustain (Not enough to give back for the W cost).

Pros and Cons

However, I'd argue that her cons make her... hard to justify. She's squishy, like most mages. Her armor is about the same as a marksman in both scaling and base. Her only escape is to run towards an INJURED target... so not always a good option. Her heal range is okay at best, suicidal versus mobile teams. Her silence has a 24 second cool down for most of the game (maxed last). Her ult's cool down is nearly 3 minutes at rank one. Yes, with full CDR at rank three, this is 1min20sec, so it does scale nicely that way. But her health regen, given the punishment to use her W, is absolutely garbage. This is realistically something not even a warmogs remedies (I mean, come on... .5 scaling and 2.5 base. The scaling per level is tied for 2nd lowest, only beaten by Rengar. The Base? Dead. Last.) Combined, this makes her the worst health regen champion at every stage of the game by a pretty considerably margin. So yes, Squishy being a con is an understatement.

So yes, we can plainly see a trend: She gives health, but doesn't keep her own well. Can help an ally escape, rarely will manage this herself. As 'Sir' Phreak would probably say, she's the team's scapegoat. But, her current role as support offers her some consequences that are not so easy to overcome because of the ever-present gold generation that supports lack. So when astral infusion's stat line is:

Heal: 120 / 150 / 180 / 210 / 240 (+ 60% AP)

There's really something left to be desired here. The 60% AP ratio is really fantastic for heals, but if we think about Soraka builds that are reasonable at any time under 40 minutes, you probably have 120 AP max. Looking at some builds for her, the max full build was 200, average was roughly half that. Admittedly, a 160 ( bonus to astral infusion's 240 is really, really nice. However, realistically we'd be talking about +80?

Talk DPS to Me

Now, what does this mean? Just about everyone maxes this second, so level 13 is when we can expect to see the 240 HP base heal. I would imagine that this is happening roughly with you about at LEAST a level behind your ADC (probably more, depending on how many times you have to back...). As soraka, I often find myself healing the adc to keep them in lane so I end up going back to replenish instead of them. This is reasonable... your ADC is one of the main carries and considering you can replenish wards/potions and HP lost from W, it's pretty important to back. Your midlaner is easily 2 levels up on you... if the opponent midlaner happens to be three levels up and have that 3rd leveled ult (which isn't completely unreasonable), you're in real trouble. Regardless, they'll get that 3rd level ult far before you.

To give this example some meaning, consider a level 14 Graves for a moment. AS Quints, AD Marks. Seals/Glyphs offering minor defense. He has a base damage of 92 (which seems roughly standard), probably has an infinity edge and Breserkers + shiv or zeal (shiv for this example). His AA DPS is roughly 450 with roughly a 40% chance to crit. So about one out of every three hits would deal 700 damage, before damage reductions and such. And at a 1.4 AS, obviously you have no way to keep up. This doesn't factor in the near 300 damage each shell of buckshot does and the 400 damage upfront from Collateral Damage (before the 150% bonus AD).

Soraka heals off less than one AA at this point, and this is as best you can do the entire game. Her CD is 2 seconds, which means graves gets 2.8 attacks in per heal. With 40% CDR, it IS a 1.2 second CDR. This means per heal, graves gets in only roughly 1.6 attacks. However, for Soraka to hit 40% CDR, she has to have three completed items. She gets 10% off masteries in a 9/0/21, 10% off a fully built gold generation item. However, you can't go straight to the final, you have to go Sightstone at some point as well as boots (heals don't work if you don't move or dead from no kiting). So reasonably, your third or fourth item completes this. This PROBABLY doesn't happen by level 13 considering everything Soraka deals with.

Even if we do assume 40%, her heals happen once every two autos, and she's losing HP doing it. You run the risk of handing over a double kill on a golden platter if the damage you help doesn't kill. Lets assume she finished off her CDR cap with a Morellonomicon. With AP Marks and Glyphs, this gives her 96 AP (Talisman of Ascension for speed/HP/Mana regen) and 40% CDR. She does an 'impressive' 298 HP per heal. At the cost of 5% of her MAX health. So cool, out of combat within a 10-15 seconds, you can reasonably get a tank back in. And lose a quarter to a third of your HP.

In Combat

But in combat, that's not terribly effective. Wouldn't I, at this point, almost be better off sitting about 1400 units back (outside of a double Leblanc jump, I believe), watching and call in Wish when needed? Hope someone can run fast enough to me if they need HP? I mean, I can assist that with my passive a bit. But if I walk up there to heal, I can be deleted by simple AOE. No one is going to waste their ult on me. However it won't take an ult to kill me given my mobility and the fact that I'm killing myself through the combination of heals and simply being near the front line.

That's all well and good, Soraka isn't supposed to tank much, even with a Frozen Heart + Warmogs build (And warmogs takes forever to build). But, going to our Graves example, if I simply had Thresh and hooked him for the 1.5 seconds I get, not only could he die, but he loses 2 autos (aka roughly 800k damage, 1.2k on crit). That's what, 4-5 Soraka heals and 20% of her HP? Sure, we can argue kiting for an ADC or mage, but I can still hook someone else out of the way and initiate, tank or do whatever. While not all supports are healing their allies, many of the popular ones do have the ability to mitigate DPS from carries through stuns, bindings or simply tanking (Braum). At this point, what they mitigate is more than Soraka gives back.

Compared to Janna's heal (ult)

Either way, Soraka's sole purpose is to be able to sustain people through teamfights, but besides her ult, she can't really combat medic. I mean, Janna in a team fight can disengage with Q and R, and gives 150 health per second over 3 seconds at rank 2. She's just pushed their damage away and gives allies who stay near her 450 HP + 60% AP (which AP on Janna is higher on average anyways. The first three items of C9 Lemonnation's build gives her 145 AP. Compared to others used in LCK/LCS and simply in the ladder, this is fairly normal. The final build not using Mejai's gives her 345 AP, which is an additonal 200 HP per second. At Max rank, if an ally sticks on Janna for the duration (3 seconds) they get 200 HP +60% per second. That's nearly 1.2k. Soraka doesn't even hit that much with her ult on a member in need (50% increase). That power is roughly an instant 700+80% AP (Which is close to 100). So we begin to see some issues. While it IS instant, Janna is also throwing diving enemies back... There's obviously no reason to choose a Soraka over a Janna unless you really think a 1/3/1 is going to happen and in that case they'll need Wish. Global Presence w/Instant heal vs Stronger Heal+Throws back enemies in teamfights? Considering Janna's is also on a slightly shorter cooldown at all ranks, it really isn't a question.

Early, the 120 HP per heal is really fantastic. Very few HP items have been bought and considering that 600 HP is a pretty average mark for a team at level 2 to 3, 120 represents a fifth of their HP. Not to mention, with no damage items, you'd be surprised to see a damage output of over 100. But in the later stages of the game, this ability just falls off so harshly. Especially now with the Cinderhulk, which hurts Soraka indirectly by presenting a jungler with MORE HP. Meaning she can barely help them sustain. Remember, Soraka needs her tanks alive to help protect her. If her heals have so little affect on them because of the renewed emphasis on building HP and scaling it so well, she really can't expect her team to consider her a priority. The enemy will simply destroy priority targets on the team and then chase Soraka as her best escape was her passive, which reasonably still puts her in danger.

Don't get me wrong, I understand Soraka shouldn't be neutralizing damage completely. However, with the renewed emphasis on tanks, her own squishyness, her general lack of any harass in the later stages of the game and the fact that she is in a position where it is nearly impossible for her to solo lane because of this W (and of course only one minion-damaging spell that is better off used on a champ), I think that her heals could see some help. If it was needed to be kept in balance, making it such that we don't need to focus AP for strong heals. Seeing the w scaling harder into the late game would be nice, especially if she could hit 400-450 HP on a maxed W, even if it did cost a lot of AP ratio (even to the point of like 30%).

What would this do? Well, primarily it would make the risk for entering into the middle of a team fight more rewarding with the heals provided, considering the sacrifice of HP. It would allow Soraka to have to be considered as a target now that she has a way to mitigate DPS better. She could focus items like Frozen Heart, Warmogs and Crucible and still be rewarded for her W's presence. Most importantly, tanks would notice her heals and she might be able to tip the scales of the DPS coming out of an ADC to her own ADC. If she can keep tanks healthy, she has a higher chance of not just being ignored and picked off once a teamfight concludes. Reasonably, the opposing team has to think about targeting her much of the same way they have to be conscious of a Leona, Annie, Thresh or Blitz engage: It's a present thought, but it won't completely oppress the opposing team's decision making. She still sacrifices HP, still retains her flaws of no escaping and doesn't gain a niche in a solo lane.

*Tl;dr? *

I guess it's just a thought, but considering how I even had to check where Bard stood and how close he actually is to Soraka in heal strength, maybe it's time to consider what a heal should look like. Between strong heals with utility functions from the likes of Bard and Janna (and Nami to a much weaker extent) as well as the reemergence of tanky junglers, I feel that the flat HP healing is simply too low for League's "#1 Healer".

Should I even say sorry for the long post? Not used to the forums yet.

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One more idea... Since her heals cost her health, why not scale her healing off her bonus HP (could be with AP, could replace it... whatever, still allows some bulk to be built in, even if only a rylze)?