Hey everyone :) I´m "Amilu" welcome to my first Leage of Legends Champion, Soraka Guide. I love to play Soraka, I am currently 19 years old, from Germany.

This is going to be an advanced Soraka guide, so if you are not familiar wit her yet, please make sure to check out her SorakaLeague Wiki . You also may consider to play a few Games with her before reading ahead.

In summer 2013, i started playing a lot of LoL. Immediatly i loved to play healers - Alistar, Sona, Kayle etc., but especially Soraka, since she had and still has the strongest heal in the Game, which is in genenral very annoying and frustrating for the enemy team, and of course you got to love them Bananas :). I climbed my way up to gold relative easily, just by building utility, cdr and some tankiness. It always was funny to punish some greedy plays with a simple heal or the silence. It took a while, until i realised how devastating her Q (Starcall) damage has been and how well soraka worked, building more AP. With the Basic build: Athenes - Rylais - Cdr Boots.. i started to play her top mainly but also mid and still as support. At this point Soraka was able to dominate almost every botlane, most top and also some mid matchups, while also being able to help the whole team with her ultimate.
In May 2014 i already made it to Dia 3, when one evening i sadly read the patchnotes for the upcoming patch 4.8. : Q (Starcall) dmg decreased by more than 30%. Imho Soraka was slighlty OP before she got the huge nerf, but 30% dmg reduction was way too much. I still wanted to make her work and desperatley tried to adapt to the new patch, but failed in every regard. Neither a tanky solo sustain lane nor the aggressive support did work out. So i tried to play the passive heal support, which was ok but i felt like had no more impact into the game.
So it happened what had to happen - play a different champ. Until this point i only played Soraka, no matter what. Trying out new Champs in Dia 5..well, guess what happened...yep:/ i got flamed and reported almost every game for how bad i played, tilted, played really bad sometimes, didnt really care anymore and dropped straight in one month from dia 3 to gold 5. I was really frustrated, so i took a break from LoL for about 1-2 months.
I got into it again after hearing about the upcoming rework of Soraka and also i wanted to practise other champs.
So..Soraka´s rework was published a month ago, at the beginning of october 2014. I played alot again, tried different builds, climbed up the ladder again and would like to share my thoughts and experience. With currently 1200+ Soraka ranked games in Season 4, i have the most Soraka games Global. %)
But for now, enough about me! Here we go, lets do this

Soraka is a healer, zoner and for most important: a Teamplayer.
Sure, her q and e still do some damage but even with 40 % cdr u only can starcall every 3.1 seconds and make use of your equinox like every 9 seconds.
So what do you want to build with Soraka?
Without your abilities you are completely useless ( even though i love Bananas :P), so make sure to rush or at least aim for 40% CDR in your build to spam heals in fights.
As you lose 10 % of your max health if you heal an ally, you dont want to build Soraka too HP heavy and maybe go for some Health regeneration.
With Soraka´s rework her active healrange became very close range and she loses HP while healing, which will make her a priority focus for the enemy team. So actually it would be nice to be fast as soraka even though i use no speed items.
The more AP you have, the stronger are your heals, your damage and your selfhealing, if you hit the starcall.

In the late game its very hard to beat most champs in a 1on1 as Soraka, so try to team up as soon as possible. Make use of your active Astral Infusion and try to avoid to fight alone. Your Ultimate Wish denies kills and wins games.

Pros

• Heal every 1,2 Secs in late game

• You are a kill denier :)

• Annoying laning-phase for your opponent

• nice Aoe silence/snare ; also usefull to avoid getting allinned and force enemies to reposition

• Easy to farm with starcall in a solo-lane

• Bananas :P

Cons

• No mobility --> vulnerable to ganks --> needs a lot of wards

• losing health, while healing

• rather squishy

• No burst damage

• Hard to farm with slow bananas in a solo-lane

As support Soraka:
I think a support Soraka should go for flat AP and maybe some mana regeneration runes. HP regeneration / 5 increases only your selfhealing and you´re not able to pressure the lane, since you lack damage.
If you are playing against a melee support like Leona, Alistar or Blitzcrank take Hybrid Penetrations marks instead of magic pen marks, so your Bananas will deal more damamge.
Don´t forget to implement 3 scaling CDR Glyphs, so you your missing 5% CDR if you use my suggested usual build.
Exhaust is your way to go.

As solo lane Soraka:
If you are playing against a melee fighter like Jax, Alistar or Riven etc.. take Hybrid Penetrations marks instead of magic pen marks, so your Bananas will deal more damamge.
Dont forget to implement 3 scaling CDR Glyphs, so you your missing 5% CDR if you use my suggested usual build. If you think the matchup will be really hard and you are scared getting all inned go for full flat AP glyphs instead of CDR and go for Ignite, Barrier or Exhaust instead of teleport. with 35% CDR in the late game you should be fine aswell.
If you are laning against an AP champ take MR marks instead of Penetration Marks.

I always go for the same AP / Tank masteries. With Armor and MR i´m safe against lane switches. As support i dont go for gold / 5 masteries. They provide like 25 gold / min, which is about 250 gold / 10 mins. Dominating the lane from beginning on is more important. If you ult properly as Soraka you will get many assists and gold anyway.

As support Soraka:
Spellthief's Edge really nice item for poke champs like soraka. Upgrade asap to Frostfang to get more gold and increase the poke damage.

Next you want to get Sightstone for more vision, since you are vulnerable to ganks and you want to save money u had to spent for wards.

Athene's Unholy Grail provides 20% CDR, really nice manaregeneration and some mr. Mikael's Blessing would be viable aswell but it provides less CDR, so i almsot everytime go for Athene's Unholy Grail, also because the 60 AP increases your healing.

By now at the latest Boots are required. Upgrade them to Mercury's Treads or Ninja Tabi depending on the enemy team composition.

Get Kindlegem to finalize the 40% CDR.

As a forth coreitem i usually get Rylai's Crystal Scepter, so its harder to get out of your Equinox, due to the 15% slow and you also can hit the Q easier if your enemies are slowed.

At this point i usually upgrade Kindlegem to Spirit Visage. It provides nice Health regeneration and some MR.

Zhonya's Hourglass increases your healing and provides the extra armor you still lack of. Since you lose your health while healing, you will get lowlife and a priority aim for the enemy team - Zhonya's Hourglass's active will safe you plenty times :).
Let´s assume you are fighting a 2vs2 @ botlane and your ADC is too low to beat the enemy ADC. But you dont have many HP left aswell and you are scared to heal your ADC, because you would lose HP and would be too vulnerable to the enemy ADC. With Zhonya's Hourglass you can just heal your ADC and if the enemy ADC decides to focus you now, just make use of Zhonya's Hourglass's active.
If the enemy team focuses you quite a lot, try to get Zhonya's Hourglass earlier. If the enemy team is AD heavy you may consider to build Seeker's Armguard earlier or go for the "vs Full AD Team composition" -build i suggest in the cheatsheet above.

I sell Frostfang for my secondlast or last item, but keep it as long as possible, because the gold / 5.


As solo lane Soraka:
Get Rabadon's Deathcap as 6th item, so you have about 500 AP in the late game. Your Ultimate will bring all squishies back to full life :)
If u lane against an AD champion build Seeker's Armguard as first item. Otherwise just build as you would build as support, instead of the support item and the Wardstone of course.