Talk:Soraka/@comment-4959312-20140927024805/@comment-6281696-20140927095606

@sindal The issue with old soraka that made her infuriating to deal with, and sustain in general, is that it needs to be extremely high to be of any use in LoL. The reason for that is that the level of damage is already high. If a fairly average attack can take out 10-20% of your HP you need a ton of sustain to even attempt outlasting the damage caused by harrasement. As a consequence sustain-lanes are infuriating to deal with because they need to have MASSIVE sustain. On top of that, if you run out of resources (e.g. mana) after a handfull of attacks it doesn't really work either. So not only does the sustain need to be massive but it needs to be relativly low cost. As a consequence you now have a champion with extremely high sustain for extremely low costs (when compared to others). This allows champions like soraka to play a much more thought out tactical game, as opposed to do the focus on just fast twitch plays. However, as other champions have, by comparison, basicly no sustain they do not have any real responses to that. They cannot join in the tactical drawn out playstyles, and as a consequence they become infuriating to deal with.

By the way, the same goes for champions like mundo or characters revolving around life steal/spell vamp.

On top of that, because of the obsession with twitch plays and burst (cuz it looks cool), sustain becomes more and more pointless because half the time you simply get instantly killed. Which is why soraka and for example Taric don't see much play. Massive sustain is fun and all, but if you're facing a team of assasins you'l never actually get the chance to use it because if they do their job properly you should've died before your sustain actually kicks in. As a consequence they often become niche picks.

Now because of these two issues with respect to sustain & burst champions like soraka constantly switch between being increadibly niche and being horrendously overpowered and infuriating depending on the last balance changes. Either the burst teams can melt them before the sustain kicks in and sustain champions become niche, or they become borderline immortal because barely anyone can get through their (near) endless sustain.

As for the rework, haven't really played with her yet, but this kit does look "better" than the previous iteration. At least the mana-battery aspect is gone now, along with the free harras that skill could also be used for. And her Q is considerably more interesting than what it was. The rest however, is more or less the same.