@Morello, what to expect from Soraka in 4.9?

First of all, I'm very glad you actually took your time to respond to all those questions in my last thread (http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/live-gameplay/HsnUWEuK-morello-its-really-time-for-that-soraka-rework) and even confirming a rework for later this year. But as we all know, these things take time - up to six months maybe.

I'm seriously wondering how you're planning to deal with Soraka until the rework has arrived, you couldn't possibly consider letting her decay for an undetermined amount of time. So far I haven't seen a single mention of Soraka for the patch 4.9 forecast so naturally I've come to expect the worst.

You must admit, what you've done to her in 4.8 was extreme. We're dealing with a champion here who has lost any remaining viability, a living testament to an ongoing series of merciless gutting. But let me try to explain the situation to you and how you may be able to bridge the time until the rework is finished.

First of all, on the topic of imminent changes - I've seen what you had in store for the PBE. Sure, it may seem okay that you're putting 5 more percent on the cdr-effect of her Q (thus raising it to 10% cdr at rank 1, capping at 15%) to help Support Soraka BUT it's still less than the 17% which you originally promised. There's hardly a reason to level Q beyond rank 1 due to the pitiful scaling on the bonus.

We're still stuck with massive mana-costs from having to use Q twice as much and her E-poke being incredibly cost-inefficient. It literally deals as much damage as her nerfed starcall BUT is only limited to a single target while costing almost twice as much. Most of the time her silence doesn't even work since the enemy-ability goes off anyway.

Why hasn't this been fixed yet? Back then it was kind of tolerable since it was a FREE ability but now it has entirely lost any viability. Please, at least consider cutting the cost by half but make it scale with each rank. I don't see any other way to fix this ability right now.

Also let me do some math for you: the old poke-rotation (one Q and E) used to cost 30 mana in total, now you have to pay 110 (!) mana just to deal the same amount of damage. Also let's not forget that you're required to stick around longer just to get off the second Q to make up that sum. And that's just the cost at rank 1. That's already the cost of an entire heal wasted on mere interaction with the other player.

You can't simply remove the damage from her kit and expect her to be healthy afterwards - the consequence is actually the opposite of what you've hoped for. She's even more passive now since she can't fight ANYONE now without using up the entirety of her mana-pool. You need to do something, as soon as possible.

The least you could do is reduce her mana costs or give her back the damage on her Q while adding a damage-reduction to minions/creeps to weaken her solo lane-performance. Infact that change would even be healthy to Support Soraka since the risk of taking cs from your adc would be reduced drastically while dealing actual damage without being a mere healbot anymore who's plagued by overbearing mana-costs.

I seriously hope we may see some of those changes in 4.9 so we may get to play Soraka again without feeling almost entirely useless.