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@Riot, Any context behind the Soraka changes?

Lichblade·5/17/2014, 2:40:38 AM·10 votes·7,982 views

EDIT: Changes has hit live but the Q oh hit CD for W doesn't even matches the tooltip? Its the one listed here from PBE but the patch notes buffed it to

Astral Blessing's on-hit CDR increased to 5 / 8 / 11 / 14 / 17 % from 5 / 6.25 / 7.5 / 8.75 / 10 %.

So on the PBE Soraka got a pretty big nerf to her aimed at solo laning power - which I'm ok about since I see/always played her as a support since S1.

The current changes below:

Soraka

Starcall [ Q ] - Now deals 40/65/90/115/140 damage (down from 60/95/130/165/200)

Starcall [ Q ] - If an enemy is hit, Astral Blessing's cooldown is now reduced by 5/7.5/10/12.5/15 % (up from 55 /6.25/7.5/8.75/10%)

Infuse [ E ] - Now Has a Mana Cost when cast on an enemy: 50 Mana

What I'm concern about is: are these the final changes to her? because currently the compensation in utility on her Q doesn't offer much compared to how much damage it lost, you will only see a 2.5%/5% reduction of W by rank 4/5 of the skill. have you considered increasing the MR shred base amount/scaling?

Another one is for support soraka the E flat rate 50 mana cost is going to make her laning patterns binary because she would be less willing to use infuse on emeny's, since her E has a mana cost now shouldn't you guys reduce the mana cost on her other spells? i really think she will run out of mana too fast.

34 Comments

the Anarchit3cht5/18/2014, 9:05:20 PM6 votes

I think it's just silly. Someone does an off-meta pick? Well let's destroy that and enforce the meta that we swear we don't enforce.

namielise5/22/2014, 4:58:50 AM2 votes

with theise nerfs,i have to ask when can we expect her whole rework please???

Lord Ammon5/17/2014, 3:28:32 AM2 votes

If they really wanted to hit solo lane Raka but leave support Raka alone they should have hit damage after rank 1 starcall. Unfortunately as with every other time that Soraka became a popular pick out comes the nerfbat. Maybe when she gets reworked to only be able to heal with ulti and infuse gives just armor and a speed buff or something we can play our battle goat lady. Cause you know she needs more nerfs when her heal costs as much as an ult on most other champs and heals for 140.

mertatron5/22/2014, 8:42:28 AM2 votes

ok, so she shouldn't have free poke .. I can be fine with it ... but then it's not like she was such a strong bot laner ... and u nerf her damage by giving her mana cost.

if u think it's toxic .. ok ... but then lower maybe her heal cost ? or her Q cost ? or buff her damage ?

u just destroyed her damage, her sustain but u give more % CDR for her heal ... but if she has no mana ... more CDR is quite useless.

so yeah changes can be good, if it means the champion stays good ... here u nerfed her really badly without any compensation, it's not as if she was destroying botlane.

then it's funny how u never realised how starcall was strong in a solo lane and annoying as a support ... and your changes won't really help her as a support ...

Dryad Soraka5/23/2014, 2:10:30 PM1 votes

Well RIP Soraka. First Karma (my favorite champion at the time) gets destroyed, now Soraka is going to be. GG well fucking played.

DefNotKessler5/24/2014, 5:14:14 AM1 votes

I gotta say, i know who id love to lane against.
Soraka cant do well even vs B5 players now -_-
She now does less damage and runs out of mana faster.. her damage was already stupid low as a support.

PNeptune5/25/2014, 10:12:27 PM1 votes

Well, I'm not from NA server (I play at Brazilian server, here is my kinda crappy lolking atm: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/br/2388439), but I'm a true Soraka fan. It was my first champion to master and i had more than 200 games with her during season 3 when I started playing.

As a main support I feel (and would like to be proven wrong if anyone would)that in order to help my team more it's better to pick a different support than Soraka (that lacks hard cc and escape, which I feel makes my bot lane vulnerable to the enemy's jungler ganks or mid laner's roams). I feel support Raka is a very situational pick for me...

However, I always enjoyed playing Soraka and when I started playing her like a tanky mid laner I felt I could have a supportive role in my team and do more for them in that way than picking support Raka (imo).

In my opinion, again, I do not feel her mid lane playstyle was unhealthy at all. She was (before being gutted in patch 4.8) a tank support oriented mid laner that didn't deal burst damage (if you were solo killed by a Soraka in mid, well, my condolences you are not that much of a mid laner) that had a different playstyle that people are not used to.

I think the same goes for Lulu mid, she's a support oriented mid laner and kind of needs someone else dealing the damage (which is happening more with top lane carries being more viable nowadays I guess). I didn't feel that Soraka's q was such a problem (if anything it would put her in risk of the enemy's jungler gank by pushing the lane to far, specially in top lane, such a long lane for a no escape goat lady) due to her range being fairly surpassed by the aa and spells of many mage mid laners. Besides that, she could be easily bursted by an assassin such as Fizz as her w does not provide magic resist and has a long cd (bait Raka into using w, kill Raka aftewards).

I think the reason she got nerfed to the ground in this patch was due to the fact that people did not get her mid lane playstyle or her role as a tank support oriented mid laner and because she is a anti-hyper carry mid laner. People have said that Riot did something innovative by trying to create a support that would force a passive lane, but shut down Soraka solo lane because she'd slow the game's pace (btw, Braum is much more of a problem right now due to his mechanics allowing him to force a passive lane and being aggressive himself).

TankRaka had to put herself at risk a lot to make full use of Starcall, having to be at the center of a teamfight and in order to be a viable mid laner she required the right set of runes (get it wrong and it could cost you the lane).

Anyway, I hope that if she gets to see a rework soon it will adress these qualities that made her a special mid laner (being able to support the team), give her a more useful passive (I don't know, this more recent passive doesn't even feel like a good passive for a support - I could be wrong though) and make her a more viable pick as a support.