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My opinion for why the soraka update was not a good change

Djsammit·9/27/2014, 10:28:01 PM·1 votes·829 views

With the new release of the Soraka rework I found myself in a situation similar to many others when playing against her. In my experience most people would consider her very strong and frustrating to play against currently (maybe not OP, but undeniably strong). So today I played her for myself for the first time since the rework and I thought I should comment here with a few of my remarks about her. I'll start with the good things:

Pros: Her passive helps her reach allies in desperate need of a support (this is something I think most supports should have in some form or another) Her Q is no longer a "press and win" skill. There is more risk/reward involved which allows for counterplay. I like the direction of the heal taking away her own health to give to others. This makes Soraka no longer the "no risk, high sustain" champ and forces her to choose when/who/how often to heal. Also, without the added armor buff it makes diving towers have a higher risk as they normally do and should. (nothing on her silence) Her ult didn't change much and I think it's in a good place.

Now for the cons which I will describe in a bit more detail. Salvation: With the instant ability to gain a significant speed boost to ANY ally in danger of dieing without cooldown, she can rely on high mobility champs on her team along with her new-found cc built into the rest of her kit. The reason this is a con is because in hard "all in" brawls, champs like ahri that can escape intense team fights very quickly can also then assist Soraka in escaping. Team fight breaks out, AP carry gets bursted but escapes, and Soraka quickly and effortlessly follows away for an escape (especially when combined with flash, this is like a free ghost built in!) With no cooldown or risk on this passive, Riot has basically grabbed jinx's ult and said "this is too difficult to proc", thus Salvation was created. Starcall: I think this skill was put in a good spot. Skill-reward ratios have always been something that I feel Riot could improve on with a few champs however, I think they executed this idea well with Starcall. Raising the cooldown and reworking it to a skill shot (with added effects on better accuracy) allows times for Starcall to seem like it's doing quite a bit and also times where it seems like well... the old star call (without the MR shread) Astral Infusion: This was one of my favorite changes about the rework (as explained in the pros). However, one thing that I think made Soraka shine before was the ability to sustain damage if a team decides to dive in on her (or to stall for her team to regroup). Removing the armor buff I think is good, but disabling the ability to heal herself does not make sense to me. Almost every support (and most other champs) who have sheilds, heals, health buffs (Lulu) or similar are able to use those abilities on themselves so why does it make sense that Soraka (the champion known for healing) cannot heal herself like the others. Now, if the enemy team jumps in on her, she will be quickly bursted down much like the role of an ADC especially with lower health/armor/MR. Other supports have a fighting chance to escape. Whether it be their natural tankiness (leona), high CC (Janna), burst (Annie), or sustain (old Soraka...) every support has something for themselves when faced with 5 scary enemies coming straight at them. Without Soraka's ability to heal herself, she's left in an awkward place between some cc and some burst but not shining in either category like the examples I gave above do. Equinox: I think this, over all other abilities, is the one that went in a completely wrong direction. When Soraka was first released, she was made as a champ that has the ability to sustain her team in fights. She can give them mana in clutch times for that last second dash and she can give them health to make an ally who appears to be close to death be, in actuality, very far from it. A champion like this seems to be all benefits, (what more does a team need than all the health/mana they want) however the one thing that balances a champ like this was the fact that she had ZERO crowd control. Meaning, unlike thresh she is NOT there to hold the enemy down or single out one opponent for the rest of your team to jump on. Now, Riot has taken away her ability to give mana and instead given her one of (in my opinion of course) the best crowd control abilities in the game. Not only can she silence an ENTIRE team if she places this "point and click" ability correctly but she then can hold that entire team down like an Amumu ULTIMATE. While you might argue that Amumu's ult is instant and larger, and Soraka's has a slight delay, Amumu doesn't add a silence and that, my friends, DOESN'T have a delay. This means, any champ that normally would be able to dodge a Janna torando, Amumu Q, blitz hook, Caitlyn ult, etc. with a dash, flash, jump, going invulnerable, etc is now silenced and has no way of doing so. They have to rely simply on walking out at their current speed. This means, if you get a AOE cc from any of your other team mates (Karthus wall) you are almost garunteed to land an "Amumu ult mimic" with a ~12 second CD without the added risk of being immersed into their entire team. This ALSO means that champs like Galio no longer become the champ Soraka "solely holds her silence" for but, instead waits for Galio to ult and then silences their whole TEAM allowing for Soraka's team to come out of a "game changing ultimate" already ahead of the enemy. I'm not saying giving Soraka a silence is OP, I'm saying giving her the one of the only aoe silences in the game COUPLED WITH a AOE ROOT is OP. The decision on Equinox's change actually is what changes the entire idea of Soraka being the "League's Heal/Sustain" support into a CC champ who ALSO can heal her team at the same time with a lot less risk than other champs with similar abilities.

Solution: Instead of going through each ability individually I will combine all my changes into a summary (because A) it would add more reading to an already TLDR post B) I do not think any direct solution to her abilities would be the "best" solution and C) it allows for much more discussion to just sum it up). As I already mentioned Soraka was released as a different type of support than all the rest in that she has low cc, low mobility, but one of the highest sustainability in the game. I don't understand why there was a need to change this. The slow on her Q is fine if the MR shread and armor buff is being removed, but the aoe silence into a root is too much. I think she needs to regain the ability to supply mana to her team and lose the ability to cc the entire enemy on her own. The direction of her heal is great in that there is a higher cost for her to heal her team AND in the fact that she can heal many of them more quickly but, her gaining health back on her Q is not how she should be able to heal herself. (One recommendation here) Maybe she should be able to heal herself, but in turn triple the cooldown (or more with the low CD it already has) and increase the mana cost so she cannot sustain herself and instantly return to healing her allies. <-- definite discussion piece... :P (this is also why I did not go into each ability with direct suggestions) All in all, I think there just needs to be a complete change to her Equinox (previously known as infuse) to allow Soraka to shine in a way no other champ does like she used to. Right now Soraka is one of the safest support picks because of her situational mobility, high cc, AND high sustain for her team. The way to not only balance her, but also keep her unique, is to remove the cc and increase the sustain like when she was originally released.

Final Disclosure: I am in no way absolutely correct on any (or maybe everything) I have said. I added this post as I am, even myself, looking for feedback on what the community thinks on her change (and because I apparently have way too much time on my hands on a Saturday afternoon...) So please, let me know what you think and any questions on what I have said, I will more than happily answer! :D

3 Comments

Soleka9/28/2014, 3:10:27 PM1 votes

hmm

her E is only effective CC if the enemy is stupid enough to stand in it long enough for it to go off. Otherwise it's just an AOE silence with a bit of damage. If you can get them with the E, it makes landing her Q so much easier. Otherwise your playing psychology on trying to figure out how the enemy is going to move so you can land the Q.

I find her new E is better then her old E which was a point and click adventure power. You had to get uncomfortably close to the enemy and click on them to silence them. Now with the way her E is, you have to decide where you want to place it, and what you are trying to achieve. For instance I have used her E to block the path of a champion. That little bit of Zig can be the difference between survival and death.

Eapenator9/28/2014, 5:57:23 PM1 votes

Honestly,

I really like the direction they took Soraka. She feels like a healer. She can make alot of impact in a fight. In fact, the best part of the rework is that fact that she can draw pressure to HERSELF in a team fight in a different way then any other champion in the game.

Other champions bring threat level through Damage, aka. that burly brusier his hurting your adc, your team needs to peel, or CC, where a champion can lock your carries down.

This method of threat has been done so much through every other champion in the game, that it makes the game stale in a way. Braum was one of the few champions that redefined drawing damage away from his team, without damage or much cc threat.

By sacrificing the amount of damage that braum can out put, riot instead gave Braum the ability to funnel damage into himself. You can argue yasuo also does this, but I think braum's ability is more balanced and much better for the game. Regardless, riot designed a new way to shift enemy damage towards a less favorable target.

Soraka does this now, except, she does it a different way. With the new soraka, she can literally keep one ally alive under intense focus fire, to the point where the enemy need to make the decision to either continue trying to kill that one person, and then get destroyed because of tunneling, or focus Soraka. This is intuitive game design because it forced the enemy to make the 'right decision', depending on the scenario, and this adds more depth into the game. Instead of just

"hurr durr, im killing your carries if you don't peel me off them" like most other champions in the game, its more, you can't kill my team if I am still alive. Soraka also brings something new compared to every other support in the game. With every other support, after they use their defining ability, usually their ultimate, their threat level instantly goes to the bottom, and they are ignored by the enemy team. Though wish is an important ability, soraka's new W can continue to keep making an impact depending on whoever is receiving focus fire. This is why I think the soraka rework was good

Currently, the new soraka is able to assist her team mates when they are positioned well (only thresh should be able to save champions who are caught in a very bad position). I think she shouldn't be able to heal herself because she needs to be vulnerable, otherwise she may honestly be too strong