Talk:Soraka/@comment-33359150-20171014220123/@comment-28977071-20171016035959

Maxing is damn close to what one'd naively describe as "never".. Hence I'm assuming that you're talking about maxing. That I could explain in a bit other way:

Maxing Maxing first is a good stable decision, but if ones does that without dynamic decision-making, it's basically a behavior on a bot/script level. Every point put into it should be felt like a right decision at the very moment it was levelled up.

E.g. this is roughly how I was usually levelling her: Everytime I got a level I reconsidered the current local balance in the matchup. If the constitution of my ward(s) showed tendencies to decline even after the inclusion of all sustain/healing, I levelled up when I was going to use it next (or slightly in advance if the circumstances seemed to be too hot to enforce the potential consequent smartcast). On the other hand, if the local tendency of allies' constitution was non-decreasing (e.g. a result of being ahead, local enemy playing too passively, etc.), I intended to level up on its next use. If the enemy isn't trying to create enough pressure, to enforce levelling up that, then it makes more sense to create such pressure by yourself; rather than giving'em your free retreat to a more defensive option. Having the healing steroid buffs such as those from //.. can also slightly shift this local decision-making. But those are a bit more complex as they icrease the potency of / too and thus are no longer local. I don't intend to consider this important aspect much in there..

In the end one end up with maxed first in most situations but that does not imply the "WWWWWQ.." priority order kind of scenario in most situations at all. is a great counter against both burst and sustained damage, counters sustained damage only. But it still is an equally good sustained healing in strength (just split on two subjects), with addition of MS steroid and more control; plus it doesn't cost you your own so it actually provides more overall healing on all players involved, just less healing for your ward (which is admittedly the most important thing).

I am not telling that maxing isn't a generic winner, just look at stats from plat+. But even there one can see a rare (but present) percentage of situations when ended up prioritized instead. Now either "the deviation" was caused by few particular deviants (trolls, smurfs, boosted bronzes, whatever..) or few out-of-normal deviated game conditions (e.g. adaptation to the early lane dominance, an opponent afk, ..). I could be wrong but I believe that the other subset is non-empty..