Soraka is one of the MOST boring champions to play against

DropFill·Apr 23, 2016·44 votes·4,345 views

She promotes nothing but passive play , and most of the times is hard to punish because, well, she can heal the hell out of her adc easily. Seems like she has no mana cost.

70 Comments

ForgottenLuckApr 23, 201629 votes

And yet I would rather face a raka more than a yas, zed or fizz

TotalJerkApr 24, 20164 votes

Soraka is probably the best support in the game, right now. If you want to actually win you don't want to face her.

ForgottenLuckApr 24, 20162 votes

I would say it depend's on team since Raka can't carry alone, at least not that I have seen so, but never mind that, this post is not about win percentage or OPness it's about the fun in the game and I really love mid lane but anytime I see a Yas or Zed they instantly destroy any chance of fun I have in the game yet I have never felt like that with a raka I enjoy playing vs her anytime

TotalJerkApr 24, 20161 votes

Sure she isn't going to be the one doing all the damage, but in terms of impact, hers is a lot bigger than people notice. You know, right now she is tied with Galio top for the highest winrate? And unlike Galio she's also a common pick for her role. Her win rate is actually higher than Janna's, now.

ForgottenLuckApr 24, 20161 votes

Ohh I agree about her lack of dmg yet big impact but in a team game she lack's the ability to carry if the team in itself is not that good, but once again we are not talking about balance, win percentages or any of that we are talking simply about what's fun, and believe me not once has a raka made me so mad at the game to the point where I never want to lane vs one or even simply play vs one, she has never forced me to leave a beloved lane or play a champion that i did not want to, she has not made me question leaving this game since it started getting annoying to face some of these champ's, unlike Zed and Yasuo and for that is why I will never see eye to eye with the person of this post. And I wish winrate, banrate and losses, decreed how balance work's in this game but Riot has stated that it does not so point kinda invalid whether we want it or not.

Theiki KayleApr 24, 20161 votes

She's the best if her ADC is decent and can peel. Trust me, you don't want Soraka with a Jhin when the enemy team has Volibear or Garen or anything that can run at you. I've played a lot of Soraka, and there have been so many games where I just wish I was Morgana and could snare that fed bear or Demacian running at me.

Soraka's insane in the right team comp, but she's terrible to blind pick.

TotalJerkApr 24, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=My Flare Lady,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=r7aaYlYe,comment-id=000b00010001,timestamp=2016-04-24T14:39:27.778+0000)

the enemy team has Volibear or Garen or anything that can run at you

Soraka's recent changes make it impossible for anything without a gap closer to catch her. She has a 30-50% slow every 2.75-5 seconds depending on CDR that gives her a 15% speed boost for 4 seconds. She has become among the best kiters in the game.

DrehirthApr 24, 20164 votes

Agree so much. Besides your support should have much more roam potential because soraka can't set up kills easily in the 2v1. If your ADC has waveclear it's free roams and I say this as ADC main I don't mind soraka at all

Morgy MorgyApr 23, 201614 votes

TahmKench you wanted to poke? lol. seriously, there's no fun to be had laning against tahm fuckboy.

Athenes LuluApr 24, 20162 votes

mmmmmm I love them permaslows

Seriously though, you don't want to face a decent one.

disregardableApr 23, 201610 votes

The reason it seems like she has no mana cost is that she'll usually run out of health before mana. Once she gets a warmogs and her health cost is instantly regen'd, then she runs out of mana. :D

DropFillApr 23, 20164 votes

{quoted}

The reason it seems like she has no mana cost is that she'll usually run out of health before mana. Once she gets a warmogs, then she runs out of mana. :D

If she hits her Q which is not hard to do early on, she gets pleanty of health.

disregardableApr 23, 20165 votes

Not really. I only ever bother if my ADC and I are both below half health.

Duke AnaxApr 23, 20163 votes

That's really backwards.

That's when I stop using Q because it becomes too dangerous. In that situation I use up my heal and go B.

I spam Q beforehand for effective trades.

LankPantsApr 24, 20162 votes

If she hits her Q which is not hard to do early on, she gets pleanty of health.

"If she plays well she'll do well". I'm gonna go with working as intended.

Lady HammerlockApr 24, 20161 votes

{quoted}

If she hits her Q which is not hard to do early on, she gets pleanty of health.

don't get me started on the New athenes on the PBE that shit will be disgusting on her

TotalJerkApr 24, 20161 votes

Actually the reason it feels this way is that she is tied for the highest base mana regen in the game. I notice when I play Soraka it takes her around 10-15 seconds to totally recoup the mana cost of Q.

disregardableApr 24, 20161 votes

That's not a short amount of time.

TotalJerkApr 24, 20161 votes

That's with no mana regen items, and it's far less than most champions. Once she actually buys mana regen the only thing that really ever depletes her pool is constant prolonged all in fights.

Nameless VoiceApr 23, 20168 votes

I feel that the rework to her Q, specifically the removal of the "sweet spot" was a really terrible mistake. That sweet spot was hard to hit, and caused an interesting little minigame where Soraka tried to land perfect Qs to hit someone in that sweet spot, while the enemy tried to avoid being hit by the sweet spot. Now, she can just spam it and doesn't really have to care about aiming it properly.

There's both much less opportunity for the Soraka player to show her skill, and for her opponents to use theirs to reduce her effectiveness.

Jungle Lux GodApr 23, 20163 votes

Good luck sweetspotting Q's against an opponent that moves faster than Eggnivia.

Personally, I'd rather Soraka be able to spam Q's than have to aim them perfectly because it at least means I can engage on her when she tried to poke. If she can't land the sweetspot consistently (and no Soraka except maybe her dedicated mains can land the sweetspot consistently) then she has no reason to use her Q, and if she has no reason to use her Q then her optimal strategy is to buy massive amounts of health regeneration to offset her W's healing cost and do nothing but heal all laning phase. That's even less fun than a Soraka that spams Q all game.

BârdApr 24, 20162 votes

I landed it rather often.

Then again, I played Soraka as an AD toplaner, so I had no shortage point blank Q targets.

LSmaster16Apr 24, 20161 votes

Respect

crippler38Apr 24, 20161 votes

let me guess bard replaced her

BârdApr 24, 20161 votes

No, I play both.

AbyssphereApr 24, 20164 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=r7aaYlYe,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2016-04-23T16:59:38.374+0000)

I feel that the rework to her Q, specifically the removal of the "sweet spot" was a really terrible mistake. That sweet spot was hard to hit, and caused an interesting little minigame where Soraka tried to land perfect Qs to hit someone in that sweet spot, while the enemy tried to avoid being hit by the sweet spot. Now, she can just spam it and doesn't really have to care about aiming it properly.

There's both much less opportunity for the Soraka player to show her skill, and for her opponents to use theirs to reduce her effectiveness.

But no Soraka ever actually tried to hit the sweet spot because it was so harrd to hit and not actually worth the difficulty. A moderate slow wasn't worth trying for and the damage increase was irrelevant because her damage is meaningless regardless of using her abilities perfectly. For the enemy players it was much more important to avoid being hit by the Q full stop than to avoid being hit by the empowered Q because the most important thing to avoid was Soraka getting health back, not the damage or the potential slow.

The sweet spot was removed because it was too impractical a mechanic for Soraka players to actively care about it (why would you focus on such a difficult to use slow/mediocre damage amp when you have much more powerful abilities that are significantly easier to use?) and the power of the Q being hidden behind something so difficult to utilise meant that it became a completely ignorable move altogether. Soraka cares a lot more about her Q now because it's more powerful in ways you actually care about and you can actually access that power with some level of reliability.

When Q had the sweet spot mechanic, Soraka players never bothered trying to hit the opponent with it because it was just easier to sit back and avoid taking damage if you wanted to sustain yourself. It wasn't worth putting yourself in danger for a 10% (if not lower?) chance of a slow and a mild damage increase. Now that you know you'll get the slow and a boost to your healing off hitting Q, it's much easier to justify using it than it once was.

Nameless VoiceApr 24, 20161 votes

When I played Soraka, I always maxed Q first, and usually consistently bullied my opponents out of lane with it by hitting the sweet spot damage.

That felt like a much more healthy pattern than before. Good damage if you could hit it, decent sustain but not that godlike since heal was only maxed second.

But I suppose most people didn't play her like that. They just maxed heal and only used her Qs to get health back, rather than actually trying to damage her enemies.

Now I feel that her Q is just used as an extension to her healing, to make her heals stronger and keep herself healthy. It feels less like making a choice between poke and healing, and less skilled overall because the ability is much easier to land at full effectiveness.

AbyssphereApr 24, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=r7aaYlYe,comment-id=000400010000,timestamp=2016-04-24T13:09:00.016+0000)

When I played Soraka, I always maxed Q first, and usually consistently bullied my opponents out of lane with it by hitting the sweet spot damage.

That felt like a much more healthy pattern than before. Good damage if you could hit it, decent sustain but not that godlike since heal was only maxed second.

But I suppose most people didn't play her like that. They just maxed heal and only used her Qs to get health back, rather than actually trying to damage her enemies.

Now I feel that her Q is just used as an extension to her healing, to make her heals stronger and keep herself healthy. It feels less like making a choice between poke and healing, and less skilled overall because the ability is much easier to land at full effectiveness.

Unfortunately you are a major outlier in how you played Soraka. For the vast majority of her playerbase, maxing W first and using Q only when you wanted health back was the ideal way to play her laning phase. Speaking as someone who played her a decent amount just before and after the pre-season, I maxed W first exclusively for burst healing and had no interest whatsoever in poking the enemy out of lane - I could do that with significantly more ease with someone like Sona or Zyra.

Perhaps if they'd increased the sweet spot size and made her heal bigger if they hit the sweet spot, people would have been more willing to take advantage of her Q, but removing the sweet spot altogether and making the wider part of the skillshot more impactful was probably a more fool-proof solution.

Nameless VoiceApr 24, 20161 votes

The problem there was that both Soraka's self-heal and her ally-heal were both on W, so maxing W first gave you both sustain for yourself and your ally.

They shifted that around in her rework so that you need to max Q to get the self-healing required to refill your own health. That alone would have shifted her more towards needing to max Q first and use Q regularly.

With her current state, I'd like to see the sweet spot introduced, and both the healing and the damage of the spell changed to be lower for non-sweet-spot and higher for hitting the sweet spot.

manbearswineApr 24, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Nameless Voice,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=r7aaYlYe,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2016-04-23T16:59:38.374+0000)

I feel that the rework to her Q, specifically the removal of the "sweet spot" was a really terrible mistake. That sweet spot was hard to hit, and caused an interesting little minigame where Soraka tried to land perfect Qs to hit someone in that sweet spot, while the enemy tried to avoid being hit by the sweet spot. Now, she can just spam it and doesn't really have to care about aiming it properly.

There's both much less opportunity for the Soraka player to show her skill, and for her opponents to use theirs to reduce her effectiveness.

The Q rework was riot realizing that healers are cancer, and they moved soraka more in the direction of other supports, she has much more peel(and can easily make her silence last longer by slowing first then silencing) on top of more utility(can speedboost herself and allies if she lands q), with the intention of losing some of her healing to compensate(which she did, just not enough).

So yeah just gut her healing and move power to more conventional, less obnoxious strengths.

Krys StarApr 23, 20167 votes

Yeah? So is Ezreal, who you can never capitalize against unless he's a bad Ezreal, same with a bad Soraka. Yasuo, Zed and Blitzcrank are frustrating, anti-fun and stressful champions to play against. About 10% of the game's roster are antifun and frustrating to play against, in other games too. It happens.

Besides, she's getting a massive nerf next patch so be happy.

HowPlayGAEMApr 23, 20163 votes

[deleted]

Voluug13Apr 23, 20164 votes

The biggest counter to Soraka is lategame ADC and strong damage Mage as support.

You play the farm game, and then outscale them by 20min.

Vayne completly destroy them. Have Brand buy Morello's and you got yourself easy easy fights.

NineTailedMysticApr 23, 20161 votes

What does Morello do against her? The Grevious Wounds wouldn't affect her outside of ulting herself. Until the GW revert goes through though.

Voluug13Apr 24, 20161 votes

They are reverting GW to affect all healing next patch.

NineTailedMysticApr 24, 20161 votes

Until the GW revert goes through though.

Nameless VoiceApr 24, 20161 votes

It also affects her self-heal from landing her Q.

KrinuApr 23, 20162 votes

They're playing around with different ways to nerf her for next patch, since her win rate has crept up significantly since the mini-rework that promoted more interactivity. The problem isn't her healing output, either baseline or AP-scaling. It isn't her self-healing from her Q, the slow applied by her Q, or the tertiary effects applied by Ardent Censer or the upcoming Athene's Unholy grail.

The problem is Ancient Coin.

Fundamentally, she's balanced around her W's health costs. She has mana costs that prevent her from spamming without a care in the world, yes, but they're hardly prohibitive and they'll be even less of a factor after the MYMU and the new items get rolled out. As a result of being balanced around %maxHP health costs, she has a lot of somewhat unusual interaction with stats. She loathes bonus health, because it increases her costs without granting her anything significant in return, and she loves sources of regeneration and healing, because they directly reduce the windows of vulnerability she has to expose herself to in order to keep going.

It's that last part that's the key.

She's amazingly frustrating to play against because when you start to win lane against her - say you're good at dodging her Q - she isn't forced to keep toying with you. She just backs off, way out of poke range, and plays passively for half a minute and regains half of her health via passive regeneration and Ancient Coin's health return.

You want to see a far more fun lane opponent? Try playing against Soraka using FQC instead of Ancient Coin. She's rewarded for skirmishing, landing Q, harassing with E, and can't offset bad play (taking way more poke than she gives) by hanging back at tower and leeching health from dying minions.

We've seen the problem late game with Warmog's Armor. Aynthing that gives her massively increased health return breaks her risk/reward payoff structure. She's only balanced when her Q is her primary source of health restoration, and anything outside that will only make her frustrating and overpowered.

TL;DR: Soraka is balanced around Q regeneration and powerful item-based healing from Ancient Coin and Warmog's Armor causes problems.

WadeWilson1337Apr 23, 20162 votes

She actually maxes Q now. She is more interactive in lane now atleast, as she pokes you and permaslows you and has even more sustain than before and potentially more healing.

NecromagikApr 23, 20162 votes

Hate it when people cry "unfun" or "op" when they don't even try to counter her. All sustain champs counter poke (of course you can't poke her down in lane) but BURST and LOCKDOWN counters sustain.

Try Blitzcrank Leona Nautilus Thresh Annie and every assassin in the game and watch her insta-die.

GraphicVisualsApr 24, 20162 votes

Depends Blitzcrank

SeekerofSilenceApr 24, 20161 votes

As a Soraka main, there's several ways of countering her. Get a burst mage that can pop squishies easily without any ability for Soraka to sustain up/heal allies, get lock-down champions for botlane (Braum, Leona, Nautilus etc.) and go all in.

With Soraka you want to separate her from her adc. Try to position so she can't run in without risting major damage, a Soraka player with less experience will be a bot flustered by this.

She's fine, honestly. I think she was more enjoyable for me last season when everyone hated her and told me not tp pick her, only for me to hard carry games. Now people just sigh and shake their head at the banana queen being locked in. Much sadness...

Athenes LuluApr 24, 20161 votes

That's why she's still getting more nerfs, even though Riot hinted that GW will soon apply to ally healing too.

Reaper SorakaApr 24, 20161 votes

Her or her adc aren't targets you can wear down over time. Anything with a lot of burst or long engage does quite well against her (blitz, annie, braum, Nami, Leona, an experienced thresh.)

Same goes for her opposing adc. Draven, Quinn, Graves are all great picks. Something that can push out a lot of damage on a short amount of time.

QuephaApr 24, 20161 votes

{quoted}

She promotes nothing but passive play

She's complete garbage if she isn't landing Q's and she has to get pretty close to reliably land it.

option paralysisApr 24, 20161 votes

The problem is her W. They give a champion 1 second heal and then try to balance her around it. It has the hp cost, but that creates the boring playstyle and the one that everybody hates mid/late. IMO, they should rework her again, because with the current kit, she's gonna get banned for a long time. Well, maybe less with the grievous change but I still think she needs another rework.

LankPantsApr 24, 20161 votes

Personally I don't really care if Raka makes the game more passive, she does it in a way that feels pretty fair to me. She's never felt like Tahm who's just "fuck you, you can't kill anything. She puts herself at risk and you can still burst past her heals.

Photos of GhostsApr 24, 20161 votes

What?

Easy to punish: you delete her.
Try to play her and tell me 'bout mana costs.

PokladnicaZlaApr 24, 20161 votes

I rather face Soraka than one Blitz Q and gg.

It's true that she forces somekind of play-pattern,but why shouldn't she? If you play against a Leona,Blitz,Thresh you play passive aswell,but complain when you have them on your side.Soraka should be the that allows weak early game ADCs to actually surivive and be able to reach their late game fantasy.

Moulin RougeApr 24, 20161 votes

I would rather deal with Soraka than Blitz.

Soraka doesn't auto zone you.

Soraka doesn't make you pray to the elo gods that your bot lane partner isn't bad enough to get hooked in lane and give them a gold lead

Soraka doesn't win games with one lucky grab

yeah, she makes the lane boring because she denies aggression. But that's only if you're playing a lane bully that needs to get fed. Any ADC worth playing will just sit back and farm and just scale into team fights.