Can we have a little rework on Soraka?
EDIT adding the entire reasoning for clarity:
Hi there,
What are the intentions that lead you to these modifications ? Designers don't change a champion because it "seems cool", but because it serves a purpose, an intention of design. I see you'd like to play around stacks, but this would need a lot of balancing on this healing beast that Soraka is. ^^
Thank you for your reply!
Right now I feel that soraka is between 2 extremes where both sides feel unsatisfactory (one being overbuffed and kind broken and the other being overnerfed and very sad)
She have a kit that allow her to easily win lane phase, what can lead her to an explosive early mid game start(what is overtunned) although it dies late game when gw pops.
Or she can not win lane phase and have a nullified mid and late (where her kit show its deep failures)
Soraka have 3 main utilities in her kit. 2 scale down extremely bad with one scaling up absurdly strong until it dies horribly because of gw.
Here is a list of the reasons her mid-late game feel bad:
1- Risks outweighs rewards.
Soraka have an 0.5 second casting time on all her skills. The implications of that are very simple, Soraka stay 0.5 more seconds in a high risk situation where other champion don't.
Soraka becomes a momentary target when she uses a skill is also a way of seeing how that affects her.
This means that a hard positioning play with a normal characters turns into an impossible play for Soraka mid late game.
Going in front of everybody to try landing an Starcall, for example, becomes suicide really quickly and using Starcall, even to get vision, become some kind of noob trap we learn quick to stop doing.
What leads to the second point
2- Starcall scale horrible mid late game.
At level 1 Starcall is honestly one of the strongest skills of the game, but on mid late game you simple can't use it anymore ( I'm not OK on how this balanced is shifted). Champions have enough mobility to avoid it, engage in you when you use it or just punish you for trying to use that when you expose yourself.
Even if you manage to land this suicidal skill shoot that have inconsistent landing times, mid late game rejuvenation is completely ignorable too. It scale absurdly bad and takes at least 1 entire full second to start regenerating you 24 health. We are talking about the phase where people can deal 2000 in 2 seconds.
Against any decent team, you either land it in a fight you are already winning or you try to land it and die without having any reward for landing it.
3- Equinox get lightly outclassed.
Although equinox is an amazing skill that combo really hard with a lot of stuff, soraka cant really make any play on her own using it mid late game.
People have tons of mobility to walk over it even If you land Starcall before. Even with rilay mid late game you just cant combo people. Also the entire Starcall + equinox thing take 1 full second of immobility to happen too.
I'm not saying it's a bad skill, but mid late game it works more like a cc combo to other characters than an core combo utility as it suppose to be.
Jhin for example have a W trap combo that remember what soraka have to do, but makes way more sense on him as uses a long range skill shoot to work.
this entire "win lane phase, explode mid phase, dies late game" thing just feel wrong and place holder to me. For sure this benefits soraka in this meta but don't mean it's enjoyable or that fits her.
If anything soraka should be an hyper support that have a not so good early game as a thresh have, a more skilled mid game than karma have and an hyper late game like how sona have.
My suggestion of mini rework would have those goals:
1-Make her utilities well defined and functional mid game winning or not.
Starcall falling like Xerath W with higher range and speed than live and higher cooldown. If you land it, rejuvenation is applied immediately and you get some cooldown reduction.
Basically a system where if you land its better than now and if you don't you face a big cooldown. Starcall become a good resource to get vision far but make soraka face a huge cooldown to balance using this way.
2-Allow her to scale extra hard late game specially after level 16.
Making rejuvenation scaling better is everything all soraka mains want. You can actually kill completely her Regen level 1 to tune down her lane phase, but allow her to stack rejuvenation if landing on more than 1 target. This with a better scaling ratio will make us feel we can peel ourselves better against non assassins.
3-Allow all her skills to decrease casting time as you level up
Self explanatory.
4- Make equinox a skill shoot.
As equinox is mainly used as a cc combo, it could be an skill shoot like jinx zap or Jhin W. This way it would still work fine as a cc combo but would offer more counter play and space to utility buffs mid game (like a slow for example).
Could be just like an Jhin w, but if If you land it a big equinox area is created.
5- make soraka gain gw penetration per level in her ultimate
Self explanatory
Riot already have a solution to make mages with high range interactive, they just need to auto attack to trigger something important early, I don't think why soraka would be different( aka xerath, Ziggs and lux).
Soraka could have a passive like garen armor gaining system that instead of increasing as he farms increase as soraka autoattack enemy champions affected by Starcall.
She starts with a 0 Regen rejuvenation and can increase the amount it regenerate by auto attacking enemy champions until a bonus cap of 20 for example. Sorakas that face risks during lane phase get rewards at the same time it offer space to engaging from the enemy team and reward who plays better.
I really love soraka and I really look forward for a modernization.
I'm sure that giving up a lot of early game trading potential and removing the reliability of equinox on lane phase would make soraka life way worst during the early stages of the game, but with the changes I said she would feel clean, skillful and useful. Much more satisfactory.
