[WIP Champion Concept] - "Snowraka", need feedback and thoughts

Hey guys, I'm working on a champ concept but I've run into a bit of a brick wall (the bloody ult) I guess I'm a bit too close to the matter to think straight about it. It happens to us all. I had one idea I really loved early on but I'm extremely doubtful it'd be fun to use or play against. That also happens to all of us.

Also, please let me know what you think of the strengths and weakness of the idea as a whole and if the goal of the concept (soraka inspired champ balanced for mid lane) works out.

Placeholder name: Snowraka (I’m using this as a placeholder to drive home the fact that she’s based on soraka but her own champ, she’ll need something better eventually) Titles: the snow caller, the heart in winter, the hot springs otaku

Role: pusher, mage, bully with secondary heal powers Inspiration: Shiva from the FF series meets Soraka Looks: A moderately busty female based on divine Soraka in minimalist clothing (final fantasy shiva inspired) . Visually she'd be slightly bluish Divine Soraka in a bikini. With white hair. Personality: good, helpful, friendly, carefree, playful Likes: naked moonlight walks in waist deep snow, bathing in hot springs, relaxing, cute things (like poros), desserts and sweet stuff Dislikes: getting up in the morning, nasty tasting food, restrictive clothing, and wet poro smell

Joke: she pulls out a poro from somewhere, it hops around on the ground for a few seconds and she puts it back Dance: she starts dancing and her pet poros appear around her to watch Taunt: something childish or playful Death animation: her pet poros surround her body and mourn her loss. When she respawns they happily frolic around her for 8-10 seconds (or until she gets into a fight) Recall animation: A snowy vortex circles around her and she dissolves into the snow

Lore: Snowraka’s background is she comes from the same realm as Soraka. Soraka leaving sort of upset the balance of things big time and her absence is causing a lot of problems back home. Snowraka left to find Soraka to both help out her friend and their realm by bringing her back. Plus to Snowraka, Runeterra looked like a place filled with curiosity, fun, excitement, adventure, new desserts, snowy lands, and hot springs to be bathed in. And poros. She totally wants to take a few home as pets since they are so cute.

To her, this is half noble quest and half getaway vacation.

Goal of this Champion Concept: My original intent was to make someone like Soraka but more balanced towards being a solo lane champ instead of a support. From there I let things grow and evolve. Somewhere she picked up a bit of a dualist nature.

For instance I first thought of the champ as Poroka (poro-soraka) and thought about swapping out the unicorn and moon motif for poros (poro horns) and hearts. But I dropped the main poro aspect because I thought shiva from the FF series was cool and wanted to make a sustained damage utility shiva/soraka mix. Then I asked myself about the problem of shiva’s clothing for someone from the north but then I thought about hotsprings in places like Japan and Iceland and well, clothes you can just jump into one of those with seemed more natural. Plus if she’s a magical being who belongs in the snow, cold weather probably doesn’t affect her like it would normal people.

So I kind of ended up locking in on hotsprings in a snowy winter if that makes sense as her core theme.

Gameplay: I’m going to avoid numbers as much as possible and work on mechanics.

I started with the pre-nerf/rework soraka and worked from there. Right now, Soraka is basically Q is an AoE meant to push lanes, W is a heal, E is a poke/fight prevention, and the ult is a global heal. From there I asked myself what would make her more of a battlemage and what would give her a little more counterplay than before. Maybe less of this toxic healing thing.

Passive This one has been tough for me. At first I thought about an AoE version of Irelia’s W passive that triggered on mana usage. Maybe make that the only heal in her kit. However I wasn’t completely happy with that direction. Then I thought about her being able to be in snow and hotsprings without difficulty and I’m leaning towards something defense related, maybe MR only maybe not, to make her a bit of a lane bully by nature.

Song of Steam and Snow Song of Steam – Snowraka gets bonus HP/5; increases when she ranks up ult Song of Snow – Snowraka gets bonus MR; increases when she ranks up ult

Hidden Passive – In Her Element On howling abyss and in the river of summoners rift she gets 1 bonus HP, AP, Armor, and MR.

So far I think this passive that is a reflection of who she is, carefree/likes relaxing and her ability to be out in the elements just fine and with the right numbers won’t be too bad as far as passives go.

Q: Snowy Winds Snowraka produces a cone shaped AoE which does magic damage as well as a small amount of bonus magic damage based on the target’s missing health.

Snowraka gains a small boost of speed for 2 seconds.

I wanted to make something in the vein of Soraka’s Starcall without being as oppressive as that skill and I think an AoE cone offers more counterplay and less oppression. The bonus magic damage based on health missing is to make up for the missing MR shred and to let the other guy have some counterplay in terms that avoiding damage to begin with will weaken this.

And I think the speed boost kind of reinforces the idea of her as a carefree snowflake flitting about the battlefield. I’ve been playing long enough to know that 2 seconds is pretty standard and I left the amount up in the air on purpose.

I’ve only had one problem with this skill. Do I make it something that is do I make it like Eve’s Q in that it auto-targets or have it something that has to be manually targeted. I’m leaving it as the latter for now but I think the former would be more fun to play.

Also I left out CC from this on purpose even though I wanted it to have a slow effect. I’d be happy with that, but in terms of counterplay, I don’t want it build into her kit as I opted for evasion instead. I kind of figured she’d buy Rylai’s as a core item, maybe a rush item, and I wanted to keep to her theme so while it might be doable in terms of balancing, I don’t want to commit to a built in slow unless she really needs it.

W: Water Burst This skill is a circular targeted AoE with a smallish radius. Snowraka and allies in the radius of this skill are healed and get the Hot Springs effect. Enemies in the radius take magic damage and get the Cold Shower effect. If Snowraka is within the AoE, she takes half the healing of it since she is always healed by it. Snowraka can self-target this skill and it will slightly increase the AoE.

Hot Springs – allies are healed based on missing health every second for a few seconds Cold Shower – enemies take magic damage every second for a few seconds

The concept for this skill is I asked what if Sona’s heal had a targeted version and I remembered Nami’s heal could bounce for healing and damage. So this is sort of a mix of the two and I wanted to give it a water theme to give a nod to her love of hot springs.

For context, the healing and damage should be about the same for this skill and about half the healing and damage should be in the HoT/DoT effects. In terms of power allotment this should be lower than Soraka’s W in terms of kit power.

Snowraka can heal as she’s Soraka inspired, but not nearly as well. I also think that the lack of the armor buff and the healing not being all at once makes this skill a little more manageable for the other team. You at least get a small window to burst as the heal takes time to finish.

Since Snowraka is meant to be a sustained style champ, I think opening her and her allies up to burst damage/kill lanes is the best option for counterplay. My personal healing theory in short is that sustained healing should be set up so burst damage can counter it and that burst healing needs to be set up so that sustained damage can counter it.

Finally I think that smaller, more sustained sources of healing would help separate her from Soraka thematically and let them be their own champs.

NOTE: After I wrote this, I explored several ideas with ults and I wondered if I should rework this to an AoE slow without the heal or DoT effects if I specifically did one of the ults. Basically the ult would get all of her heal budget. So this skill is sort of in flux ATM and I’d like feedback.

E: Snow Blast Snowraka shoots a line of swirling snow that deals magic damage to every enemy it passes through. Enemy champions are silenced for a short duration. This is a long, thin skill shot.

This is Snowraka’s poke skill. I kind of liked the laser theme of infuse but I think that changing it from a click to target to a line skill shot both makes Snowraka more of a battlemage, but also more counterplayable for the other guy. I kept the silence though as I’m hoping that won’t be an issue. Also making this an aoe skill shot can also give her another option for pushing lanes and bullying.

Now it’s time to talk about Snowraka’s Ult. I’m not entirely sure what it should be. I had one idea early but it was a little too over the top for me and I’m not sure if matches her theme or role in the game that well. So I’m tossing out a few options.

For me, I guess it’s a lot easier to overdo it with ults than it is normal skills

Option 1

R: Winter Aura This is a medium-large AoE circle centered on Snowraka. Allies in the area are healed every second, enemies in the area are slowed and take magic damage every second.

At first I wanted this skill to be half Soraka’s ult and half Karthus’s ult: a global swing effect. As cool as I thought that’d be and as much as I thought that would cement her as a more battlemage style Soraka that just seemed too much over the top and no one would take it seriously. Remember, I’m leaving most of the numbers up in the air on purpose when I thought of this skill.

So then I thought how about making it half Janna and half Anivia? That would allow her to have a form of Soraka’s old starcall (now as an ult) and give her an exclamation point as a battlemage with a secondary heal. My only issue with this kind of skill is how much should it be like Anivia/Starcall (toggle effect) and how much should it be like Janna (a short burst with a long cooldown). What’s the right choice here?

I don’t know. It’s a cool idea and the first one I had when I started this concept. However I’m at the limit of how far I can theorycraft it without having anything real to play with. This ult would need care and a lot of iteration to work right.

If the numbers were small enough and if she were mana-gated enough, the toggle effect could probably be made to work. However that is a lot for an ult to contain and the numbers might end up being so low you don’t really notice them or they eat up the power budget for the rest of the kit.

On the other hand a big effect if it were more aligned with Janna’s ult, bursty healing and damage with a long cool down, it wouldn’t fit the character’s theme as well. However the bigger gameplay would be more fun to and being more time limited would give a larger counterplay window and more choices to the other team.

Either way, this is a two for one effect so both effects will have to be a little on the weaker side to make up for that or she’s going to have to pay more in terms of mana to gate the effect somehow.

My personal thoughts are this is a cool idea that I fell in love with and I don’t think will work in game. However I don’t want to just throw this idea away either. Maybe make it one cast and not an HoT/DoT and you can spam it for an ult... as a random example give it a 20 second cooldown (that would be 1 every 12 seconds with 40% CDR).

Would you all mind playing against someone who could damage everyone a little and heal all their allies once a bit once every 10-20 seconds? But if I did that, I’d have to consider taking the heal and DoT away from the water blast. What do you all think about that? A starcall that heals allies once every 10-20 seconds but no heal in her kit pre 6?

I’m kind of intrigued by the idea of a weaker but spammable ult.

Option 2

R: Snowcall Snowraka heals allies and damages enemies in a mid-sized circle centered on her.

If you choose this, her W loses its healing effects and DoT effect and is a simple click to target circle with a CC of some form, probably a slow.

Keep the numbers on the healing and damage down and give it a really low CD for an ult. How does that sound?

Option 3

R: Hot Springs Snow Storm Global effect – enemy champions are slowed, have reduced attack speed, have reduced vision, and take damage every second for 3 seconds. Local effect – Snowraka creates an area that heals all ally champions in it or who enter once a second for 3 seconds.

This is a more thematic version of the last skill, but on a long cooldown. Basically Snowraka creates a snowstorm that hinders all enemies, but allied champs near where she ulted are healed every second. So it’s karthus’s ult meets Janna’s. Since the damage is over time, enemies would have a chance to pop heal, barrier, throw a shield, or something like that. Hooks would be able to grab someone out of the hot springs effect, knockback effects could work too if the positioning was right.

However to be fair the numbers for the damage, and the CC, and the heal would have to be scaled back from those champions and this still would eat up a large power budget. Probably too large for that big gameplay effect an ult needs. Again, this is a two for so you’d have to temper your expectations for it. Maybe if the global effect was scaled back to the range of Ashe’s E it might work… a big chunk of the map but not all of it.

My thoughts are this is a cool idea on paper, but like option A probably wouldn’t hold up during gameplay. However this is a better representation of the champs theme so I want to keep it on the table for now until I get a definite idea for the ult.

Option 4

R: Go My Poro! Snowraka unleashes her pet poros which expand outward from her in a wave. Ally champions in the area are healed by the warmth and love. Enemy champions are stunned for two seconds by cuteness. And poro slobber. Lots of poro slobber. Think Bill Murray “I’ve been slimed” in Ghostbusters. She must have taught her poro to slobber on command or something.

This skill is both more fun than the others, but also a lot more sensible in terms of power budget and counterplay potential. If it takes long enough for the poro wave to expand, the other team would at least have a chance to get out of the way.

I think options 2 and 4 are the best gameplay candidates but option 3 is the best thematic candidate. The first option probably should be trashed completely.