How does Lulu have any particular level of interactivity from the enemy team beyond dodging a single skillshot? The same question for Janna, and even more so for Sona. With Nunu support, there would seem to be even less interactivity on the part of the enemy team, unless you count try to flee his ult, which isn't a major aspect of Nunu support anyway.

Support is inherently discouraging of interactivity from the enemy team as they're supposed to avoid most direct contact with the enemy team and focus on making their own team and team presence stronger, and I don't see how Soraka is any different.

I mean, is there a good way to play against Lulu and Janna outside of forcing cooldowns? Is there a good way to play against any ability-dependant champ outside of forcing cooldowns? Is there a good way to play against a champ with flash outside of forcing cooldowns?

Keeping track of what enemy abilities are or aren't on cooldown is a significant part of beating your opponent. Just like how I'm not going to engage on a Volibear until I've managed to harass him down enough to trigger his passive so when I go in for the kill, his passive is on cooldown. How is Soraka any different? You might say "You could ignite Voli during his passive." You could also ignite soraka or her carry when you go in on them, and/or use champs with more frequent grievous wounds capabilities like Tristana and Miss Fortune.

Hell, especially after the nerf to Soraka's infuse, Taric has better sustain potential in lane than Soraka. With Soraka, you can harass both Soraka and her carry so that she has to choose which one to spend her 20 second cd heal on, whereas Taric can simply heal himself and his carry at the same time, yet no one complains about his sustain, and he's even got a stun (typically much more useful in bot lane than a silence) and a +armor aura (whereas Soraka's ability to boost someone's armor is limited only to one person every 20 seconds). Soraka has more immediate burst heal potential (i.e. better clutch healing capability, which ya'll have said is what you want healing to be) and a better team fight presence in general, and that's the only reason that Soraka is used instead of Taric unless maybe the enemy team went all AD.

I'd much rather lane against an X+Soraka than an X+Taric.

It's fairly simple for the opponent - if you manage to damage a champion who is being guarded by Lulu or Janna - that damage sticks and is permanent. Your actions have meaning because they are hard to reverse or negate. Similarly with Nunu - if you attack the enemy carry and stick damage onto the carry - that damage stays. You could make an argument here about life leech and I would agree with you that life leech has similar problems - but life leech also opens the opponent up for harass if he's using it continuously to recover health.

For the player of Janna/Lulu/Nunu/Taric/Alistar/Sona/Leona - they have the ability to set up an opportunity for their carry to perform an all-in assault. Yes, most supports have some degree of countering opponent harass - and most supports usually have a way of negating incoming all-in strategies but the flip side is also true - many supports can open up opportunities for their carry.

Soraka, on the other hand, doesn't open an opportunity for her carry. She counters harass heavily actively (with armor buffs) and passively (with MR auras). In exchange for not creating opportunities - she has, next to Janna, some of the highest reversal power in terms of negating the all-in that opponent's have. That's not to say that Taric or Lulu or Sona or Janna is fine or in a better spot in terms of frustration or balance or power levels - I'm giving my analysis on Soraka.

I'm not against Soraka being the queen of healers, however, I do think there is space for improvement by making Soraka not only a queen of healing but also encourage her carry to be more aggressive more overtly.

1.) For the most part, I agree, especially after the infuse nerf. I used to put one point in it at lv4 for helping when I needed to keep the lane from pushing turret while carry was b. Now, it's too much of a mana drain to be worth that, imo.

2.) Leveling W first is an effective way to play her, but not at all always the best. If you're against an enemy carry/support combo who has really good harass, then it likely is. If you're against an enemy support/carry combo that doesn't have spectacular harass/range, then it can often be better to max her E first, because the damage on it is really good for harass, especially if your enemy lane doesn't have much sustain (such as a vayne+nunu combo).

3.) True, I think it was better before they changed it. It used to have a shorter duration at lv1 and a longer duration at lv5 than it has now. This is one of the reasons a lot of people don't bother with maxing E before W. The silence is also many times not terribly useful in bot lane unless you're up against an Alistar, Corki, or Ezreal.

4.) Bot lane stalemating due to a Soraka is more because of people's mindsets than because of Soraka herself. Soraka can be played very aggressively, and the carry has to decide whether or not to be aggressive as well. A Carry+Soraka lane -can- be very passive, but this is not a requirement. It's simply one of the ways the lane can be played.

5.) Agreed.

6.) I don't agree here. She's not necessarily the best direct enabler, but she is very capable of it in the right situations, such as silencing an enemy Ezreal or Corki, enabling her ally to leap in and get a lot of damage in before they can use their escape ability to get away. This is much like a champ using a stun, just slightly less effective since it doesn't completely negate the enemy's ability to trade damage. Enabling an ally, however, is done almost entirely by denying the opponent the chance to do something, and many other supports deny the opponent the chance to do something much more effectively, such as Taric, Alistar, and Leona with their stuns.

7.) 95% of the champs in LoL seem to be stupid to play against for most people according to GD.

8.) I would disagree somewhat on this. It's the main source of people recognizing Soraka's contribution to the match.The satisfaction of people playing the champ will not be as dependant on this because they know what actions they're taking and what effects they've having regardless of the visuals. The visuals do more to let others know what is happening than anything else.

So, uh, Xyph.
Why aren't your ideas being worked in right now? Because a lot of this sounds really awesome (I especially like the thought of the passive, makes it seem a lot more clutch, but it would probably have to be pretty limited in strength).

Encouraging the carry to be more aggressive doesn't really have much to do with Soraka or her kit, though. That's a choice the carry has to make, and you can't really encourage it without communication between the players.

As far as kits encouraging aggression, if anything, Soraka's kit should be one of the most encouraging with how it is because you don't have to worry as much about the damage you take in a trade (thanks to her healing) and you don't have to worry about running out of mana because you're too aggressive (her infuse). For some carries, that last bit is less relevant, but that has more to do with general champ synergy than whether or not a champ is toxic.

Graves+Soraka means Graves can be very aggressive since he doubles as an AD caster. It also lets Kog'maw, Corki, and Ezreal be far more aggressive, especially once they hit lv6. The same holds for Urgot, Miss Fortune, and even Caitlyn.

Vayne and Tristana are really the only current carries who don't need the mana support from Soraka to be more aggressive, because their kits are far less mana intensive. Thus, having them be aggressive will typically benefit more from supports like Taric, Alistar, and Nunu, or even Blitzcrank or Leona if you want a lane focused entirely on kills.

Sivir would be more dependant on who you're up against and exactly how you want to play her since she can often have a lot of mana sustain from her E.

The reason there's a lack of aggression when Soraka's in lane is she used to be perfect for and still can be effective for a "passively farm" lane, and people are stuck in the mindset of that's the only way she can be played.

While there's some merit to the argument that Soraka enables a 'Your mistakes are worth less - so do as many aggressive things as you want' playstyle - This doesn't necessarily mean that aggression is worth it or required to win the lane on the part of her lane mate. A carry who attempts to trade can rapidly drain Soraka of her mana, defeating the point of her sustain.

Furthermore, Soraka and her carry partner incur very little advantage from being aggressive in that manner. Unless the carry is self-sufficient in being able to guarantee a kill for himself - Soraka basically doesn't enable much besides a constant pressure-game to harass the opponent back while cancelling mistakes made for by her lane. Neither can Soraka capitalize on a mistake the opponent has made - which basically leads to a lot of superflous damage floating around doing a lot of nothing - Eventually players simply play passive because there's no point to trading damage.

I'm not sure you end up in a better spot at the end of that line of thought - as you replace passivity with very little counterplay with aggression with very little counterplay and the latter is actually kind of worse.

That's also why I'm not particularly confident in the changes I've outlined - as they don't solve that secondary problem. There was a time when Soraka was aggressive as all hell - because she could not make a mistake. However, this also meant that she zoned you out leading the opponents to have zero plays.

While communication is definitely helpful - Leona or Alistar both show an excellent example of how to encourage a carry to be aggressive. They beat the **** out of someone when they make a positioning mistake and pin them down, basically screaming 'Hey, if you do something right now, this guy will die.'

I find it extremely satisfying to shut down mids as AP soraka, and wish soraka moved more towards an AP caster than a support.

That being said, she is ridiculously over powered as an AP caster.

Thinking back to one particular game, @45 minutes in with ~700 ap +a wota, my team pushed through mid, and we got a 2 for 4 with 3 of them getting low. An ashe, Poppy, and an alistar all lived. They went and healed, and I continued to solo push their nexus turrets.

When they came back out, I silenced poppy, cast heal on myself, and spammed starcall. When their next minion wave spawned, every starcall healed me to full health while doing incredibly lame amounts of damage to their remaining team. I ended up acing them, and by the time my team was up to their nexus I had it to nearly 25%.


I feel that the idea of an infinitely targetting AOE ontop of a magic shred per cast with a decent damage rating is absolutely ludicrous and I can't believe midraka isn't the most common mid you see. That's all.

It's too bad we couldn't just sever the healers from the other champions and overpower them, but provide them with little to no means of providing damage. In theory, it would still be beneficial to take a healer for their team-assets and most teams will opt to have one around, while the healer isn't negatively impacting someone else's experience as much as being overpowered by a high damage harass.

With little means to fight someone alone, a healer/support would almost always opt to be with a carry or someone for protection, and their being overpowered to the point that each team wants one, but not to the extent that each team wants multiple (due to the loss of damage output in team fights) wouldn't be a deterrent from overall game enjoyment.

Could changing her w to a temporary lifesteal buff help with her passivity?

That would be horrible, please never do that. We don't need another Lulu in the game. One is more than enough.