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Can we talk about the Soraka changes?

me honor hi·3/12/2016, 9:11:27 AM·4 votes·2,036 views

Soraka

Hey everyone,

TL;DR at the end if this looks too long for you.

I've been a pretty avid Soraka player since S2, though I've really started to play her a lot since S5. She basically carried me to Diamond this season. She has a very unique playstyle in that unlike other supports who want to start a fight or peel, her job is to just run around dodging skillshots and avoiding assassins while filling up those life bars. I know that Soraka can be frustrating to play against (there's nothing that makes me happier as a Soraka player than healing someone up from the brink of death as my healing outpaces a carry's damage, which I'm sure infuriates people). I think I understand the intent of the changes, but I don't like how it was done.

Let's just quickly outline what those changes were:

Q - Starcall COST 70/75/80/85/90 mana ⇒ 40 mana at all ranks COOLDOWN 7/6.5/6/5.5/5 seconds ⇒ 5 seconds at all ranks CELESTIALLY BODIED Now slows all targets damaged by Starcall (instead of just slowing in the center) REMOVED STARFALLEN No longer deals 150% increased damage to targets hit in the center NEW HOTNESS Now grants Rejuvenation for 4 seconds, restoring 14/16/18/20/22 (+0.1 ability power) health per second and granting 15% movement speed when not moving towards enemies.

So, they lowered the mana cost, lowered the CD, made it always slow, removed the sweet spot, and added a new Rejuvenation mechanic that restores health over 4 seconds and gives a movement speed buff when not moving towards enemies. If you look at this in isolation, the only downside here is the removal of the sweetspot! But wait...

W - Astral Infusion HEAL AMOUNT 120/150/180/210/240 ⇒ 80/110/140/170/200 HOT POTATO If cast while under the effect of Rejuvenation, Soraka gives her target Rejuvenation for 3/3.5/4/4.5/5 seconds (based on rank of Starcall) REMOVED MISALIGNED No longer increases Starcall's healing amount against champions REMOVEDSORAKACARE No longer able to target minions

Base healing amounts got hit hard; scaling from a 33% nerf down to a 17% nerf. Ouch, but lategame I guess that's not too big of a deal, right? And you can pass that Rejuvenation buff along; that's nice. W now no longer affects Soraka's self-healing. Also, you can't heal minions anymore, because why not.

So, both of those in isolation don't look too bad, but the devil's in the details...

  1. No matter how many targets you hit with Starcall, you only get 1 Rejuvenation buff. There's no benefit to hitting multiple targets.
  2. Self-healing is attached to Q, ally healing is attached to W, whereas they used to be together.
  3. Starcall's healing now no longer scales with your missing health.

When you combine all these things, you're left with a Soraka who:

  1. Loses a lot of her durability in mid- to late-game teamfights now that she heals herself over time rather than in burst, with no regard for her missing health, and with no regard for how many targets she hits;
  2. Has to make the tough choice between leaving her E at an absurdly long CD or leveling her Q to help improve her now mediocre durability;
  3. Will, the majority of the time, just heal for less since (because of 1 and 2) it's dangerous to get in the mix of a fight, which means you won't get in range to land a Q safely.

Now, I expect some people will argue: "They added a movement speed buff to Rejuvenation and it has a decent AP scaling, so at least that's good!" Well, frankly, 15% movement speed isn't that much in League of Dashes, when you have the buff active at all (first: hit Q; then: don't run towards enemies). As for the AP scaling. if you're building enough AP to feel the difference, you're going to have even more trouble with durability out of lane.

Now, if you agree with me and view the changes as a net nerf, did Soraka need to get nerfed? Maybe. Her winrate was a bit above average, and she was seeing a little bit of play in competitive. She's also just a super frustrating champion for a lot of players, as much as the Soraka player and her team might enjoy her. From my point of view, though, rather than just nerfing her, they removed a lot of the fun from the champion. No longer can you get a burst of healing from hitting 3 people with a Starcall. No longer are you rewarded for sitting on low health because you'll get healed extra from Starcall. You can occasionally heal more than Soraka used to be able to, but it's very subtle; your heal over time might as well just be health regen for visual impact it has.

OK, so I complained a lot, what can be done to make things better? Well, I won't just say "Revert the changes" or "Buff the numbers", though I guess I wouldn't mind those. Instead, how about we just go with the new mechanics but make them more rewarding and more interesting? Here are a few ideas for BUFFS:

  1. Allow Rejuvenation to stack. Either it can have the same duration and just stack based on the number of targets hit (rewarding hitting multiple targets), or it could even have an increased duration (rewarding hitting multiple Qs in a row). If you hit a lot of targets or multiple Qs in a row (depending on your choice), you get rewarded with a lot of extra (but still over time) healing.
  2. Similar to (1), but instead let the movement speed buff stack. Ambulance Soraka: Combat Version!
  3. Add the "scales with missing health" component to Rejuvenation to reward her for sitting at low health and aid her in healing low-health targets.
  4. CRAZY IDEA Allow her ult to apply Rejuvenation to all targets healed if she has the buff (rewards carefully timing your ultimate).

I think that any of these changes would reward good Soraka players without making her much more complex (she has been a simple champion for a long time, after all).

OK, but she was strong before, so we don't just want to buff her, right? Here are some NERFS I'd personally be okay with:

  1. Revert back to sweet spot slow, so she no longer always slows (strips away a little utility).
  2. Revert Q mana cost reduction/ increase CD (punish spamming Q in lane).
  3. Remove Rejuvenation speed boost entirely (to be honest, I don't really like it anyway...).

So, what does everyone think? I know a lot of people hate Soraka, but you can see why I (and hopefully other Soraka players) don't think these changes are all that great, right? Do you disagree and think that the changes were a straight buff? Let me know.

TL;DR I don't like the Soraka changes because they make her teamfighting pretty bad, just read the bullet points above for the gist of it.

EDIT: Oh, also, a QoL change I'd love would be if Rejuvenation was applied a bit faster... the delay wasn't a big deal when it was just for self-healing, but I like to do a quick Q into W and I'll 99% of the time W before the Rejuvenation buff has reached me...

15 Comments

Hawke Solaris3/12/2016, 12:13:40 PM2 votes

I made a comment here about it, but I'd love to continue the discussion since I'm passionate about Soraka . I've also somewhat calmed down since then, but I still feel somewhat emotionally engaged with this topic so I do apologise upfront if something comes across very harshly.

In short, I dislike the changes and was a critic of them ever since they came out on the PBE, even so far as taking to Twitter and begging Riot Repertoire to not go through with them and try a few other adjustments to her previous kit to make her more vulnerable such as reducing her W range which they had in the past increased when her rework was first done to help her out. I completely opposed the buff back then because I knew it would result in nerfs once people caught on to what Soraka would be capable of doing- staying even safer and harder to get on whilst still being able to keep her ally alive. I took the buff but was always scared of what would happen once Soraka's potential was noticed.

Soraka suffers from anti-play-syndrome. She opposes play-making and she's really good at it. She's the premier healer in a game that revolves around, encourages and glorifies killing your opponents. She is naturally going to be DEEPLY hated when she's actually good at doing what she's supposed to do which is being a pacifistic counter to violence. She's not alone in this, but I personally feel Soraka's always been the scapegoat (pun somewhat intended) when it comes to being hated by the League Community because she does it in the most obvious and opposing manner you can think of.

Janna is a champion that fits the bill here, and arguably she has FAR more tools to do it than Soraka, but visually it's not as obvious that Janna is screwing the enemy team. She shields and she peels. Soraka heals. Janna prevents damage getting to your carries, but Soraka erases the damage that's been done (and that is probably more frustrating than preventing it from happening in the first place). But unlike Janna who has been this way since her conception and has remained as oppressive and anti-play-making since her creation and only received nerfs to how well she can screw her enemies, Soraka's been gutted and remade over and over because it's hard to make healing satisfying for herself, her team AND the enemy. That's not even to mention the current monster that is Lulu who they ONLY NOW are starting to pay attention to despite being a problem ever since she came out.

Even then, Soraka cannot be blamed for some things Riot have decided to do. She came out when Grievous Wounds would cripple her healing, but now do nothing, but she wasn't compensated for it and remained powerful. The support mastery even AMPLIFIES her healing!! And gives stronger defenses!! It was literally a matter of time before Soraka was going to get nerfed and not for things that she was directly responsible for. The mastery changes always favour a few champs over others, but that mastery and the GW removal AT THE SAME TIME? I was scared and knew Soraka was on borrowed time before Kindred came for her.

Personally I think Soraka is a lost cause if you're looking with this incredibly narrow mindset of "counterplay" or "interactivity" or perceived "fairness". She's been hurt over and over when I could point to at least 20 champions and state with reasoning why they lack counterplay or interactivity or fairness and have been completely ignored by Riot for a VERY long time, whilst they continue to stab Soraka over and over. Soraka inherently will never be "fair" or "interactive" in a game that is focussed on killing her opponents because healers never ARE interactive because they inherently have to have poor combat capabilities to justify their unique power of being able to restore health to allies. Soraka is akin to the Medic of TF2- his combat prowess is TERRIBLE compared to pretty much every class (not to say he can't do it, but he's noticeably poor at it) to justify his unrivaled ability of buffing his allies. Soraka won't want to interact with her opponents in a game focusing and glorifying killing unless she's able to do just that, which she never should be allowed to do. No matter how hard your mechanically DEMAND her to, she will never want to, which fits her character completely as well given her complete disdain for violence.

Soraka is a strongly refined niche character. She's a healer and a pacifist, and the only one present in the game right now who plays, as you said, a different style of game completely, being more focussed on avoiding damage, removing damage, and remaining aware of her allies across the map should she be needed to help with her ult or roaming and using her passive if possible. She's anti-kill, she's anti-fight, she's anti-everything that this game wants you to do and for me, THAT was why I fell in love with her. She is the oasis in the nuclear wasteland of League. She is the light in the darkness of violence and clown-fiestas. She TRULY helps her allies in the most blunt and clear of ways by restoring health bars back and is psychologically the most supportive of allies and the most oppressive of enemies, and no amount of reworking is EVER going to change that.

For all people moaning that Soraka is cancer, she was the most well-balanced champion in conception and in practise for me. Her damage was subpar even with AP. Her utility is niche, but had strong simple counterplay to get out of it (just walk out). Her personal durability was poor unless she could use her Q's burst healing. Her healing was OVERWHELMING when built AP, and still nothing to discard when built tanky (to fix her durability issues). She had one HUGE strength, one decent strength (her silence), and nothing else to offer. When drawing a comparison of her against other supports and what they bring to the table, every single one was stronger in the field of utility, damage, durability... probably all 3 of them at the same time. Soraka made up for this by turning what should be a 2v1 into a 2v2 or a 2v2.5 with her making allies a lot more durable and forcing a lane into either a passive farming lane, or winning through war of attrition. She had CLEAR strengths, but she had very OBVIOUS weaknesses that needed to be exploited- kill Soraka first, not her ally.

Were Soraka's weaknesses too hard to exploit? Probably. I said above, lower her W range so that she can't stay far away from her allies and still help them. If she wants to help, she has to expose herself and I advocated that her W range was a problem that needed to be adjusted first BEFORE trying some more heavy-handed mechanical nonsense to entice her to interact more. It still remained that if Soraka made a mistake and got caught early on, she'd either die or flash to live. Later on in the game yeah, her burst Q healing could save her, and she could silence you to stop any further harm, but dedicated hard-engage assassins and fighters that got to her would quickly cut her down, as they should with a champion that has no mobility and the lowest base MS you can have in the game (325).

The changes solve NOTHING. Soraka STILL will not want to interact because her opponents are capable of forcing her summoners or outright killing her if they get an opportunity, which Starcall is trying to force out of Soraka currently. The bot lane meta highly favours tanky initiators with a lot of utility, a lot of durability and respectable damage... essentially as said above being flat out better than Soraka at pretty much everything except sustain. They want to fight and skirmish, and Soraka is happy for that to happen provided she's not the target that's taking damage, so she wants to hang back passively and not get caught out, whilst ready immediately to assist her ally once a brawl breaks out, but still remain safe and keeping her distance from her opponents so as not to then be turned on in retaliation for her healing.

THAT was always going to be the window of vulnerability for Soraka- the moment she comes to help an ally. Imagine if she had to stand very close to heal someone, like a nurse coming to dress your wounds. Imagine you're Lucian with E up and Soraka comes over to help her ally that just got initiated on... you dash into her and you start to hurt her directly and deal PERMANENT damage that Soraka isn't going to easily shrug off without burning through her mana with her old Q cost. She's also opening herself up to being hurt by the enemy support. She's EXPOSING HERSELF TO HARM to help someone. This will ALWAYS be the window you have against Soraka, because unless you force her to do something, she will always remain passive and unwilling to get too close because she will not risk dying for any reason other than to save someone's life.... hell she sacrifices HER OWN HEALTH to help in the first place!

I don't know what more to say, but I'm now VERY cynical that Rioters are even willing to listen. Tweeting Repertoire and being ignored twice has damaged my faith in him listening. I will try again, directing him to this, but I'm cynical.

I will admit that what I say might be harsh and might be somewhat emotional, but I genuinely care about Soraka and her state of play. She felt perfect previously and fully met her needs. If she was too powerful, there were better ways of altering her kit than going about with something that to me felt like a mechanical butcher disguised by coin words like "interactivity" and "windows of opportunity" which I'm starting to feel are just masks for intentionally ripping a champion apart just because they are despised by the community. The hypocrisy of this attitude never burns harsher than when it comes after a champion you deeply love. Whilst oppressive and bad-design champions are free to run around for patch after patch and totally ignored, Soraka gets a mechanical limb welded onto her body for reasons you can so easily use to justify gutting a lot of other champions or reworking them.

Poop Jelly3/12/2016, 5:19:14 PM2 votes

I'm not sure... I fought 2 games as Karma & Janna vs 2 different Sorakas (one passive and one aggressive) and they're still incredibly annoying at healing pace. It feels like the nerf wasn't even there. In team fight I think the enemy team did exactly what they should've been doing: Poke and let soraka heal any receiving damage from our team and avoid all-in combats.

She's still in a very very strong place, IMO.

Pandemic Punch3/12/2016, 4:38:48 PM1 votes

I am on a quest to bring back old Soraka so we don't have to keep dealing with these changes :)

Zero Skill Tank3/12/2016, 11:18:29 AM1 votes

Sraka won't be fine as long as she is so extremely tied to healing/defense. 4 of her abilities are about healing allies, healing herself, positioning to heal and healing even more allies. Her last ability is still about protecting allies, using it offensively is almost impossible, unless it's used as follow up to allied root/stun.

Compare her to Janna, Ali or Braum - they are all awesome protectors, but all of them are only somewhat about protecting, and have ability to make offensive plays. IMO Sraka needs her playstyle shifted a bit from healing into something else, so she is not so one dimensional of a champions, until than all changes will only make her weaker without fixing her problems.

Changing her slow to bigger AOE is IMO step in right direction, because it makes her a bit better at chasing/engaging for the cost of some healing power, but at the same time it makes her Q less important, and this is the only part of her kit that enemies can outplay.

TL;DR remove half the healing and give her something cool in return, or she will be as toxic as she is

I hate my ADC3/12/2016, 4:58:08 PM1 votes

Soraka is the Jhin of support. A powerhouse of sustain that rely on her team for protection. I'd rather see her E instantly trigger the root and second damage if she touch the zone (like Ekko), to help her deal with hard engage.

Quepha3/12/2016, 5:17:13 PM1 votes

It's a lot of different changes that are difficult to add up and figure out whether Soraka is better or worse off. Luckily the statistics came in today. http://champion.gg/champion/Soraka Soraka's winrate went up.

Amelie3/12/2016, 4:57:52 PM1 votes

Her heals on her allies are still not affected by ignite, right? Do you think it would help if Riot brought back the old interaction with grievous wounds so there's actually a way to cut her heals? Or would it make her too weak? (If so, maybe make grievous wounds have a slightly reduced affect against her heals?)

Maybe then they wouldn't have to keep changing her kit so much.....

Baby Ghoul3/12/2016, 11:30:24 AM1 votes

I actually like the new changes. They just need to be tuned a bit better.

The changes seem to stop people from building tanky for Soraka in an effort to get Warmog's active. Building health is difficult to do on her after the nerfs, and it just isn't worth the 10% damage she receives anymore. You end up wasting health for a tiny heal. I still max W first, but I no longer build health because I feel like it stops me from healing more.

You can choose between upgrading E and Q now, and I think that's a nice. I think being Q poke AP Soraka would require you to do a lot and that a lot of other champions do that better than her. It is still too slow and the mana cost is still too high early game.

As for team fighting, that's always something I struggled with. There's usually so much going on that I can't save everyone and it just gets messy, maybe it's a Gold and below thing. In skirmishes Soraka really shines I believe.

The people that hate Soraka are always going to hate Soraka until she's no longer a healer. She's one of the few supports that makes a big impact, and she's not a tank on top of that. So many of the changes non Soraka players have mentioned for her around the boards have just seemed awful. It's nice to read what other Soraka mains have to say for once.

I don't think she can carry games all by herself, but I think she comes as close to it as any support can. I wish more supports were like that.