Talk:Soraka/@comment-76.230.107.202-20110523030841/@comment-99.240.60.236-20110528215820

^ I don't think I'm a reputable source on balance, but Vayne's probably definitely not OP now. I don't play her myself, but many casters can beat her in lane handily and clearly to me, having superior early-game damage and harassment. Some examples - Ryze can harass with his higher-ranged Q and punish her attempting to harass him with his rotation once he has W and E available. Lux's harassment abilities' range is significantly greater than Vayne's, and she may punish a Vayne attempting to harass her with Tumble via her snare. Vayne will have no chance against an accurate Cassiopeia with her long-ranged spammable harassment capabilities. Veigar just hits her with his E should she attempt to harass him with Tumble, then tear her apart with the rest of his abilities - his stun's range is significant enough that he may even attempt to harass her with it in addition to his Q and W after hitting with it. Anivia may stun a Vayne Tumbling toward her and Frostbite. Basically, all these champions just needs to avoid getting stunned by Vayne's Condemn and they'll should be golden in ensuing head-on fight. Should they fail to, it's a bit murkier. There's probably more champions that can do this sort of thing against Vayne in lane too. We can agree a Vayne that's not winning their lane won't be that great, right? She's certainly not Xin Zhao upon initial release.

With that build, you're going to have to be very good at positioning anyway because you are squishy while auras generally have a generous range that's greater than Soraka's abilities' range, especially since Starcall's requires a lot of more casts than other abilities to be worth it meaning you'll have to stay in range longer to make the Q which makes a significant part of building AP's value worthwhile.

The idea of killstealing to get more gold because some needs it is a silly concept in a serious match. Opponents will try as hard as their can to kill you and not die, so specifically letting a single person get all the kills is impossible against competent opponents, and to do so wastes time in a fierce teamfight. A situation in which you really can just let one person take the kill means your opponents are screwing up badly...but you can't rely on that happening.

Your comparison between auras and building AP is not taking everything into consideration - an aura stacker can still heal at least 300 health with 80 armour every ten seconds to a single target, heal 440 to all allies, do 250 damage with a significant 3 second silence with the occasional Starcall (though probably better than that), in addition to their useful auras.

And everyone agrees your allies' dependability is always a crapshoot in solo queue, no matter what role you are. A carry can't carry if their tank doesn't initiate well lest they get nuked by enemy mages, a jungler can't provide ganks if everyone pushes up their lane or is getting trounced and constantly low on health in lane requiring the jungler to take over their lane, and a support is useless when the team they are supporting isn't very good. There is clear gameplay problems for all champions when teams don't work as one. Soraka is not special in this manner.

AP is still viable for Soraka since her support abilities benefit from them. It doesn't mean building items seen as being the cheaper things supports should generally get are a completely inadequete option either, though.