Originally Posted by Classick

It seems like there is a lot confusion about the upcoming sustain changes, so I'll try to clarify what we are doing with my own opinion of the upcoming changes.

Currently there are aggressive supports and there are passive supports, aggressive supports are characters such as Alistar and Taric. Meanwhile there are the passive supports such as Soraka and Sona. The thing is these passive supports have some good offensive attributes on them, and some of them are not even being used. For instance, I can't remember the last time I've seen Soraka cast a Starcall, that to me is just silly. Soraka can still fulfill her support role with these changes, it's just slightly different. For instance, instead of supporting your lane by sitting in a brush and holding down W/E on your lane partner you can go out and be aggressive to protect your lane partner, using Starcall on your opponents as well as silencing them when they try to retaliate and quickly casting your heal early on whomever your opponents choose to attack. This is similar to Alistar, who has one of the weaker sustain abilities in the game but can win his lane by being extremely aggressive. Zoning off his opponents away from his partner in lane and protecting them with his powerful CC abilities.

This to me is not only significantly more healthy for the game, but it also will create more action packed lanes, making aggressiveness optimal instead of passivity. With the significantly longer cooldowns on heals, your options on how to approach a fight is being increased greatly, you have more opportunities to strike your opponents while their heal is on cooldown. You will have a much more heavy incentive to be aggressive and apply pressure because the support you are fighting cannot just top off the damage you have done within 30 seconds.

For those of you who think that these changes will lower the amount of choices to play as a support, I think this will broaden the spectrum of choices you have as a support player. Currently the optimal supports to be played are ones that can constantly provide sustenance in lane, which has greatly lowered the amount extremely powerful supports such as Janna as a choice. It's not only Sona and Soraka who received some changes to their sustain, other characters in their league of sustain such as Taric have had some tweaks made as well. How great would it be if you could lane versus a good Soraka as a character without any sustain such as Lux and actually win beyond level 5!

tl;dr The most powerful supports currently are the ones who can infinitely sustain their lane and play passively while allowing their partner to farm. This role should stay intact, but through the means of aggressiveness and confronting their opponents as opposed to playing passive. Reducing the dependency on sustenance will help broaden the spectrum of viable supports in lane, and make the lane and those characters more fun/active!

Originally Posted by HigeInuzuka

If you don't see why Soraka is getting changed you probably don't see the problem with 0cs supports either so no point arguing anyway.

Originally Posted by Blizz

From this thread: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=1102898

They literally make no sense at all, you have to think that shurelia has never played soraka at all by the way she redesigned her. Reducing the AP ratios by half AND increasing the cooldowns? Who thought that was a great idea? The only red to ever give brilliant explanations is zileas, so I ask of you to explain.

Originally Posted by Bekkal

This is a bit misleading as they largely intend to keep supports at/near 0cs.

Originally Posted by Shurelia

Originally Posted by Quicksave

^ Has nothing to do with it. Watched this back when it was beta. You've changed Soraka numerous times since then. This recent proposed change is merely poor decision-making.