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Could a 100% Pacifist Soraka concept work?

Hawke Solaris·6/18/2016, 10:19:30 PM·4 votes·576 views

As the title says: Could a 100% pacifistic design for Soraka work in-game? What I mean is completely stripping the damage out of her kit (minus her auto-attacks of course) and focussing only on pure defensive power?

What if instead of her Q being a damage-poke ability that then boosts healing, it instead becomes a 1-second delayed Cleanse ability akin to summoner 1 or item 3140 ? Here's how it could work: Its trajectory is FIXED on 1-second no matter the distance and removes either most CC or all CC (including knock-ups and suppressions). This makes it a skillful ability because you have to predict a CC to use it as an instant-cleanse whilst still being just fast enough to use reactively to the longer CC present in the game. AP-scaling could be used to increase the speed of the Star by 0.1s per 50AP up to a cap of 0.5s total reduction. Cooldowns can be adjusted as necessary.

Her E could remain as is- a Silence Field that then roots after a delay. The root could scale with AP instead of any damage scaling with it.

Her W and R remain as is, maybe reducing the range of her W though to force her closer to her allies so that she truly exposes herself when she's healing them. Without her Q's MS that helps her back off, the best time to engage is when she's going to heal her ally and any support champion with a strong engagelike Alistar Annie Blitzcrank Braum Karma Leona Nami Thresh can exploit this opening.

I predict people will reply she'd be extremely boring but... Janna exists and is played often enough. Her damage is nearly nonexistant, as is Soraka's... but I was wondering if the concept of a champion with literally no damage outside her autos could work.

On paper, Soraka would become one of the strongest, if not THE strongest support with a cleanse in her kit because such a mechanic is extremely powerful. It technically exists on TahmKench right now because his W can work like a cleanse (and make them pseudo-invulnerable as well).

What do you all think? I will concede that some people might find Soraka completely oppressive to play against if she can heal AND remove CC, but I'm only interested in discussing if such a concept could work in a game like League of Legends. The idea of a totally pacifistic champion interested me and I was originally thinking up how a champion could exist, then realised that Soraka could fit that concept perfectly (given her character's distaste for violence) and had the groundwork that could be adjusted to fit it.

4 Comments

67chrome6/18/2016, 11:09:20 PM2 votes

What do you all think?

Main issue with a pacifist champion is that pacifism means you're not fighting anything at any time, and the core engagement in LoL comes from fighting other champions.

Watching minions slap one-another because there's no point in fighting your lane opponents gets pretty boaring pretty fast, and it's the main issue Soraka brings to the table. She can easily make a lane a snooze-fest where the only thing either side can do is concentrate on CS.

Because Soraka needs to land Starcall to stall out a lane she still puts herself in danger to some extent ATM, but she's not that engaging. A Cleanse would likely only make her more aggravating to play against, and with a 1 second delay likely more aggravating to play as. If her partner wants to trade, throw down the cleanse where they are and watch them land a few shots without retaliation.

The idea of pacifistic runs on games is pretty interesting, but I don't see that having a place in LoL, as LoL really doesn't have any core engagement or mechanics that support it.

Solving problems in a pacifistic way is usually the result of diplomacy and conversation over fisticuffs as well, and there's no real means to resolve fights through dialogue within LoL.

Epic rekit6/18/2016, 11:01:51 PM1 votes

no it couldn't work sorry that's now what league does

SaltyKracka6/18/2016, 11:02:45 PM1 votes

Riot would never go for this. Not only is it the least interactive kit I have ever heard concepted, it is almost literally "Nope" the champion, who exists only to negate the efforts of the enemy.

Maximum Zilean6/18/2016, 11:17:19 PM1 votes

Would not work.

With this concept, you would have 0 lane presence and interaction with anything outside of your team. Would be super frustrating to be against, and we all know riot hates those kind of kits.