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Patch preview: "We nerfed Taric's heal, but buffed his attack speed, so he can really get into the fight and start hitting people".
Patch note Wrote:Base attack speed increased to .625 from .613
Beware, enemies ! Are you scared yet ? Mighty Taric is coming for you ! 
Still, I am glad I'm not a regular Soraka player... 
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What a terrible patch. Here are the champions they nerfed:
Alistar
Jax
Nidalee
Orianna
Sona
Soraka
Taric
Udyr
Xin Zhao
Here are the champions they buffed:
Kayle
Nerfs always have their place, but this destruction of supports is so profoundly pointless and unnecessary... I'm seriously pissed at Riot for putting through these awful changes. There is literally no reason ever to play Soraka under any circumstances now. How does that improve game balance?!?
All because "we think supports are boring." Screw you, Riot. 
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Maybe they consider Taric and Soraka to be more of a remake than a nerf? 
If they wanted to put an end to the 0 CS Support Meta, I don't understand why they didn't simply nerf the support base spells and buff their ratios. Why completely neuter them? It makes no sense. Give them a reason to farm.
"There is no wealth like knowledge. No poverty like ignorance."
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Dunno, this Sona was healing like a beast against our team today post-patch. Atleast in non premades Sona should still be viable. Dunno about other pure supports, haven't seen em in action yet. Anyway, seven out of nine of the champs nerfed were Tier 1 og Elementz latest tier list (Leona patch) and considered very strong by the general public. As for the other two, Jax has been gaining support and even saw play / bans alot at gamescom, while Xin Zhao is a pub stomp char, too strong against nubs, too weak against pros, so hard to tell if he should be buffed or nerfed lol.
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The Soraka changes feel a lot more like a remake than a nerf, imo. Starfall got buffed by a decent amount. I think that Shurelia (Soraka designer) really likes her in the (likely solo-top) zoning role rather than the passive support role. Keeping multiple stacks of starfall on the enemy while nuking with infuse does a lot of damage. They made her sturdier with base health and health/lvl too.
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Patch hasn't hit yet so that was pre nerf Sona sadly.
The Udyr nerf was probably what was needed to hit lane Udyr but I am worried that it will effectively screw my non-blue starting jungle route. I am always right on the edge when it comes to mana costs on it anyway.
Soraka's healing got nerfed a lot now but saying Quote:There is literally no reason ever to play Soraka under any circumstances now.
is unnecessary hyperbole. She can give more mana or do more harass than she could do before and the armour buff on her heal is incredible now - 125 armour for 5 seconds at max rank. That is going to more than double most characters armour and means that you will not really be able to burst them down (with physical attacks). So I don't know if you would want Soraka in all team comps but if you are up against a burst ad champ (say Vayne, Pantheon or Talon  ) she could be a solid counterpick. Also she might still be good with a champ that has to get close to harass like Jax. If soraka healed Jax when he jumped in it would really reduce the opponents ability ro retaliate.
I am going to try her out when the patch hits and see but I think she still has potential, I will have to build her a bit differently though as CDR seems like it needs to be maxed. It will be back to Janna superiority though.
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I agree with Sullla - terrible terrible changes, and such an immature reaction on Riot's part.
Remake Soraka all you want into Zilean, and the champ can theoretically have a role. But with 80 champs, once again why can't we just let the unique and fun champ exist, balancing normal stuff like ratios and stats as needed?
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The buff to armor for soraka is interesting to me. I have no idea if the math works out or not, but something like 125 extra armor is pretty incredible, especially if used on a carry that won't generally have much armor anyway. If you use your heal just as a the damage starts, it could possibly allow the carry to be much more aggressive in lane (or allow a weak laner such as Ashe to survive), or make it so that your high priority target carry on your team can survive a teamfight against a fed Jax that you can't normally burst down fast enough.
In other news though some of the UI improvements are nice to see- being able to mute players with out having to use arcane keyboard commands will be nice, as well as the "fall back" ping and the new scoring ui.
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I don't know. The Soraka changes don't seem that hugely hindering. She went from "goddess of sustain in bot lane" to "a bit meh", but still, the armor boost is huge, you can still heal and sustain decently, it's just that if your lanemate goes superaggressive and gets himself free-hit all the time, you no longer have the "it's okay, I keep you alive even if you lack brain cells" factor. Her Infuse is overall a bit better too.
The entire patch isn't even a huge nerf to Alistar, who is going to be wtf godlike now because other than Janna he doesn't really have any competition when it comes to Tier 1 Supporting. Soraka and Sona probably won't drop to the level of current Karma.
And hey, most other champions on that list deserved their nerfs. Udyr is no longer going to be the no-risk solo top - the hurt on the mana regen on turtle is going to make him pay for his mistakes, and that's a good thing, right?
Just because there are nerfs doesn't mean the patch was terrible. My ability to think straight *is* nerfed by Shushei doing horrible karaoke on his stream and my overall lack of a few brain cells, but still.
I do agree that they have a weird way of doing stuff, and they should, if anything, nerf base ratios and give higher AP ratios to make supports actually want the Ability Power.
Also, just as a light-hearted note, I was a little amused yesterday when I was watching the jungle Gangplank stream at the Baron and Sullla's proud exclamation of:
"That's why you practice smiting!"
(Smite is still off cooldown)
No hard feelings, I just lol'd.
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