Oops, missed that part. Yes, Windspeaker's Blessing 's essential for Soraka.


I'm sorry but I can't totally agree. To be honest, Soraka is a very squishy champ. And her heals are just pretty strong, early, mid or late game, there's no difference. Therefore, I'd recommend to go on the tankiness tree. Why tankiness you'll ask? Because, you definitly don't need to boost her heals.

Let me show you how I build my lovely goat:

Cunning tree

Wanderer 5/5 ; Secret Stash 1/1 ; Meditation 5/5; Bandit 1/1;
I don't think I need to explain further about this tree. However, the resolve tree should interest you.


Resolve Tree

Recovery 5/5 ;
This mastery isn't really surprising. Since your heal depends of your current HP, to provide efficient sustain you'll need HP regen.

Tough Skin 1/1 ;
As mentionned previously, you want to provide efficient sustain for your carry. Therefore, Tough Skin is a great mastery, because you'll be focused a lot, and to heal your mates, you'll need to stay alive as long as possible.

Veteran's Scars 5/5 ;
This mastery allow you to focus on armor instead of flat HP in your runes. I'll show you the runes soon, don't worry. ( I know, this may sound crazy but you'll get the point fast enough)

Insight 1/1 ;
Since you already have HP regen with Recovery , you won't need the Perseverance one (for some reason it shows garen passive and not the mastery, but you get the point). You'll regen enough if you're able to hit Q when needed. Moreover, reduced cooldown on summs is a big YES! Like hell yeah :)

Legendary Guardian 5/5;
Now this is questionnable. Why this one and not Swiftness ? Because the last mastery is Bond of Stone . Since you'll take 6% of the dmg dealt to the nearest ally, you'll just need to grow tankier, naturally. And by that I mean that you will be able to focus more on utility items than tank ones ( tho tank items are still welcolme).

Bond of Stone 1/1;
Are you horrified enough now? Yeah, Bond of Stone . This mastery allow you to secure easily your carry. He basically takes less damage with you nearby. Add to that your healing, he's nearly invincible. All you need to do is land a great Q in teamfights ( it'll be easier, trust me) , and cast a well timed E. Oh and of course, Exhaust is welcomed in teamfights, offensively or defensively. Can make you win a fight or win a trade.


Now let's talk about runes. I mentionned earlier that taking Veteran's Scars allowed you to focus on armor and not flat hp.

All you need is:
x9 Greater Mark of Armor
x9 Greater Seal of Armor
x9 Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
x9 Greater Quintessence of Armor

That is as simple as that. You'll get a monstruous sustain early game, allowing you to take some extra damage while trading ( but don't get cocky, you're still Soraka).

About skill order, I prefer to start w, q, e, then max w, but that's up to you.

Sorry for the long commentary, I've got no potato for you <3

And what about Zilean? Is he viable as a support or is he a better ap mage?

I actually love Nautilus <3 It's just that not a lot of people are playing him right now. He'd be put under the always will be relevant supports section. I'll add him in when I get the chance.

Ummmm.... No Nautilus support section?

It's spectator section in the launcher. I spectate games featured there from time to time and see swaps quite often. Maybe I was lucky to run into games with swapped spells and it isn't that common actually.
I might be wrong so that I'm totally cool if you don't agree with me. Time will tell, I guess.

Right after I wrote this, I decided to check spectator, here's what I've got (EU West):
P.S.
There is one more reason why Soraka picks Heal, due to her positioning she often finds herself too far from a source of damage to put Exhaust on it. AD carries, on the contrary, are always ahead of her and usually are able to reach the source with Exhaust. In other words, it's for her safety.
Oh, and there is more, you know all those moments when you use Heal because you need it so bad, but your ally is perfectly healthy? Due to Soraka's mechanics, this is very unlikely to happen. I should add some of this info to my guide (done). Thank you for this conversation.

P.P.S.
Maybe it's a viable option only with support Soraka. I don't swap spells if pick other supports.

You're right that some supports do not really use Ignite that well ( Soraka and perhaps Janna), I should have mentioned that.

However, can you mention a source for summoner swaps? I haven't been playing ranked as much lately but from playing tons of normals with other high-Diamond players I don't see any indication of frequent spell swapping. I also had a quick look on probuilds and I can't find any of that there either.

As I already mentioned, having Exhaust or Ignite in roams is far superior to Heal (plus it has a slightly shorter cooldown). Roaming is one of they key skills a support should have so I don't think it's a great idea to reduce your own roaming potential just for the way grevious wounds work nowadays.

If you disagree with me and stick to your own opinion that's fine, but I don't think your reasoning is any convincing.



Sorry if this comes across as nitpicking. It's fair if your experience in using Ignite tells you otherwise; it is a much less forgiving playstyle because if you get caught once, you're dead. As I said, Exhaust can create a stalemate because both sides have so much defensive spells that it's hard to kill each other. The reason I'm so nitpicky on this is the way you phrase it; it's essentially an opinion ("I don't have good experiences using ignite") phrased in a way that implies it as a fact ("You only really want to...")

I'm partially biased towards Exhaust and also am not that high up in terms of Elo/MMR so you probably have more experience. So I can fix that, although I personally cannot attest to using Ignite successfully as a Support.

As for runes, I'm not an expert at all. I only have like 5 or 6 rune pages that I use for everything. I doubt I'd be able to give a good explanation as to why I use these runes or what runes to use.

In terms of phrasing? Yeah, it's very rough and not polished yet. Playing support I know that there's more to it than Getting Vision, Shotcalling, and Staying Positive. I'll attempt to edit and polish it as the Pre-Season continues. Thanks for the input.

Soraka doesn't agree with you.
I find Ignite inappropriate on her, Exhaust is very good and Heal is just as good, especially considering that enemies pick Ignite against Soraka very often. I'm Platinum, but I often see spell swaps in Diamond 1, Master, Challenger games. With all respect, I'll stick to my opinion.

On a side note, yes, Ignite is great on a lot of supports.


Oops, missed that part. Yes, Windspeaker's Blessing 's essential for Soraka.

No don't swap summoners, it's not good at all. Supports are much better off with Exhaust/ Ignite because Heal greatly reduces kill potential in roams compared to the former.


Also, @OP:

I really dislike some of your phrasing. The role of a support extends way past "get vision, shot call, stay positive" and I would even argue some of these aren't even the most important things: instead, the way I define it is "to create optimal circumstances for your team to perform in and provide any form of utility". That is a much broader (and purposely vague - supporting is not clearly defined by 6 words) definition of what a support should be doing.

Furthermore, I really dislike the part on Ignite:



This is ********. Ignite is the most common summoner spell for supports in high-Elo because it gives a whole lot of kill potential you wouldn't get from Exhaust. Yeah I know your reasoning through saying Exhaust also has offensive purposes, but far from those of Ignite. Especially against mobile ADC's, exhaust won't prevent them from just popping heal and running away freely, ignite will. Therefore, Exhaust generally creates a stalemate in botlane with neither botlane being able to kill each other, whereas Ignite can break that through reducing healing effectiveness.

Oh and your runes. It's a very non-conventional page so I'd at least like to see some reasoning for these runes.

Standard is:

Marks: depends a lot on champion, mostly free choice depending on champion (but armour is not the optimal choice for many of them, except thresh/janna)
Seals: flat health
Glyphs: flat magic resist
Quints: armour

Finally, Soraka really does not use Thunderlord's Decree .

I meant support can swap spells with ADC.
If an enemy Ignited your ADC, how much health ADC restores if he uses Heal? Only 60%, right? If you use Heal on your ADC, you utilize 100% of Heal's power, because that's how Ignite works at the moment. Same goes for Grievous Wounds debuff.

The only problem I came across is that some AD carries ain't used to having Exhaust and struggle with timing it right. So that I try to be polite and understanding every time I ask for swap.

I hope I made it clear enough, apologies for failed first attempt.

If anything, it's featured in my guide. I talk from my experience. Also, I noticed that Exhaust may help ADC in an ADC duel if used at the right moment.

Eh, IMO having a 2nd Heal on bot isn't that great as the 2nd heal (if used consecutively) heals for less and most of the times preventing damage ( Exhaust) from being dealt rather than recovering from damage that was dealt is safer and more efficient. Although, it's not a bad idea if your ADC instead decides to run Cleanse.

Edit: Also, Heal is a more defensive spell and is harder to use offensively like Exhaust. With Exhaust it's easy to use it offensively and defensively.

Hello, Yoshiking123. Great start. You may want to add Heal to support spells because of recent changes to Ignite and Grievous Wounds debuff.