Soraka apparently isn't one of the cool kids.
Holy health regen nerf Batman.
51 Comments
When talking about champion changes, it's best to include ALL of the changes, not just 1 of them.
Soraka is very much one of the cool kids. Build AP, heal bitches.
"this will seperate the good Soraka players from the great Soraka players"
They need to make her Q's slightly easier to land if they're nerfing the hell out of her regen. They said something about doing that, but it didn't make it into this patch. Kind of a bunch of bullshit...
I don't mind that regen nerf but if riot wants us to build ap to replace healing soraka needs higher base hp and hp/res per level or extended range to q and w. Keep in mind base stats won't increase healing potential since it is %. Soraka simply can't viably build much ap against decent opponents, as one of the most naturally squishiest champions in the game she needs extended range or survivability to even get to the whole "healing herself and allies" part. Now tank items with regen won't be nearly as good and her lane will be even worse, I think this is a massive nerf overall. Pretty terrible thought out concept for soraka overall specifically. It's a good idea but doesn't practically work on soraka because of the way it creates a huge problem with weaknesses they implemented onto soraka before this patch. Short/medium range, squishy w/ low regen, dependent on ap for sustain makes her have way too many weaknesses when she was already not very strong
She's going to require a higher skillcap to play. It's isn't a nerf but a refocus.
Apparently she is quite cool, she was reworked after they started removing silences from people and she kept hers.
Still not worth building AP on her at all. CDR and regen runes are still superior and low risk. Even with 20 AP the Q would heal 16 health more, and spell thief gives 5 ap. Considering the fact you risk getting poked to land Q, and that mana regen is a major issue as well if you spam Q, and that hp regen runes can net you over 8 hp regen per 5 and the ancient coin 5 health per minion killed in lane, the AP is a terrible tradeoff. Just the ancient coin itself is going to give you 30 hp back over a minute, along with the hp regen another 96 from runes, that's 126 hp a minute for just standing safely in the lane. For the 5 AP from spell thief to do jack, assuming max heal of .8 ratio, and landing Q every time it is on cooldown for about 10 landings a minute, that'd be 40 health to 80 health if you hit 2 people every time and she will be completely oom and take poke and harass completely making it a terrible decision. Making it realistic, it'd be more like .6 ratio, making it 30 hp to 60 hp a minute verse the 126 hp i can get with runes and coin. The only factor outside this is that maybe all that harass will put your lane ahead. But if you're doing soraka right you're doing low risk poke or your adc is anyway, so really you're losing nothing by going regen and losing a lot by going AP. I think I know what I'm talking about as I got plat this season playing Soraka support like this:
Every time I see an AP soraka in lane I wince. Here is my rune page for her: Armor +8.2 Health Regen / 5 at level 18 +18.2 Magic Resist +12.1 Health Regen / 5 +8.1
And unless they totally revamp runes this will be way more viable than ap soraka. Which I'm glad. Ap Soraka is a stupid design. Talisman is a very under rated item as is coin on her. Being able to control engage/disengage is huge in the team fight stage.
Additionally her AP ratios SUCK! Her W and R heal ratios only approach average if you're healing people already close to death's door. I'd consider AP if her ridiculously long cool down ult had a 1.5 AP ratio. Or her W was even .8 base. But it's not. So cooldown and hp regen far superior.
Since most in game hp regen items really sucked before the regen changes and suck even more now, and suck even even more after this patch, and I never really bought them anyway, the only thing this patch's nerf and the regen changes really did was lower my early game regen from 18 per 5 plus ancient coin to 15 per 5 plus ancient coin. Which will effect things, but I'll still scale well thanks to scaling regen runes and the masteries on defensive tree :)
It really sucks when one of your favorite champs (kat in the past, shyvana right now cough) gets riot's attention b/c they tend to leave a champion in a bad state for 6+ months. Or forever if you're Urgot. So I'm glad that them ruining soraka is gated by the fact that for 6+ months they can't do a rune pages revamp.
They are nerfing that, but buffing the crap out of her regen from landing a q. Basically, its a buff if you land your qs, a nerf if you dont.
I wonder how they think we're gonna be able to build any AP before we finish half our build.
What Soraka needs is a stable speed on her Q, and a new passive that makes her able to do anything at all when there's no enemy champions in lane. There's nothing worse than getting to the point where both your lane opponents are dead and all you can do to prepare yourself for them getting back is wait for your ADC to farm hard to proc heals from 
. Anything sensible you can do which isn't returning to base (warding basically) removes you from your only source of ok health regen.
so soraka was in a pretty good place before 4.21, i often found my lane partner at 2/3 -full health, and my self at about half to 1/3 with enough mana to get back to 2/3 - full, but doing so would drop my mana to almost 0... a fair trade that made the player strategically balance their mana and health.
now with 4.21 soraka has decreased health regen.. okay thats fine, that means i need to land more Q... but now there is also a nerf to forbidden idol, that now restricts soraka's use of Q due to a lack of mana regen, thus denying her the ability to heal her self efficiently via Q OR Health regen..
this appears to be a very bad decsion, and i am completey dissappointed with riot for nerfing forbidden idol simply because it was not a multiple of 25, with out any thought to the drastic effect it would have on champions reliant on it in early game such as soraka.....
you have essentially nerfed soraka, out of the "primary healer role" by all around decreasing BOTH of her (at least one) necessary regens! she is unable to get enough heal back consistently to heal consistently.
You have my upvote because of that old Robin reference.
ARAM Soraka:
then 
, 
, or 
depending on what I feel like.
FEAR THE BANANA!
Sobs I'll never be able to regen again!
Welcome to the club.
Who's in it?
Me.
...
It's a small club.
and then they massively increased her self heal scaling. Going from .2-.4 all the way up to .4-.8 is HUGE. If you get 200 AP (not hard for an AP support) that is between 40- 80 MORE heal for hitting a star call on a single person (if you hit more than one, that gets to be a LOT of self healing).
Yeah, but they doubled her Q healing. Will we not talk about that?
I think I'm going to be ok with the new changes. When I play Soraka, one thing I do is spamming the Q, and enjoy landing it. Obviously I wouldn't be doing so if I don't land them a decent amount of times, and it looks like I'm going to benefit from the change.
I am also able build some AP too, almost always.
It's getting nerfed more because of how strong it was with flat health per 5 runes. I would run health regen quints and yellows on my Soraka page and you literally could not win against that lane with anything short of multiple four man ganks. This change is will help raise the skill floor/ceiling on Raka though, requiring you to land your abilities a lot more often.
After these newest changes you'll have to either run 
with AP runes or 
with mana regen runes. I think the Ancient Coin route will ultimately end up being the better one since Raka doesn't put out quite enough poke to make Spell Thief's efficient. It's also debatable but the move speed from Ascension should bring more utility to Raka who is more often at the backline.
I think one of these two builds will end up working the best on her depending on what runes you're running:
> [situational build]
or
> [situational build]
I literally have no problem with this due to the builds im running.
During lane phase
This will allow me to consistently throw her Q and if I happen to miss, then the Coin and potion will help me with my healing. I usually get sightstone after lane phase as I prefer combat effectiveness early on.
After lane phase
Either 15 ap runes or all gp rune page with support mastery tree basically filled. Healing for a hell of a lot on a 1.2 second cooldown. The buff to her Q will actually make lane phase a lot easier for me.