Did you always use infuse on yourself? With the reduction in cooldown if you were using half of the infuses to give mana to your laning partner then it gives exactly the same amount of mana out. If you were giving more mana to your laning partner then it is a straight buff to the amount of mana generated. Also you can keep a target silenced for a larger proportion of time with it. If you maxed cdr then you would have a 2.5 second silence on a 6 second cool down now.
Soraka is still 90% a defensive character. She still has the largest heals in the game. She is still the only character that can heal a whole team any where on the map. She is still the best champion at mitigating damage delivered to a single target (except for Kayle I guess).
I can see this is quite an emotive subject for some people here but just looking at one aspect of the changes is no good. I can't play tonight but I will take her for a spin after Eu patches and give a trip report.
Edit: What Tyrmith said, people should see how new Soraka handles in real games.
Soraka is still 90% a defensive character. She still has the largest heals in the game. She is still the only character that can heal a whole team any where on the map. She is still the best champion at mitigating damage delivered to a single target (except for Kayle I guess).
I can see this is quite an emotive subject for some people here but just looking at one aspect of the changes is no good. I can't play tonight but I will take her for a spin after Eu patches and give a trip report.
Edit: What Tyrmith said, people should see how new Soraka handles in real games.