For casual gamers, Soraka may seem like an ordinary champion who just runs around healing, but for truly skilled players, she is nothing short of a nightmare. Of course, she can’t deal massive damage, dash repeatedly, or go invisible under towers, but Soraka makes it extremely difficult for your opponents to reach your teammates, while also keeping them healthy after multiple enemy assaults.
It is precisely her enormous healing ability, especially when equipped with items, that makes Soraka incredibly dominant in high ranks. Players use her in top lane, mid lane, and even as an ADC; as long as she is alive, your team is hard to beat. This is why LCK expert and commentator Nick “LS” De Cesare reacted strongly when patch 10.10 continued to buff Soraka.
Commentator LS: “People keep messaging me, spamming the chat because of Soraka, and over the past few weeks I’ve seen many professional players everywhere using this champion in every position from top lane, mid lane, bottom lane, and even support. This champion is simply unbalanced; she gets buffed immediately after being nerfed, and it makes Soraka stronger in the mid and late game.
All Soraka does is trap you into having to kill her, and it takes away any fun from playing the game. Soraka limits your power while also progressing well into the later stages, making you gradually “useless”. Want to climb the ranks? Just play Soraka in top or mid, as long as you don’t face ranged mages or highly mobile champions, you’ll auto-win.
Looking at these buffed stats, increasing the Q spell damage by 10 seems completely unreasonable to me. The reduction in health cost of the W spell increasing to 80% at level 1 is extremely powerful in the mid game, as she helps allies survive, stay healthier, and fight longer even when they normally wouldn’t be able to due to lack of items and stats.”
Although Soraka was nerfed a few patches ago, Riot Games basically just made this champion a bit harder to play and required players to use Q – Starcall to maintain continuous Healing. Therefore, the buffs Soraka receives are all oriented towards this aspect, increasing the rewards and power when you hit opponents with spells instead of directly buffing her healing stats.
For “lazy” gamers, they just know to use W – Astral Infusion to heal. For high-skilled players, they can use Q to kite and heal while also using W to significantly increase their allies’ healing without sacrificing much of their own health. That’s why when Soraka is buffed, commentator LS becomes frustrated because he knows professional players will exploit the “broken” power of this champion in upcoming tournaments.
Anyway, patch 10.10 has been released by Riot Games, so don’t be too surprised if you encounter a solo lane Soraka, or even an ADC in the coming days; she is extremely broken right now.