How to make Soraka a pure healing support
Hello everyone. First of all, I'm not English-speaking and I'm sure there will be many mistakes in this post and I apologize if I ravage your language. Then, I'd like to present to you a concept I thought about for Soraka's rework. A concept that would make her a real duolaner and great asset in team fights.
Some problem we had with Soraka were her capacity to be played anywhere, spamming her Q for high amount of damage and her W being really too simple to use, without any risk. Thus, I decided to change her to make her heal capacities and Starcall more useful when in presence of more enemies, but also making it more risky to use. I found some concepts that I thought were interesting and I decided to mix them.
|Spell|Specifications|Effects|Commentaries |- |Astral Heart|passive|The most wounded friendly champion in 400 range from Soraka's spells friendly targets is healed for 2(lvl 1)/3(lvl 7)/4(lvl 13)% of his missing health. Soraka and the targets can benefit from this passive.|This passive supersedes Salvation by offering an auxiliary heal power that allows Soraka to: 1° heal multiple targets with Volition or enhance the healing on a single target, 2° heal with Devotion, 3° modularize the power of Wish, 4° feel more useful when healing a tank. |Starcall|known level 1, 6 ranks, range: 250, cost: 20/30/35/40/45/50 mana, static cooldown: 5/4/3.5/3/2.5/2)|Soraka summons a shower of stars in a 500 circle, dealing 0/15/25/35/45/55 (+0.15 AP). Champions hit by Starcall get a stack of Astral Mark (up to 4 stacks), refreshing its duration. When a mark detonates via Volition or Devotion, it deals the same damage again. After 10 sec, all stacks are consumed, dealing no damage. The marks can detonate regardless of the distance.|By making Starcall known at start, I offer Soraka to use the Astral Mark debuff with one of the two other spells, although it doesn't do any damage. Soraka can now play aggressively but needs to use other spells to get results from Starcall such as better heal/buffs/debuffs and longer CC. |Volition|range: 750, cost: 80/100/120/140/160 mana, cooldown: 15|Soraka binds to a friendly unit or herself for 4 seconds, dealing herself 20/35/50/65/80 (+0.15 AP) per second and healing the target for the same amount. An Astral Mark detonates on every marked champion each second, healing Soraka and her target for 4/7/10/13/16 (+0.03 AP) per detonated mark. Soraka can move freely but cannot use abilities. The bond is interrupted if Soraka's health should reach 0 or she activates Volition again. Astral Heart is applied every second.|Soraka's healing ability is not instantaneous anymore and now she has to put herself in a dangerous situation to heal. She can either heal without marks but it won't be very effective and will lose a lot of health OR she can try to place her marks but it requires playing aggressive. However, don't forget that you can benefit the passive while you deal yourself the damage, or let your ally benefit from it, making the spell always effective, even without Starcall although it will still hurt you a lot. Plus, in the best scenario, if she places 4 marks on every 5 enemies, the spell will cost no health and will be twice as effective! |Devotion|range: 725, cost: 50 mana, cooldown: 10|On enemy cast: Soraka reduces the target's armor by 12/18/24/30/36 and deals 40/70/100/130/160(+0.4% AP) magic damage. All the target's marks detonate, rooting the target 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 second and reducing his magic resist by 4/5/6/7/8 per mark. On ally cast: Soraka transfuses 40/50/60/70/80 of her armor to her target for 3 seconds. A mark detonates on every champion, giving 12/15/18/21/24 bonus armor to Soraka and 8/10/12/14/16 bonus magic resist to her target for 3 seconds.|Devotion is a good way to get a small unexpected poke on a highly marked champion and a good CC Soraka never had before. The ally cast part is quite similar to that of Volition: it transfers Soraka's stats to him; every champion marked improving the effect on the target while mitigating the effect on Soraka. But since armor reduction is more powerful than bonus armor, the armor drain per mark equals 30% (instead of 20%) of the given amount to mitigate more efficiently. Remember that Astral Heart allies only on ally cast. |Wish|range: global, cost: 100 mana, cooldown: 160/145/130|Soraka instantly heals all friendly champions for 150/250/350 (+ 0.55 AP).|Everyone seemed happy with Wish as it was, thus I didn't change it even if it will be used differently because of Astral Heart.
This was the first version of the kit when I posted it:
Salvation: (passive) The most wounded allied champion in 300 range from Soraka's Astral Blessing and Wish targets is healed for 2(lvl 1)/3.5*(lvl 7)/5(lvl 13)*% of his missing health per second for 3 seconds. The passive stacks in duration only. Soraka and the targets can benefit from this passive.
I created this passive with the goal of making a support that can actually REGEN his teammate, instead of simply instantly heal them.
Starcall: (known lvl 1, 6 ranks, range: 250, cost: 20/30/40/50/60/70 mana, static cooldown: 5/4/3.5/3/2.5/2) Soraka summons a shower of stars in a 500 circle, dealing 0/15/25/35/45/55 (+0.15 AP). Champions hit by Starcall get a stack of Astral Mark (up to 10 stacks), refreshing its duration. When a mark explodes with Astral Blessing or Wish, it deals the same damage again. After 10 sec, all stacks are consumed, dealing no damage.
Starcall is known level 1 to offer the possibility to use Astral Blessing correctly by marking the enemy, but it does almost no damage at all. Astral Blessing and Wish will benefit from how much champions will be hit by Starcall (which makes less damage than before). This "forces" Soraka to play where there are more champions (ie botlane). Plus, Starcall makes twice the damage to champions, making her less effective towards minions waves. To compensate, I made Starcall a ranged ability but since it can be really powerful if stacked enough, I made the cooldown static to avoid too great spamming.
Astral Blessing: (range: 750, cost: 80/100/120/140/160 mana, cooldown: 15) Soraka binds to an ally or herself for 4 seconds, dealing herself 20/35/50/65/80 (+0.15 AP) per second and healing the target for the same amount. An Astral Mark explodes on every marked champion each second, Soraka is dealt 20% less damage and target is healed 20% more per mark exploded. Soraka can move freely but cannot use abilities. The tether is interrupted if Soraka's health should go below 1 or she activates Astral Blessing again. Salvation is activated at the beginning of the spell only.
With this changes, Soraka's Astral Blessing is not instantaneous anymore and that makes the ability less efficient but potentially more effective. But the great change is that she uses her OWN health to heal her teammate! This is what makes Soraka's healing ability really risky. The way for this to be the most efficient in lane phase is to use Starcall at least 4 times on the two enemy champions to reduce the amount of damage taken and to improve the heal. Don't forget that you can benefit the passive while you deal yourself the damage, or let your ally benefit from it, making the spell always effective, even without Starcall. The ability is clearly more useful in a duolane. And in team fights, if the enemy team is sufficiently packed, Astral Blessing could deal no damage to Soraka and the heal be twice as effective!
Infuse: (range: 725, cost: 50 mana, cooldown: 10) On enemy cast: Soraka interrupts channelling abilities, deals 40/70/100/130/160(+0.4% AP) magic damage and drains 2/4/6/8/10% (+1 per 50 AP) of target's current mana, adding it into a mana pool. (A crowd control could be useful here but I don't know what wouldn't be useless nor OP as shit, I thought about a possible blind) On ally cast: Soraka reduces target ally's abilities' cooldowns by 1 second. If the target uses mana, he is given all the mana in the mana pool.
The silence has been deleted in the same way as Kassadin's and the mana-scaling removed as well. What I like about this Infuse is that it introduce two concepts we never saw before: Draining enemy's mana and reducing ALLY's cooldowns. The idea of the mana pool is there to force Soraka to use Infuse offensively if you want it to be really useful on your ally.
Wish: (range: global, cost: 100 mana, cooldown: 160/145/130) Soraka instantly heals all allied champions for 100/175/250 (+ 0.6 AP). All Astral Marks explode simultaneously, increasing the amount of heal by 3% per mark consumed.
I read that everyone was happy with Wish, thus I didn't change it too much. But there are a few things to remember: First, it procs the passive, but since it will choose the most wounded ally, the placement is really important if you want to make sure that it procs on the right allies. Second, It removes all Astral Marks on the enemy team to create a small burst and improve the heal; this makes the ability useful in long team fights, when Astral Marks are stacked and all mates are low in health. Due to the passive and the Astral Mark buff, I reduced the base amount of heal. And by the way, since Karthus' ultimate could have a global phrase, I thought it would be fun for Soraka to have it too (maybe even one in response to Karthus' ultimate).
I'm open to critics, I clearly didn't think of many issues this rework idea could bring. It would already be a great honour for me to be read by the Rioters and know how they feel about it.
