Talk:Soraka/@comment-171.66.39.198-20120224023404

The unfortunate part is that healbot Soraka still works; what doesn't work is a more aggressive approach. If the only spells you cast are Infuse and Astral Blessing, you will end up playing exactly the same as you did before the patch, except your mana gradually goes down. But since any Starcall you cast is going to take away from your healing pool, you'll pretty much never cast it, despite it giving Soraka some of the most exciting options in lane. For example, most junglers do a respectable amount of magic damage, so you want to get a couple starcalls off before your jungler actually arrives for a gank. But if you only starcall when the jungler's about to gank, the other lane will know to back off as soon as you start starcalling. And if you try to feint with starcall to make it less obvious when the gank is really coming, you'll quickly find yourself out of mana.

Incidentally, only healbot Sorakas had infinite mana pre-patch. Those of us who actually used all our spells definitely ran out of mana, even with the regen from Infuse. I usually needed Eleisa's Miracle or Shurelya's Reverie before my mana stabilized, and with the new patch, getting one of those two items is pretty much a necessity by midgame, which stops the gp10 from philo rather early.

What I'd like to see is a rework that actually hits healbot Soraka more than aggressive Soraka. What would be interesting would be to give Soraka stacks from Starcall that are consumed on Astral Blessing to give extra healing (of course, we'd also lower the base heal substantially).