Actually that's pretty much what you want, if the other team focuses you just spam heals and stay alive, get one silence off on their caster and let your carries rape them. You're useful in teamfights just because of your ult, you can be cross map and swing the tide of a teamfight with one cast. If you're in it, even better, spam starcall and silence their caster while hitting heals on anyone who gets hit at all.

But yeah, without a team you can't do shit, soraka alone does not win games.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

March 03 2010 15:23 GMT

#1522

IMO the most consistent way to win solo-queue is to DPS Sivir and keep telling your team to push lanes with you. It's so no-brain and people tend to listen to a Sivir wanting to push lane.

I don't like her for exact the reason Mog stated ;p But she's so damn consistent :x

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

March 03 2010 15:46 GMT

#1523

yea, you can't argue with results, and when you have unreliable teammates, Sivir seems to get the best results in my experience.

Brees

Marshall Islands3404 Posts

March 03 2010 15:58 GMT

#1524

ive had the most success with shaco and AP sion in solo queue

dominating lanes early really gets in the opponents head and demoralizes them for the rest of the game, makes for easy wins.

pokeyAA

United States936 Posts

March 03 2010 16:32 GMT

#1525

On March 03 2010 21:01 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Actually that's pretty much what you want, if the other team focuses you just spam heals and stay alive, get one silence off on their caster and let your carries rape them. You're useful in teamfights just because of your ult, you can be cross map and swing the tide of a teamfight with one cast. If you're in it, even better, spam starcall and silence their caster while hitting heals on anyone who gets hit at all.

But yeah, without a team you can't do shit, soraka alone does not win games.

Zerg is right, you have to play a very aggressive Soraka. You can't be at the back passively healing people and infusing them. I'm usually at the very front (in front of the tank even if we have one) spamming starfall back and forth (and autoattacking, soraka has 2nd highest range i believe). This usually pisses off one guy enough to try and attack me, if not their whole team. I run cleanse, heal (love eating Ashe's arrows for breakfast). The second they initiate, I cleanse whatever they use on me, run back to my team, all the while spamming starfall. At this point I'm usually half hp from their initial attack. I run behind my team and hope they continue to target me, at which point if they do, theyre screwed. Summoner heal, wish, and astral blessing keeps me alive, starfall going on the while rapes their magic resist, and my team wipes them. If they don't chase me all the way, my team at that point usually still kills 1 or 2 from attacking me.

The reason this works solo queue is that even if you play a carry, a lot of the times you find even if you can rape everyone 1v1, or even 1v2 its just not enough. The other team just learns to save their CC for you, and their team advantage owns your character advantage. The biggest benefit is though, people actually like to group up and push when they have an anchor like Soraka keeping them full health and mana and getting them kills. It usually even makes the selfish jungler or lone wolf come and join the party, which is a big cause of losing a game is people not sticking together. Can't count how many "I love you Soraka!" I get from my teammates haha.

Or, you can take the other suggestion and play Sivir, and learn to monster push towers down fast.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

March 03 2010 16:37 GMT

#1526

It's not so much monster push fast, so much as if you build Sivir DPS, all you need is the rest of your team to be a meatshield, and eventually her high damage + ricochet will clear out everything, hahah. And your team + your ult can usually be of at least SOME use. With Spellshield it becomes very difficult to CC her, especially if the other team isn't significantly premade (usually won't happen solo queue), and if you get Banshees it becomes borderline wasteful to try.

The only problem is that teams you run into also bring Sivir quite often, so the differential will be how much better a Sivir you are than the other team.

bellweather

United States404 Posts

March 03 2010 16:49 GMT

#1527

On March 04 2010 00:58 Brees wrote:
dominating lanes early really gets in the opponents head and demoralizes them for the rest of the game, makes for easy wins.

This works pretty well but gets a bit more complicated if you're in a dual lane and your lane mate keeps feeding. I suppose you could ask for a solo and hope to god your other lanes don't get raped.

pokeyAA

United States936 Posts

March 03 2010 16:49 GMT

#1528

Haha I had a game where our team had Alistar, Soraka, Sivir, Nidalee, and Fiddle not premade.
Opponent team couldnt help but watch their towers turn to rubble.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

March 03 2010 16:54 GMT

#1529

Bwah bwah bwaaah, that's like, an actual tournament-quality lineup :p

Closest I get with friends is like, TF, Shaco, Sivir, Alist, Blitz.

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

March 03 2010 16:58 GMT

#1530

On March 04 2010 01:54 Southlight wrote:
Bwah bwah bwaaah, that's like, an actual tournament-quality lineup :p

you mean besides soraka right? cause I'm under the impression that even with the nerfs to executioner's calling, no one competitive would play soraka.

Closest I get with friends is like, TF, Shaco, Sivir, Alist, Blitz.

That's still a really nasty team. We're talking 3 obvious Tier 1s and Shaco and Blitz aren't exactly slouches either.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

March 03 2010 17:02 GMT

#1531

Maybe not Soraka, I'm not sure. Taric is definitely tournament-worthy and I'm not sure Soraka is that far behind now with EC nerfed. She does, after all, have a pretty good silence and reduces MR, which in conjunction with stuff like Fiddle is "just a bit strong."

Anyways, yeah, ours is nasty, too, but Shaco + Blitz is a bit odd in terms of synergy.

pokeyAA

United States936 Posts

March 03 2010 17:28 GMT

#1532

During the CouchAthletics LoL tourney a while while back, Soraka WAS tournament worthy. In fact, she was character ban pick worthy. Then came the tank nerfs, heal nerfs, and exec nerfs. Now that exec nerf is gone, she's at least very viable in my eyes.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

March 03 2010 17:30 GMT

#1533

Yeah, that's more-or-less the way I see her. I'd definitely prefer a hard shutdown over her, but I feel the same about Taric, and I know I constantly underestimate Taric.

Quick rant about playing against Taric:
I hate how his heal is so deceptively strong. It really fucks up initiating. So freakin' hard to play against. But not enough people play Taric for me to get comfortable gauging his healing power, guh.

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

March 03 2010 18:18 GMT

#1534

ehh, taric is way more viable IMO.

Their heals are comparable, with Soraka's edging out a little bit with the bonus armor and lower CD. Stun > Silence due to lower CD and stun generally being a more powerful effect than silence (though imbue is insane early for ability spam). Shatter Aura and Starcall are pretty different, but ultimately Shatter wins out IMO due to bursting way better and giving some survivability to teammates/creeps during pushes, though it really boils down to whether your team is bursting with AD or abilities due to each abilities defense reduction. Radiance is such a beating in team fights and while wish also makes a huge difference, I think radiance with the considerable bonus damage tends to make a larger impact on the game.

On top of all that, Taric's hp growth is considerably higher and so the other team will have a much harder time trying to target you early to knock out your team's support.

*shrugs*, just my 2 cents, but I think there's a reason tier lists consistently have Taric in the top 3 tiers and have Soraka lurking somewhere around the bottom. (also, why is kayle never talked about in the Soraka and Taric conversations? She seems like she fills a similar role and is pretty damn good...)

Brees

Marshall Islands3404 Posts

March 03 2010 18:30 GMT

#1535

on the correct comp, taric is just imbalanced. starks + shatter + ultimate = 0 armor opponents getting hit for super attacks from your carries while you are healing them and stunning for them. what the?

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

March 03 2010 18:40 GMT

#1536

That's why I said Taric > Soraka, but I don't know if, with the EC nerf, Soraka is that far behind. As in tier 1-3 vs tier Eve. I don't think they're that significantly apart now; Soraka's better as a caster support, Taric is better in an overall teamfight/partner for physical carries.

Kayle isn't talked about because she's a one-trick pony that brings almost nothing else to the table, barring some sort of miracle. I'd rate Zilean over her, because at least Zilean will bomb the crap out of you.

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

March 03 2010 19:04 GMT

#1537

o_O really?

I mean, she does have a 1:1 AP ratio on her slow and a pretty solid heal + pretty good HP growth in addition to her annoying as balls ult.

I dunno, she seems pretty damn solid on paper at least.

Southlight

United States11768 Posts

March 03 2010 19:12 GMT

#1538

No disable nor burst = generally a bad character. There aren't many heroes that are good with absolutely no disable nor great burst damage. That's just how this metagame is.

pokeyAA

United States936 Posts

March 03 2010 19:21 GMT

#1539

I also think Kayle is a one trick pony, and not as useful now that Twitch was nerfed (people ran Kayle JUST to ult twitch back when twitch was OP)

Mogwai

United States13274 Posts

March 03 2010 22:17 GMT

#1540

I dunno, she still seems better than Zilean IMO. I guess she is mostly a one trick pony when you boil it all down, but it's a pretty good trick and her other stuff is all situationally pretty decent. She's pretty similar to Zilean I guess, I just think her skills are usually a little bit better than his.

They both seem better than Soraka to me, but I might not have logged enough games post-EC nerf to have felt how much better Soraka is.

Complete change of topics, but has anyone else seen Tryndamere use his ult and get hit by Mordakaiser's ult? It's pretty stupid...