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An idea for Soraka's Astral Blessing.

Timber owl·4/22/2014, 4:54:49 PM·6 votes·4,732 views

Since Riot wants healing to be more interactive, what if holding down W prolonged the healing effect on top of the initial burst heal, turning it into a sustained heal? The sustained portion draws on your own HP to prolong the heal. This fits with the theme of self-sacrifice in Soraka's lore, too.

For balance, engaging the sustained healing effect puts Soraka in a channeling state, so it allows for enemy interaction and the total healing done is more subject to gameplay. Also, it keeps her from spamming Q or silencing while the channel is engaged.

Another idea: What if this sustained heal, in establishing a link between her and her target, grants her the armor buff while it's active, as well? This way she isn't rapidly erased, while draining her own HP to heal her ally ADC, by the enemy ADC. It gives her time to react. And it kind of makes sense with the nature of the ability, anyway.

To me, the thought of holding W down for a sustained heal at the expense of your HP has a certain sense of commitment and sacrifice to it, because you are continually deciding to give your strength away for the sake of another, while watching your HP dwindle down. Opinions?

31 Comments

RiotMorello4/22/2014, 6:09:17 PM11 votes

I've always liked the "Infuse Healer" (probably the most balanced and interactive version of healing in GW1) a lot. The gameplay is apparent there, though it is a tough character to play well with a lot of opportunity for failure.

I like the mechanic, I wonder if Soraka players would like it?

RiotVesh4/22/2014, 8:51:52 PM5 votes

My initial thoughts on this ability is that it would cause some weird decision making when it came to trades and positioning. With the bursty nature of bot lane right now, I don't want to accidentally incentivize Soraka players to drop their health to really low levels and end up dying/feeding when they are just trying to do what the kit tells them to do. This style of ability might also be hard for the player to understand when they have done a successful choice/cast. There are other ways that solve the sustain problem besides shifting health from one champion to another (ways to make the W just straight up better in combat and weaker in the sustain case).

That said, the idea of health sharing/selflessness is cool. I thought about trying out a damage link tether for awhile that shares damage the ally takes and gives some of it to Soraka. Not sure if she's the right character for this kind of ability though.

Vortex IV4/22/2014, 6:29:21 PM3 votes

Something that'd be better used on a fresh new champion imo. Riot needs to stop spending so much effort worrying over butchering supports.

ILoveTiramisu4/23/2014, 7:12:28 AM2 votes

I didn't like about channeling because, you need to spam Q. However, Heals for time stacks better with with passive and even with armor buffs.

I think another problem of Soraka is actually her Q mana costs at rank 5. 70 mana is too much.

SavagePenetrator4/24/2014, 1:59:55 AM1 votes

I actually like this idea alot, as long as it were interruptable like a kat ult it sounds like a good risk to reward scenario

BearsAreScary4/22/2014, 8:56:56 PM1 votes

I think this kind of change would make Soraka more interesting and powerful, but I think it could easily be abused. It's a really neat idea, but in practice I think it would simply be very frustrating to play against and, more importantly, take Soraka back into the territory of being a "life and mana battery" instead of someone with combat casting presence.

Allowing her to heal significantly more than she currently does (regardless of her Q strength, which I think is in a good place as a support) will make her optimal play shift more towards building tremendous amounts of hp and mana regen. Currently, a Soraka support has decent heal and infuse numbers, but used on an ally they are low enough that she must always do the dance of "do I sit back and heal - or do I poke and fight?".

Playing Soraka, you're always forced to make awkward choices if you want to play passively - wasting the armor buff on W, asking yourself if you should try to poke with Q so you can reduce your W cooldown, choosing to use E on an ally or enemy - and that's good. S2 super-passive Soraka was undoubtedly really strong, but also bad for gameplay as a whole (and honestly just made her unsatisfying to play).

So creating the choice between a "combat Soraka who trades off stats for other stats" and "passive Soraka who sits back and pumps allies full of power juice" is definitely a good direction, which is why I like your idea :). My argument is just that when players are faced with this choice, regardless of power, I think that 90% of the time higher level players are going to go with the passive option simply because of how strong it is to give HP to allies. Lost a trade and at 200 hp while Soraka was at fountain? She'll show up and donate a bunch of it back to you so you're good to go.

Suggestion: Maybe add on a requirement to this "infusion" heal where she must be in combat? Engaged in combat in the last X seconds, have at least one Starcall stack, be in proximity of an enemy champion? I know these aren't the best solutions, but adding some kind of combat requirement for this channneled heal will help prevent it from being abused.

TL;DR Soraka's heal/infuse are low enough that she is forced to be a combat mage in lane, buffing her ability to heal will make spamming regen and playing super passively a "better" way to play her (which makes her boring). Maybe add some kind of combat requirement? Good idea though!

Radix Zero4/24/2014, 1:36:03 AM1 votes

This would be a interesting mechanic on a new champion. If you were to rework Soraka kit to work around this heal then she just wouldn't be the same champion anymore. Karma anyone? After reading this suggestion my first thought was why would I pick Soraka as a healer over Nami? With Nami I would get the heal as a burst and it would free me up to use my other abilities to help my team, it wouldn't leave me standing still in the middle of a team fight like a raw steak in the middle of a lion pit.

Also if the heal costs my health to cast, would it also cost mana? If it cost mana, how much different is converting my mana to your health vs my health to your health?

Does the heal have a set channel duration? Or can I cast it for as long as I have health?

Is my gameplay interaction going to be silence one person, hit starcall, and then hold down 'W' until the end of the fight?

Papy Mougeot4/22/2014, 5:11:15 PM1 votes

That's not a bad idea, that doesn't solve the problem imo but it's a good start.