The reasons I don't trust Riot with a Soraka rework

I was just reading a post on GD about Soraka's recent nerfs and someone pointed out that she's fallen to 44% win rate. I'm not going to sugar coat things. That's pretty bad. That's urgot tier. That's a clear overshoot of whatever balance goals they had for her.

And riot wonders why people think they meant to kill her before her rework. Well, she's Urgot tier now. So while I'd like to give you guys some benefit of the doubt, a 44% win rate (3rd worst in the game) at the time of this speaks pretty loudly. Meant to to that or failed at correctly balancing her, it's your call. Those are pretty much the only 2 options that I can see.

I'd really, really, really like Riot to be able to do this rework right. Soraka was the second champ I got and the first champ I mained. I've played her both as a healer support and as a battlemage in the solo lane. Guess what? She's both champs. I don't give a crap about the lore or the fantasy. She's both a healer and she's a battlemage who can push people to tower and starve them out.

So why do I think riot won't rework her right?

1) She's Urgot tier now.

This fact can't be escaped. That means either riot wants her current iteration gone (meant to do that) or they were unable to balance her correctly.

I follow football. Football from a management GM perspective is what have you done for me lately? For us Soraka fans, the last thing riot has done was putting our favorite champ in the Urgot tier. As a Soraka fan, her last balance pass is the only thing I'd care about and it sucked. I mean indefensibly sucked. It broke both solo lane Soraka and support Soraka.

And you want those of us who are fans to be happy about a rework? To look forward to a rework? After a 44% win rate? Urgot to be kidding.

2) Riot refuses to balance supports to have a meaningful and fun solo lane experience.

First Lulu and then Soraka went mid. What happened? Well mid laners went bot, that's what happened, in part.

But there's another part of this. People are creative. People see things and make something of it. In MtG these are your Johnny players. For whatever reason, maybe the fact she's listed as a mage, the Johhny players picked her up in solo lane. Then the spike types saw that it worked and followed suit.

Here's the deal. Not everyone likes to support. In fact, if I'm taking a champ into a solo lane, it should be pretty bleeping obvious I'm not planning to be a support nor do I want to be supporting my team all bloody game despite being in a solo lane.

True some people love playing support. I like it too, tried to play it as much as possible last season. But that's not what they always want to do. That's not what they want to do all the time. That's not what they want to do when the champ has more potential that pure support.

Until riot gets it through their skulls a champ needs to be fun both in a solo lane and as a support, then this is going to fail. The rework will fail. I don't think riot gets that yet.

Can they balance for everything? No. But I think they have to balance for this moving forward. You know that line about never going full retard? Well Riot shouldn't test or balance champs as a full support. That's just not what people want to do and obviously will not do at least some of the time.

What if your ADC goes AFK or disconnects? What if he gets shut down early? What if you lock in support second pick because no one called it and then 2 people announce they are going bot together. Or dual jungle. Yes both things have happened to me. 1v2ing is hard enough as is. It's harder on a champ that has a feeding or non-present lane partner that riot never took a second to ask how is this champ by itself?

Again, if someone is picking a champ into a solo lane to be played as the non pure support part of that champ's kit, they probably aren't thinking "I'm going to be a support mid" or "I'm going to be a support top". They are planning for and want to play as a normal mid and a normal top.

Riot's always talking about the fantasy fulfillment of champs, well you've got to remember fantasy fulfillment of lanes too.

3) Riot doesn't know or won't admit what really Soraka is.

Is Soraka a healer? Is she a utility mage? Is she a battlemage who can push people to tower and starve them out? Is she a mobile ambulance (jungle soraka)?

The answer is yes. To all of those.

And this, this is a huge problem. If riot doesn't admit she's a lot of different things to a lot of different people, if riot doesn't admit she's got a diverse fan base, this will fail.

I have yet to see riot admit she's more than a healer or a support. Sure that's what her lore says. But her lore also mentions something about her blasting the cr4p out of warwick for stabbing her in the back. There's that too.

Truth of the matter is that Soraka is what her kit says she is. Her kit, at least prenerf, said she's just as strong a mage as she is a healer.

Riot hasn't admitted that to my knowledge. Therefore, this rework must fail. A large part of her fan base will be pissed off by it. And it's not like they are going to give us a similarly themed mage that costs 450 ip and has all the skins we've got for her.

Until Riot admit she's someone who does a little more than spam heals, this isn't going to work.

4) Riot doesn't get healing. At all.

Healing is counterplay.

Until riot gets that, they are screwed. Don't get me wrong, healing is tough to balance, but it is a part of PvP. It is a part of counterplay. In fact you can only use it after the other guy has done something meaningful. That's the definition of counterplay.

PvP is...

Well PvP is a DPS race more or less. You are racing the other guy to 0 HP while managing your skill rotations and resources. Some people win the race by increasing their DPS, either in one big burst that kills the other guy or in a more sustained fashion. Other people win the race by lowering incoming damage. Healing is a part of this second group.

Normally when you damage someone, it sticks. Well armor keeps a percentage of damage from sticking, it increases your effective HP. Shields give you a window where X damage won't stick. Healing just unsticks the damage. Sure it's demoralizing to see the red bars go up, but ADCs rush things like BT and Bork to do just that: increase their damage and make their red bars go up and unstick the damage.

And I don't see BT or Bork getting removed from the game. Not only do they increase your outgoing DPS, but they decrease your incoming DPS.

Don't get me wrong, it is hard to balance healing. But you have to admit that healing is both a fair skill to have and it is a natural part of counterplaying the other team.

5) Morello seems fixated on infuse healing from GW

This is a dangerous case of trying to apply a specific thing from one game into a completely different environment.

What is infuse healing? In that game basically it means I lose health to heal you.

So what's different?

Well a couple of things.

Firstly, and this is pretty big on its own, there were two monks, two healers on a pvp team in GW. So one could infuse and the other would still be able to heal the first.

The second is PvP in that game, particularly monks were based around a skill called Protective Spirit. What was PS? Well in short you couldn't take more than 10% of your max health in damage from any one source. That could be an attack or a spell or whatever.

Third is that infuse was one skill on your bar of 8 skills. And maybe only one of the two monks had it. Sometimes both would, sometimes neither. Still you had 7 other defensive and healing skills, one of them would be your ultimate heal. So it was only a small part of your skill bar.

Finally, and this can't be overlooked, is the healers in that game had a passive that healed about 5% of your max health for every skill they used on you, or on themselves. So even if you didn't use a skill that explicitly healed someone, they'd still get a little health boost.

So why am I bringing this up?

Well because Soraka's skill bar is nothing like a GW monk's skill bar. But also because I'm not seeing her fan base ask for infuse healing. So this is a case where we are being hinted at something we don't really want. But this also goes into that part where riot doesn't get what Soraka. Infuse health in GW is a dedicated healing skill on a bar packed with 8 defensive/healing skills.

Now I can get why infuse health is in that game. It works in that game under those circumstances.

However that's not even in the ballpark of what a lot Soraka fans want, and I don't think most supports who want a heal think that losing a chunk of your health to heal someone else is a good thing. So when I see that particularly skill mentioned in a Soraka thread, it seems pretty clear to me what riot wants with this champ and what a lot (but not all) of the fans want with her might be completely different.

And that's why I don't trust riot with the rework. I understand that reworking a champ like Soraka is going to be difficult. But what they've done for Soraka fans lately was an Urgot tier balance screw up on their part. That was just a numbers tweak they messed up. This rework is going to be a whole lot more for a champ they don't get and who has a large aspect they think is toxic.

That's not exactly setting oneself up for success.