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Soraka feels AWFUL to play as a support now

Krinu·2/23/2020, 3:36:27 AM·1 votes·2,158 views

So I've had a chance to play Soraka in a support role a few times since the patch, and good lord she feels awful.

I have no agency over my own survival With Q half as powerful and nearly a quarter more expensive, if anyone autoattacks me once in the trade, I lose more health than I gain. If someone tries to run up to me, the pathetic speed boost means that all the enemy needs is one minor movespeed steroid or item to catch me. My only choice is to hug a tower and pray they don't have any tower-dive champions on their team.

I cannot cast spells. I cannot benefit from the discounted mana on the W if I don't have have health to cast it. I cannot get enough health or discounted health cost Ws without landing Qs, which, again, I cannot afford to cast because of the mana cost increase and huge reduction to my mana pool. This in turn also affects my ability to stack Manaflow Band, which is now 300% mandatory if you want to cast more than three Q->W combos before backing.

Because of the above two things, my R is laughable. I'm a support on a support income. Dropping gold on a tear that I don't get any benefit aside from offsetting the nerf I was hit with last patch that were aimed at a role I don't play means I'm that much later getting Censer or Redemption, which means my ultimate goes from "let me swing this close fight in midlane from bot lane" to "it takes the enemy one more autoattack to kill someone."

When we do well, it's in spite of me. When we do poorly, it's because I'm picking a champion that cannot affect the progression of the game.

How in the world did this go live?

8 Comments

Krys Star2/23/2020, 3:41:25 AM7 votes

I took Presence of Mind with her once... it kind of helps in the long-run, but the problem still exists in that you can't sustain yourself well, and you're still incredibly weak early.

Unless they add more buffs onto the pbe, I think we're just going to have to deal with this for the rest of League's existence because it's not often Riot visits Soraka for buffs other than the random once she got in summer last year. =\

inarii2/23/2020, 5:37:55 AM1 votes

I honestly don't see that many bad things about these changes. i'm going to try and explain why:

Soraka's Q early game was a get out of jail for free card, it enabled her to damage AND mitigate damage from enemies. Let me remind you, most early game trades imply around 50-60 damage per aa, soraka with lvl 1 Q literally sustained that. In lane she mostly lvl'd Q 3xs to get her poke and sustain going which made playing against her annoying since u had to hard focus her and still often lose the trades. She was also able to spam this ability way to much. Also, she literally outranges any adc that is not caitlyn or jhin with this ability = free agression.

Soraka got her base stats buffed, both HP and Mana, but got her scaling removed, which allows her to still sustain a lane, play early as she's always did, but not be as obnoxious pre lvl 9. Most mana issues are also easily solved in her Athene's + items having natural high mana regen.

At last, riot created a way for Soraka not to be as much of an healing bot as she was, creating both risk and reward on her playing a tiny bit more aggresively: if you hit ANY enemy with your Q, your heal has it's HP cost reduced/removed. She can still sit back, hit the enemy tank with Q, heal her ally, and maintain herself healthy. Losing no hp while giving 300-400hp to your ally every 2-3 seconds is a big deal mind you!

She is tho a bit more squishy and prone to being 100-0 a little bit more easy than before, but she's still a powerfull.

only zhule2/23/2020, 9:08:08 AM1 votes

welcome to the hell that is a mana hungry support with little to no ability to effect the lane (without hyper active and good jungle/ADC). You will find much like Sona, that your play style with Soraka will now suck unless you get ahead or wait till the 15-20 min mark.