Reviewing the logic and reason behind the Soraka changes.

Okay, So another two weeks gone by, another return to Soraka's tentative changes. So instead of crying havoc, I figured I'd take a gander at breaking down what Riot seems to be after when it comes to changing Soraka, and try and get a discussion rolling about what the appropriate way to deal with everyone's favorite space-unicorn is. A link to the full patch notes for this cycle thus far is above, so Brush up on it if you need a refresher for what's going on!So without further ado, Let's get in this thing!

EDIT: Just noticed today they replaced the mana-regain mechanic with a minor speed-boost. I don't think that's an interesting development. Its actually conceptually more annoying than the mana could ever be, albeit marginally more useful.

Self-Healing has been moved to Q This is pretty simple, Now the reason Soraka is able to have the crazy healing output she does is due to her martyr-based healing. If she's giving her health away to her teammates, she needs to have a way to sustain herself so she doesn't just squish up like a used up juice box. By making the self-healing scale off Q, You encourage her to be more aggressive, as she needs to either level it to get more powerful self-healing, or hit more of them to sustain herself. Base Healing on her W has been cut by 50 at all ranks We've all seen it before, Soraka healing her allies for crazy amounts, especially early game, not losing much of her health but restoring a massive amount of lost health to her low HP comrade. The changes here are intended to make her early healing, and just her basic healing in general less effective, and to maybe even encourage soraka to build more AP to compensate, (Instead of full-tank, which should not happen on a healthy champion of this nature). The lost healing has been placed into the alignment mechanic as a way to incentivize good soraka players to hit their Qs and use Alignment to make up for lost Base Healing. Basically its suppose to promote pro-active play, which I support. Q no longer has a sweet spot This one's a mixed bag, as depending on how you played soraka this will be either great or awful. If you weren't that good at leading your Qs on soraka, this is a Massive buff, as the slow is now persistent across the whole skill, removing your need to lead it, and just requiring you land it for it to be effective. For people who were good at landing those sweetspots though, this is going to hit pretty badly, as its a reduction of Soraka's overall damage-potential and overall Trading power. So why did they do this? Partly I think to make soraka's trading worse as indicated, since she should be out-sustaining fights, rather than bringing the wrath of god down on her enemies. It also addresses soraka's quite crazy wave-clear, which i don't think is discussed often enough (Because its amazing for the type of champion she is). This will make it easier to push soraka in, and makes her more vulnerable while she's under turret alone. It also means she's not as good at counter-seiging, and her ability to push lanes out by herself is greatly weakened. Alignment So the alignment system I don't feel is that far off since they reduced the HoT time to 3s. The logic behind it is cut and dry, Make soraka easier to kill. With the current system, she gets way too much health back, especially for hitting multiple enemies. This system gives soraka more windows of vulnerability, and since its tied to her Q now, it means that she can start being pro-active earlier, and anyone whose been complaining about her not having mana-restore can quite their yapping. But there are some problems here. You see Alignment has gone through some iteration in the last few patches, and currently, they've changed it so that she only gets the healing and mana regain After the 3s window. The only way she can get it earlier is to give it away to an ally, thereby popping the end-effects immediately. That is an issue.... The biggest issues here relate on both spectrums, Gameplay, and Clarity, and I want to specifically focus on the Clarity first. So with how this latest patch to the pbe changed, Soraka's Alignment gives her the benefit after 3 seconds. Since her W transfers Alignment to her allies, this means that her heals ALSO have a 3 second window before the benefits of her well landed Q affects her allies, which not only makes it difficult to gauge how much health they'll really get back from her heal, but makes it difficult for enemies to tell how much damage they have to do to kill her allies. After 3 seconds, either of her landing Q or healing an ally and giving them Q's blessing, You'll get this random spike in health and mana. This makes understanding how much health you can take and give incredibly difficult, as you have to plan 3s into the future (And as a healer, chances are you don't have that time). This will likely lead to Soraka's healing being inconsistent, and if there's anything players don't like, its inconsistency. Especially if her Primary attribute is inconsistant, It won't be worth taking her over a healer who has more consistent heal values, and better CC to boot.

Gameplay-wise, Soraka's new Alignment makes it much more difficult for her to do her job, since by virtue of cast-range she has to be in the fray to get her healing off, and thus put herself in harm's way. When someone is trying to kill you, 3 seconds is an eternity of no support, and especially if you've not removed the little Healing blip that soraka gets currently, then She'll have to wait MORE than 3 seconds as she waits for Alignment to reach her, and then 3 seconds for it to proc. Any healing she could hope to get from this however is all lost the moment she has to do her job and heal an ally, making any regained health completely irrelevant, since her self-healing is now a base measure instead of having %missing Health attached to it. Albeit a good hit to tank-soraka, waiting 3s with no support, is likely to result in a dead unicorn, and a useless healer.

But as a whole I think you guys were on the right track with yesterday's patch. Giving her scaling slow% on her Q gives more reason to max it earlier rather than later, which is important for promoting her aggression. Making the self-heal an HoT is okay for giving more windows to fight her, and I thought that 3s was a good timeframe of vulnerability. Honestly I could do without the gimmicky mana-heal for allies, but its not damnable. Honestly If you took out the after 3 seconds clause on her Alignment, I think she'd be just about right, because as a soraka main, I can attest that she's too safe. It wasn't as bad before Windspeaker's blessing and the changes to GW, but currently, she just doesn't have that much of a meaningful trade-off for her healing, and Tank builds are ruining the idea you set out to achieve.

So as a heartfelt banana-empress main. Remove the after 3 seconds clause. It will make the gameplay clarity much easier (as we can see health restoring over time), removes unnecessary hassle as you try and gimp someone before 3 seconds, or have to count for health you can't see 3s in advance. and the instant-effect when transferring will help make it so that she feels Rewarded for those alignment heals, since she has to work for them, And to boot she basically gets a Free heal for making good aggressive plays.

I think you guys have a good direction. I may not have at first, but I see the logic, and I think we're almost there. Just please... That 3 second clause will destroy her. Not literally, but conceptually. It makes her feel gross. Also you might want to lower that max slow value. 50% slow in that large an AoE on a 5s cooldown with no cdr? That's begging for trouble.