Boards›Gameplay

@Meddler please read this, Sona is going to be nerfed

KONO RUBICK DA··20 votes·2,025 views

I don't disagree or anything like that but you said that her healing is going to be nerfed.

i just want you to remember this:

v1.0.0.106

-Hymn of Valor Base damage reduced to 60 / 110 / 160 / 210 / 260 from 70 / 120 / 170 / 220 / 270 -Ability power ratio reduced to 0.5 from 0.6 Aria of Perseverance healing reduced to 30 / 55 / 80 / 105 / 130 from 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 / 140

v1.0.0.113

-Hymn of Valor Base damage reduced to 50 / 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 from 60 / 110 / 160 / 210 / 260 Ability power ratio increased to 0.7 from 0.5 -Aria of Perseverance Base heal increased to 35 / 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 from 30 / 55 / 80 / 105 / 130 Ability power ratio reduced to 0.35 from 0.5

v1.0.0.124

-Aria of Perseverance Base heal reduced to 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 from 35 / 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 Ability power ratio reduced to 0.25 from 0.35

v1.0.0.125

Aria of Perseverance heal amount adjusted to 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 from 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 125

v3.14

Q - Hymn of Valor Ability Power ratio reduced to 0.5 (from 0.7) W - Aria of Perseverance Base heal amount reduced at later ranks to 40 / 55 / 70 / 85 / 100 (from 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120)

Q - Hymn of Valor ON-HIT MAGIC DAMAGE AURA RATIO: 0.25 ability power ⇒ 0.2 ability power

v4.2

Aria of Perseverance MISSING HEALTH RATIO: +1% healing increase per 1% health missing ⇒ +0.5% healing increase per 1% health missing BASE HEAL: 25 / 45 / 65 / 85 / 105 ⇒ 30 / 50 / 70 / 90 / 110

and the last patch

5 fucking years of nerfing/buffing her heal and hymn of valor, and i skipped all the power chorde damage buff/nerf because i don't have that much time .

don't you learn from the past? aren't you tired? are you going to continue for 15 years until finding the perfect number? can't you instead of all this mess give drawbacks/weaknesses to sona.

look at your last patch changes: aura range 350-->400, you don't know it but this is really a high range for an aura and it allows her to stay back while her enemies can't profit from her squishiness.

how about you try to revert this change, or reduce her healing range (it's 1000 right now) instead of repeating the same action?

40 Comments

Darth Pixy Misa21 votes

Why does lol Just have this Vendetta against healers? Every other modern Moba, RPG, MMORPG, and Overwatch use better healers and are able to balance healers much better than Riot can....

The Yetii Rider3 votes

It's because healers can build tank and still be relevant. Mercy, Zenyatta and Lucio are NOT tanks.

AramsAreBest2 votes

Overwatch is not a moba

Itadaki Seieki6 votes

{quoted}

Overwatch is not a moba

Yes, yes it is.

MOBA = Multiplayer Online Battle Arena.

Overwatch fits that exactly. MOBA can mean A LOT of different things.

DotA-Style MOBA are League, DotA, HoN, etc.

Overwatch is a First Person Shooter MOBA.

Atanchan2 votes

I bet you think there's actually not that many RPGs in the world, or that any game where you play as a character is an RPG.

Kubox4 votes

RPG is a broad term, mostly because it stems from 2 different origins.

The japanese RPGs mostly featured games where the story was the main point and you'd play a certain character. The most important factors here was story, but some liberty, especially when it comes to "Where do I go?" and "What should I do now", was also necessary

Western RPGs, however, are more about character customization. They often let the player makes his own hero, sometimes physically, most of the time technically (skills and such).

It's why Borderlands is considered an RPG. It's an FPS sure, but there's also many RPG elements. Overwatch is an FPS, but also contains many MOBA elements. Both of those are thus considered hybrids between the genre.

Atanchan1 votes

Overwatch does not contain any sort of MOBA elements, though. Namely, it doesn't contain the one element that differentiate the MOBA from a character-based action game:

Creeps.

Seriously, they're the one thing that defines a MOBA - you can't boil a MOBA down to just them, but you'll find nothing akin to them when you boil down other genres. Having allied NPCs that mindlessly march towards the enemy objectives is something no other genre has, and while they might not sound like much, keep in mind they totally define how you take objectives, fight early on, and increase your character's power; if not for them, League, DOTA, Smite, etc. would have to be designed and played more like a straight-out slugfest ... much like the modes of those games that remove creeps, like Ascension and Overthrow + Colosseum, respectively ( not sure if Smite has one, haven't tried it out in forever; pretty sure its teamfight-focused mode had creep too, though ). Seriously, those modes play so differently from the base game that you really are basically not playing a MOBA at that point; you're just playing a somewhat RPG-ish PvP game.

So when Overwatch introduces maps where your objective is to have your constantly spawning robot allies beat your opponents' constantly spawning robot allies to reach your opponent's whatever and destroy / capture / do a wicked musical number on it, I'll accept it as having a MOBA game mode at least. But until then, calling it a MOBA is like calling Warcraft 3 ( both ladder and tons of custom maps, though obviously not including WC3 DOTA ), Nosgoth, and basically every MMO since WoW a MOBA, which is just dumb.

( speaking of WoW, though, I have heard that it does have a PvP scenario that is MOBA-like in a clear reference to DOTA, so there's that )

doombotMECHA1 votes

to elaborate, standard jrpgs (zelda, persona) typically give you a defined protagonist with a certain story that you play out. in a western rpg, (skyrim, dragon age) you typically can make your character look like whatever the heck you want

AramsAreBest1 votes

If overwatch is a moba then cod is a moba

Itadaki Seieki1 votes

{quoted}

If overwatch is a moba then cod is a moba

It is.

It's a first person shooter ( FPSMOBA )

Multi-player Online Battle Arena.

You are in a map/zone/field with OTHER online players battling. MOBA is an umbrella term. Kind of like RPG.

AramsAreBest1 votes

Most people who use the term do not use it literally when explaining games.

doombotMECHA1 votes

overwatch is literally tf2 with ultimates. it's the final sign that moba is too broad of a term to describe anything. characters in OW can't build anything, really. (well, except toblerone and symmetra) they have their role and they've gotta stick to it. the whole notion of item build as a strategy is gone.

a better example of a moba shooter would be Battleborn or paladins. smite and paragons are also on the moba/shooter sliding scale, they're just a bit more moba than shooter.

TurquoiseYoshi4 votes

To be fair, the only real healing supports that are problems because of their healing are Sona and Soraka.

EddardStark8416 votes

That is definitely NOT true. Nid, Kayle, Alistair, Taric..etc. have all had their healing nerfed at one point or another pretty recently (in the last season or 2 iirc). There are more as well, and while not all are supports, RIOT DEFINITELY struggles with balancing healing on a fundamental level.

Voluug134 votes

The difference is that none of those are extremely good healers, and often their healing is secondary to something else.

Nid was because of her horrible gameplay pattern of spear spear spear gets initiated hop away heal spear spear. All the game. Also because she was clearing jungle too fast and too safely.

Taric and Alistar due to their tank champion status. Alistar because he had a lot of power on his combo (his heal was nerfed inr response of his jungling at first, and then when they made QE queue-able). While Taric was basically a bruiser support and needed some backdraw.

And Kayle.... her heal was never extremely good, yet it was nerfed because of her solo lane, not becauseof whatever mediocre supporting she can do.

EddardStark846 votes

That wasn't the point I was making. The point was that yes, RIOT does in fact struggle with balancing healing on a fundamental level. Regardless of if the Champion is a support or not.

LankPants12 votes

The main reason for this is Grievous Wounds IMO. Healing has to be about 25% higher than it should be at a base line level because the second someone brings GW into the game your healing becomes worthless if it's not overtuned at a base level.

Partholonian2 votes

{quoted}

The main reason for this is Grievous Wounds IMO. Healing has to be about 25% higher than it should be at a base line level because the second someone brings GW into the game your healing becomes worthless if it's not overtuned at a base level.

They fixed that for a while. Then they unfixed it. Surely there were better ways to prove the "Riot never reverts their changes!!" crowd wrong.

But I think the main reason Riot struggles with balancing healing because there's a substantial contingent of players who systematically want it to be trash and are personally offended whenever healing has an influence on the outcome of a play -- mainly assassins and some divers.

Riot is unwilling to ignore players who say "I landed my full combo and he didn't drop dead, Riot fix!" and allow healing to actually be something that you have to take into account when planning to kill someone (as much as you do, say, peel). So they're unwilling to actually allow it to do its job and make people hard to kill as long as the healer is alive, un-CC'd, near the person they're trying to help, and has mana.

chipndip11 votes

{quoted}

They fixed that for a while. Then they unfixed it. Surely there were better ways to prove the "Riot never reverts their changes!!" crowd wrong.

But I think the main reason Riot struggles with balancing healing because there's a substantial contingent of players who systematically want it to be trash and are personally offended whenever healing has an influence on the outcome of a play -- mainly assassins and some divers.

Riot is unwilling to ignore players who say "I landed my full combo and he didn't drop dead, Riot fix!" and allow healing to actually be something that you have to take into account when planning to kill someone (as much as you do, say, peel). So they're unwilling to actually allow it to do its job and make people hard to kill as long as the healer is alive, un-CC'd, near the person they're trying to help, and has mana.

Problem with THIS is that a lot of healing spells are pretty spammy in nature in this game. Imagine Soraka with free reign to just spam W. If healing moves were big, but had long cds, that's one thing...but the more classic healers usually have their heals up and then back up again pretty fast, so each cast can't be too potent.

doombotMECHA1 votes

nah. smite has CRAPTONS of anti-healing (in spell-based, attack-based, and even in an aura) it's that lol healers are always shoehorned into being "supports" who don't scale with anything, so they can't have any scaling, so they need high bases, and if they have high bases, they trivialize the laning phase

Lady Hammerlock2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Darth Pixy Misa,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=ZehwGLOp,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-07-15T00:38:16.039+0000)

Why does lol Just have this Vendetta against healers? Every other modern Moba, RPG, MMORPG, and Overwatch use better healers and are able to balance healers much better than Riot can....

Thats because In Heroes of the Storm:Mana is quite the hefty resource and overall most heals are locked behind cooldowns or high mana costs(and kharazims auto attacks) and the only remotely frustrating one is Lt.Morales

Dota 2:Apart from omniknight and life stealer there isn't a lot that heals for much

IDK about smite

KONO RUBICK DA1 votes

omniknight has a heal that should be used in a fight cause it deals true damage. if you want a healer like soraka that heals you in laning phase, which doctor since he's a doctor. every other healers shouldn't use their heals as a sustain because they lose a part of their kit (dazzle losing damage too).

doombotMECHA1 votes

smite healers tend to be either 1 of 2 things:

  1. fighters who heal as a defensive mechanic and to group hug with the tank (guan yu, chaac). GY maxes heal second and is a formidable group healer if played right, requiring anti-healing items (of which there are many) in order to successfully poke down his team, in addition to dealing good damage if he gets close

  2. healing mages who are weak early (by smite mage standards) but are practically unstoppable late as they start to put real power into their heals, becoming unkillable without anti-healing, in addition to their potent cc (aphrodite) or raw damage (Hel) tend to be out of meta with the availability of anti-healing, so if you see one who isn't on free, expect an expert.

tl;dr dedicated healers scale very well into the lategame, but are rare as anti-healing items are common.

Rozzeta5 votes

This is an extract from Morello's comments on the matter, back at the start of season 4 before Soraka was reworked:

We really need a dev blog up where I can have this sort of information readily available for people! :) This is specific to Soraka - Janna is a different issue of raw power. Let's look closely at Soraka and what the problem is: mechanics that heal aren't problematic, dedicated healers are. "What, why?" Glad you asked! In order to be satisfying and impactful, characters whose job it is to heal need to be able to "erase damage" effectively with healing at a decent clip. If they can't, they feel useless most of the time while they wait for long cooldowns or do other offensive actions (which is counter to why you'd make a dedicated healer in the first place!). If DPS outclips the healing in the usual situations, they also end up feeling ineffective and weak, meaning that the healing-per-second also needs to be powerful. Finally, you're not getting the natural satisfaction of things like CC or kills, so it has to be provided in watching health bars rise and saving friends. OK, sure, so what's the problem with that? The problem with that is the type of gameplay that surrounds it for not only the opponents, but for allies and even the healer. By removing a big consequence for actions (damage and attrition-over-time), you remove one of the primary axis for overcoming opponents in any non-burst scenario - especially with the combat pacing in lane or when posturing for objectives like Baron or Dragon. This creates a situation where it's not useful for characters to engage in harass, poke or other non-lethal actions since it will basically be a waste of time, energy and resources. Additionally, since a healer can't provide much else to secure a kill (other than +time), the friendly is also at a disadvantage for trying to secure kills or create windows of opportunities to capitalize on. The natural counter to sustain is burst. While that does make it counterable, I'll point to Guild Wars 1, WoW PvP, TF2 or other games that feature significant dedicated healers into how that ends up changing the game into something much more single-dimensional from a strategy and options standpoint. I'll also point directly to how bottom lane plays out whenever Soraka's a top 3 pick (hint: extremely passively and even more farm-heavy, sans ganks). So, even if I can accept that, does that mean there's no character who should heal an ally? No - the key is here in pacing. I think the really good versions of this are the Heal Summoner spell and Wish. These skills have very long cooldowns and huge effects, but their healing-per-second is really poor. This means they're used for heroic saves, clever baits, and can turn the tide of a battle, while still having a good range of counters and a significant opportunity cost. The worst heal I could design would be a 1 second cooldown heal that did a hot for 1 second - it only sustains and can never be used in an active or dire situation effectively. Another option that I like is hybridization. Nidalee is my favorite example here, because even if her heals isn't the best-feeling skill in the world, it's still useful, and she can derive satisfaction through poke, zone control or kills as well, lessening the burden her heal needs to carry from a fun and power perspective. Nidalee is a shape-changer with a heal, as opposed to someone who just heals. Again, this may not make people who like the red-bars-go-up style feel much better, (and as a lot of us play MMOs or other games with these characters, there's an attachment to feeling helpful there, for sure) but I think it's important to make sure you guys at least understand our position and reasoning, even if you don't agree.

If you ask me, having every single healer having to make THE clutch save feels more binary than spreading between dedicated healers and poke/tank champions with some sustain, so this comment always seemed (to me) like an excuse on their crusade to make the game more fast pased (aka LCS appealing) by punishing defensive play. It's also not mentioned here, but to Morello a situation where "shoot the healer first" was the tactic to follow was the worst kind of balance state for him. One of the many reasons support players hated this guy, and his arguments are usually taken by the now Zed players kids who think they should kill anything in one rotation whenever they claim for nerfs.

Of course, this man is no longer around, but the current team more or less follows the same dinamics.

It Hertz When IP4 votes

Which IMO was a colossal failure on Riot's part. Pre-rework Soraka had to actually make choices once the laning phase end. In the heat of a teamfight, she had to decide whether to cast W on her ADC, the jungler, the tank (for the armor), or the midlaner. With her decently long CD on W, there was real decision-making potential there that could make or break the teamfight. Now? It's the healer equivalent of a wet noodle fight, where there's precisely zero non-ult decision-making on her healing; never a "when/who do I heal", but "how do I build to most efficiently spam heal on everything". Instead of applying a tourniquet to an otherwise fatal wound, she runs around with a Band-aid minigun spraying anything missing HP.

It Hertz When IP2 votes

Simple. Healers promote "stagnant gameplay"; read: strategy over reflexes. When the game started migrating from being strategy-focused to reflex focused, healers had to be constantly waterboarded so that they would never impinge on the reign of CC/initiator supports.

Nideak1 votes

If I remember correctly back when Morello was still Lead Game Designer he had a discussion with a few users about his issues with healing. He used Team Fortress 2 as an example and he complained about how strong and powerful healers were in that game and that he considered very stagnant. I don't agree with this, but it seems like the direction Riot is taking with healing and supports in general.

D357R0Y3R13 votes

riot Warwick learningSejuani from the pastKassadin you say?

ACENOX1 votes

Azir it's almost as if they learn from the past.

KONO RUBICK DA4 votes

they showed some good things on some champions though.

Rozzeta7 votes

don't you learn from the past? aren't you tired? are you going to continue for 15 years until finding the perfect number? can't you instead of all this mess give drawbacks/weaknesses to sona.

Blitzcrank

EDIT: Technically anything she can't easily poke, or that has hard engage is her weakness in lane.

In any case it didn't matter. Her changes, along with other supports, were made to for the sole purpose of strenghtening supports and make them more desirable picks in an attempt to raise the amount of Support picks in DQ, thus reducing queue times. Just think that after the end of the preseason, Rioters actually thought Sona was going to receive a nerf, if anything, and now we're looking at Power Chord damage increases, of all things.

HaloDragonX2 votes

Honestly right now I feel Sona's W heal is too much and her Q is over nerfed. I love the ultimate change, I LOVE IT. It's fun to play. But her W is quite insane with it and her Q isn't that relevant.

chipndip12 votes

I was saying this for ages: The problem is in the core play pattern. There's just no way you can make Sona strong without making her too strong when there's no skill floor. With nearly nothing that separates the good from the great, if Sona's strong, she's freelo, and if she's weak, she's garbage. They need to make more aggressive changes to her core play pattern instead of playing it safe, otherwise they'll never truly get to the bottom of this.

Leblancs Boob1 votes

100% agree with this. Sona is the epitome of walk around the map while smashing every button on your keyboard. Champions are impossible to balance when there is absolutely no room for error.

Hige1 votes

this has nothing to do with numbers though, they added a new mechanic to her that made her power go crazy high, the base cdr on her ult, her numbers were tuned to work with a kit that didn't have that in so now they must do balance accordingly.

ZT Xperimentor1 votes

Rather her initial rework be entirely reverted.

Rozair1 votes

No. Auras are the key to sona. I think sona needs a rework. Power cord are what ia really op on sona. Her damage from q isn't all the much but the power chords do lichbane damage. Sona is more of an ap damager than a support.

zlumpy1 votes

Maybe some kind of persistant aura that buffs allies stats and utility allowing them to have more presence and map control....hmmm

Miraweave1 votes

{quoted}

Maybe some kind of persistant aura that buffs allies stats and utility allowing them to have more presence and map control....hmmm

That leads to incredibly uninteresting gameplay since most of the champion's power is tied up in passive auras they don't have to interact with.

Prerework sona was horribly designed.

zlumpy1 votes

Maybe for some people. Pre rework sona was my absolute favorite version of Sona. They easily could have nerfed individual aruas but had them buff eachother when stacked with a decay window on the previous aura. This would have made a 3 aura stack hard to do at the right time but the rewards would have been worth it. Sure anyone would be able to stack but good sona players would have known WHEN to stack and which aura to have up last to get that aura buffed up most.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by KONO RUBICK DA

How about You Code your Game before doing Big changes?
Gameplay125 comments
159
votes
@Meddler, i found an interesting quote of you when you replaced morello in 2014
Gameplay135 comments
158
votes
ADC mains lie, but don't worry i'll tell you
Gameplay162 comments
157
votes
Old Master tier player leaving after 1 game of dynamic queue
Gameplay122 comments
152
votes
I'm going to destroy the ENTIRE board with a single thread
Gameplay375 comments
139
votes
Vayne Reached the Late game
Gameplay109 comments
138
votes