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Soraka(2014) Needs To Be Looked At

Saint Valzy··5 votes·2,169 views

Why has Riot not addressed the problems with Soraka's new kit yet?

Support Soraka(Early):When Riot gameplay developers and Profesional players talked about Soraka during the 4:17 Rundown, they said that they wanted Soraka to be the League Healer and not a heal bot. This however was executed as poorly as possible. When Soraka heals an ally, she loses 10% of her HP and 30 mana. Not only does this cause Soraka to run out of mana early game, but it makes her a free kill to champions like Lucian,Twitch, and all other meta supports during the laning phase. She might keep the ADC alive, but she gives the enemy a free kill in every engage, while other supports such as thresh and Braum have easier ways of keeping their ADC alive while also keeping themselves out of harm.

Soraka Support(Late):Since Soraka uses her own HP to her allies, no matter how much HP or Defense you build, you will inevitably kill yourself. You could say Soraka is healing for good as her team can survive fights better. But when you put it into a practical perspective, Riot unintentionally made a champion that can't build defense. Heal an ally that gets caught out 10 times and then become a free reset for the enemy team's Katarina or Kha'Zix. Not really what you want to aim for as a support.

Leveling Soraka's W decreases the cooldown but only increases the healing by 10hp.Leveling her Q only makes the Q deal more damage rather then having it heal more. The person at Riot who made this Rework should be demoted from Champion Design to Champion Tester.

12 Comments

RoyceRollin1 votes

just start flask and pots and have a hyper scaling adc its op

Gareth Tankin1 votes

I've played about 50+ games as Soraka... her main strength is early laning, that and after she gets some ap (soulstealer, archangeals staff, zhonyas, exc.) If you're losing lane constantly, there's probably a few things going wrong.

(1) your adc doesn't know how to play with new Soraka. In allot of matchups he should be getting in fights and harrassing/zoning a ton in the early lvls (especially lvl 1) since Soraka's heal is utterly broke OP then. Soraka kinda needs the adc to take advantage of her great healing in lane or else she tends to slowly become worse and worse than the other support. (2) you should be running hp5 quints. There is never a reason not to. In allot of matchups you should start coin or 2*rej beads (20-25hp5 lvl 1) so you have utterly preposterous sustain. It lets you top off your adc fight after fight. (3) Equinox is a VERY skill dependent skill, you need to be able to lay it down very quick and accurately in allot of situations. Like on a thresh right after he hooks or flays so he can't fallow up, or in front of the adc so he can't fallow up a supports harrass/engage, or far enough in front of the enemy that it triggers the root when they run through it, exc. It is a very tough skill, wiffing it or casting it for no reason can end up costing you guys your lives. (4) You probably spam starcall. That's a big fat no no. The only way you OOM as Soraka is by using starcall way too much. In early laning you you should mainly rely on hp5 and pots for hp unless you're lane really needs more sustain so you level up the heal to rank 3~. Short of that it's mainly just a counter skill, like when the enemy tries to engage or poke when you can really use the extra dmg and chance at a snare. They will be closer and you can roughly guess where they will be going, so you should have a decent chance at a deadcenter shot. Unless you're stacking tear or just have above 70% mana. (5) you probably aren't building the right items. As a rule of thumb, build as much AP as you can get away with. AP is as good on Soraka as it is on a mid champ. I tend to rush an archangeal's staff or soulstealer if we don't seriously need the extra disengage from frostfang/coin. Tear ends up giving infinite mana after a bit, archangels gives massive ap, it gives a better version of hp (a shield). 120 ap is like 72 more health a cast or 30~% more healing + much better sustain from starcall. Ideal build order: coin -> tear -> sightstone -> archangels -> ionian treads -> zhonyas. I only start rej beads when I know the adc is good or we seriously need to get ahead early on or we lose lane, coin makes stacking tear much quicker.

Anyways, my main issue with her is that she is a snowballer. AP is so beneficial, she has such awkward/delayed disengage and is so bad at mitigating adc dmg that she is a snowballer. Either you get ahead and her healing stays utterly obnoxious, or the enemy adc gets items and kills you're allies faster (making her W worse) and Soraka doesn't get gold for ap (making her W even worse) and with her not being reliable at disengaging from fights so she can heal up the adc (making W even worse)... the enemy can just shove you out of lane hard. It makes her just an obnoxious toon all around.

Sunfield1 votes

New Soraka is great tho, 2 sec cd on her heal and thats without full cdr build. I can heal someone for over 1k hp in a matter of seconds. How could you not like that?

FakeGravity1 votes

i honestly think there are very little changes possible that wouldnt break soraka:

if you move the self heal to Q soraka becomes a mid-top laner maxing it first and been very hard to kill if you make the self heal be a % of her health then she can get away building tanky and become very hard to kill, but if you dont her allies are harder to kill too

i feel soraka can be very effective in lane but if you dont build AP her heals fall as the game progress since its cost get increase but her heals are no longer enough to safe ppl

Direwolfiez1 votes

Astral Infusion- PASSIVE: Each enemy champion hit by Starcall heals Soraka, increased by 1% for every 1% of Soraka's missing health.

If you had just read the skill description, you'd know that leveling her heal increases the amount of hp she gets from successfully landing a Q. If anything, her AoE spells make playing her even easier. Silencing an entire team before a teamfight isn't exactly useless. Is their Kat ulting? Silence her and her teammates coming in to finish you off. Kinda hard for her to AA your entire team to death. Throw down a Q directly behind it, and you'll get a ton of health back. People almost always back away from AoE spells and skillshots, they usually never go forward to avoid them.

BastionKross1 votes

Anyone else tried her in the mid or top lane yet? She reminds me of a Vlad where poking the enemy laner with Q also regains your health. If they try to trade, you just put down your silence and walk away, no one is going to willingly waltz into that AoE. And quite frankly, if you don't plan on using your W that much, there's nothing to stop her from building tanky. (Or AD) item 3065 ? Go ahead. item 3083 ? Right on. item 3022 ? Frozen banana smoothie, comin' right up.

Gareth Tankin1 votes

There kinda is something stopping you from building tanky... All Soraka really brings to a teamfight is her healing. If you build tanky... if you ignore AP... enemies can ignore you, you have no engage, super awkward CC, bad ally-healing, bad dmg.
You're only real use becomes baiting or hoping enemies are willing to bronze out and ignore your team and try to kill the bad version of trundle.

Direwolfiez1 votes

The rework killed Tankraka. Not really sad to see her go, she was pretty strong pre-rework.

BastionKross1 votes

An AoE slow and an AoE silence + root doesn't bring much to the table? That's insane. Do you know how infinitely easier it is to hit people in the middle of your Q when you're in melee range? It's practically instant. The base damage on her Q is also quite high, and the scaling is pretty decent for a sweet spot hit.

And healing? Why would you ever heal? You kill yourself when you heal, especially if you're throwing out heals every two seconds. More realistically you'll be healing once every 4-5 seconds with AP support Raka. That's a Sona with CDR, and she heals herself too. Another second or so and you run into Nami territory, who can heal multiple people and damage opponents with the same move.

Snakethrower1 votes

Sorry, but you're doing it wrong. You don't understand her concept. Staying back an healing only doesn't win your lane anymore. You have to aggressively poke. Her "heal" is no heal but a trade early on. Your life for your carrie's life. Ofc you loose if you rely on it.

Your Q is your most efficient spell. It punishes your enemiea for lasthitting and keeps you healthy. Just like a Vlad, Cassio mix.

Try to win your lane, not to hold it.

Rafnork1 votes

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/vXkNE3EN-terrible-terrible-terrible-give-us-back-soraka

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