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Changing heal mechanics won't help Soraka

Zero Skill Tank··2 votes·1,180 views

I just played against Soraka and had a thought: almost all her kit is about denying. Healing in MOBA game is only denying what enemy team is doing/has done. 4 of her abilities are centered about healing. Both parts of her passive are about making it harder to stop her from healing. Her only CC are silence and conditional root, they can be used to deny enemy abilities/movements, but it's really tricky to actually do something to harm enemies with that - it's not like they will get you killed. She does some damage, but it's tricky to get it to relevant levels.

Now compare it to another defensive support, Janna: She is mostly about protecting allies, but it is far easier for her to actually aggresive commitment to fights. She can set up kills with slow and knockup, she buffs damage, finally she can make some surprising "Janna insecs", even if that's rare.

I think that to become healthy champions again, Soraka needs some of her healing power traded for ability to actually do stuff.

16 Comments

Sluiceway2 votes

Riot needs to stop messing around and just revert Soraka already. It is the enemy team's job to kill me, not mine. Especially since she is going to be hated by the enemy either way, they can at least please us Soraka players.

BadmoonBC1 votes

{quoted}

Riot needs to stop messing around and just revert Soraka already. It is the enemy team's job to kill me, not mine. Especially since she is going to be hated by the enemy either way, they can at least please us Soraka players.

I thought the new changes to her kit make her even stronger, did I miss something?

Sluiceway1 votes

They did not make her stronger, just forced her out of solo lanes and forced her to build massive health regen to be relevant where the old Soraka thrived in extended team fights, being able to fuel herself and her team with health and mana while standing in the front line (the way I built her, at leastitem 3040 item 3116 item 3110 item 3065 item 3026). Now she has to hide in the back line and stack health regen, which is one of the things people call "low interaction" about her, or risk being easily executed after a few heals, which are larger now than they were before to make up for the fact that she can only heal for a short duration before going under the minimum hp level.

In short, she used to be a sustain healer (and mana battery) and she is a burst healer now. And the pbe changes will even more firmly cement Soraka as a back line champion, as she will get additional move speed away from enemy champions after landing Starcall (with its nerfed self heal), essentially forcing her into a hit and run play style (which will start a new round of complaints about her low interaction from opponents and annoy Soraka players in one move). The old kit was much healthier for everyone as she was more exposed from having to stand in the front line to land multiple aoe Starcalls and having to make the choice between donating mana to an ally or silencing an enemy. In other words, she was more interactive in teamfights before, and only seen as a problem because she was a safe laner who could avoid assassination if played well, thereby stopping the snowballing assassins depend on (especially AD assassins, since her heal also gave armor). But playing safe and keeping assassins in check does not make for LCS big plays, so she was nerf reworked into a easy target for executes, then Adrian and Immortals found a way to make her useful, so it is back onto the nerf list for her.

At this point, Riot has made it clear that they don't want her to see play, and I would rather they just delete her than continually gut her.

BadmoonBC1 votes

{quoted}

They did not make her stronger, just forced her out of solo lanes and forced her to build massive health regen to be relevant where the old Soraka thrived in extended team fights, being able to fuel herself and her team with health and mana while standing in the front line (the way I built her, at leastitem 3040 item 3116 item 3110 item 3065 item 3026). Now she has to hide in the back line and stack health regen, which is one of the things people call "low interaction" about her, or risk being easily executed after a few heals, which are larger now than they were before to make up for the fact that she can only heal for a short duration before going under the minimum hp level.

In short, she used to be a sustain healer (and mana battery) and she is a burst healer now. And the pbe changes will even more firmly cement Soraka as a back line champion, as she will get additional move speed away from enemy champions after landing Starcall (with its nerfed self heal), essentially forcing her into a hit and run play style. The old kit was much healthier for everyone as she was more exposed from having to stand in the front line to land multiple aoe Starcalls and having to make the choice between donating mana to an ally or silencing an enemy. In other words, she was more interactive in teamfights before, and only seen as a problem because she was a safe laner who could avoid assassination if played well, thereby stopping the snowballing assassins depend on (especially AD assassins, since her heal also gave armor). But playing safe and keeping assassins in check does not make for LCS big plays, so she was nerf reworked into a easy target, then Adrian and Immortals found a way to make her useful, so it is back onto the nerf list for her.

At this point, Riot has made it clear that they don't want her to see play, and I would rather they just delete her than continually gut her.

So you think she will disappear from competitive now? She's got like a 6-1 record in lcs this season. I personally love watching soraka games because it reminds me of an mmorpg where you have a healer on each side and most people try to kill the healer first. I'll be so sad if these changes make her crap again

Sluiceway1 votes

Probably, I have seen champions fall out of favor for lesser changes, such as when they changed Draven's passive from Bleed Damage to Adoration Stacks and he was replaced by Twitch within a week. I think this was back in season 3 or 4.

Quepha1 votes

{quoted}

Riot needs to stop messing around and just revert Soraka already. It is the enemy team's job to kill me, not mine. Especially since she is going to be hated by the enemy either way, they can at least please us Soraka players.

There is no worse decision they could make than bringing back Soraka's old, garbage kit.

Itadaki Seieki1 votes

It's not her healing; It's how much she can heal in a short amount of time. Look at her CDs compared to every other " Support " based healer.

Here is the list; NOT ACCOUNT WINDSPEAKERS.

Bard's W: MINIMUM HEAL: 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 (+ 30% AP) 」That adds 20/30 if charged. CD? COOLDOWN: 12

Taric's Q: 「 HEAL: 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 (+ 30% AP) (+ 5% bonus health) 」 CD? COOLDOWN: 18 / 17 / 16 / 15 / 14 ; WITHOUT PASSIVE

Alistar's E: SELF HEAL: 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+ 20% AP) ; Which, is halved for other players but reduced by minion kills. Innate. CD? COOLDOWN: 16, again, without innate passive.

Sona's W: MINIMUM HEAL: 30 / 50 / 70 / 90 / 110 (+ 20% AP) 」 CD? COOLDOWN: 12

Just adding Kayle's here, since I do play her as a support: HEAL: 60 / 105 / 150 / 195 / 240 (+ 45% AP) CD? COOLDOWN: 15

Nami's W: HEAL: 65 / 95 / 125 / 155 / 185 (+ 30% AP) CD? COOLDOWN: 10

Nidalee's E: HEAL: 45 / 85 / 125 / 165 / 205 (+ 50% AP) CD? COOLDOWN: 12

Now let's see Soraka's W: HEAL: 120 / 150 / 180 / 210 / 240 (+ 60% AP) CD? COOLDOWN: 4 / 3.5 / 3 / 2.5 / 2

This is accounting: NO RUNES/NO CDR. NO WINDSPEAKERS; JUST BASE STATS.

The problem lies in her scalings and outrageously low CD that benefit a REALLY OVERTUNED heal early game, with the addition of Windspeaker's Blessing.

Tact on she has a self-heal, a silence, and a slow; It's not the mechanics that need changing.

Mandang01 votes

Healing isn't denying damage any more than damage is denying healing, they're 2 sides of the same coin. I could just as easily say that CC denies action or that death denies the ability to deal damage... this "deny" argument needs to stop, seriously.

On top of this, heals do nothing when targets are at full HP, which is the big difference between healing and damage - healing NEEDS to be reactive. Now, I'm not saying every implementation of healing is balanced, (you need to look at the numbers to figure that out) but they're not all bad design simply because they make health bars go up rather than down.

Lastly, for people personally struggling with Soraka: bring AOE damage. I know it's a pain because mages are sorta weak right now, but Soraka's non-ult heals are single-target and she needs to get within a decently-short range to cast them. It's very difficult for a Soraka to heal multiple targets.

Itadaki Seieki1 votes

{quoted} Now, I'm not saying every implementation of healing is balanced, (you need to look at the numbers to figure that out) but they're not all bad design simply because they make health bars go up rather than down.

I listed the CD's and heal values of all support healers a bit further up, you can see the balance there.

Mandang02 votes

That's Soraka's strong suit - she SHOULD outheal other healers.

If you really want to get into it, I'm sure I can make Soraka look bad in a comparison of **literally anything else **against that pool of champions. It would be like arguing Kogmaw needs an attack speed nerf because he attacks faster than every other ADC - sure, it might make him more balanced, but once you remove that, he's got nothing left.

Itadaki Seieki1 votes

{quoted}

That's Soraka's strong suit - she SHOULD outheal other healers.

If you really want to get into it, I'm sure I can make Soraka look bad in a comparison of **literally anything else **against that pool of champions. It would be like arguing Kogmaw needs an attack speed nerf because he attacks faster than every other ADC - sure, it might make him more balanced, but once you remove that, he's got nothing left.

She SHOULD outheal other healers, yes. The issue is she can outheal other healers twice, if not triple before the enemy's heal is back up.

Compare her heal to Tarics, yeah? Let's say it's Ezreal Soraka vs Corki Taric.

Ezreal, being innately a poke champion, keeps Taric from using his passive to reduce the CD on his heal.

Bottom gets a gank, Ezreal is low, Corki is low.

Ezreal gets healed to full in about 3 heals which is 16 seconds, give or take CDR + Windspeakers.

Corki, having Taric running Bond of Stone ( Most likely, never seen a Taric go Windspeakers ) gets ONE heal, which isn't that strong unless he's maxing it in 18 seconds because Taric is afraid of dying to the poke Ezreal brings to the fight.

Yes, she SHOULD be outhealing enemy supports, but not to the point where she can full health her ADCs in the time it takes others to heal twice.

Mandang02 votes
  1. Taric's just in a bad place in general. Using Taric as a comparison is too easy.
  2. OK, let's compare Soraka's armor aura to Taric's: Oh, wow! Taric's is "twice, if not triple" Soraka's!
  3. Let's compare Taric's health costs to Soraka's: oh, wait... that's a mechanic that only Soraka has, for the specific purpose of counterweighting her healing strength.

Fact is, Soraka sucks at everything that isn't healing to such an extent that she NEEDS to be this good at healing. She's obviously not overpowered for it, and frustration is subjective (also, poke supports and harassment in lane have sucked for years now, not just recently since Soraka's been powerful).

Itadaki Seieki1 votes

{quoted}

  1. Taric's just in a bad place in general. Using Taric as a comparison is too easy.
  2. OK, let's compare Soraka's armor aura to Taric's: Oh, wow! Taric's is "twice, if not triple" Soraka's!
  3. Let's compare Taric's health costs to Soraka's: oh, wait... that's a mechanic that only Soraka has, for the specific purpose of counterweighting her healing strength.

Fact is, Soraka sucks at everything that isn't healing to such an extent that she NEEDS to be this good at healing. She's obviously not overpowered for it, and frustration is subjective (also, poke supports and harassment in lane have sucked for years now, not just recently since Soraka's been powerful).

Which raises the question; She doesn't suck at everything. >_>;

That's Janna's job, duh.

All in all I feel like the kit is just frustrating from someone who DOES play a poke support.

I main Bard, and it's an irk feeling when I have to be pushed out of my comfort zone JUST to compete against Soraka. If I can't play Bard, I play Thresh, and it's so bluh cause I hate all-in champions. I'd much rather play at the comfort of my own pick, but then be at a disadvantage because my Q poke early does shitall.

Linthe1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Bard and Soul,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=xtNbgx5H,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2016-03-03T16:42:51.084+0000)

Now, I'm not saying every implementation of healing is balanced, (you need to look at the numbers to figure that out) but they're not all bad design simply because they make health bars go up rather than down.

I listed the CD's and heal values of all support healers a bit further up, you can see the balance there.

Yes. Except none of them are as strictly healing as Raka. Nami and Sona for example have very nice poke.

Zero Skill Tank1 votes

Healing isn't denying damage any more than damage is denying healing, they're 2 sides of the same coin.

The difference is that out of two sides damaging and ccing each other, one will eventually win. Healing does not bring you closer to win, it makes it harder for enemies to win. Soraka lane most of the time won't do anything by itself, only waiting for gank or for when enemies underestimate Soraka's healing and overcommit to fight.

Other healing champions have weaker heal, but have ways to capitalize on HP advantage they achieve, like Ali or Sona. This makes for much better experience when playing against them.

Mandang01 votes

The people she heals will be doing the damaging and CCing, which DOES bring you closer to a win. A well-played Soraka lane will get advantages by forcing people out of lane, even without gank pressure. Of course, a lot of that is on the ADC to push damage, but they can afford to take more risks doing so because Soraka's heal offsets the damage they receive

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