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Stop pushing Alignment on Soraka, it does not make her laning more interactive!

Water Breathing·2/9/2016, 9:46:16 PM·20 votes·2,976 views

The AP ratios got buffed a little bit on this PBE patch, but the problem is that Alignment is a VERY bad gameplay experience for Soraka. I get that Soraka needs changes, but this is because of the preseason changes and item changes.

Let's be honest, Everyone complains about Soraka in lane - it's her biggest problem in my opinion. She is too safe in lane and non interactive. WHY?

  • Potions exist, making it easy to regain health back, masteries make this problem worse.
  • Ancient coin gives a deceptively large amount of sustain, this doubles with Nomad's
  • Soraka is naturally DISCOURAGED from doing anything because if she loses health, that means she can't heal. If she can't heal, she can't really do what she is good at.
  • Windspeaker's is a thing
  • GW no longer impacts all healing, making ignite less useful

Now, Alignment changes NONE OF THESE THINGS. All it does is make Soraka useless after laning, especially in team fights. Why does this not impact her laning?

  • Hitting Q always slows, makes it a little easier to defend against ganks
  • You're more likely to be able to hide and do nothing for 5 seconds while alignment heals you in lane
  • Potions are still a thing
  • Windspeaker's is still a thing
  • Ignite still useless against her
  • Ancient coin still provides sustain

Soraka is still gonna sit back behind her ADC and spam W, any Q she misses is moot because she can just pop a potion and wait for ancient coin to kick in. Her defense against ganks will improve slightly. Windspeaker's means her heals are still strong.

But, what Alignment does do though, is make Soraka very bad at team fighting later in the game, because Alignment has a bunch of flaws. What are they?

  • Alignment does not stack with each champion hit, the buff duration is 5 seconds, meanwhile at max rank the Q CD is 5 seconds. This means that with any sort of CDR using Q off CD to hurt someone (which is what these changes are trying to do, make her more interactive) means you aren't getting 2 full alignments, but like 1.3-1.5

  • In order to self heal, you need to stop healing. If you want to heal, you can't self heal. This punishes Soraka for doing her job, and it feels very bad for the person playing Soraka.

  • Transferring the buff is all nice and dandy at first glance until you realize you need to actually press W to transfer it over, which means you're spending all the health and mana you just got back from waiting 4.9 seconds to transfer it. Makes no sense.

  • The goal of the the change (make Soraka interactive) contradicts Alignment, because to get the full healing from alignment you need to wait and do nothing for 5 seconds while you heal, so you naturally hide behind your team while waiting.

  • Numbers are still terrible - 90/5 = 18 health per second, which is what most tanks have mid game, or basically any fighter with a Spirit Visage.

Do you really want to tweak Soraka? Wanna make lane Soraka less a pain in the ass? I have some ideas:

  • Make GW actually useful against her

  • Cut the regen on ancient coin and nomad's, increase it on the Talisman passive. Buff the mana regen if necessary.

  • Make her health regen only scale with her level, giving her compensation else where (ala Jhin passive)

  • Wish no longer heals Soraka herself, maybe buff the extra heal threshold to 45% if necessary.

  • Change Windspeaker's so that heals don't give the extra AR or MR, but keep it on Shields.

The Wish and GW ones I think will go in the right direction. GW will hammer lane Soraka down a lot, since it removes the "you can only hit Soraka to get anywhere" play pattern. A Thresh can bring ignite, hook ADC, pop ignite, and Soraka can't heal them out of it due the reduced heal value and the CD of rank 1-3 W being relatively high still. Want to piss Soraka off even more? Buy Executioner's Calling for 800 gold.

Riot has said they won't change GW back though, since it was a final gameplay decision. They felt that GW has a healer felt bad, which it kind of is, but what is worse in my opinion is_ Nerfing the champion anyway because of the decision you made_, so it really doesn't make sense.

In the very least, Alignment needs to STACK per champion hit, and her W cast when she has Alignment on her needs to be completely free of health and mana costs so she actually feels good about sending it over and makes landing Qs good.

49 Comments

Profirix2/9/2016, 10:24:29 PM11 votes

While I don't agree on many of your proposed balance suggestions, I do think that the current PBE iteration of Soraka basically removes her from viability. Alignment is basically a punishment for Soraka. It won't heal her enough to even do her job because 1) they majorly nerfed her heal without cutting the health cost 2) her self-heal is now ONLY based on Alignment, which has a cap at 90hp + a crap 0.4 ratio, and will never give her the sustain she needs even when you repeatedly land Q, 3) you have to level both Q and W together, which cuts her healing DRAMATICALLY early and mid game. She will be a support without a viable role if these changes go through.

I know she is a problem right now, but over-nerfing her back to the days when playing her was considered trolling is not the way to 'fix' her. These changes are just plain BAD. And I really hope this is just a first pass. Shes going to need some major tuning if Riot insists on pushing the heal over time mechanic. Not just for the ability to heal allies, but to heal herself! This practically screams 'buy Warmoggs' every game. At least with the old passive on W, if you landed Q on more than one champion, you were rewarded with a huge heal and allowed you to continue to heal allies. You get a maximum of 10 heals off before you have to base now because the reward for landing Q is atrocious.

HigeR2/9/2016, 9:57:57 PM7 votes

In order to self heal, you need to stop healing. If you want to heal, you can't self heal. This punishes Soraka for doing her job, and it feels very bad for the person playing Soraka.

This is what I think is the worst part of the rework :S maybe if they made it so alignment turned her heal into a half cost or even free cost spell...

As it stands right now, Soraka straight out kills herself, everything she does is going to hurt her and naturally her team.

Zero Skill Tank2/9/2016, 10:15:44 PM5 votes

Half of proposed "fixes" affects many other champions in pretty meaningful way. Wish nerf could make sense, but it is likely to make Sraka total sitting duck, overnerfing her.

After 6 years I think it is time for Rito to admit that this game has no good place for a dedicated healer.

Krinu2/9/2016, 11:07:54 PM5 votes

Soraka main here.

You've got an interesting mix of good ideas and awful ones.

  • Alignment granting a stack per enemy champion hit isn't just a good idea; it's essential. Soraka is already a middling late game champion due to the speed with which teamfights resolve, and removing her sustain's ability to scale with the increased target count in a teamfight would ensure that she has no place in any game that goes past 25 minutes.
  • Changing Wish to not heal Soraka would be a massive nerf. Why? Because she already the squishy "kill me first" target in fights; removing her burst Q heal and her ability to panic heal herself with Wish would guarantee that the assassins would just walk in, assassinate Soraka, and leave - because she has literally nothing to stop them.
  • You can't make GW work against her heals without removing her from the game. GW is too easily applied by Mortal Reminder, to the point where her entire kit would be rendered half as powerful by one member of the enemy team buying one item. Turning the game into a 4v5 by buying one item on one champion is about as far from healthy as you can get. Leave Grievous Wounds as what it is - a tool to stop sustain champions - and come up with a different way to slow her down if it's needed.
  • You have an interesting idea with the health regeneration bit. Making her not able to stack Warmog's / Spirit Visage and spam her heal from the backline until the cows come home has potential, and I think they could build on that. There are some kings to work out, but it definitely has potential.
ZephyrDrake2/9/2016, 11:47:47 PM5 votes

why do you want to nerf an entire mastery just because of Soraka? what about every other support that heals? why should they get a weaker mastery just because of Soraka? that's just stupid. Wish healing Soraka is not an issue at all, that's her Ult if you are only engaging her when she has her ult up then that's on you. Take advantage of her pre 6 and whenever her ult is on CD.

I have not seen a single Soraka build anything from the Coin line in this entire pre season, hell i have no seen a single coin item period. The set is already in a terrible spot why do you want to make it worst? Soraka already has one of the worst health regen (if not THE worst) in the game.

Making her be unable to benefit from health regen items is dumb... specially since she barely builds health regen to begin with (except ARAM but even then that wouldn't change at all). Soraka builds mostly resistances with some amount of HP and AP to it. She could care less about health regen

In order to make GW be useful on her it would need to be changed again to what it was and i would hurt every single other support as well

Penguin Eclipse2/9/2016, 10:19:27 PM4 votes

You are blaming everything but Soraka. Potions have always been and will always be a thing. The healing of Ancient Coin isn't a problem on any other champion. Windspeaker's hasn't broken any other champion in the game. And no one took GW bottom prior to the changes. Literally almost no one. No one had an item that included GW. Almost every champion that had GW had it removed. And almost no one took ignite. You guys can't keep blaming a mechanic that has no less impact now than it did previously. Especially since Wish cleansed GW. It was literally non-existent.

The problem is Soraka. And the problem existed prior to this season. Her banrate was soaring well into the teens at the end of last season. More than nearly every other support combined.

And almost all your solutions just circumvent the problem.

Changing GW wounds will negatively affect everyone, despite that no other healer in the game is broken.

Cutting regen on the ancient coin/nomad's significantly nerfs passive/defensive support's laning phase. Adding regen on the Talisman is worthless. No one cares about health regen out of the laning phase except for Garen and Mundo.

Nerfing windspeakers nerfs Nami, Sona, and Bard, none of which are broken.

She needs real changes. I'm not sure Riot is going the right direction. But they at least acknowledge that the real problem is Soraka.

Duke Anax2/9/2016, 11:57:20 PM2 votes

I said it before and i say it again: make Alignment stack.

Q stacks with every hit, W transfers one stack.

That solves a lot of the problems Alignment has and makes her really interactive.

Birefringence2/10/2016, 2:08:59 AM1 votes

The worst part is, rather than reward aggressive reactive heals during battle Riot chooses to focus on her being a passive lane sustainer. No matter how much number tuning Ricklessabandon does, Soraka's teamfight potential is basically gone because she will be a health potion that needs to back to get her health back every 30 seconds. The difference between Soraka is that her play pattern is torn between being effective in the heat of combat and being effective after a fight has ended.

 For example, Janna has nothing she can do after a fight has ended but has several options when a battle erupts. A good suggestion would be to give Soraka's heal the power to make a target invulnerable to damage in the same way that disruptive CC does such as when a thresh flays a target away to keep an enemy from damaging his carry. In this way Soraka will have to make the proper choice of who to use her heal on and when, while not being overbearing with her healing outside of combat such as in lane phase. I was thinking of making the heal a sort of buff (infusing the target with the energy of the stars) that when damage is taken it explodes healing the buffed target. A number of different things can be done with such a heal like giving an offensive buff like Janna's shield while the effect persists and gives Soraka clear and satisfying windows of power.

 Now that her heal does something more distinct and rewarding the cooldown and costs can be reevaluated and she can finally be the premier healer of LoL. People think healers can't work in this game but I disagree. The people who work on Soraka normally don't play her or outright hate healers. How can someone who hates healers make a healthy change to one? I hope one day Soraka will once again be the star child she is supposed to be bestowing her boons upon her allies instead of a self mutilating emotional wreck.
Saianna2/10/2016, 3:11:24 AM1 votes

Why does it feel like some reworks are made by total idiots? Someone you wouldn't entrust even the simpliest job, yet they get green light to rework a champion..?

I'm not saying that this rework is a failure, as I haven't played it yet.. But it does feel like an idiots masterpiece from notes

Old Man Teeto2/10/2016, 4:54:40 AM1 votes

Put Soraka into the bottom drawer under all the fan submitted lore suggestions and let it rot.

Best way to deal with the champion.

Nagoh Shan2/10/2016, 5:01:26 PM1 votes

I don't know, the change is interesting, but undertuned.

The problem is I don't know if there is a way to make Soraka feel good as a support, as strange as it sounds. She can be balanced, but that doesn't mean she'll ever feel good to be against. Maybe.

That's just the way healing is. Healing is negative DPS. That means that as a support if, she runs off base numbers, it feels impossible to do anything against her until you outscale. Once the DPS outscales her healing then it feels terrible to be the Soraka because her numbers are just not large enough to do anything.

Soraka is a traditional support, but a healer with traditional scalings should probably be a utility solo laner to allow for the scaling that balanced healing needs. That or they need to change her scaling method to something that is gold agnostic, but has interaction with the enemy. If it were done correctly, she wouldn't even need to pay health for casts. Something like:

Starcall:

Mana cost changed to: 80/75/70/65/60 from 70/75/80/85/90

Astral Infusion:

Passive changed to: Each enemy champion hit by Starcall grants 4 stacks of alignment. Astral infusion and Wish's effects are increased by the amount of Alignment Soraka has accumulated.

Active changed to: Soraka infuses target allied champion with celestial energy restoring 70/100/130/160/190 +1.0 Alignment health and 0(base) +.15 Alignment Mana. If Soraka uses this ability on herself, she restores .25 Alignment mana and .15 Alignment health (No base values).

Health cost removed

Wish:

Healing changed to 100/200/300 +1.0 Alignment from 150/250/350 +.55AP

Something like that.

Something that people can feel like they can avoid, keep her base effects reasonable in the face of DPS in the early/mid game, allow her a chance to scale into the monstrous team carrying beast that people hate, and give the enemy an opportunity to prevent that and outscale through appropriate play.

One thing that has to be understood, though, is that HPS is negative DPS, so it feels about as good when it's at the critical mass scaling, as DPS that just hit all their multiplicative scaling points.

The good/bad feeling shouldn't come from the healing or method used for healing. Just like the right click damage of carries isn't the satisfying part about playing against them. Rather satisfaction from playing against her should come from successful play around her Q and E. Soraka is rewarded with the increased heal an mana restore, while the enemies reward is being able to effectively dodge part of a point and click buff.

Maybe, or maybe healing can't be done right in this game and community. Unlikely, but so far hasn't been promising.

Meep Man2/10/2016, 7:04:35 PM1 votes

Its a nerf to Soraka that also adds another mechanic to her (mana restore). That seems ok to me.

Also, not sure if I would call it making her useless. Sure, the nerf could be buffed (?) but its a step in the right direction.