League of Legends General Discussion Thread

[Sullla]

You mean the heal that's on a 20 second cooldown? And has a lousy AP ratio (.45)? Have fun healing exactly one time in a teamfight.

[Deceptus]

125 armor buff to your carry? Sounds like a compensation to me.

Also, they found Orianna.

[Jowy]

We had a great game. 4-man premade. The fifth guy got angry at the beginning and spent the whole game yelling at us and trying to help the enemy team to win. He was our tank. We still won 4v5 after 50mins. I went like 20-2 as Kennen. Then the servers crash as we're transferring from the game to the stats screen, the whole game is erased and we could never get that fifth guy reported. Argghh!

[Gustaran]

You mean the heal that's on a 20 second cooldown? And has a lousy AP ratio (.45)? Have fun healing exactly one time in a teamfight.

But according to Riot you can do other fun stuff:

We're buffing everything else so that maybe as Soraka, during the lane, you might make the CHOICE to actually level Q and use it to zone your opponents.

I understand that Soraka + carry lane was not an ideal situation, but it is very irritating to see this "solution".
It reminds me of the stealth problem, which still hasn't been fixed and basically just nerfed the problematic champions into the ground because Riot's gamedesigners lack the ability to find an appropriate solution.

[Jowy]

Twitch is probably the most useful character I got in the champion bundle. Ever feel like dodging just pick Twitch with fortify and revive, someone is bound to take the bullet for you.

[sunrise089]

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.

Soraka's changes are enormously hindering to the champ in terms of being a 95% defensive support. Is the champ overall worse? Well yes But I can see that if you buff starcall and the E's damage enough and upped her attack speed and auto attack damage and base movement speed and health ratios..... The point isn't that you can't have a viable champ even if you kill a skill, the point is that in a world of 80 champs taking a niche champ and making it into say the 5th best version of a much more common type of champ isn't a good choice. For those of you who can't get past "OMG laning vs Soraka isn't fun" consider if Blitzcrank had his grab ability replaced by like a shield. The champ could still be viable with other changes, but it still kills the essence of the champion. Likewise taking a champ based around healing (yes the E is better, but the E before was mainly to give mana for the heal ) and killing the heal is a pretty big change.

Additionally, I'm weary of people acting like Soraka+ranged AD was unbalanced past the point of ratio or ability stat tweaks. Yes you had huge sustainability over time. But you know what you didn't have? How about CC? Sona, Taric, Alistar, Morgana, Lux, Janna, and even Zilean have more support CC. How about damage? All of the above have more. How about defense? Your lane is super squishy. How about initiation? Poke? Ability to hold the lane vs a creepwave when your teammate buys? Soraka is the opposite yet equivalent to a Master Yi (all damage, no defense, and still no CC).

Finally, the Soraka lane is still super counterable at low and medium ELOs. Stun + AP champ, 2x tanky champs with CC, or good ganks can still own it, because once you've cast 1 heal you've got no more for 10 seconds, you can't do damage, and you will always be super squishy yourself due to no farm. Yes if you can carefully avoid ganks and in-lane CC and carefully babysit your carry you do well, but that's just called playing the champ well.

Twitch is probably the most useful character I got in the champion bundle. Ever feel like dodging just pick Twitch with fortify and revive, someone is bound to take the bullet for you.

I see the humor, but if they're dodging before you lock in they're idiots and if you're actually locking that in you're not exactly following the summoner's code.

[Deceptus]

Congrats to Speaker on hitting Gold overnight! :D

[Sullla]

Soraka's E was not buffed:

Infuse

• Ability power ratio increased to .75 from .6
  
• Cooldown reduced to 10 seconds from 15 seconds
  
• Silence duration adjusted to 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 from 1/1.5/2/2.5/3
  
• No longer grants double Mana when casting on yourself

The only skill buffed - Starcall - still has pathetic damage, range, and AP ratio. I don't see any way that Soraka remains viable at a competitive level after this. She has been completely eviscerated.

[Tyrmith]

I'll agree that's she's been eviscerated from the stand point of Soraka as we did play her fairly thoroughly, but I don't think the nerf on her E is that big a deal (and the fact that they're buffing her silence while decreasing the cooldown means that the nerf is irrelevant after the team phase). If you're building Soraka right, and as long as you arn't losing the lane horribly I don't think the nerf to her mana is a huge deal.

In my opinion they're increasing the skill cap on Soraka, instead of just "people are low= push heal buttons" you need to be watching several different champs and making choices on who is important to heal, who you think will be targetted, who should be silenced, etc (as well as don't die! ).

I'm waiting to see how she does in a real game before giving up on Soraka

[Speaker]

Congrats to Speaker on hitting Gold overnight! :D

So pro.