Why hasn't soraka gotten the Ekko treatment yet?

arghilost·4/18/2016, 6:28:02 PM·1 votes·909 views

Honestly the problem isn't with Soraka's fool proof laning phase or with her healing in teamfights.

The first can be countered with good roaming since soraka isnt a good aggressor. The second is the exchange she makes to not have as much cc/utility as the other supports.

No the problem has always been that sorakas best build is literally going full tank, to the point that focusing her is almost a bad idea as she is so hard to kill and still healing just as well. Why aren't her bases lowered and ap ratios heightened?

It's a catch 22 where you can't focus anyone against her lategame.

30 Comments

Baby Ghoul4/18/2016, 6:54:10 PM4 votes

Soraka never goes full tank, "literally" or otherwise.

Stop saying that. Whenever you see someone say "Soraka has gone full tank." You know they have absolutely no idea what they're talking about, have not played her or looked at her builds, and should not be speaking on her balance.

Going full defensive on Soraka is a bad idea no matter how you look at it. The reason Soraka's attempt to build health is to get Warmog's Heart for the HP Regen. passive, which is quite hard to get nowadays. A few patches ago most Sorakas got it by mid game, and that was broken. It's still a good item on Soraka, but that active isn't going to come into play until late game, which is hard enough to reach as a support. The moment Soraka enters a team fight, the passive is disabled. Similarly, it offers no MR or Armor for Soraka.

Her Q, the ability most Sorakas max first now, will not do very much damage or heal with a build consisting of only defensive items. Most importantly her heals will cost so much health compared to how little they heal, since healing scales off AP.

Repeatedly pressing W when you only heal a little bit is a good way to die quickly and help no one.

The more health you have = The more damage you do to yourself. The more AP you have = The more healing done.

It's especially ineffective to build health early game since you need AP to be effective. Lowering her base stats and heightening her AP scaling is the exact opposite thing that should happen, especially if your primary concern is Soraka late game.

Soraka is squishy at all points of the game, and considering that most Sorakas are reliant on landing Qs early game, you can find your opening really easily.

A typical Soraka build looks like this.

item 2049 item 3069 item 3092 item 3190 item 3504 item 3083 item 3158

Building one or two defensive items does not make someone a tank, much less a full tank.

Complaining about how hard it is to kill Soraka when you catch her, and then complaining about her healing makes no sense.

yukumari4/18/2016, 6:34:22 PM1 votes

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that was what it was like with her when her rework was first released. High ratios, low base stats, which is what had people complaining about her in the first place.

Chaos Milk Tea4/18/2016, 6:54:30 PM1 votes

I'm going to say something people might not like: Healing is a toxic mechanic in PVP in most cases. Shields are a good compromise as they aren't permanent, and smaller heals can make a character come together nicely without frustrating opponents too much. Spam burst healing though, is everything that is wrong with healing: It undoes whatever you just did very quickly and the Soraka gets to do it many many times on multiple targets.

MY STUPIDLY SIMPLE SORAKA REWORK: Make her able to heal much less often, but make the heal stronger and make a significant portion of it a shield. This makes the heal just as good in the moment, but you have to choose who to heal instead of trying to keep up with the spam.

Done. Soraka is fixed. You are now free to shift power to other areas of her kit.

67chrome4/18/2016, 7:29:26 PM1 votes

No the problem has always been that sorakas best build is literally going full tank, to the point that focusing her is almost a bad idea as she is so hard to kill and still healing just as well. Why aren't her bases lowered and ap ratios heightened?

The most optimal pattern for a support is also having good bases and low scaling. Strong early to offset the weak early of marksman, relevant late game even when you're behind in gold and levels. Low bases, high scaling is the optimal pattern for a carry that gets a lot of gold.

Lowering bases and increasing scalings generally runs into the Lulu issue where you remove a champion as a support pick and they become a solo-lane utility carry instead.

Also: AP itemization has so little innate synergy with the support play-style you run into the Lulu issue long before AP actually becomes worthwhile to purchase en-mass on a support.

. Supports are always a lower level than their opponents, which makes defense itemization quite appealing to remove their frailty. . Supports having strong bases also allow them to scale very well with CDR, where raw AP is more of a carry stat reliant on secondary damage multipliers. . If you can survive twice as long you can do twice as much stuff, where even doubling your potency with AP doesn't tend to effect great base, no scaling things like the general CC and utilities that generally give supports good base, low scaling patterns. . Supports can make minor mistakes like getting tagged with AoE or getting within sight-range of an assassin without turning into a blood stain.

For Soraka in particular: it's also worth noting Soraka's HP costs eradicate most incentives with building heavy AP, seeing as she'll often be sitting at 50% to 33% of her max HP where other innately squishy supports like Sona, Nami, and Janna will be at 100% HP. Even with tripling her defenses through itemization: Soraka is still going to be somewhat frail, especially played as a support and 1 item behind everyone else.

Abyssphere4/19/2016, 4:35:08 AM1 votes

Soraka isn't a solo laner, she's not supposed to get major gold access and she's not supposed to buy AP with the gold she does manage to scrape together. Cutting bases and boosting ratios wouldn't be a nerf to tank Raka and boost to AP support Raka, it'd just gut her across the board. And if you make her AP ratios rewarding enough to make up for the base nerfs then she'll go mid/top instead.