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There is no way the nerfs to Soraka are balanced (LMFAO)

Illabethe·2/7/2020, 2:43:06 AM·5 votes·1,784 views

To Sum up:

Starcall (Q) Self heal lowered from [60/80/100/120/140 (+50% AP)] to [30/40/50/60/70 (+30% AP)] movement speed lowered from 15/20/25/30/35% to 15/17.5/20/22.5/25% Mana cost increased from 40/45/50/55/60 to 60/65/70/75/80 [Reverted] no longer does 60% damage to minions

Astral Infusion (W) heal increased from 80/110/140/170/200 to 80/115/150/185/220 mana cost lowered from 50/55/60/65/70 to 40/45/50/55/60 [New] Now notes "if cast while affected with Rejuvenation, Soraka will incur no Max Health cost"

#LMFAO

Seriously? Let me get this straight: Because a support goes top, and stagnates lanes vs melees and creates gank opportunities for junglers.....

SHE GETS HER Heal CUT IN HALF? LOSES 1/3 of her MOVEMENT SPEED BONUS (WHICH IS DELAYED)? GETS A 50% INCREASE IN MANA COST?

..... all for a CHANCE to get no HP sacrificed if she's under Rejuvenation?

WHAT?

Because Soraka totally ..... TOTALLY never gets dived and has to deal with chases where SHE is the one who needs healed...... not her allies.....

#This isn't just a small nerf. This is a Burial. (Right after they release two of the best skins ever designed for her)

She's a 50-51% Support. A huge part of her lane phase IS TAKING HITS AND POKING. This nerf is burying that function right after taking away all her post 1000g quest gold.

What could go wrong.

(I'm just going to start going Top Nami, Sona, Lulu, Janna, so they can all get nerfed into 45% champions too)

(Even Top Lane Taric didn't get this treatment, and he could both deny the lane, AND Get in 5-6 enhanced attacks per skirmish..... literally outdueling top laners)

[sg-ahri-3]

Has Riot never seen Soraka on Grievous Wounds? Rejuvenation almost does NOTHING AT ALL when it's half as powerful. Anyone can shred her without Grievous wounds with these numbers!

25 Comments

ProphetOfDraven2/7/2020, 8:49:10 AM5 votes

This honestly seems like an insane buff. If you hit your Q you get 5 seconds of free W's. With W maxed and with 30% cdr it has a 1.4 second cooldown. Meaning you can get 4 free W's off. Thats 40% of your health you wouldve lost. I understand it's a little bit less than 40% due to the self heal you are missing out on. Basically nerf to her laning phase and buff to her mid and late game.

Chembaron Yamada2/7/2020, 12:38:49 PM3 votes

Looking at these changes, it seems that she will continue to work well in the support role while they are removing top lane Soraka. If it pans out like that, then they exactly achieved what they wanted to with these changes.

Because Soraka totally ..... TOTALLY never gets dived and has to deal with chases where SHE is the one who needs healed...... not her allies.....

Isn't this supposed to be her primary counterplay, tho? That she gets focused? Her ability to keep an ally alive during a fight is great, makes sense that the best strategy to win a fight against a Soraka lane is to target her and burst her down first.

KFCeytron2/7/2020, 3:20:27 AM3 votes

Have you considered that making Soraka unable to duel her way through a dive on her own is an intentional design decision for what's ostensibly a heal-focused enchanter support?

Level 2 (the minimum to have both Q and W):

600 health
W cost: 60 health
Q nerf removes 30 base healing and 0.2 * 25 AP = 5, total 35
60 > 30

Level 18:

2000 health
W cost: 200 health
Q nerf removes 70 base healing and 0.2 * 500 AP = 100, total 170
200 > 170

If she's actually supporting someone, she comes out ahead. Also keep in mind that Rejuvenation lasts 5 seconds while W scales to a 2s base CD, so she can eventually cast two or three heals with no health cost after a single Q. Sure, you're healing for 170 less, but you also avoided damaging yourself for 600. Also note that while Q costs 20 more mana, W costs 10 less, so you break even at two casts of W during Rejuvenation. If you manage three, you save 10 mana compared to pre-nerf.

Posui Gart2/7/2020, 1:34:12 PM2 votes

SHE GETS HER Heal CUT IN HALF? heal increased from 80/110/140/170/200 to 80/115/150/185/220

Excuse me? Oh, you mean SELF-heal cut in half? This is compensated enough by no healthcost W during Q.

Because Soraka totally ..... TOTALLY never gets dived and has to deal with chases where SHE is the one who needs healed...... not her allies.....

And she gets dived and has to deal with chases BECAUSE she loses 10% maxhp per W. Losing 70+20% AP health per Q is nothing if I get to save 20% of my HP by casting 2 free Ws.

A huge part of her lane phase IS TAKING HITS AND POKING.

A heal support should not win lanes by taking hits and poking. I am glad all those Q-E builds will die, just how I was glad W max Janna was hard nerfed

Has Riot never seen Soraka on Grievous Wounds? Rejuvenation almost does NOTHING AT ALL when it's half as powerful. Anyone can shred her without Grievous wounds with these numbers!

I've seen what Soraka does on Grievous wounds. 200 hp W(plus some more from transferred heal over time) with 2 sec cd and 300+ hp ult. Sure anyone can shred her, she is a support that loses her own hp to do her job.

Salty Mc Feed2/7/2020, 7:36:13 AM2 votes

Honestly looks like they want to enforce W max to make sure she stays bot but the way they are doing this is very... ambitious...

[New] Now notes "if cast while affected with Rejuvenation, Soraka will incur no Max Health cost"

This is huge

Also W max heal buffed from 200 to 220

So the pattern is something like, if you hit your useless Q once (it is now pretty useless except for the slow + with higher mana cost almost 0 damage), you get to spam the buffed W that costs less mana with NO HEALTH COST. So that means W max and cdr rush. It's gonna be a much more reactive playstyle where you wait for your opponent (or your adc) to do something and use it to land Q, it's usually easier to hit Q if your opponents are going for an obvious engage/trade or are already committed and then you get rewarded by being able heal without health cost. Depending on how often you can press W during one Rejuv. this is a huge buff to Sorakas sustain in a duo, because for every W cast she would lose 10% of her max health.... the health she doesn't have to spend anymore will be much more than the Q self heal nerf. This also means tankier builds especially with items that give bonus health will be much much more viable on Soraka.

Tbh this is much smarter than giving Soraka the incentive to poke constantly. We have to keep in mind that Riot wants to keep her interactive, but making her too interactive turns her into a lane bully as we can see. On the other hand all enchanters are lane bullies by proxy, because they support their adc who then gets to bully you, but tbh that's just how backline supports work, you can't expect them to "fix" that.

Grievous Wound are still in the game so it's debatable if this will have any impact at all or if the damage nerf to Q is more impactful and make Soraka very weak.... it's really hard to tell because LoL players have this tendency of underestimating the levels of brokenness that Grievous Wounds items have been given by Riot and often they don't buy it because they don't care or whatever... idk.

The way Soraka is balanced is something like if you rush item 3123 she is trash and if you don't she just stomps you, really bad balancing tbh and it's really sad that this is still in the game and that Riot just can't be arsed to find a more fine tuned way to balance healers, BECAUSE they are so FKIN LAZY. Also whenever Soraka is perceived as strong people will pay more attention to their items and healing counters and if she is perceived as weak they might be less likely to do that.

This being said, the decision of your opponent to buy such an item is still 10 times more impactful than this change. At least Soraka can now W targets that are debuffed without losing health if she hits Q first. Using W on debuffed targets always felt really bad. 10% of your health for nothing. LOL

Overall I think it's gonna remove Soraka top and be a powershift for Soraka bot but might also turn out to be a huge buff to Soraka bot especially in low elo and for inexperienced Soraka players that never tried to play aggressive to begin with.

Also one last thing: no matter how her winrate will develop if this goes life, it's gonna be meaningless unless we also get "grievous wounds rates".

Worst JG Wins2/7/2020, 3:10:11 AM2 votes

Wait why are they buffing SUP Raka? She is OP to WTF

Ahri Baka2/7/2020, 6:32:42 AM1 votes

because top mains have always been cry babies when it comes to ranged top laners

DeathBurst2/7/2020, 1:17:05 PM1 votes

[New] Now notes "if cast while affected with Rejuvenation, Soraka will incur no Max Health cost"

That line is OP af. Even despite all the other nerfs, this line alone might make the overall package a net buff for support. And even if it's not an overall buff, it's at worse a slight nerf for support, not a "burial".

And it does kill Soraka top. Which I'm not entirely sure I agree with, because the real problem is the lack of agency for Top lane, and that was enabling Soraka to go there in the first place, she wasn't particularly OP, and this problem is still intact, even if she can't lane top anymore.

But for Raka support, it's fine.

Skia Asteri2/7/2020, 5:29:01 AM1 votes

{quoted}

(I'm just going to start going Top Nami, Sona, Lulu, Janna, so they can all get nerfed into 45% champions too)

I recommend starting by bring attention to how OP Bard is with the new build that has slowly been increasing in popularity over the last month or so item 3117 item 3742 item 3094 . It is higher win rate from the support role than Soraka is from top lane.

boricCentaur12/7/2020, 3:17:00 AM1 votes

Holy FUCK SHE'S DEAD WTF. Why not just make her q heal only when allies and make it deal 0 damage to minions.

There was much better ways of nerfing her then this.

The worst part is I already know these nerfs will never get revert when the actual reason soraka top works is gone.

Edit: missed the no hp cost on w if the q hits so she is less nerfed then I thought but sadly it's still big overall nerf.

Dewott6102/7/2020, 1:00:52 PM1 votes

It's good that they're pushing her out of toplane, certainly wasn't fun just eating so many low CD low mana Qs that you can't avoid always because of how big and fast it is, while also undoing any poke you do to her. Her toplane is pretty much spam Q and run if things get too dangerous which is boring and uninteractive. Then no matter if she somehow gets out bullied or camped by jg, she's still useful late game with heals and silence

Infamous Gray2/7/2020, 6:48:32 AM1 votes

I saw another post a few days ago suggesting they move the Rejuvenation from her Q to her W instead. As in you still proc the effects of Rejuvenation with her Q but it scales with her W instead so people would need to choose between damage and healing. https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/XIsEAlOX-idea-to-nerf-top-soraka-but-keep-support-soraka-viable

Grievous wounds is literally the bane of any champion that can heal others or themselves but a lot of people are "allergic" to buying an Executioner's Calling (800 gold), Bramble Vest (1000 gold), or Morellonomicon (3000 gold) if it means they can't build the same way every single game.

The Bad Touch2/7/2020, 6:10:14 AM1 votes

Honestly looks like a buff to me. I might have to play some Raka again.

Nyarlathοtep2/7/2020, 1:16:20 PM

They are a nerf to top and a buff to supp. Less power in her offensive shit and more power on her supporting shit. Period. Her q being overall weaker makes sense since she now can heal without sacrificing hp. As others have said, with max cdr (which you should have) she can pump out 4 or so w costing no hp whatsoever.

Funnily enough, i doubt it will push her out of top. The strength of soraka top isnt her ability to hold turret. But remain relevant no matter what and outscale most toplaners. These changes dont really address the problem.