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SSS Soraka, Supports, and Sustain

Kid Freljord·4/20/2014, 10:58:05 PM·9 votes·18,893 views

They are a few champions with the ability to sustain ally champions such as; Nami's Ebb and Flow, Sona's Aria of Perseverance, Alistar's Triumphant Roar, and of course Soraka's Astral Blessing.

Each heal works in a different way;

Nami Ebb and Flow's power is divided into three parts, either Heal-Damage-Heal or Damage-Heal-Damage. In order to get your budget's worth of power you gotta position to get either two allies and one enemy, or two enemies and one ally

Sona Aria of Perseverance's power budget is mostly hidden in the resistances it grants a whole team, but in lane is used to heal very small amounts of health over a period of time. It's spammable and mana-hungry, yet doesn't outright erase damage.

Alistar Triumphant Roar heals everyone and their grandmother in the nearby area. It doesn't have much power alone and most of it goes to Ali himself, but it does heal minions, helping with pushing and denying some CS early game if you're lucky/smart.

Soraka Astral Blessing is a single target high-yield heal with a temporary armor buff. It's current power is offset by HIGH cooldowns and manacost

(Note that Sona's and Soraka's abilities are gated(cooldown and mana), where as Nami's and Alistar's abilities are power-conditional(Can't just use on an ally to get your powerbudget's worth). I feel like this is an important distinction to keep in mind)

Good deal, right? So what's wrong with Soraka's heal? Sure it's bursty but it only targets one ally and costs a boatload of mana.

Well, a couple of major points wrong with it. First off is that Soraka's core fantasy (Medic!) forces most of her power budget into her W and Ult, making the other abilities sorta lackluster on their own. This leads into another major issue, the optimal play style of Soraka in lane; PASSIVENESS.

Now I'm not denying the power of stacking AoE MR shred, it kills in teamfights, but in lane you really can't use it without; putting yourself up front and in serious risk (damn girl you is the squish), pushing the lane no matter what, and inadvertently denying your own carry some CS. Her Infuse can be a nice harass tool in lane if leveled first, but most Sorakas are going to opt for heal first. Thus it's main use during laning is simply to interrupt and prevent action.

With all this in mind, that means the optimal way to play Soraka during the laning phase is super-passive-topoff-stayaway-farmfest-funtime! This is extremely frustrating for everyone else involved. It's a decreased chance for plays to happen and for lane opponents to meaningfully interact. Sure the other supports I mentioned could do this to some extent, but their power lies in the entirety of their kits; Nami for unbelievable kiting, Alistar for CC/Displacement, Sona for insane pokes and teamwide engagement through ER.

The kit needs to be brought in line to work with and not against the structure of the game without ruining the core fantasy of medic. If a lot of power needs to go into Astral Blessing to fit the fantasy, then it must either be heavily gated (as is now), or power-conditional.

You can't really make a dedicated heal spell interactive, so it needs to go through another part of her kit in someway, a part of her kit that DOES provide interaction. An example below;

DISCLAIMER: Numbers and effects below are pure conjecture and may need changing in order to be considered balance.

| Ability | Name | Effect | |- |(Passive) http://i.imgur.com/2EA0naM.png | Salvation | Offensive abilities weakens the resolve of their targets, reducing their damage output by 5/10/15% for 2 seconds. Any damage applied with weakened resolve blesses the ally champion hit with Astral Essence| |(Q) http://i.imgur.com/CJ8Qq6Q.png | Starcall | Calls down an astral being to the target area dealing 60/95/130/165/200 (+50% Ability Power) magic damage.| |(W) http://i.imgur.com/ALvytBW.png | Astral Blessing | Heals a single ally for 65/95/125/155/185 (+ 30% AP) and increases their armor by 50/65/80/95/110 (+15% Ability Power). If the target ally is blessed with Astral Essence, the blessing is consumed and the amount healed is doubled.| |(E) http://i.imgur.com/6ADYApR.png | Infuse | On Ally Cast: Soraka drains 5% of her maximum mana to restore 20/40/60/80/100*(+5% maximum mana)* mana to her target ally. If the target ally is blessed with Astral Essence, the blessing is consumed and the amount restored is doubled. On Enemy Cast: Soraka silences the target for 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 seconds and deals 40/70/100/130/160*(+ 40% AP)(+5% maximum mana)* magic damage to them.|

With the iteration above the heal shouldn't be gated so heavily as it's pretty lackluster to cast individually. It's as strong as a single bounce of Ebb and Flow. Instead it's now power-conditional; using Starcall or Infuse offensively allows you to supe up your heal/manasustain giving you incentive to be interactive in lane. The kit also flows together better and hopefully allows for more interesting plays. Cooldowns would still have to be worked out.

Or I could be completely out of my head and this whole post is ridiculous...

116 Comments

RiotVesh4/21/2014, 8:04:31 PM11 votes

This is a really really well done analysis. Like seriously. It's true that a dedicated heal spell cannot really be interactive. However, maybe there is some cool space to make a heal that is somehow enemy-interactive. Nami's does this to some degree, and I tend to think it's one of the better designed heals in our game.

I actually think your older idea for her passive had a better direction. Damage reduction feels really shitty for everyone involved and is incredibly powerful for how unappreciated it is.

In general we want to create interactive gameplay patterns. It's acceptable for a single spell to have little to no interaction provided it is a part of an interactive pattern. Currently Soraka's W is not this.

I'm working on a couple of different pattern directions currently and have tried a few others that have failed.

Your goals for starcall being important to the overall pattern are good, but also remember that starcall by itself has low overall gameplay/counterplay. There might be something cool we can add to the rest of the pattern that makes a simple heal an integral part of interacting with enemies. Gonna test some stuff today and if any of it shapes up to be promising I'll share some of the results!

Archainis4/21/2014, 9:51:15 PM3 votes

I think this looks pretty cool. It changes the question from "who to heal?" to "how to heal more?" and in a single-target sort of way. I think that's actually even more in line with the medic archetype.

Some other ways to have healing amp in gameplay might be:

  • anti-grievous wound AoE (while standing in this area, champions are healed for more)
  • healing amp AoE (while standing in this area, champions heal others for more)
  • other application methods of heal stacks
  • heal resets or cd reductions (heal cc'd ally -> cd reduction, Astral Blessing on live, etc.)
  • ramping healing (like vlad's Tides of Blood stacks)

Also, I'm curious what your previous iteration looked like. Mind posting it?

Glork4/22/2014, 12:39:30 AM3 votes

This might be a bit of a long shot (and sorry if it's been brought up before), but what if you had W heal for a percentage of damage done within the last X seconds.

As an example (using completely arbitrary numbers), your team's J4 jumps into the opponent's team at the start of a teamfight. He takes 1200 damage in 2 seconds and gets hit with a W, healing for 600.

Obviously, the specific numbers would be different, including the "window" that damage can be healed and the percentage that actually gets healed. But Soraka can be kind of the anti-burst who isn't very good at long-term, sustained and passive healing. This version of Soraka would love quick and intense skirmishes and shy away from a slow-paced harassing lane. It gives opponents a strategy to try to limit her effectiveness, and her lane partner incentive to get in there and FIGHT.

Edit: I would give the heal a (low) minimum amount, so that it's not 100% useless outside of fights. Topping someone off after you've aced the enemy team is fine, but we don't want Soraka to just heal for significant life whenever she feels like it.

Auxilia4/22/2014, 8:18:23 PM3 votes

I've been maining Soraka lately. She was my first champion, and I learned to play her passively, but as I've grown as a player I began to learn how to play her better (which is to say, NOT entirely passively).

In the same way that you shouldn't use Nami's heal without the damage effect, I've learned that it's best to reserve Astral Blessing until a pivotal moment in a trade, helping your carry to win or helping you to harass better. Doing it poorly is punished because it wastes mana, but doing it well feels very rewarding. Playing Soraka has helped me to understand damage trades, and how to harass with auto-attacks (!) in lane, so much better.

I really love Soraka and I feel that she is very strong without being uncounterable and is actually optimally NOT played passively. If she gets reworked just because people aren't taking advantage of her kit which rewards careful micromanagement of her heal/armor buff, I will be very, very sad.

EDIT: Also, if you do use Astral Blessing merely to keep your carry (or yourself) topped off, you are even more vulnerable to blowing up in all-ins due to its long cooldown...i.e., if I'm Leona and your armor buff just wore off, I'm engaging if at all possible in the next few seconds because I know my carry can do a lot of unmitigated damage.