What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Today’s video is another journey through a champion’s history, featuring everyone's
favorite..
Or most hated healer Soraka!
As with Jax, Soraka has been a part of the game since Alpha, meaning we’ve got a lot
of changes to cover.
Remember you can always suggest the next champion we cover in the comments, and leave a like
if you liked it or a dislike if you didn’t.
Soraka was released as one of the original 17 champions on League released into the Alpha.
She was designed by Guinsoo as a mage that tapped into the power of the cosmos to aid
her allies.
In her original lore she was a champion of the Ionian people who was overcome by her
anger and hatred towards Warwick, at the time a mercenary for Noxus who had slain countless
of Soraka’s kin.
She cursed him to become the beast he is today, and lost most of her power for it.
Still, she hung on to enough power to save the life of that top laner you were just about
to kill!
Soraka started off pretty differently to how she is now.
Her Q was called Starcall, striking nearby enemies and reducing their magic resist, stacking
multiple times.
Instead of the instant healing she’s known for now, her W was called Bless which was
a long heal over time that lasted 16 seconds, as well as providing damage reduction.
E was Wish, an ability that restored mana to a friendly unit and had no use at all against
enemies.
Her ultimate Purify would cleanse all debuffs alongside a huge heal for a single teammate,
similar to Mikael’s Crucible.
Consecration was her passive, and it actually gave bonuses to her basic abilities.
It originally increased the damage of her Q, cooldown of her mana restoring E, and the
duration of her W heal and damage reduction buff.
Riot soon decided instead of removing debuffs from an ally, Soraka’s Ultimate should have
some kind of impact on the rest of the map.
Her Ultimate Purify was replaced with Wish, a global heal that has been a core part of
Soraka’s kit since all the way back in Alpha.
Her E was called Wish at the time, so it was renamed Infuse to cause less confusion.
Her W Bless was also given a fresh update to it’s name, replaced with Astral Blessing
early on in Alpha.
This kit didn’t change much until a closed beta patch on June 19th 2009, which reworked
her passive Consecration into a magic resist aura, basically turning her into a walking
Aegis of the Legion.
Soraka saw a few tweaks during Alpha and closed beta, but didn’t really see many gameplay
updates until the open beta patch 0.9.25.21, where her Infuse was made castable on enemies,
silencing them for a few seconds.
V0.9.25.24 built on this a little, giving it a damage and ap scaling effect to go along
with the silence.
This introduced some pretty interesting aspects to her kit, causing her to choose between
giving mana or silencing enemies.
This locked in the playstyle of her kit for quite a while, and it’s probably quite familiar
to a lot of players that played before her most recent rework.
Her Consecration passive still gave a magic resist aura for allies, her Q was still Starcall,
her W gave a heal over time and armor buff, her E was the now re-made Infuse, and her
Ultimate Wish was the same global heal that everyone is familiar with.
The first big change to an ability that Soraka saw was to her W, Astral Blessing, in Patch
61.
Up to this point it healed over time, but Riot eventually decided that it should be
an instant heal instead, leaving only the armor buff with a duration.
She had a few minor tweaks and changes here and there for most of Season 1, but for the
most part these were nerfs because Soraka was such a strong champion that stayed in
the meta for a long time.
A couple were targeted at some irritating features - such as her passive magic resist
aura sticking around after she died, but most were aimed at dialling down her healing power
by increasing her cooldowns.
V99 saw the next change to one of her abilities, another tweak to Infuse to balance it out
a little.
It was changed to give half the mana to her target ally, and half to herself, rather than
giving the full mana boost to an ally..
She could still gain the full benefit of Infuse by targeting herself though, but it did make
Soraka players feel a little better about giving someone else the bonus.
A few patches later she received some further tweaks to her W Astral Blessing.
Her base heal was nerfed early but buffed later, and her ability power ratio on the
heal was taken down.
To compensate the armor buff was increased by a ton, although the duration was reduced
by over half, which is quite a big change that forced Soraka to time her heal better
to get the most value out of it.
It also gave enemy teams the chance to play around her armor buffs, by timing their attacks
better, so it was a pretty well received change overall.
Patch V124 was quite huge and featured a ton of tweaks to the abilities of quite a few
different champions, Soraka included.
This was a big gameplay update, aimed at making Soraka a little more competitive after the
small nerfs over the months had started to add up.
Her Starcall was given better scaling and a cooldown reduction, along with more range
and a mana cost reduction.
It could also stack the magic resist debuff less, but gave more per stack as she levelled
it up.
Her W had it’s ability power ratios cut in half, but the base heal increased, letting
her itemise more defensively rather than needing to risk ap items.
The cooldown was doubled too, but the armor buff and duration were both increased, making
it even more important to time it’s use.
Her E had it’s ability power ratio increases and it’s cooldown reduced, but the silence
duration was reduced and it had a slight mechanic tweak - no longer giving herself double mana
when cast on herself.
In line with the other changes to make her less reliant on ability power, Wish had it’s
ability power ratio nerfed but it’s mana cost reduced by a huge amount.
Riot didn’t manage to get Soraka quite where they wanted her, and she was constantly tweaked
from patch to patch.
In V148, she received an update that had nothing to do with her gameplay though - a visual
upgrade, with a revised lore to go with it.
It didn’t really change the nature of her lore, just went into a little more detail,
such as giving a bit of background to Runeterra, along with Warwick’s nickname ‘The Deathmaker’
given to him by the Ionians because of the atrocities he caused with his chemical weapons.
It also gave a little bit more information about Soraka’s ascension to power, and her
ambition to redeem herself for cursing Warwick with his werewolf form.
After two final changes, Soraka was finally in the ideal spot that Riot wanted her.
Infuse had it’s tooltip bugfixed to show the correct AP Ratio of 60% in V151, and her
base movement speed was giving a buff from 310 to 335 in the following patch.
And from then onwards, nothing!
She wasn’t touched at all during Season 2, and didn’t see another change until later
on in Season 3.
This was actually a pretty interesting time in Soraka’s history because AP Soraka mid
was starting to rise to power.
It wasn’t that powerful for killing enemies, but Soraka mid was crazy good at farming and
staying alive, making it quite difficult to deal with.
Of course being one of Riot’s original supports, Riot took this rise to power of AP Soraka
as a challenge and gave her a massive rework in patch 3.14.
Soraka’s first rework in Season 3 included nerfs focused on AP mid Soraka, along with
a few mechanics changes to make her need to itemise differently.
First up was her passive, completely removed and changed to Salvation, increasing her health
and mana restoration abilities by 1% for every 2% of the target’s missing health or mana.
Along with this was a Starcall base damage buff and cooldown reduction if it hits an
enemy.
W had it’s heal AP scaling destroyed in favour of an armor buff, aimed at making it
more valuable in the bot lane.
Infuse now caused Soraka to drain her own mana to restore an allies mana, and had it’s
damage nerfed to make it less effective in the mid lane.
Her Ult also received a big nerf to both its base heal and ap scaling, although it was
given a tweak to let it affect untargetable allies such as someone using Zhonya's.
The changes did a good job of making support Soraka more appealing, although she was still
picked up in the mid lane occasionally - usually as a counterpick to the new champion Yasuo
once players had started to figure him out.
Soraka survived with no changes in Season 4 right up until pro player C9 Hai brought
the spotlight back to AP Soraka mid, prompting Riot to quickly answer with some nerfs in
4.8 and 4.9, tweaking her Q damage and the cooldown reduction from hitting champions.
Although this successfully discouraged the Soraka mid players, it was more of a temporary
fix until her second rework in patch 4.17.
This was the biggest change Soraka ever received in the games’ history, focusing on gameplay
changes through brand new abilities.
Her passive Salvation had it’s heal/mana boost removed and replaced with a movement
speed for Soraka when moving towards lower health allies.
Starcall was revised, calling down a star at target location that dealt damage in an
area.
Enemies hit directly took 50% more damage and were slowed for 2 seconds.
This, along with the removal of the magic resist debuff and spammable nature meant that
Starcall became a utility spell rather than a great waveclearing tool, which played big
part in stopping Soraka mid from finding her feet again.
The other part was a changed to her W - it had the armor buff removed and it’s healing
power increased, but it now cost 10% of Soraka’s health and could not be used on herself.
This killed off Soraka mid completely, as she had no way to sustain in the lane.
E was changed to Equinox, the silencing zone that Soraka still has today, removing her
ability to give mana to allied units.
Her Ultimate was the only part of her kit that was barely changed, instead it was given
a quality of life change that removed Grievous Wounds before healing allies, and also healing
low health allies more.
The changes were pretty well received overall, but she was a little bit on the weak side
because of Riot’s delicate approach, and was given two buffs to W in 4.20 and 4.21
as well as a slight nerf to her E’s cooldown.
Once again Soraka had found a pretty nice place in the meta without being too weak or
too dominant.
She went through most of Season 5 without notable changes, only receiving a couple of
small nerfs to her Q range and W mana cost in patch 5.24.
The Grievous Wounds removal of her Ultimate was also removed after Riot decided that there
should always be some form of counterplay available for the enemy team.
Preseason 6 was a scary time for Soraka players - the problem was that she was getting really
strong, and people knew she’d be in line for some nerfs to tone her down.
Riot finally gave her another mini rework in Patch 6.5 that was aimed at making Soraka
a little easier to deal with for opponents, making Soraka take more risks rather than
just sitting back and healing her partner.
Her Q was made a little more spammable and gave her the ability to slow all units hit,
not just those in the middle, but no longer could she deal 150% damage to targets in the
center.
She also gained a new buff, Rejuvenation, that gives her health over 4 seconds along
with movement speed away from enemies, with the aim of making Soraka play a more active
role in fights.
Astral Infusion also received a big change - the base heal was nerfed massively, but
if she used it while Rejuvenated by her Q, she’d give Rejuvenation to her target too.
The idea was to make it so that Soraka had a fairer gameplay pattern, having to get in
and fight to get the max benefit from her W healing.
It definitely made her more fun to play, but it also turned out to be a huge buff.
Soraka became a crazy dominant pick from this point forward, and was picked in almost every
game as the go-to support.
She was hit with a couple of mana cost increases to Q and W in 6.7 but it didn’t do much
to stop her rampage as the queen of supports.
She’s still a dominant pick now, although since 6.9 she’s been a little bit less annoying
to play against, after she saw one last nerf to her Q that cut out some of that slow percent
and movement speed buff from rejuvenation.
That was the very last nerf she’s seen so far, so as for the future - only Riot knows!
And that brings us to the end of our look into Soraka’s past.
She ended up with 3 big gameplay updates and quite a few tweaks over the years as Riot
worked hard to find a fair spot for League’s Number 1 Healer to be.
Make sure you let us know what your thoughts on her changes through the years are by leaving
us a comment below.
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!