Or they could actually make Starcall useful to support Soraka and fix the problem of it being a lane pusher and not worth putting a point into until level 13.

ITT: The glaring reality of how 0 CS support is ruining this game is ignored in lieu of unnecessary discussions over how to balance a balanced champion.

Good point. I think that this is a tremendous irony: Starcall is a pretty **** good farming tool, but Soraka is usually expected to absolutely never farm (or else).

XD. And you'd be absolutely right in taking such a stance.

If I was right all the time - I wouldn't need to talk on the forums. But I post my thoughts here - because time and time again - there's some error or flaw in my logic that forumites point out and then I learn more about our game and improve my theory.

Kind of like here - These are my thoughts on Soraka but whose to say if I don't have crippling errors in my logic/theory?

It would also fix the problem of people never seeing Soraka go OOM in normal circumstances. Everyone would be happy, Soraka players would get to actually have a full set of useful skills to use during laning phase and Soraka opponents would maybe be able to cause her to waste mana depending on what replaced Starcall.

+1 respect.

For a game company to not take a "we know better than everyone about our own game" stance, it really speak volumes.

As for Soraka, I haven't been able to entirely follow all the walls of text. But I suppose it's out of the question to have her with no aggressive starcall and full utility/support spells?

For example, nerf the **** out of Starcall, but make it ping on stealthed and bush hidden units, and/or show vision for a few seconds of the enemies?

Or make it target allies and grant them aoe attacks, with a higher cooldown. (edit - would help her carry to farm, and help in team fights... etc)

Sort of how all of Lulu's spells have a utility/support roll, as well as an aggressive roll.

I think we could do some very cool interactive things with astral blessing. Maybe taking it in a reactive, bide type direction, like Maokai's ult . Upon casting, places a charm on a friendly champion for a moderate duration. Any damage taken during this time is recorded, and either upon second cast, or end of the duration, a heal is applied that gets magnified based on damage taken. (Capped of course) This would give the heal more interactivity, giving the choice between a small quick heal or a long cast powerful heal.

Depending on the strength, maybe you could even incorporate Astral Blessing's armor buff during the char, period of the spell, making it even more important to time when you want to cash in.

Disclaimer: The following post is entirely a thought experiment and in no way shape or form reflects anything that will be done to Soraka as I'm not responsible for live reworks or balance.

Now that that's over with - Here's my general thoughts on Soraka:

1. Starcall is unusable on support Soraka.
2. Astral Blessing is ridiculous and the level-ups on the skill are absurd - There is no way levelling any other skill could be good when one of your skills can triple someone's armor at level 9. :P
3. Infuse Silence is annoying and lasts a really long time for a point and click silence.
4. Her role being primary healer is fine - her role being primary stalemater is not so.
5. Passive is invisible power that not a whole lot of people appreciate (though incredibly effective).
6. Soraka cannot enable her teammates to do anything - only deny the opponents a chance to do things.
7. Soraka is pretty fun to play as for some people and stupid to play against for most people.
8. Too much of Soraka's visual feedback is in her heals - and so that's her main source of satisfaction.

My initial thoughts on how to try solve the above are as follows:

1. Starcall be given some kind of passive: When you cast a spell on an allied champion, their next autoattack deals X bonus magic damage and shreds Y magic resistance. When you cast Starcall, your next autoattack deals X bonus magic damage and shreds Y magic resistance.

2. Soraka to be given a more fitting character passive - maybe something like: Your heals are up to X% more effective on targets with low health - Something that requires action on her part to take advantage of but fully synergistic with how she wants to play.

3. Tone down the armor bonus / healing of astral blessing - Wish is probably fine.
3b. Wish could probably grant some kind of combat advantage too - Brief team wide MS might be fun - but if I wanted to start at crazy, Brief Team Wide Cleanse? Not sure.

4. Figure out something to make Infuse less annoying to fight against - because infuse is annoying to fight against.

5. Give Soraka some more base health/defenses - because honestly - her base statistics are awful.

I think this is the core problem of Soraka. She has so much defensive ability and so little offensive power that she is essentially relegated to being a +hp buff to her allies. In fact, she very rarely has to even get in harassment range of the other team to do her job. She's always been like this, and the few attempts to make her less passive never went far enough in the other direction.

The key here is the fact that she only has two abilities that can even be used offensively, and one of them requires her to remain in range for several seconds before it starts doing something. Starcalls "ramp up over time" design forces her to choose between no offense and 100% offense, but the MR reduction doesn't synergize with an AD carry in lane or with her 0cs support role in which she lacks the tankiness to survive in range for that long.

If you look at the other common supports, Janna, Lulu, Taric, Leona, Blitzcrank, none of them have less than three abilities that can be used on enemies in some way. Alistar only has two, but they're both CCs and he has his ult, which is largely an offensive tool. Soraka has mage-like stats, but what little offensive tools she has are both very ineffective in the short-term.

The solution to her offensive problems? Make Starcall a more harass-friendly ability. I believe an effective way to do this would be to make it a ground-targeted AoE instead of PBAoE, because a mage-support shouldn't be in the middle of the fight anyways. The reduction in overall range would allow it to be a lot stronger, potentially with a bit longer cooldown like a Pillar of Flame but with MR reduction. A real offensive alternative to Astral Blessing spam would allow players to choose between offense and defense in lane. The primary inspiration for the idea is Sona's current design, but with Wish instead of Crescendo, Soraka could have more offensive power.

Another alternative would be to take the Help, Pix! design and apply it to Astral Blessing: giving it the option to be cast offensively and nuke/reduce armor as opposed to heal/increase armor.


TL;DR, Soraka has no offense in her kit, which makes her have toxic levels of sustain and defense. Put offense in her kit, thereby allowing for a reduction in defense.

I'd like this...if not for the fact it'd completely ruin AP Soraka.