League of Legends LII: Sin of the Blind Monk

[brutii]

If you have an ADC player in mind, I'm a terrible Leona who happens to know a decent ADC I have good synergy with.

[mrcarter11]

Point awarded to Lego for that one. Raka is a rare support to see. One who Riot I think has mentioned several times that they aren't happy with. They don't like how she plays. But your silence is useful sure, but I really don't see you winning with her early game. At level 2, a blitz or thresh outranges your silence, they pull you in and you start burning your spells to save yourself, or you die. Raka isn't that strong, and maybe you have some luck with her sure, but past your personal experience she really isn't mate.

EDIT: I mean assuming we are all about equal level, I'll gladly play with a buddy of mine who is on currently as his support, if you can find yourself an adc of equal elo-ness

[Merellis]

It's probably because the thresh/leona hasn't played vs a soraka in 500 games.

What's a Soraka? This some kind of fancy new item?

[Eldariel]

Wow. A year and a half after I won it, Riot finally added Triumphant Ryze to my account. About. Damn. Time.

[Thomas Cardew]

So huh, anecdotal evidence and all that but I think these are at least slightly relevant to the Leona thresh counter discussion.

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[Nadevoc]

well, it was a reaction to nothing beating an agressive tresh or lvl 2-3 leona diving... (especially tresh vs Leona)

I never claimed nothing beat Thresh or Leona? You clearly misread something.

That said, Soraka generally DOESN'T beat Leona's level two dive.

Really, Soraka's power is inversely related to your opponent's skill. That's true to some extent for all champions, but particularly with Soraka. She has no inherent play making ability; she basically relies on her opponents underestimating her sustain or (in the case of her ult) forgetting she's in the game.

Raka is a rare support to see. One who Riot I think has mentioned several times that they aren't happy with. They don't like how she plays.

Indeed. Here's a thread where Morello talks about her within the past day, basically saying he intends to keep her numbers tweaked towards the weak end until they figure out what to do with her:

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com...05177#41405177

To quote the final Riot post, from Xelnath:

"And this is exactly why we've elected to leave Soraka as non-competitive for right now. She can't be competitive and maintain the mechanics she has now. (see the 99 Morello posts above mine for details)"

[Nerocite]

Summer skins are finally out! Loving the Graves, not so much on the others.

[Socratov]

I never claimed nothing beat Thresh or Leona? You clearly misread something.

That said, Soraka generally DOESN'T beat Leona's level two dive.

Well, that said, if you are called bvefore you can silence her, yeah, you are righty tightied into deathtimers. However, if you use your head, ward brushes (support 101), use stun before she reaches you. fighting Leona is using your head. Her E has a castingtime (about half a second) and a nice simple animation. Soraka's E is instant one in range. Use your head and you can outthink Leona. Blitz (I saw him mentioned earlier I think) the same: keep between minions and ward the brush, stay moving, standard stuff. If Leona wants to hit she needs to get in close, guess where she hasn't built items for yet? Right. Lvl 5-6 is the problem. Then she is really dangerous, but lvl 2-3 is nothing yet.

Really, Soraka's power is inversely related to your opponent's skill. That's true to some extent for all champions, but particularly with Soraka. She has no inherent play making ability; she basically relies on her opponents underestimating her sustain or (in the case of her ult) forgetting she's in the game.

Or (end game) that she reduces your MR into the single digits, Or that she can silence you for a far too long time to be comfrotable. And this is true for especially supports: Sona? Wait for the ultimate, rest is icing on the cake, but not that nesccessary. Blitz/Tresh: pull, (if they can land it). Zyra: Ult/snare. Now, the only actual useful support always is Elise. She has the ability to splitpush.

Indeed. Here's a thread where Morello talks about her within the past day, basically saying he intends to keep her numbers tweaked towards the weak end until they figure out what to do with her:

http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com...05177#41405177

To quote the final Riot post, from Xelnath:

"And this is exactly why we've elected to leave Soraka as non-competitive for right now. She can't be competitive and maintain the mechanics she has now. (see the 99 Morello posts above mine for details)"

It's true. That is because (and this discussion has gone on for about 2 years now) Riot can't marry the concept of dedicated healer with how they envision their game to be. Another problem is the fact that they can't just remove Soraka from the game without giving people something back for it since people have paid for it. And third (this is more of a frustration) the playerbase actually love Soraka's healiness. Personally I'd throw Starcall away completely (useless anyway unless you have gone warmogs+ every other tank item ever) and put something else in it's way. I'd turn blessing into a 5sec shield+ current armor buff and kick up the ult in numbers. Now she has her defining feature (healing) which actually would be awesome in teamplay and encourage more baiting, she has the whole protect carry schtick, her defining E and no more early game reset of lane. (and maybe her Q non damage debuff or something.) Though I seem to have misplaced my account details on the NA site

[Nadevoc]

Well, that said, if you are called bvefore you can silence her, yeah, you are righty tightied into deathtimers. However, if you use your head, ward brushes (support 101), use stun before she reaches you. fighting Leona is using your head. Her E has a castingtime (about half a second) and a nice simple animation. Soraka's E is instant one in range. Use your head and you can outthink Leona. Blitz (I saw him mentioned earlier I think) the same: keep between minions and ward the brush, stay moving, standard stuff. If Leona wants to hit she needs to get in close, guess where she hasn't built items for yet? Right. Lvl 5-6 is the problem. Then she is really dangerous, but lvl 2-3 is nothing yet.

First off, keep in mind that Leona will force you to burn two wards to get one into the bush.

Once your Infuse is on CD, that's 8.5 seconds during which you are either zoned or I am jumping on you or your ADC. Particularly at three, I'm going to do that. Leona doesn't NEED her items. Her kit has what she needs. And as I said, if I have to wait 'til 6? That's fine. I can wait a bit for my free kills if I have to.

With Blitz, the issue is that he just needs one good pull.

Or (end game) that she reduces your MR into the single digits, Or that she can silence you for a far too long time to be comfrotable. And this is true for especially supports: Sona? Wait for the ultimate, rest is icing on the cake, but not that nesccessary. Blitz/Tresh: pull, (if they can land it). Zyra: Ult/snare. Now, the only actual useful support always is Elise. She has the ability to splitpush.

You hold up the silence as being hugely dangerous, but she's got to compete with the CC that other supports bring... and they pretty much all bring hard CC. Sona and Zyra bring AoE stun/knockup and slow/damage reduction or snare/slow respectively. Leona brings a bunch of stuns and roots. Blitz brings pull, silence, and highly spammable knockup. The silence is nice, but it's seriously, SERIOUSLY weak in terms of a support's CC.

Yeah, she shreds your MR, but takes a bit of time to become significant and isn't terribly long range. Combine that with the utter squishiness of Soraka, and it's not that great. It takes any damage dealer about two seconds to take her out, collect the gold, and move on.

It's true. That is because (and this discussion has gone on for about 2 years now) Riot can't marry the concept of dedicated healer with how they envision their game to be. Another problem is the fact that they can't just remove Soraka from the game without giving people something back for it since people have paid for it. And third (this is more of a frustration) the playerbase actually love Soraka's healiness. Personally I'd throw Starcall away completely (useless anyway unless you have gone warmogs+ every other tank item ever) and put something else in it's way. I'd turn blessing into a 5sec shield+ current armor buff and kick up the ult in numbers. Now she has her defining feature (healing) which actually would be awesome in teamplay and encourage more baiting, she has the whole protect carry schtick, her defining E and no more early game reset of lane. (and maybe her Q non damage debuff or something.) Though I seem to have misplaced my account details on the NA site

When you say 'the player base actually loves Soraka's healiness', you have to realize that that's NOT the entirety of the player base. In fact, every time throughout League's history that Soraka's numbers have been high enough to make her really good, she's been THE most complained about champion. Players in general HATE dealing with a champion that's designed solely to prevent any plays from happening through healing, and historical feedback has shown this. Pure healers are great in PvE, but they really aren't great design in purely PvP games.

[Godskook]

Infinte sustain soraka would like a word with you. Heal+silence make for a deadly counter...the dive depends on factors like position mana, cooldowns (know thyne enemy) and early game power of your carry.

1.Infinite sustain Soraka is gone man. Just let her go.

2.Soraka's W heal is on part with other support heals. Sona has slightly worse healing per second and almost exactly the same healing per mana(important on a support's income), but Sona can AoE CC a team, provides choice of (burst/slow/damage reduction), and just generally be relevant in situations outside healing her ADC and silencing a DPS Mage(the only class that really cares about silences).

3.Nothing in Soraka's kit stops an all-in. *NOTHING* It can swing a close fight, but not every fight in bot lane is close. If you want a disengage support, go learn to play Janna, that's what she does best.

supports running ignite are freakishly rare (favoring exhaust), so that's a first thing, then, there is the fact that any sorakaplayer worth his/her salt goes ult>heal>silence>starcall

Its actually becoming common in solo queue ranked, these days, at least at my level, to see a support grab ignite. I'm not sure I agree with it, but its common enough that calling it "freakishly rare" means you're really not aware of it.

Additionally, some ADCs have methods to reduce healing in their kits, including Varus, Miss Fortune, and Tristana.

Seriously you have absolutely no business as a soraka to take starcall early on, too much push, too much screwing your carry over with last hits.

Which was kinda his point.

and anytime someone gets funny ideas you verbally kick your carry back to the tower and simultaneously silence anyone close enough to care for a taste. that and decent warding (not to mention spamming heal) makes sure you win lanes through inaction and let your carry farm. The only thing to screw over soraka lanes is excessive pushing denieing the carry his last hits. The only propblem in botlanes is noone sees tell-tale signs of people initating if they don't know what they are up against...

You can't silence Leona if she jumps your carry. Her W is already up, she can have her Q up before she goes in, and she's already used her E(and probably her R). Silencing her after that does -nothing- to stop her ADC from murdering yours. You can't silence Blitz after a good hook because he's over 1k units away from you. Thresh, you can silence, but that doesn't stop lantern, so the jungler he dragged along is now on top of your carry, what do?

This may be me, but I have no problems against tresh and leona as long as my carry has half a braincell to spare

Its probably just you, man. I mean, a good Soraka player can make it work for a long time, but you're fighting an uphill battle against supports that are just better at what they do than she is.

[Laudandus]

Last time Soraka was good, I stopped maining ad carry.

Bethor it is worth noting that silence is actually very good vs assassins and her heal gives a massive and very useful armor buff, but all that means is that she's much worse than Sona, not strictly worse. Soraka matchups are almost all just farm lanes where Soraka gets outscaled, except actually Soraka can't even farm right. She's probably okay vs the defensive/bad supports (Janna/Alistar, respectively) except that she gets outscaled really really badly by them.

Remember that when evaluating your personal experience of a champion, Socratov, you are weighing experience that is both low-level (I'm guessing, based on your opinion on Soraka) and extremely biased - low-level people don't do well against champions they haven't seen much, especially champions they haven't seen much that play differently from most champions.

[Anarion]

As a further point about Soraka, I tend to dread playing with her in soloqueue if I see the support pick her. I always watch them die and then they type something in chat like "My heal was gonna be back up in 2 more seconds."

If the person didn't have the heal for two seconds, why was he in range of being killed?!

[Mabn]

as an addendum to this discusion I will note that Soraka is both strong and fun in the Domminion and TT games I have encountered or played her (in ARAM she's exactly as broken as everyone else with a heal). This leads me to suspect that she may have Karma syndrome where her design is fine but she isn't and can not be a bot lane gold-less support. Mid lane she's a fairly strong bully who scales pretty well.

[Thomas Cardew]

Dominion and Twisted Treeline both have enhanced mana regen, that really allows her to spam her spells. And didn't we have a discussion about mid lane Sona in the last 10 or so pages on the old thread?

EDIT: Read Sona for some strange reason, scratch that part. But the point about enhance mana regen still stands. Plus given the rampant nature of bruiser on 3v3 the armor buff on her heal is going to be REALLY good.

[Mabn]

mana is and issue in mid, I really wish her e was just a silence that gave her passive mana regen when leveled sometimes. Nevertheless itemizing mana on ap casters is really good right now so it mostly just stops her from shutting down her opponent before ~ level 5 when she can get a chalice or tear.

[Winthur]

(I meant to send this post a good 6 hours ago but, alas, internet managed to die right before I hit Submit Reply, so I went to sleep. So now it has responses to additional comments on the matter)

supports running ignite are freakishly rare (favoring exhaust), so that's a first thing, then, there is the fact that any sorakaplayer worth his/her salt goes ult>heal>silence>starcall
Seriously you have absolutely no business as a soraka to take starcall early on, too much push, too much screwing your carry over with last hits.

Ignite is picked very often when
1) you want to snowball because it grants more kill potential than Exhaust
2) you see a heavy sustain support / a troubling sustain champion in any lane in Draft mode
3) you don't necessarily need Exhaust (Draft mode or team comp)
You see it quite a lot in pro matches.

Starcall at level 1 yields hilarious results especially with something like Doran's Shield as a starting item. It's some enormous cheese and I never even implied it's a "mainstream" strategy, but it has the potential to do some massive level 1 damage and pressure. It can work on people who seek all-ins at early levels who underestimate it's damage. It has a funny synergy with Barrier (that people don't normally pick on supports). It's something I threw out there as a possible solution to Soraka's bad level 1.

and anytime someone gets funny ideas you verbally kick your carry back to the tower and simultaneously silence anyone close enough to care for a taste.

Blitzcrank / Thresh hooks your AD carry, Leona initiates on you. Your silence lasts 1.5 seconds and you don't max it first. It doesn't even stop anyone, they can just keep following and apply that CC anyway. It gives time to Flash or dash away maybe. You still are forced to back off as soon as possible and can continue to take free damage. Silence doesn't even stop stuff like Thresh's empowered autoattacks.

and decent warding (not to mention spamming heal) makes sure you win lanes through inaction and let your carry farm. The only thing to screw over soraka lanes is excessive pushing denieing the carry his last hits. The only propblem in botlanes is noone sees tell-tale signs of people initating if they don't know what they are up against...

Decent warding and using your skills is how every other freaking support wins lanes. Soraka just has way less ways to do anything because she has no good peel, no initiation whatsoever, her amount of poke rivals Janna's poke at best, CC of dubious usefulness in the laning phase and her early game heal heals for nothing and has a huge cooldown. Engaging on her early and often emphasizes her weaknesses.

If you wanted to outsustain your enemies while possibly outpoking them or winning engages/counterengages why not just pick Sona? Or Nami?

Or (end game) that she reduces your MR into the single digits,

Exactly how tanky are you, ever, that Starcall provides you with relevant amounts of shred on anyone but the enemy frontline who should have plenty of resistances in most comps?

Well, that said, if you are called bvefore you can silence her, yeah, you are righty tightied into deathtimers. However, if you use your head, ward brushes (support 101), use stun before she reaches you. fighting Leona is using your head.

Assuming you meant silence by stun, "using your head" seems to imply the enemy support is incapable of using his and doesn't prepare extra vision and vision denial in the form of pink wards in order to commit to aggression.

Her E has a castingtime (about half a second) and a nice simple animation. Soraka's E is instant one in range. Use your head and you can outthink Leona.

Assuming she hits the Zenith Blade right before you silence her, most of the level 1 silence is going to waste while she's in transit and then Leona still has ample time to apply Shield of Daybreak as soon as the silence wears off assuming she didn't pop W and Q right before using Zenith Blade which a lot of people do. Especially since if the Leona coordinates with her carry then they're just going to rush in together and Leonas tend to space out their abilities to proc the Sunlight passive as much as possible.

If Leona wants to hit she needs to get in close, guess where she hasn't built items for yet? Right. Lvl 5-6 is the problem. Then she is really dangerous, but lvl 2-3 is nothing yet.

You yourself don't do any damage (unless you go Starcall cheese) and can't peel. Unless Leona players you play with push lane to the turret, which, by the way, doesn't allow them to exert any aggression at all and thus should be avoided, getting in close isn't a problem.

And this is true for especially supports: Sona? Wait for the ultimate, rest is icing on the cake, but not that nesccessary. Blitz/Tresh: pull, (if they can land it). Zyra: Ult/snare. Now, the only actual useful support always is Elise. She has the ability to splitpush.

Well, I'm assuming you mean that supports work off of people forgetting what they do. So I guess you never met Blitzcranks that constantly kill your vision with Oracles and hit great grabs from great places, Jannas that reset entire teamfights and shut down entire team compositions, Lulus or Sonas who get to do amazing engages and disengages... Hell, all Thresh has to do is put out a lantern, he has a ton of amazing skills other than his hook. Meanwhile Elise is mostly picked for the fact she has a ton of natural damage from the get go and a stun so she can be used in high pressure or kill lanes. Oh, and she can splitpush, I guess. So can Janna, if you slap some cost-efficient AP items, like the Morellonomicon, on her.

[abadguy]

What are the 'usual' bans you see?

All this Thresh talk gets to me because I see Thresh being a regular ban even when i spectate Gold+ games

[Talesin]

What are the 'usual' bans you see?

All this Thresh talk gets to me because I see Thresh being a regular ban even when i spectate Gold+ games

I tend to ban TF, Shen and Fizz. I'll add in Malphite, Amumu, Thresh and Elise depending on whether the other team bans any of my 3.

The reasons I pick them is that I hate TF and Shen's global presence and few people have the skills to deal with them. Fizz on the other hand just seems to wreck mid lanes, though he is counterable if your jungler knows what he's doing.

I've also seen Nasus, Blitz and Vayne bans but I wouldn't ban them myself unless my team asks for them.

[NineThePuma]

That moment where you get demoted because your team has an AFK.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I finally unlocked Kha'zix (mostly out of aesthetics, common he looks bad ass!), but I'm not really sure what to do with him. Due time constrain I could only play one game yesterday and I (un)luckily got a really good team that managed to win in less than 20 minutes, so I couldn't do much, I tried jungling (as it is my usual go-to role), but it was bad.

Would mid-laning be better? His passive does increase his damage a lot against lone targets and IME the mid-lane is the usual solo one.

[Ivellius]

What are the 'usual' bans you see?

All this Thresh talk gets to me because I see Thresh being a regular ban even when i spectate Gold+ games

Some combination of Thresh, Blitzcrank, Vayne, Zac, Lee Sin, Zed, Nasus, maybe Malphite or Shen. A lot of these depend on team compositions for me, but I hate Wither and those hooks (easier just to not play against them). Thresh is just silly anyway for everything he can do. Lee Sin and Zed are incredibly frustrating as well. *is Gold player*

I finally unlocked Kha'zix (mostly out of aesthetics, common he looks bad ass!), but I'm not really sure what to do with him. Due time constrain I could only play one game yesterday and I (un)luckily got a really good team that managed to win in less than 20 minutes, so I couldn't do much, I tried jungling (as it is my usual go-to role), but it was bad.

Would mid-laning be better? His passive does increase his damage a lot against lone targets and IME the mid-lane is the usual solo one.

I feel like KZ is probably better in a lane, but his jungle isn't terrible. W slows now without even being evolved. But yes, he does make for a good assassin in lane.

[TechnOkami]

I finally unlocked Kha'zix (mostly out of aesthetics, common he looks bad ass!), but I'm not really sure what to do with him. Due time constrain I could only play one game yesterday and I (un)luckily got a really good team that managed to win in less than 20 minutes, so I couldn't do much, I tried jungling (as it is my usual go-to role), but it was bad.

Would mid-laning be better? His passive does increase his damage a lot against lone targets and IME the mid-lane is the usual solo one.

I think the trick to Kha'Zix is to wait and farm until you've got your jump and a few ranks in Q, and then jump onto them and burst them to oblivion with jump damage + Q.

But I don't play Kha'Zixstahn, so I might just be wrong too.

[Hullabaloo]

As a new players that played support thresh most of last week and threw down 20+ wards (including sight stone ones) every game, it hurts to try mid this week (with Cass so far) and have no wards other then the ones I put down.
x.x

[Krazzman]

How does this banning work anyway? Never quite understood the draft mode due to never trying it out...

The thing I thought youbest ban is broken champs, champs that would make the enemy comp better and champs that you don't like to play against.

[TechnOkami]

How does this banning work anyway? Never quite understood the draft mode due to never trying it out...

The thing I thought youbest ban is broken champs, champs that would make the enemy comp better and champs that you don't like to play against.

You just described banning in a nutshell. Banning champs to improve a comp though is a little harder, borderline impossible I would say. League has so many champions by now that substituting one champ for another in a specific team comp is easy, making banning champions basically along these lines: if they're currently op, broken, or you just don't like 'em, bann 'em.

[Dusk Eclipse]

In tournaments I've seen people banning champions that they know the other team favours.

[Delusion]

In tournaments I've seen people banning champions that they know the other team favours.

That is not really possible for most players because you never know who your opponents are.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I meant high profile matches, like TSM vs. C9, IIRC the commentators were going on and on about how TSM would have a hard time banning champions since C9 were really good with a wide variety of champions.

[Krazzman]

I did not meant meta wise but more or less how the mechanic of draft is so I won't be surprised by it in my first ranked that I will probably play next year...

[Nadevoc]

I did not meant meta wise but more or less how the mechanic of draft is so I won't be surprised by it in my first ranked that I will probably play next year...

The first picks on each team are captains. In ranked it'll be the person with the highest elo; in normals it's decided normally.

Each captain gets three bans, alternating back and forth between the two. Captain A bans one, then Captain B, then A, blah blah blah.

I suggest playing a game or two of normal drafts before going into ranked just so you're used to it and aren't as intimidated during champ select.