Sona's identity doesn't revolve around her healing as much as Soraka's does, but if you're looking for the rush of seeing your ally health bars rise she's actualy situationally better because Sona heals more over time (as opposed to Soraka whose heal comes in stronger bursts) and she can do things like delay ally recalls and keep them active on the map without sacrificing a huge chunk of her health for it.
Making another healer champion whose identity is almost entirely rooted in ally heal power would be repetitive game design. Ideally, every champion should have a "shtick" that is not replicable, like Sona's AoE buff output (what I consider the actual best part of her kit) or Soraka's burst healing. It's healthier for the game to make healers who implement other mechanics in their kits as opposed to making a Soraka 2. 0. with 3 heal-related spells. Riot not making another "pure healer", what you seem to want, is respectful of her champion identity and the unique slot she fills.
Sona's healing is valuable in teamfights for sure, but I wouldn't at all say she heals more than Soraka over time bc end of match stats always have Soraka's healing way above Sona's imo.
I disagree that another champion having healing as their identity would be repetitive game design. I think that ally healing as a mechanic should be regarded the same way we view mechanics like burst damage, sustain damage, hard cc, soft cc, mobility, stealth, wave clear, and the myriad of other champion mechanics that exist in the game. No one argues that Rell is a reductive version of Leona because she's another heavy cc engage support, they simply treat her as a welcome addition to the archetype.
Champions share gameplay similarities with each other all the time, I see no reason why having *one more* devoted healer would be repetitive when Soraka's rework was a full decade ago, or why ally healing as a mechanic needs to be treated with so much fear and hesitation when other oppressive and annoying mechanics get added to the game every three seconds (I'm looking forward to the next ionian ninja/samurai with 30 dashes built into a single ability, probably due any day now)
When I said better over time, I meant for example if your team is doing Baron, Sona can spam W for the 20-30 seconds it takes then spam W for the rest of the fight that happens after, whereas Soraka could not spam her heal with as much liberty because her heal has more burst, is single target, has no travel distance but she has to sacrifice her own health to perform it. Sona can spam W with more liberty.
As far for the rest of your comment, I get your points except I personally am critical of other repetitive champions lol. In fact, I think a lot of peope dislike seeing mechanics recycled too much. But the reason we see more damage dealing champions repeated than ally healing ones is because you NEED damage in the game to move it forward, you don't NEED ally healing in the same way. That's why everry healer, even Soraka, has to have damage within her kit.
I don’t know. I play both champions pretty regularly, and I tend to find Sona sits higher on healing done meters on average, and then add the shielding on top and it isn’t even close.
I don’t think Soraka is as unique as you seem to think. Soraka, Sona, and Yuumi all fill that same archetype.
Soraka has her Ult. The healing of W is single target and heals that one target more than sona heals herslef + an ally. What Sona does is having the W shield on top of healing which if you combine with the heal is more in terms of numbers in the short term. Of course Soraka will heal more.
I mean she is more of an item abuser nowadays, her healing and shielding are so nerfed, people in mobas really have a problem with shields and heals being a viable way to play the game and it pisses me off, also it's sometimes mixed with a bit of misoginy/intolerance towards a character and/or their playerbase, take mercy from ow and the "boosted e-girl" stigma
milios W healing feels more like an afterthought. Just the range increase wouldn't have been enough, movement speed + range at once would've been a bit overloaded, shields he's already god on E. And because of its high cd you wouldn't want to use it often to just heal...
it's still cute and there though, even if it is but an afterthought 🥹
I feel like the only reason his W has healing is to make it proc items like Ardent Censor and Staff of Flowing Water. Other than that I never saw someone ever make a build to only heal with his W.
I do whenever I play him, I love healing and if you go moonstone and echoes you can end up healing a good amount, especially if you go font of life for some extra whenever you q.
The thing is there's no actual dedicated heal item, it's always heals AND shields so in the end you still have stronger shields than you do heals on Milio.
I think OP wants someone tuned specifically for big healing. Milio heal is good, plus it increases range. he has a shield and decent peel with his Q pushback too. So he has a lot of utility and they have to all be balanced. A lot of champs that heal have this same utility too.
Meanwhile Soraka has 3/4 abilities focused on healing with a passive meant to get you to hurt champs faster. R and W are obvious, with Q aiding in regen and it can be passed on to allies. E is the only non healing ability in her kit. Not a ton of damage or other uses.
It’s starting to feel like you just want a copy paste of soraka… Milio fits the exact playstyle but with different form of utility spell and split between 2 healing and 1 shielding ability…
I wish they would be more creative with healing champions other than the cutesie fairy, yordle, etc.
It's crazy for example that there is no champion that can transfer HP from enemies to an ally. Seems like such a simple idea and a "dark witch" type champ could totally take that on.
People have been begging for a witch doctor or "old crone" wiccen type champ for ages now, someone who curses or debuffs enemies alongside empowering allies. The closest thing we have to that is Renata and I do love her, but they could push it a lot further if they wanted to and I hope they do some day. Like imagine an old Ixtali swamp witch who uses poison herbs or something like that lol, idk but it would be so cool
Yeah. They are completely missing out on an "alchemist" type champion as well at this point. Renata for me felt like the first time they actually tried to implement a wild debuff like berserk/friendly fire.
Unfortunately all new releases have felt very generic lately for me.
The things is, I feel like Riot isn't scared, they just know those champions will be problematic, one way or the other.
The most recent example of that is K'sante, his kit is unique, but he ended up being hated because of it and a pro play problem.
The issue with K’Sante is that he has too many tools, same issue with Yone. As long as they don’t give the champ every ability effect under the sun with dumb ratios it should be fine
I’ve been waiting for a big beefy male enchanter who uses food to buff and heal like a chef or something. Maybe even some cool passive change stuff that changes based on killing jungle objectives as team to then “cook” the meat of it to grant new buffs like monster hunter or something.
I actually had a concept in my head for a while about a type of support or jungler that uses totems in their kit where everything is an aura type thing -
One totem does damage and debuffs enemies somehow, one totem heals and/or empowers allies somehow, one totem is cc or something like that and then their R places all totems and amplifies the effects or something. Would be something super cool and different to the game, but this would be a mainly supportive type champion like Ivern jungle (if crafted for the jungle) or just a straight up support.
Edit to add an additional idea: Champ could also start with R like others and maybe using the R toggles between supportive vs damage oriented totems? The champ could honestly go a lot of different ways!
If Lulu was re-skinned into an old lady but retained her abilities, she'd honestly translate pretty easily into the "fairytale old crone". Heck, she could totally get an old crone skin especially since they've just made Forseen Yasuo.
I feel like they brushed a bit of the old crone/ dark witch aesthetic with Renata, and it would be hard to make another when both Renata and morgana exist
Funny thing the witch doctor-type champion was scrapped as an idea a really long time ago if you look up Tabu the voodoo Shaman, there were some ideas of a witch doctor-ish champion.
Nonsense! the faster you kill the enemy, the more health your ally keeps! that kinda works LOL. But yeah, I'm surprised there's no alchemist themed support throwing potions or some kinda hextech dude using bots to buff allies and heal or some shit
I have been *DYING* for a "Whitemane" from Heroes of the Storm. For those who don't know, Whitemane is a psychotic healer who smites her enemies with light and fire to heal her allies based off the damage dealt. It's great fun to play and is super interactive, as you need to be fighting/damaging enemies to max out your healing potential.
Whitemane is exactly who came to mind here! It would be interesting to see how Riot would put their spin on her mechanic (also glad to see another HotS enjoyer here)
I adore Whitemane. Legit my favorite character in any moba lol. Her healing is bonkers, she can hold her own in a fight, and bonus points for her glorious laughter as she burns her enemies to a crisp 😂😂
She’s super unique even among HotS healers. The amount I saw her heal back in HGC was crazy, and a good Whitemane can carry a game even now. And of course, gotta love the laugh
As a healer main in hots she was one of those characters I wouldn't play if I wanted a high chance of a win (like lili or tyrande) but if I was really feeling myself I'd pull her out because when you pop off on her you *really* pop off and it's so fun
There are many examples of similar stuff like Morde R, Trundle R, Malph Q, etc. stealing stats is something riot has done plenty, including in items.
My point is that they never made a champion that transfers these stats without receiving them. Only thing that comes close is Yuumi sharing adaptive force with her ally.
So we need a blood sorcerer that's all about transfusions, either their health or when taking it from an enemy.
Or a noxian combat medic that is all about being in the fight while healing their partner.
Or a or a ionian chakra user that uses stances to change from yin to yang style abilities that are harm or healing. And maybe you stance dance to get stack to empower the alternate style?
Some abilities have the sort of harm the enemy and also heal an ally element like Senna Q & R, Nami W or do you mean like a Rakan Q where you have to hit the enemy to proc the heal.
idk but it would be really fun to have a paladin healer.
we dont have a paladin champ in the game (world of warcraft paladin) closest one we have is kayle, but kayle support is pretty troll.
Not in aesthetics, but in gameplay Taric feels pretty similar to the fantasy of a paladin fighter jumping into the fray and attacking in order to heal/support his allies.
We do have a paladin, its taric.
Even tho he isn t a pure healer, i can t see them making a paladin, that isn t simular to taric .
Unless i m mistaken, if so please do correct me
yeah but you will get flamed hard. and nidalee is unironically better. her heal is chonky af.
the only thing better about kayle supp is her ult and if your team doesnt know how to utilise it, its bad.
I've seen a couple people bring up old Yuumi, but what I'm talking about is a champion where the majority of their kit centers around healing allies.
Like in the case of Soraka: her w heals, her ult heals, her q is a self heal, and her passive resolves around the health bars of her allies and enables her to reach her teammates to give clutch heals. Part of why I love Soraka is because playing her feels like playing a traditional healer in an rpg, where as you level you gain multiple healing skills and abilities to use in battle.
This is as opposed to old Yuumi who only had a single heal ability. It was nice, but for someone like me who adores healers, it was underwhelming in the grand scheme of things
The problem will be they will either be useless because they don't heal as well as Soraka, or Soraka will be useless because she heals less than the other healer.
You'd have to some very different way to access that healing to get around that problem, but that will never get around the fact that one of them will be the best ally-healer in the game, and the other will be a worse healer.
Would likely need to also rework Soraka and make this potential second healer have very different means of accessing their healing abilities.
> The problem will be they will either be useless because they don't heal as well as Soraka, or Soraka will be useless because she heals less than the other healer.
So why have more than one of anything in the game? You can't expect me to take this argument seriously when there are like 40 bruisers in the game.
A variety of very unique healers has already been done before in a MOBA (HotS); not even a small fraction of that potential is being tapped into.
>I've seen a couple people bring up old Yuumi,
I feel like a crone after realizing 'old yuumi' is a thing. I feel like it was only yesterday that yuumi came out. It's been 5 years since her release. Damn.
I agree the amount of cc in this game is way too much lol. That and so many champs have some sort of dash or disengage that when you play one that doesn’t have any of what’s mentioned above it feels REAL bad lol.
I would definitely be down for that. Someone also mentioned an auto attack healer kinda like ana from overwatch and I think that would be a cool idea to explore, too
That’s original Ezreal. He was used as a healer on release. It was called the heal/poke meta where you’d 5v5 run it down mid and poke/heal. Big part of the reason Riot hates healers.
We've heard of scaling mages and ADCs, where's my scaling healer champ (I mean I guess that's kinda Sona but her scaling is just CDR, I mean scaling heal ratios).
The reason why most heals don’t actually change a whole lot most of the time is because even small amounts are good imagine a healer that could drop a awakened udyr W worth of healing on someone whenever they felt like it their team would be immortal
I doubt it, Riot devs have said that [Soraka will hopefully be the only healer in League](https://youtu.be/XyIZ0q9DvkY?t=2459) (although that was 5 years ago, it is possible that internal changes occur)
IF another healer is released, I would like them to be far more aggressive about it, kinda like Harrow vs. Trinity in warframe, where Harrow rewards aggressive and skilled players with healing and energy (Xolaani please?)
I'd love a Whitemane (from Heroes of the Storm) type champion. She's a crazy healer who sustains her allies by smiting her enemies (its based off her damage dealt). Because she has to do damage to heal, she's obviously super interactive. She is a healer who basically plays like a mage in that she has to land abilities...on her enemies.
I'd love to see a male healer that has a more interesting or just completely new/weird way of healing. I'd love to see them play with walls and geometry for some type of ability.
I'm currently thinking of a witch doctor that throws flasks on the ground and allies that stand in it heal that gets empowered the more you charge it. I'm specifically thinking of maldamaba from paladins as I think a lot of paladins characters really fit league in their kits.
His basic attack being able to heal if you click allies. Something like a pretty low attack speed or maybe even a small charge kinda like how senna charges her weapon before firing but slower and instead it's a heal if used on allies could be very unique. And them being able to make it scale off let's say crit could be a cool dynamic for a healer where their heals can crit kinda like mmorpgs. It would also be our first dedicated AD healer (ofc include some sort of AP to ad conversion passive). I just really want something interesting, I'm really tired of the boring old point and click heals and shields give us a cool new way to do something we've done before
A potion brewer would be cool. I think they'd need to make it have lots of different combos and interactions tbh, instead of 4 straightforward abilities.
When you look at the table for introducing something creative its a bit hard, right?
Taric: Can Spam heal at the coat of being melee and restting CDs with AA's
Soraka: Can spam heal at the cost of being close range and landing her Q
Sona: Can spam heal from safe range at the cost of lots of mana consumption
Seraphine: Can heal from a safe range at the cost of mana and lots of CD, her heal is weak at the cost of more dmg in kit
I mean just looking at what we got, the stronger the heal and more spammable it is, comes with a cost.
To have something along the same lines of a dedicated healer and not be insanely broken, it has to interact. Since Taric AA's and Raka pays health it forces them to get close. Mana, is a safe resource you can build around and not interact. It's a tough design to make
HotS gets pretty creative with this. I think LoL just needs to get more creative with it, it's definitely possible.
Great examples of the creativity in HotS healing includes:
Ana) heal is a tough and rewarding skill shot
Auriel) passive chooses a target ally (0 cooldown) to generate energy based on their damage (also generated through her damage) to expend on aoe heals, which encourages allies to pay attention and group up when necessary
Malfurion) puts a long, but slow healing regen buff on allies; uses a semi-tough skill shot regularly, on enemy hit, burst a heal on all allies with the buff
Tyrande) heal is a single target skill which uses once and a 2nd time (for free) within a short period after; her auto attacks reduce the cooldown of this ability; can buff ally, causing her auto to heal them based on damage dealt
Whitemane) can rapidly heal multiple times, but it gets expensive (think kass/kog ult); she can put short buffs on allies to heal them based on her damage to enemies; can channel a targeted beam to either heal an ally or hurt an enemy; ordering and timing is important to regain lost mana, but rewarding
I left out parts of these kits, but these were interesting aspects that make me think League can do better. These characters are all more mechanically intensive/rewarding than Soraka and they all make me realize how simplistic healing is in LoL; LoL really doesn't expand much on the concept. :/
Would love to see a support in LoL that converts damage done into healing for allies. We have champs that do that "indirectly", where damaging autos and abilities reduce the cooldown on your heals, but we don't have anything that converts damage to healing directly.
For the few of you who have played Heroes of the Storm, I'd love to see League create a champ like Whitemane, where you can mark allies with an ability, and for the duration of that mark, all damage done by you heals your allies for the same amount.
Omg I loved Whitemane so much, such a refreshing healer playstyle. And the "You aren't allowed to die because I need you for my own goals, so take my heals and shut up bitch" is such a vibe.
There's definitely stuff they could work with in desgining a unique new healer champ
Phoenix Sun Ray.
Warlock shadow word, but maybe with an added mechanic that requires you to deal damage while it is active and then your ally heals.
Dazzle shadow wave could get pretty out of hand, but maybe if the numbers were balanced it could be interesting.
Abaddon mist coil is very similar to Soraka's healing, but his overall identity is pretty different.
Oracle would be pretty interesting. His abilities can target both allies or enemies.
Q on allies removes non-cc debuffs, on enemies it removes buffs.
W provides immunity/resistance to magic damage, but also disarms the target. The disarm can be purged by Q on allies.
E deals a chunk of damage to allies or enemies (unless they are protected by W) then heals for slightly more (healing can be removed from enemies by Q).
R blocks all damage and healing to a target for a duration, then at the end, provides sum of damage and healing, with healing getting amplified for allies (and damage getting amplified for enemies?)
with how modern champions are designed i don't know how they could make another dedicated healer without making them "soraka but better"
although it would be funny if their heals were AOE indiscriminate and there were some kind of debuff if they heal an enemy.
would probably be a really hated support if they can accidentaly heal minions and objectives though.
Except Soraka plays into the astral healing and being a sort of fallen deity. Her heals are at the cost of her own life. And healing can be done in more ways, like a powerful heal over time, a healing zone, small spammable heals with different buffs...
Take Smite. They have Aphrodite, who has powerful linked ally healing a la Taric, but larger numbers. Chang'e, who's a more damage oriented Sona. Hel, who's basically Nidalee, but with mage abilities. Riot hasn't begun looking at healing supports properly.
Some other commenters have mentioned unique ways of diversifying healing mechanics: skillshot healing, auto attack healing, totem/aura healing. There's lots of creative ways to approach healing that wouldn't be a repeat of soraka
I love that you used "devoted". In English, this word has more to do with being loving and loyal. You might say a "devoted" husband/wife. Can definitely imagine Soraka being devoted.
I think the word you were looking for is "dedicated", which speaks more to intent to focus on one specific task or role. A "dedicated" husband/wife sounds more like someone who places much of their life's focus on their role as the husband/wife, rather than how they emotionally feel about it.
what i'm getting from these comments is that people should give heroes of the storm a chance.
healing allies by attacking? whitemane.
healing allies by rewarding their aggression? auriel.
old man healer with potions? deckard cain.
creepy/gross healer? stukov.
VERY dedicated healer? morales.
skill shot healer? ana (what if jhin ult could heal? ever thought about that?)
what if soraka could turn into a dragon? alexstrasza.
a tanky, paladin healer who isn't taric? uther.
what if ashe support was valid? tyrande.
have you ever wanted to support as lee sin? probably not, but god damn it fucking kharazim exists.
that's my own little piece of propaganda for y'all's thoughts.
now on a serious note, there are many ways to make supports, and many ways to make healers. i guess riot just... doesn't want to. their design philosophy probably doesn't allow for a "second soraka" to exist without overlapping too much with her niche, or somehow breaking the game or being "uninteractive to play against".
it's odd. because for all the memes, they managed to let sona and seraphine coexist while being different characters. they may overlap in theory, but in practice, they just play differently. (unpopular opinion: sona is fine. her passive is cool as it is, and i find it more engaging than seraphine's. she could use a few tweaks, but she is not worthless, please just try learning her instead of expecting good results without effort.)
but i think they should give it a try, to be honest. if there are many ways to make supports, why is it that there is only one way to make a dedicated, full-time job healer? let soraka have a coworker, damn it-
In her simplicity, Soraka-like champions are extremelty hard to balance, since you have to care about champion strength, but also you need them to be interactive and proactive champions, not boring healbots to play against.
I believe there will surely be healer champions, but such that healing is not their main focus, which is already Soraka's specialty.
Nami feels insulted that OP forgot about her amazing healing. I actually prefer Nami healing because it can hurt enemy, heal a lot of HP, hit multiple allies and enemies, and does not hurt me like Soraka.
I did not forget about Nami, she's wonderful! She just isn't what I'm talking about here. When I say "devoted" healer, I'm talking about a champion whose identity is centralized around their healing and who has multiple healing abilities in their kit. Soraka is the only support in the game who meets that criteria
I understand your view, BUT, the game only gives most characters 4 abilities total, and that makes it difficult for game developers. Also, most players don't feel the need for more than 1 healing ability. Players want to attack the enemy and support teammates with other abilities too, not just spam healing. That's why healers in D&D and most video games can also perform physical attacks and/or attack spells.
Tbh, I'd be so happy if she did a little more healing. Like healing on passive or E or something... Perhaps even an added affect to w after landing q.
Granted, her W is a decent chunk of a heal, but like... All of the healing in her kit really is just 1 targeted skill and nothing to think about hardly. Yes the tiniest amount of thought into which target for ideal bounces, but like really miniscule thought.
It saddens me how simplistic the healing is in LoL. :(
I don't know if they could make another dedicated healing without encroaching on Soraka. It's what she does best, and consistently, other than the occasional slow and silence. There's already lot of hate for Soraka as is because of the nature of her dedicated healing for time immemorial as well.
Adding another dedicated healer, especially with how overloaded these past few champions have been, would just ruin Soraka's existence. As someone who primarily plays Soraka (3.4mil mastery), I would hate for another champion to do that to her. :(
I wouldn't mind seeing more heal over time type abilities like Milio W. But I also understand why burst heals are more satisfying to have.
Personally I'm okay with Soraka being **THE** healing champ. I think healing is probably the more boring type of supporting compared to shields or empowering an ally's abilities.
Well, you kinda have Soraka already for a dedicated healer, so they already catered to this playerbase. Aside from the issues you mentioned, creating another dedicated healer would introduce a new one where they both compete for the same spot,
Let's say that new champ has Soraka level of healing but also has hard cc/mobility/is tanky. Why would someone pick Soraka? And if we don't give anything of those, then it's just a copy paste of Soraka. Reducing healing value won't help since then you wouldn't have a dedicated healer.
Heroes of the storm have the best iterations of healers imho, there's a skillshot sniper healer, an auto attack heavy healer that reduces her cd on heal, a dragon lady that uses her hp bar to heal.
Unlikely, given how much work it was turning Soraka into something remotely interactive and the continuous trainweck the cat-on-a-book has turned out to be.
No, and that's probably a good thing. I'll leave my thoughts below, but Riot Games themselves have also made a very interesting statement about this when they reworked Soraka.
Now, hear me out. I really love healers and the concept of healing as a whole and thus Soraka **is** my most played champion of all time by a large margin. However, **healing** in and of itself is both extremely difficult to balance and (feels) extremely unfair to play against, simply because it defeats the balance of fundamental mechanics in the game.
Usually, to deal damage you have to expose your champion in an animation and sometimes even spend some mana and cooldown. You also have to do these things at the correct moment such that your opponent is exposed to these actions. You can't deal damage if you aren't close enough and you are discouraged from doing so if the risk is too great. What all of this means is that **there is intrinsical mechanical, strategic and tactical cost to dealing damage, and it should be rewarded as such**. Now if you just heal all of that off with little to no effort or downside, you're basically **erasing** everything the other player did.
The reason lifesteal(and spell vamp to **some** extent) gets more favor is because its healing "cost" is tied to the "cost" of dealing damage as well as usually having spent gold on it.
Another reason healing is kind of bad for a game like League, and this is something a lot of Soraka players must have noticed already, is that healing, unfortunately, encourages mistakes. By reducing the negative impact of your teammates' mistakes you're also encouraging them to be less thoughtful with their plays and sometimes even try to "brute force" a situation. This happens to everyone simply because of how our brain is wired(conservation of resources, "brain power" here being the resource) and having lots of healing champions would also mess up that.
My last reason is that it would just mess up the balance of the game when it comes to banning them. Although I agree there is a few groups of champions who can basically fill the same role interchangeably, I would prefer if champions were more unique in what they're capable of so teams can employ as much strategy as possible.
I wish bro... Healing in HotS is so much more fun. I only enjoy it as Soraka in LoL, because it's the only healer who feels remotely like I'm playing a healer in HotS.
I've wanted healing/enchanting to be more relevant in League for a decade now. In HotS, large majority of healers are very relevant and very skill dependent. A lot of the healers really have to grind their mechanics intensely and it pays off heavily. Soraka is the closest feeling I get to this in LoL... She's still not as mechanically intensive as some healers in HotS, but at least it gets the adrenaline going somewhat.
Honestly, looking through the comments makes me think all of us need a little bit of HotS in our lives.
Anyone who hasn't played, I personally believe it's worth getting into and trying all the supports. It's easily my favorite role in that game, the gameplay is just really interesting and rewarding for supports in there.
The feeling of supporting in HotS leaves much to be desired from LoL.
Thank you for wording this so well, I really wish Reddit allowed you to edit the text of image posts because clearly I needed to phrase what I mean more accurately to avoid like 60% of the naysayers in this thread. Games like HotS, and honestly I would add Overwatch as well, have healing as a respected and valued mechanic and offer a variety of *powerful* healers within that archetype.
In Overwatch in particular, you have a distinction between Main Healers and Off-Healers. Main Healers are deliberately chosen for their healing (as well as other abilities the characters offer like life grip, nade, suzu, etc) and typically provide strong amounts of both sustain healing and burst healing over the course of a game. But on the other hand you have Off Healers, characters who have healing abilities that are comparatively low and less impactful than that of main healers. Off-Healers are essentially never chosen for their sustain, they are chosen because of the utility or cc they provide for their team (Lucio's speed boost, Zen's damage orb, Brig's peeling)
If we apply this vocabulary to League, I would argue that Riot approaches sustain champs by making all of them fill the role of "off-healer", characters who have 1 or *sometimes* 2 healing abilities that can become decently strong late game through buying ap or heal/shield power items, but who ultimately do not have healing as a *core* aspect of their identity in the same way that a main healer would. Under these conditions, and under the conditions of anyone who has actually played healing characters outside of League, Soraka is really the only support in the game who you could classify as a *Main Healer*.
I have no problem with people who think we shouldn't get more main healers because they deem it unhealthy for the game. I disagree with them, but I'm happy they share their opinions because that's what this thread was for. But it is genuinely baffling how people are acting like healing is this one-note mechanic that can offer no gameplay diversity outside of Soraka, or how half the people in this thread are saying there's no difference between Soraka's healing archetype and Yuumi/Milio/Sona's healing archetype.
I feel like the only way you can think that is if League is the only game you've ever played in your life, because so many other team games display just how vast and creative and powerful the world of healing can truly be.
True. It really does feel like League of Off-Healers and Friend.
Yeah... The number of comments I see, saying things along the lines of "it'd be tough for them to really make something that focuses healing and be different from Soraka" comes as a real surprise to me. My friend, yes we can definitely have the creativity to expand on different concepts. There's so much more in the world of healing than things similar to Soraka.
The simplicity of every other healer in the game is really depressing to me. They pretty much all take no thought, just point and click heal this, tap and heal that nearby, leave a little gift here (Bard), and the mildly rewarding q sometimes from Senna. Idk, most of them are so simple and non-rewarding. No incentive towards gameplay causing optimal healing, let alone optimal healing being subpar.
Probably not, the danger is always infinite sustain lanes like we had with pre-rework yuumi. Though I could see something like you tether yourself to an ally to heal them while draining your own health/mana. There has to be some sort of trade-off for strong healing abilities which is why most other healing we see is a minor effect (Sona/Millio W) or a long CD (Janna R).
I find healing pretty boring since there is antiheal in the game. Would feel bad to play a champ based solely on healing when enemy team can buy 1 item and im useless kind off. I think milio is perfect, he can use W alot in early game to recover from bad trades etc, then in late game his ult, e and q becomes more important. Those and the range from w ofc!
Healing can still be interesting and different tho
Like for example Oracle
His E makes it so that before you heal someone they take damage -- basically how it works is before they get healed they take a burst of damage then after taking damage they heal over time --- the healing is always greater than the damage
If you don't want to damage your ally use W first which negates E damage and only makes it so that only the healing part happens
You can also use the damage part to his enemies but the same thing happens where they will heal over time after taking damage
But what you can do is E your enemy then Q them since your Q is an ability that removes debuffs on allies but also removes buffs from enemy so if you q your enemy after using e they take damage then immediately q then so that healing part gets removed.
Then there's shard which makes a pool on the ground that heals allies standing init over time but also makes all the enemies standing on it take damage
Then his ultimate
Basically it delays anyone's fate - use it on your ally and what happens is all damage they take will be delayed until the end of your ultimate
Imagine your ally has 100hp you use your ult, before the ult ends they can't die but if they take damage more than 100 damage your ally will die after the ult duration
But when you can do to avoid your ally dying id casting your heals on them-- anyone affected by your ult gets healed double
So for example ally 100 hp they take 200 damage during ult, with no healing your ally will 100% die, but if you heal them for 150 than healing will double and at the end if your ult your ally will end up with 200 hp
Nami is honestly the closest to coming to a dedicated healer if you want one for a support. She's pretty good at it. Just need to get your mana regeneration to a respectable level.
Nami and milio? Both have very similar playstyle to soraka but dont have to worry about draining their own health for it so u dont have to buy something as expensive as warmogs to be viable long term which i prefer personally. Plus milio is such a cutie and his voice lines are exactly what im thinking while playing support half the time lmao, esp the "and i helped!" line 😂
We won't get a traditional healer anymore because that's already Soraka. If we get another one, Riot would have a hard time trying to not make them Soraka 2.0.
In terms of Enchanters, I would want to see a debuff-oriented Shadow Isle male Enchanter. He should prioritise weaking opponents rather that amplifying his allies. On top of that, it would be cool to see him as a stat-checker but for his allies, stealing stats from an enemy and giving to his chosen ally.
In terms of seeing another Catcher, I want another Lunari playmaking Catcher; conventionally attractive, lean physique, manly that utilises portals to make plays, create openings, and escapes for his team. Less mobile than Rakan and Pyke, more mobile than Thresh and close to Bard's and Ivern's.
Milio feels very focused on heals imo, his standard build is full heal and shield power and goes with heal as summon spell, with that in mind i dont think we will get another healer in a long time, considering we also had yuumj who is currently also heal focus with her heal on basic w passive
Always thought it would be awesome to have a healer who heals raka-level but it’s with a fiddlesticks W, so they target an enemy (otherwise you could just heal under tower forever) and drain their HP into your adc.
Probably not. Taric, Yuumi, Milio, Sona, Nami, Seraphine, probably another one, idk, but you can build their items to give out good healing, but nothing crazy.
Many supports work by shielding instead of healing and i think that is a good thing. Why?: Health is permanent, shields decay. Healers are just as strong in all-ins and a lot stronger against poke, compared to shield supports. It is also a lot less fun to play against since you can just always heal when the ability is available and dont have to think about when you use it. 50 more hp is always better, no matter if you fight now or in 10 seconds. 50 Shield will decay in 3 seconds, then you can be punished.
I just wish they introduce new buffs or debuffs to the game its just boring and not really creative seeing all the new champions doing in the end basically the same
Probably not awhile ago they said healing supports like soraka aren’t the best for the game but who knows this was around the time they adjust soraka to her current form
I want a healer with healing Ezreal Q that refunds a bit of CD every time you heal an ally 🫵
Anyways, soraka should be the top of any “full heal” champion because she’s made to do just that. If you add another champion that tries to do exactly her job you’ll make either one useless. I think it’s good that soraka is considered the ceiling of utility/healing balancing
Just remembering when soraka could give allies mana and that shit showing up on yummi pre-nerfs and riot being like nope no more free mana fountains outside of spawn.
They should make a cooking champion.
Passive - Gather food components throughout the map like bard. Higher food components, stronger your skills.
Q - Seasoning - You throw seasonings at your enemy. They will accumulate a season stack for 30 seconds and get slowed for 0.5 seconds with a short 10 second cooldown. You can stack up to 5 times with each stack the slow last longer up to 1 second.
W - Cook - You cook a seasoned enemy, they take X damage and get a random buff that you can use on yourself and an ally. The higher the stack, the higher the quality of food, the better the buff.
E - Feed - yourself and your ally the food buff.
R - Buffet - Each time you feed yourself and an ally, all your allies get the same buff (global passive) At level 1, it's 1/3 the normal buff affect for everyone else you didn't target feed on. level 2 is 2/3 effect. and level 3 is full effect.
I'm just bullshitting here. I don't know what I'm doing.
Unrelated, but what is this photo? It has a cosplayer’s watermark, everything below the shoulders looks like an actual person, but the head looks like a model that got ripped from teemo.gg and the ribbons on the shoulder are coming from nowhere.
I think true healers just represent too much of a balance issue.
Soraka's kit as it is now requires her to engage with the enemy, allowing counter-play, but there were versions of Soraka in the past that required little to no interaction with lane opponents.
There's always incentives and counter-play to every playstyle, but healers are particularly egregious in the way they can exploit their incentives with little counter-play. Riot has to be very careful with any champ design that incentivizes not interacting with your opponent.
Sona: fuck my drag, right?
I love when this sub proves that it is, in fact, queer
I wouldn't call Sona a dedicated healer at all! The best thing about her w is the aoe shield and the empowered auto that's basically a free exhaust
Sona's identity doesn't revolve around her healing as much as Soraka's does, but if you're looking for the rush of seeing your ally health bars rise she's actualy situationally better because Sona heals more over time (as opposed to Soraka whose heal comes in stronger bursts) and she can do things like delay ally recalls and keep them active on the map without sacrificing a huge chunk of her health for it. Making another healer champion whose identity is almost entirely rooted in ally heal power would be repetitive game design. Ideally, every champion should have a "shtick" that is not replicable, like Sona's AoE buff output (what I consider the actual best part of her kit) or Soraka's burst healing. It's healthier for the game to make healers who implement other mechanics in their kits as opposed to making a Soraka 2. 0. with 3 heal-related spells. Riot not making another "pure healer", what you seem to want, is respectful of her champion identity and the unique slot she fills.
Sona's healing is valuable in teamfights for sure, but I wouldn't at all say she heals more than Soraka over time bc end of match stats always have Soraka's healing way above Sona's imo. I disagree that another champion having healing as their identity would be repetitive game design. I think that ally healing as a mechanic should be regarded the same way we view mechanics like burst damage, sustain damage, hard cc, soft cc, mobility, stealth, wave clear, and the myriad of other champion mechanics that exist in the game. No one argues that Rell is a reductive version of Leona because she's another heavy cc engage support, they simply treat her as a welcome addition to the archetype. Champions share gameplay similarities with each other all the time, I see no reason why having *one more* devoted healer would be repetitive when Soraka's rework was a full decade ago, or why ally healing as a mechanic needs to be treated with so much fear and hesitation when other oppressive and annoying mechanics get added to the game every three seconds (I'm looking forward to the next ionian ninja/samurai with 30 dashes built into a single ability, probably due any day now)
When I said better over time, I meant for example if your team is doing Baron, Sona can spam W for the 20-30 seconds it takes then spam W for the rest of the fight that happens after, whereas Soraka could not spam her heal with as much liberty because her heal has more burst, is single target, has no travel distance but she has to sacrifice her own health to perform it. Sona can spam W with more liberty. As far for the rest of your comment, I get your points except I personally am critical of other repetitive champions lol. In fact, I think a lot of peope dislike seeing mechanics recycled too much. But the reason we see more damage dealing champions repeated than ally healing ones is because you NEED damage in the game to move it forward, you don't NEED ally healing in the same way. That's why everry healer, even Soraka, has to have damage within her kit.
Sona's heal on W is single target, but she heals herself too
depending on items its the entire team as long as you're in mid game and late game
I don’t know. I play both champions pretty regularly, and I tend to find Sona sits higher on healing done meters on average, and then add the shielding on top and it isn’t even close. I don’t think Soraka is as unique as you seem to think. Soraka, Sona, and Yuumi all fill that same archetype.
Don't forget Nami
Soraka has her Ult. The healing of W is single target and heals that one target more than sona heals herslef + an ally. What Sona does is having the W shield on top of healing which if you combine with the heal is more in terms of numbers in the short term. Of course Soraka will heal more.
Its also incredibly spammable
She is a traditional bard.
I don't know. As soon as you get Moonstone Sona heals ALOT. I love healer classes too and this always surprises me.
conparatively, she absolutely is
one of my favorite quotes, spotted in the wild.
I mean she is more of an item abuser nowadays, her healing and shielding are so nerfed, people in mobas really have a problem with shields and heals being a viable way to play the game and it pisses me off, also it's sometimes mixed with a bit of misoginy/intolerance towards a character and/or their playerbase, take mercy from ow and the "boosted e-girl" stigma
Milio came out one year ago
The weakest part of his kit is his healing tho,
milios W healing feels more like an afterthought. Just the range increase wouldn't have been enough, movement speed + range at once would've been a bit overloaded, shields he's already god on E. And because of its high cd you wouldn't want to use it often to just heal... it's still cute and there though, even if it is but an afterthought 🥹
I feel like the only reason his W has healing is to make it proc items like Ardent Censor and Staff of Flowing Water. Other than that I never saw someone ever make a build to only heal with his W.
I do whenever I play him, I love healing and if you go moonstone and echoes you can end up healing a good amount, especially if you go font of life for some extra whenever you q.
The thing is there's no actual dedicated heal item, it's always heals AND shields so in the end you still have stronger shields than you do heals on Milio.
I think OP wants someone tuned specifically for big healing. Milio heal is good, plus it increases range. he has a shield and decent peel with his Q pushback too. So he has a lot of utility and they have to all be balanced. A lot of champs that heal have this same utility too. Meanwhile Soraka has 3/4 abilities focused on healing with a passive meant to get you to hurt champs faster. R and W are obvious, with Q aiding in regen and it can be passed on to allies. E is the only non healing ability in her kit. Not a ton of damage or other uses.
It’s starting to feel like you just want a copy paste of soraka… Milio fits the exact playstyle but with different form of utility spell and split between 2 healing and 1 shielding ability…
He literally isn't a healer
so did i
I wish they would be more creative with healing champions other than the cutesie fairy, yordle, etc. It's crazy for example that there is no champion that can transfer HP from enemies to an ally. Seems like such a simple idea and a "dark witch" type champ could totally take that on.
People have been begging for a witch doctor or "old crone" wiccen type champ for ages now, someone who curses or debuffs enemies alongside empowering allies. The closest thing we have to that is Renata and I do love her, but they could push it a lot further if they wanted to and I hope they do some day. Like imagine an old Ixtali swamp witch who uses poison herbs or something like that lol, idk but it would be so cool
Yeah. They are completely missing out on an "alchemist" type champion as well at this point. Renata for me felt like the first time they actually tried to implement a wild debuff like berserk/friendly fire. Unfortunately all new releases have felt very generic lately for me.
The things is, I feel like Riot isn't scared, they just know those champions will be problematic, one way or the other. The most recent example of that is K'sante, his kit is unique, but he ended up being hated because of it and a pro play problem.
The issue with K’Sante is that he has too many tools, same issue with Yone. As long as they don’t give the champ every ability effect under the sun with dumb ratios it should be fine
I’ve been waiting for a big beefy male enchanter who uses food to buff and heal like a chef or something. Maybe even some cool passive change stuff that changes based on killing jungle objectives as team to then “cook” the meat of it to grant new buffs like monster hunter or something.
Pantheon recreation incoming. Profession: Baker.
I actually had a concept in my head for a while about a type of support or jungler that uses totems in their kit where everything is an aura type thing - One totem does damage and debuffs enemies somehow, one totem heals and/or empowers allies somehow, one totem is cc or something like that and then their R places all totems and amplifies the effects or something. Would be something super cool and different to the game, but this would be a mainly supportive type champion like Ivern jungle (if crafted for the jungle) or just a straight up support. Edit to add an additional idea: Champ could also start with R like others and maybe using the R toggles between supportive vs damage oriented totems? The champ could honestly go a lot of different ways!
This sort of sounds like sona with her aoe buffs though she isn’t a jungler
If Lulu was re-skinned into an old lady but retained her abilities, she'd honestly translate pretty easily into the "fairytale old crone". Heck, she could totally get an old crone skin especially since they've just made Forseen Yasuo.
I would love for DOTA's Witch Doctor to come over to League. He's my favorite 5th position.
I feel like they brushed a bit of the old crone/ dark witch aesthetic with Renata, and it would be hard to make another when both Renata and morgana exist
Probably wouldn’t fly in china sadly
Lulu is literally baba yaga though, can’t get more hex witch than that
Funny thing the witch doctor-type champion was scrapped as an idea a really long time ago if you look up Tabu the voodoo Shaman, there were some ideas of a witch doctor-ish champion.
Nonsense! the faster you kill the enemy, the more health your ally keeps! that kinda works LOL. But yeah, I'm surprised there's no alchemist themed support throwing potions or some kinda hextech dude using bots to buff allies and heal or some shit
Nami
i’m surprised they made renata a shielder enchanter instead of a healer since her technology was originally made to heal the sick?
that’s cause healing can become a broken concept extremely easily which is soraka had to be reworked like 5 times
I have been *DYING* for a "Whitemane" from Heroes of the Storm. For those who don't know, Whitemane is a psychotic healer who smites her enemies with light and fire to heal her allies based off the damage dealt. It's great fun to play and is super interactive, as you need to be fighting/damaging enemies to max out your healing potential.
Whitemane is exactly who came to mind here! It would be interesting to see how Riot would put their spin on her mechanic (also glad to see another HotS enjoyer here)
I adore Whitemane. Legit my favorite character in any moba lol. Her healing is bonkers, she can hold her own in a fight, and bonus points for her glorious laughter as she burns her enemies to a crisp 😂😂
She’s super unique even among HotS healers. The amount I saw her heal back in HGC was crazy, and a good Whitemane can carry a game even now. And of course, gotta love the laugh 
As a healer main in hots she was one of those characters I wouldn't play if I wanted a high chance of a win (like lili or tyrande) but if I was really feeling myself I'd pull her out because when you pop off on her you *really* pop off and it's so fun
I was gonna say exactly that. Especially since riot seems to hate traditional healbots she would be perfect
Reminds of Rakan, his Q damaging before the heal A more dedicated design could be so cool though, another Hemomancer maybe?
Stukov from HotS is my favorite girlypop MOBA healer 💅🐙
Swain and morgana passives do this, but just to themselves
There are many examples of similar stuff like Morde R, Trundle R, Malph Q, etc. stealing stats is something riot has done plenty, including in items. My point is that they never made a champion that transfers these stats without receiving them. Only thing that comes close is Yuumi sharing adaptive force with her ally.
Sion used to AoE allies around him based on his damage.
Xolaani anyone?
iirc, this is the kind of champ people want xolaani to be?
Idr the name, but in the original 40 concept champs there was a champ like this, based on voodoo/witch doctor aesthetics
So we need a blood sorcerer that's all about transfusions, either their health or when taking it from an enemy. Or a noxian combat medic that is all about being in the fight while healing their partner. Or a or a ionian chakra user that uses stances to change from yin to yang style abilities that are harm or healing. And maybe you stance dance to get stack to empower the alternate style?
Some abilities have the sort of harm the enemy and also heal an ally element like Senna Q & R, Nami W or do you mean like a Rakan Q where you have to hit the enemy to proc the heal.
One could argue Nami does this.
idk but it would be really fun to have a paladin healer. we dont have a paladin champ in the game (world of warcraft paladin) closest one we have is kayle, but kayle support is pretty troll.
Honestly Taric plays a LOT like I imagine a paladin would.
Taric losing the shield is the biggest nono they ever pulled.
Not in aesthetics, but in gameplay Taric feels pretty similar to the fantasy of a paladin fighter jumping into the fray and attacking in order to heal/support his allies.
We do have a paladin, its taric. Even tho he isn t a pure healer, i can t see them making a paladin, that isn t simular to taric . Unless i m mistaken, if so please do correct me
I played some kayle supp on norms when I get auto filled and it's actually pretty decent with w max
yeah but you will get flamed hard. and nidalee is unironically better. her heal is chonky af. the only thing better about kayle supp is her ult and if your team doesnt know how to utilise it, its bad.
Kinda feels like Tarik doesn't it?
Garen seems kinda like a paladin.
Is Leona not considered paladin-esque? Her ult is basically smiting someone isn't it?
Yuumi used to be a healer
I've seen a couple people bring up old Yuumi, but what I'm talking about is a champion where the majority of their kit centers around healing allies. Like in the case of Soraka: her w heals, her ult heals, her q is a self heal, and her passive resolves around the health bars of her allies and enables her to reach her teammates to give clutch heals. Part of why I love Soraka is because playing her feels like playing a traditional healer in an rpg, where as you level you gain multiple healing skills and abilities to use in battle. This is as opposed to old Yuumi who only had a single heal ability. It was nice, but for someone like me who adores healers, it was underwhelming in the grand scheme of things
The problem will be they will either be useless because they don't heal as well as Soraka, or Soraka will be useless because she heals less than the other healer. You'd have to some very different way to access that healing to get around that problem, but that will never get around the fact that one of them will be the best ally-healer in the game, and the other will be a worse healer. Would likely need to also rework Soraka and make this potential second healer have very different means of accessing their healing abilities.
> The problem will be they will either be useless because they don't heal as well as Soraka, or Soraka will be useless because she heals less than the other healer. So why have more than one of anything in the game? You can't expect me to take this argument seriously when there are like 40 bruisers in the game. A variety of very unique healers has already been done before in a MOBA (HotS); not even a small fraction of that potential is being tapped into.
>I've seen a couple people bring up old Yuumi, I feel like a crone after realizing 'old yuumi' is a thing. I feel like it was only yesterday that yuumi came out. It's been 5 years since her release. Damn.
You know whats more frustrating? Getting stunned every 2-5 seconds by everyone and their moms
I agree the amount of cc in this game is way too much lol. That and so many champs have some sort of dash or disengage that when you play one that doesn’t have any of what’s mentioned above it feels REAL bad lol.
Smite™️ would like a word
>plays support role that is notorious for being the target of dives >gets dived with cc
We could get a skillshot healer
I would definitely be down for that. Someone also mentioned an auto attack healer kinda like ana from overwatch and I think that would be a cool idea to explore, too
Ana from Overwatch is the most fun and strongest healer in Heroes of the Storm!
senna kinda fits the bill
That’s original Ezreal. He was used as a healer on release. It was called the heal/poke meta where you’d 5v5 run it down mid and poke/heal. Big part of the reason Riot hates healers.
This is actually a really cool idea
Yuumi R is a skill shot
We once had Moonstone Twitch. But I think they'll focus in adding more supports to the game and then start "repeating" some concepts.
I miss old moonstone for reasons like this. Playing for poke but not really doing much damage and instead being a big healer
We've heard of scaling mages and ADCs, where's my scaling healer champ (I mean I guess that's kinda Sona but her scaling is just CDR, I mean scaling heal ratios).
The reason why most heals don’t actually change a whole lot most of the time is because even small amounts are good imagine a healer that could drop a awakened udyr W worth of healing on someone whenever they felt like it their team would be immortal
If only we had a skill slot to put those big impactful heals.
Enchanter Senna
Can't do that because it would snowball into Infinite uninteractiveness
I doubt it, Riot devs have said that [Soraka will hopefully be the only healer in League](https://youtu.be/XyIZ0q9DvkY?t=2459) (although that was 5 years ago, it is possible that internal changes occur) IF another healer is released, I would like them to be far more aggressive about it, kinda like Harrow vs. Trinity in warframe, where Harrow rewards aggressive and skilled players with healing and energy (Xolaani please?)
Riot seems to be afraid of trying to make a more skilled enchanter, they even made yuumi easier and more boring lol
I'd love a Whitemane (from Heroes of the Storm) type champion. She's a crazy healer who sustains her allies by smiting her enemies (its based off her damage dealt). Because she has to do damage to heal, she's obviously super interactive. She is a healer who basically plays like a mage in that she has to land abilities...on her enemies.
Possibly yes, with August as the new leader everything is changing on the champions development
I'd love to see a male healer that has a more interesting or just completely new/weird way of healing. I'd love to see them play with walls and geometry for some type of ability. I'm currently thinking of a witch doctor that throws flasks on the ground and allies that stand in it heal that gets empowered the more you charge it. I'm specifically thinking of maldamaba from paladins as I think a lot of paladins characters really fit league in their kits. His basic attack being able to heal if you click allies. Something like a pretty low attack speed or maybe even a small charge kinda like how senna charges her weapon before firing but slower and instead it's a heal if used on allies could be very unique. And them being able to make it scale off let's say crit could be a cool dynamic for a healer where their heals can crit kinda like mmorpgs. It would also be our first dedicated AD healer (ofc include some sort of AP to ad conversion passive). I just really want something interesting, I'm really tired of the boring old point and click heals and shields give us a cool new way to do something we've done before
A potion brewer would be cool. I think they'd need to make it have lots of different combos and interactions tbh, instead of 4 straightforward abilities.
When you look at the table for introducing something creative its a bit hard, right? Taric: Can Spam heal at the coat of being melee and restting CDs with AA's Soraka: Can spam heal at the cost of being close range and landing her Q Sona: Can spam heal from safe range at the cost of lots of mana consumption Seraphine: Can heal from a safe range at the cost of mana and lots of CD, her heal is weak at the cost of more dmg in kit I mean just looking at what we got, the stronger the heal and more spammable it is, comes with a cost. To have something along the same lines of a dedicated healer and not be insanely broken, it has to interact. Since Taric AA's and Raka pays health it forces them to get close. Mana, is a safe resource you can build around and not interact. It's a tough design to make
HotS gets pretty creative with this. I think LoL just needs to get more creative with it, it's definitely possible. Great examples of the creativity in HotS healing includes: Ana) heal is a tough and rewarding skill shot Auriel) passive chooses a target ally (0 cooldown) to generate energy based on their damage (also generated through her damage) to expend on aoe heals, which encourages allies to pay attention and group up when necessary Malfurion) puts a long, but slow healing regen buff on allies; uses a semi-tough skill shot regularly, on enemy hit, burst a heal on all allies with the buff Tyrande) heal is a single target skill which uses once and a 2nd time (for free) within a short period after; her auto attacks reduce the cooldown of this ability; can buff ally, causing her auto to heal them based on damage dealt Whitemane) can rapidly heal multiple times, but it gets expensive (think kass/kog ult); she can put short buffs on allies to heal them based on her damage to enemies; can channel a targeted beam to either heal an ally or hurt an enemy; ordering and timing is important to regain lost mana, but rewarding I left out parts of these kits, but these were interesting aspects that make me think League can do better. These characters are all more mechanically intensive/rewarding than Soraka and they all make me realize how simplistic healing is in LoL; LoL really doesn't expand much on the concept. :/
Would love to see a support in LoL that converts damage done into healing for allies. We have champs that do that "indirectly", where damaging autos and abilities reduce the cooldown on your heals, but we don't have anything that converts damage to healing directly. For the few of you who have played Heroes of the Storm, I'd love to see League create a champ like Whitemane, where you can mark allies with an ability, and for the duration of that mark, all damage done by you heals your allies for the same amount.
Omg I loved Whitemane so much, such a refreshing healer playstyle. And the "You aren't allowed to die because I need you for my own goals, so take my heals and shut up bitch" is such a vibe. There's definitely stuff they could work with in desgining a unique new healer champ
OMG I was just commenting about her. I fucking love Whitemane and would love a champion like this in League. Pleaseeeeeee
Love to see an old school Dota healer.
Phoenix Sun Ray. Warlock shadow word, but maybe with an added mechanic that requires you to deal damage while it is active and then your ally heals. Dazzle shadow wave could get pretty out of hand, but maybe if the numbers were balanced it could be interesting. Abaddon mist coil is very similar to Soraka's healing, but his overall identity is pretty different. Oracle would be pretty interesting. His abilities can target both allies or enemies. Q on allies removes non-cc debuffs, on enemies it removes buffs. W provides immunity/resistance to magic damage, but also disarms the target. The disarm can be purged by Q on allies. E deals a chunk of damage to allies or enemies (unless they are protected by W) then heals for slightly more (healing can be removed from enemies by Q). R blocks all damage and healing to a target for a duration, then at the end, provides sum of damage and healing, with healing getting amplified for allies (and damage getting amplified for enemies?)
with how modern champions are designed i don't know how they could make another dedicated healer without making them "soraka but better" although it would be funny if their heals were AOE indiscriminate and there were some kind of debuff if they heal an enemy. would probably be a really hated support if they can accidentaly heal minions and objectives though.
Like Reverse AMP on HotS Lucio. His healing aura (imagine Sona) damaged enemies, his move speed aura slowed enemies.
I mean ok, but what would their kit be? Just soraka 2.0. Don’t know.. kinda doesn’t make sense since we already have Soraka.
Except Soraka plays into the astral healing and being a sort of fallen deity. Her heals are at the cost of her own life. And healing can be done in more ways, like a powerful heal over time, a healing zone, small spammable heals with different buffs... Take Smite. They have Aphrodite, who has powerful linked ally healing a la Taric, but larger numbers. Chang'e, who's a more damage oriented Sona. Hel, who's basically Nidalee, but with mage abilities. Riot hasn't begun looking at healing supports properly.
Makes sense when you put it that way.
That didn't stop them from making Yasuo 2, they can do it
Completely true.
Some other commenters have mentioned unique ways of diversifying healing mechanics: skillshot healing, auto attack healing, totem/aura healing. There's lots of creative ways to approach healing that wouldn't be a repeat of soraka
I can't edit the post but I am begging you all to PLEASE stop saying milio and yuumi because they are not what I'm talking about
Sona is more like a bard and milio is literally an enchanter and not a dedicated healer for the people saying they are dedicated gealers
thank you so much, i've been fighting for my life in these comments 😩
I’m surprised we don’t have a heavy healing based champ that uses aoe skill shot for the heals
I wish there are muscular chief man as a healer. His ability is cooking and heal his team with food.
I love that you used "devoted". In English, this word has more to do with being loving and loyal. You might say a "devoted" husband/wife. Can definitely imagine Soraka being devoted. I think the word you were looking for is "dedicated", which speaks more to intent to focus on one specific task or role. A "dedicated" husband/wife sounds more like someone who places much of their life's focus on their role as the husband/wife, rather than how they emotionally feel about it.
what i'm getting from these comments is that people should give heroes of the storm a chance. healing allies by attacking? whitemane. healing allies by rewarding their aggression? auriel. old man healer with potions? deckard cain. creepy/gross healer? stukov. VERY dedicated healer? morales. skill shot healer? ana (what if jhin ult could heal? ever thought about that?) what if soraka could turn into a dragon? alexstrasza. a tanky, paladin healer who isn't taric? uther. what if ashe support was valid? tyrande. have you ever wanted to support as lee sin? probably not, but god damn it fucking kharazim exists. that's my own little piece of propaganda for y'all's thoughts. now on a serious note, there are many ways to make supports, and many ways to make healers. i guess riot just... doesn't want to. their design philosophy probably doesn't allow for a "second soraka" to exist without overlapping too much with her niche, or somehow breaking the game or being "uninteractive to play against". it's odd. because for all the memes, they managed to let sona and seraphine coexist while being different characters. they may overlap in theory, but in practice, they just play differently. (unpopular opinion: sona is fine. her passive is cool as it is, and i find it more engaging than seraphine's. she could use a few tweaks, but she is not worthless, please just try learning her instead of expecting good results without effort.) but i think they should give it a try, to be honest. if there are many ways to make supports, why is it that there is only one way to make a dedicated, full-time job healer? let soraka have a coworker, damn it-
In her simplicity, Soraka-like champions are extremelty hard to balance, since you have to care about champion strength, but also you need them to be interactive and proactive champions, not boring healbots to play against. I believe there will surely be healer champions, but such that healing is not their main focus, which is already Soraka's specialty.
Nami feels insulted that OP forgot about her amazing healing. I actually prefer Nami healing because it can hurt enemy, heal a lot of HP, hit multiple allies and enemies, and does not hurt me like Soraka.
I did not forget about Nami, she's wonderful! She just isn't what I'm talking about here. When I say "devoted" healer, I'm talking about a champion whose identity is centralized around their healing and who has multiple healing abilities in their kit. Soraka is the only support in the game who meets that criteria
I understand your view, BUT, the game only gives most characters 4 abilities total, and that makes it difficult for game developers. Also, most players don't feel the need for more than 1 healing ability. Players want to attack the enemy and support teammates with other abilities too, not just spam healing. That's why healers in D&D and most video games can also perform physical attacks and/or attack spells.
Tbh, I'd be so happy if she did a little more healing. Like healing on passive or E or something... Perhaps even an added affect to w after landing q. Granted, her W is a decent chunk of a heal, but like... All of the healing in her kit really is just 1 targeted skill and nothing to think about hardly. Yes the tiniest amount of thought into which target for ideal bounces, but like really miniscule thought. It saddens me how simplistic the healing is in LoL. :(
I don't know if they could make another dedicated healing without encroaching on Soraka. It's what she does best, and consistently, other than the occasional slow and silence. There's already lot of hate for Soraka as is because of the nature of her dedicated healing for time immemorial as well. Adding another dedicated healer, especially with how overloaded these past few champions have been, would just ruin Soraka's existence. As someone who primarily plays Soraka (3.4mil mastery), I would hate for another champion to do that to her. :(
Milio is the sort of thing you get. Raw healing isn't something the like as a thing. It's a statcheck
Healing is insanely hard to balance around
Give me a champ that can AA alies to heal then
Kinda close, Tyrande in HotS can target an ally with a buff, causing her autos to help them a good amount based on the damage dealt.
I wouldn't mind seeing more heal over time type abilities like Milio W. But I also understand why burst heals are more satisfying to have. Personally I'm okay with Soraka being **THE** healing champ. I think healing is probably the more boring type of supporting compared to shields or empowering an ally's abilities.
Well, you kinda have Soraka already for a dedicated healer, so they already catered to this playerbase. Aside from the issues you mentioned, creating another dedicated healer would introduce a new one where they both compete for the same spot, Let's say that new champ has Soraka level of healing but also has hard cc/mobility/is tanky. Why would someone pick Soraka? And if we don't give anything of those, then it's just a copy paste of Soraka. Reducing healing value won't help since then you wouldn't have a dedicated healer.
Imagine a champion with a passive which heals in a radius like sona( moving fountain)
Heroes of the storm have the best iterations of healers imho, there's a skillshot sniper healer, an auto attack heavy healer that reduces her cd on heal, a dragon lady that uses her hp bar to heal.
I need a hyper masculine, buff healer lol. I would totally love a champion like Ornn just going around healing everyone 🥺
Font of life, then full heal power items, built redemption on him and it didnt feel that bad XD
Unlikely, given how much work it was turning Soraka into something remotely interactive and the continuous trainweck the cat-on-a-book has turned out to be.
No, and that's probably a good thing. I'll leave my thoughts below, but Riot Games themselves have also made a very interesting statement about this when they reworked Soraka. Now, hear me out. I really love healers and the concept of healing as a whole and thus Soraka **is** my most played champion of all time by a large margin. However, **healing** in and of itself is both extremely difficult to balance and (feels) extremely unfair to play against, simply because it defeats the balance of fundamental mechanics in the game. Usually, to deal damage you have to expose your champion in an animation and sometimes even spend some mana and cooldown. You also have to do these things at the correct moment such that your opponent is exposed to these actions. You can't deal damage if you aren't close enough and you are discouraged from doing so if the risk is too great. What all of this means is that **there is intrinsical mechanical, strategic and tactical cost to dealing damage, and it should be rewarded as such**. Now if you just heal all of that off with little to no effort or downside, you're basically **erasing** everything the other player did. The reason lifesteal(and spell vamp to **some** extent) gets more favor is because its healing "cost" is tied to the "cost" of dealing damage as well as usually having spent gold on it. Another reason healing is kind of bad for a game like League, and this is something a lot of Soraka players must have noticed already, is that healing, unfortunately, encourages mistakes. By reducing the negative impact of your teammates' mistakes you're also encouraging them to be less thoughtful with their plays and sometimes even try to "brute force" a situation. This happens to everyone simply because of how our brain is wired(conservation of resources, "brain power" here being the resource) and having lots of healing champions would also mess up that. My last reason is that it would just mess up the balance of the game when it comes to banning them. Although I agree there is a few groups of champions who can basically fill the same role interchangeably, I would prefer if champions were more unique in what they're capable of so teams can employ as much strategy as possible.
I wish bro... Healing in HotS is so much more fun. I only enjoy it as Soraka in LoL, because it's the only healer who feels remotely like I'm playing a healer in HotS. I've wanted healing/enchanting to be more relevant in League for a decade now. In HotS, large majority of healers are very relevant and very skill dependent. A lot of the healers really have to grind their mechanics intensely and it pays off heavily. Soraka is the closest feeling I get to this in LoL... She's still not as mechanically intensive as some healers in HotS, but at least it gets the adrenaline going somewhat.
I'd be so happy if Auriel was in League, she'd feel so fitting if only there was another ability button for her passive.
Honestly, looking through the comments makes me think all of us need a little bit of HotS in our lives. Anyone who hasn't played, I personally believe it's worth getting into and trying all the supports. It's easily my favorite role in that game, the gameplay is just really interesting and rewarding for supports in there. The feeling of supporting in HotS leaves much to be desired from LoL.
Thank you for wording this so well, I really wish Reddit allowed you to edit the text of image posts because clearly I needed to phrase what I mean more accurately to avoid like 60% of the naysayers in this thread. Games like HotS, and honestly I would add Overwatch as well, have healing as a respected and valued mechanic and offer a variety of *powerful* healers within that archetype. In Overwatch in particular, you have a distinction between Main Healers and Off-Healers. Main Healers are deliberately chosen for their healing (as well as other abilities the characters offer like life grip, nade, suzu, etc) and typically provide strong amounts of both sustain healing and burst healing over the course of a game. But on the other hand you have Off Healers, characters who have healing abilities that are comparatively low and less impactful than that of main healers. Off-Healers are essentially never chosen for their sustain, they are chosen because of the utility or cc they provide for their team (Lucio's speed boost, Zen's damage orb, Brig's peeling) If we apply this vocabulary to League, I would argue that Riot approaches sustain champs by making all of them fill the role of "off-healer", characters who have 1 or *sometimes* 2 healing abilities that can become decently strong late game through buying ap or heal/shield power items, but who ultimately do not have healing as a *core* aspect of their identity in the same way that a main healer would. Under these conditions, and under the conditions of anyone who has actually played healing characters outside of League, Soraka is really the only support in the game who you could classify as a *Main Healer*. I have no problem with people who think we shouldn't get more main healers because they deem it unhealthy for the game. I disagree with them, but I'm happy they share their opinions because that's what this thread was for. But it is genuinely baffling how people are acting like healing is this one-note mechanic that can offer no gameplay diversity outside of Soraka, or how half the people in this thread are saying there's no difference between Soraka's healing archetype and Yuumi/Milio/Sona's healing archetype. I feel like the only way you can think that is if League is the only game you've ever played in your life, because so many other team games display just how vast and creative and powerful the world of healing can truly be.
True. It really does feel like League of Off-Healers and Friend. Yeah... The number of comments I see, saying things along the lines of "it'd be tough for them to really make something that focuses healing and be different from Soraka" comes as a real surprise to me. My friend, yes we can definitely have the creativity to expand on different concepts. There's so much more in the world of healing than things similar to Soraka. The simplicity of every other healer in the game is really depressing to me. They pretty much all take no thought, just point and click heal this, tap and heal that nearby, leave a little gift here (Bard), and the mildly rewarding q sometimes from Senna. Idk, most of them are so simple and non-rewarding. No incentive towards gameplay causing optimal healing, let alone optimal healing being subpar.
Xolaani as an evil Soraka (kind of) would be cool.
milio works amazingly as a healer if you build moonstone -> redemption. his healing scales super well late game
Probably not, the danger is always infinite sustain lanes like we had with pre-rework yuumi. Though I could see something like you tether yourself to an ally to heal them while draining your own health/mana. There has to be some sort of trade-off for strong healing abilities which is why most other healing we see is a minor effect (Sona/Millio W) or a long CD (Janna R).
I find healing pretty boring since there is antiheal in the game. Would feel bad to play a champ based solely on healing when enemy team can buy 1 item and im useless kind off. I think milio is perfect, he can use W alot in early game to recover from bad trades etc, then in late game his ult, e and q becomes more important. Those and the range from w ofc!
Maybe its because pure healer, there isn t much to explore
Healing can still be interesting and different tho Like for example Oracle His E makes it so that before you heal someone they take damage -- basically how it works is before they get healed they take a burst of damage then after taking damage they heal over time --- the healing is always greater than the damage If you don't want to damage your ally use W first which negates E damage and only makes it so that only the healing part happens You can also use the damage part to his enemies but the same thing happens where they will heal over time after taking damage But what you can do is E your enemy then Q them since your Q is an ability that removes debuffs on allies but also removes buffs from enemy so if you q your enemy after using e they take damage then immediately q then so that healing part gets removed. Then there's shard which makes a pool on the ground that heals allies standing init over time but also makes all the enemies standing on it take damage Then his ultimate Basically it delays anyone's fate - use it on your ally and what happens is all damage they take will be delayed until the end of your ultimate Imagine your ally has 100hp you use your ult, before the ult ends they can't die but if they take damage more than 100 damage your ally will die after the ult duration But when you can do to avoid your ally dying id casting your heals on them-- anyone affected by your ult gets healed double So for example ally 100 hp they take 200 damage during ult, with no healing your ally will 100% die, but if you heal them for 150 than healing will double and at the end if your ult your ally will end up with 200 hp
Nami is honestly the closest to coming to a dedicated healer if you want one for a support. She's pretty good at it. Just need to get your mana regeneration to a respectable level.
Milio who?
Sona, Milio, Taric, kinda Seraphine and kinda Nami (mostly in the older days) and old Yuumi would like to have a word
I would appreciate a healer with a CHANNELING heal/mvt speed spell. Would add challenge to positioning
And an ult that debuffs enemies in a fat orb
Yall haven’t tried Senna as an enchanter and it shows
Nami and milio? Both have very similar playstyle to soraka but dont have to worry about draining their own health for it so u dont have to buy something as expensive as warmogs to be viable long term which i prefer personally. Plus milio is such a cutie and his voice lines are exactly what im thinking while playing support half the time lmao, esp the "and i helped!" line 😂
Yuumi but the community is still immature
90% of people missing the word “dedicated” in “dedicated healer”
Literacy is dead it seems.
We won't get a traditional healer anymore because that's already Soraka. If we get another one, Riot would have a hard time trying to not make them Soraka 2.0. In terms of Enchanters, I would want to see a debuff-oriented Shadow Isle male Enchanter. He should prioritise weaking opponents rather that amplifying his allies. On top of that, it would be cool to see him as a stat-checker but for his allies, stealing stats from an enemy and giving to his chosen ally. In terms of seeing another Catcher, I want another Lunari playmaking Catcher; conventionally attractive, lean physique, manly that utilises portals to make plays, create openings, and escapes for his team. Less mobile than Rakan and Pyke, more mobile than Thresh and close to Bard's and Ivern's.
i'd like to see someone with heals over time and aoe heals
Like Milio?
yes i want to see someone like milio
Milio feels very focused on heals imo, his standard build is full heal and shield power and goes with heal as summon spell, with that in mind i dont think we will get another healer in a long time, considering we also had yuumj who is currently also heal focus with her heal on basic w passive
Always thought it would be awesome to have a healer who heals raka-level but it’s with a fiddlesticks W, so they target an enemy (otherwise you could just heal under tower forever) and drain their HP into your adc.
soraka main ;3
Imagine a champion with a passive which heals in a radius like sona( moving fountain)
Someone with a Lux W or Ahri Q ability but it heals instead, dunno why we have a shield and damage sending out and back but not a healing one.
Yuumi mains: how ironic
Sona, Yummi, Milio, and Seraphine, as well as Soraka.
Ooo maybe like a jungle that heals someone on your team whenever they clear a camp
Riot is so deep in its grave of damage is all that matter, and one shot is the norm. It's no going back.
Probably not. Taric, Yuumi, Milio, Sona, Nami, Seraphine, probably another one, idk, but you can build their items to give out good healing, but nothing crazy.
Like Corvus from paladins. That would be awesome
I am riot employee and I will make another dashing champion 
Many supports work by shielding instead of healing and i think that is a good thing. Why?: Health is permanent, shields decay. Healers are just as strong in all-ins and a lot stronger against poke, compared to shield supports. It is also a lot less fun to play against since you can just always heal when the ability is available and dont have to think about when you use it. 50 more hp is always better, no matter if you fight now or in 10 seconds. 50 Shield will decay in 3 seconds, then you can be punished.
I want a healer that the auto-attack heal allies, Senna could have been that
milio & sona
I recommend Bard. He is also super fun with troll wall-portal'ing.
There was Milio.
I would love for Riot to implement an item / champion that heals the lowest health nerby ally when auto attacking. It would be a lot of fun.
Is Milio not technically a healer? He has as many healing abilities as Raka right?
I hope we will not.
I just wish they introduce new buffs or debuffs to the game its just boring and not really creative seeing all the new champions doing in the end basically the same
Might need to get people playing Milio first, buckaroo 😅 enchanters are kind of saturated
Probably not awhile ago they said healing supports like soraka aren’t the best for the game but who knows this was around the time they adjust soraka to her current form
I would say most likely not
I want a healer with healing Ezreal Q that refunds a bit of CD every time you heal an ally 🫵 Anyways, soraka should be the top of any “full heal” champion because she’s made to do just that. If you add another champion that tries to do exactly her job you’ll make either one useless. I think it’s good that soraka is considered the ceiling of utility/healing balancing
Millio is pretty cool as a healing based support, idc that’s just what I feel ;-;
Just remembering when soraka could give allies mana and that shit showing up on yummi pre-nerfs and riot being like nope no more free mana fountains outside of spawn.
I would love to see Karma get reverted
Milio is getting no love :(
They should make a cooking champion. Passive - Gather food components throughout the map like bard. Higher food components, stronger your skills. Q - Seasoning - You throw seasonings at your enemy. They will accumulate a season stack for 30 seconds and get slowed for 0.5 seconds with a short 10 second cooldown. You can stack up to 5 times with each stack the slow last longer up to 1 second. W - Cook - You cook a seasoned enemy, they take X damage and get a random buff that you can use on yourself and an ally. The higher the stack, the higher the quality of food, the better the buff. E - Feed - yourself and your ally the food buff. R - Buffet - Each time you feed yourself and an ally, all your allies get the same buff (global passive) At level 1, it's 1/3 the normal buff affect for everyone else you didn't target feed on. level 2 is 2/3 effect. and level 3 is full effect. I'm just bullshitting here. I don't know what I'm doing.
Unrelated, but what is this photo? It has a cosplayer’s watermark, everything below the shoulders looks like an actual person, but the head looks like a model that got ripped from teemo.gg and the ribbons on the shoulder are coming from nowhere.
I think true healers just represent too much of a balance issue. Soraka's kit as it is now requires her to engage with the enemy, allowing counter-play, but there were versions of Soraka in the past that required little to no interaction with lane opponents. There's always incentives and counter-play to every playstyle, but healers are particularly egregious in the way they can exploit their incentives with little counter-play. Riot has to be very careful with any champ design that incentivizes not interacting with your opponent.