Soraka Build Guide by

Spection's Guide to Soraka [S7 RANK #14 NA, #86 WORLDWIDE] [S11 GM]

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Soraka Build Guide By Updated on

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(2) |

Lovely guide! Thank you <3

There is no way you updated this guide in 2021 coin hasn't been an item sense season 9 and dark seal hasn't given mana sense season 10

(1) |

that revitalize on soraka so good

awesome

Hi, I'm a bit new to league, so I was wondering if the double magic resist in the runes was a troll or something that I should actually take. Wouldn't it be better to get double armor since usually the bot lane carry is physical damage?

(6) |

Hi! Defensive runes are purely situational. It will generally depend on what type of damage you expect to take in lane (or from jungle ganks). Information apps like blitz.gg or porofessor.gg will advise you on how much magic vs physical damage dealt by opponents and which rune will serve you better.

(2) |

Great guide! I'm an avid Soraka support, so It's nice to come across a guide that's offering a different way to play her. Gonna try this build later one tonight and see how it works out. Keep up the good-work creating content that is thorough and interesting to read. If this build becomes OP for me to play, I'll definitely come back and leave another comment for you.
Vote+1

Nice job!

(6) |

Hope you found success with it! If you didn't on the first go don't be discouraged as it can take time to find success with this playstyle because it's so different than the traditional playstyle.

(162) |

Hey Spection,
I love that you actually spent your time with sharing all your thoughts and experiences to create this guide and help other people. Especially your Ranked section was what intrigued me the most.
However as main Nami in S8 I saw a lot of Sorakas and most of the time I could easily shut them down. Of course you may argue that I'm only playing with people ranged from Bronze to Platinum but I don't really consider a Nami as easy when playing as Soraka. When playing wisely you can easily drain out Soraka by poking her and the enemy ADC and denying her to heal up or gain enough mana again. That's why I'd put Nami somewhere into the yellow section.
Anyway very well done. :)

(6) |

Generally, as Soraka, if you play the lane properly you should never be in range for nami to use any of her abilities. Your E and Q both outrange her significantly. I'm guessing you're just an experienced nami player who knows how to take advantage of the positioning errors the enemy sorakas make. If you do play against one who positions properly, you will get poked down and will never be able to land any of your abilities.

(162) |

It's possible but I usually use my W on my ADC when she's trying to land a Q since the range of Nami's W is kinda huge and you don't necessarily need to catch Soraka with Nami's Q because if you get the ADC, you can try to starve out Soraka or just immediately use the Ult, Tidal Wave. Even if you don't get a kill, the enemies will have to recall, allowing your ADC to get ahead in farm.
But you're probably right that I'm simply waiting for the other Sorakas to make mistakes to hunt them down then. :d Who knows.

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(6) |

Yeah! A lot of people don't understand the bounce range of Nami. I think it's quite strong, having played a fair amount of Nami this season. However, a good soraka will position to account for this. The delay of the W bounce from Nami to ADC is generally enough for the Soraka to walk out if she's aware.

(162) |

Yeah of course she'll try to walk out of it but if you play cleverly, you could drain her health because Soraka will want to heal her ADC back so you try to repeat that kind of thing a lot and hope your ADC will be clever and fast enough to sidestep Soraka's Qs - at least more of the times. :d With Nami's Bubble (Q) she could even stun the enemy ADC and Soraka will have to work hard to heal back the taken damage which would drain her health a lot. That's usually how I passively love to poke Soraka down. :>

(6) |

Most matchups can be taken advantage of if you play well.

(162) |

Yep that's true. Anyway, thanks for the very nice and informative talk. (:
Very appreciated.

(6) |

No problem. Thanks for stopping by and the chat!

Can you please update threat levels? I see that pyke and kai sa is missing

(6) |

Done.

Hi Spection,
Why do you consider to be so good? and why not start with a as a starting item instead of Ancient Coin... is there an extra amount of gold earned comparing both the starting items ?? (with the extra gold / mana dropped by dead minions when you take Ancient Coin first)
Thank you in advance.

(6) |

Hey gameboyAdv, I was just playing Donkey Kong Country 2 on one a few days ago. Great device.

As for your question, I think ancient coin is superior because of how strongly reliable the gold generation is in almost every elo. It is very easy to get all the coins that spawn without being punished, and you can almost always get the quest done quicker than the eye of the watchers quest. In addition, ancient coin has health regen which allows you to use your W more frequently. However, in matchups where you intend to max Q and poke as much as possible, Spellthiefs is definitely quite viable and is capable of generating more gold than Ancient Coin (although you would have to be poking almost constantly to achieve this)

Hope this helped!

Thank you for you feedback!
Yes I get it now, it all comes down to the play style, when aggressively poking then Spellthiefs otherwise Ancient Coin to play passive support with chance of more gold income :)

Hello, great guide! I just wanted to ask you two things;
First; synergies with ADC
second; Detail the reason for your choice of objects individually ... and your opinion about Athenera's impure grail.

(Sorry for my English so bad)

(6) |

Hey there Lexas,

Soraka works really great with ADCs that have lack any form of innate health sustain like or . She really helps overcome a big weakness of those champions. ADCs that she can stay close to and heal are really good later in the game, it can be harder for her to heal a or a if they dive into a teamfight and get away from you. can help with this, however. If you mouse over the notes button in my build path, you can find a description of what each item offers and why you should take it. I hope this helped!

Oh! thanks!!!!!

(47) |

Hi! I was just passing by and I saw some coding mistakes:
- you missed a [/columns] at the end of pros/cons and summoner's spells
- I think there is a formatting mistake when you explain wish (+there is still a piece of information about )
- just a wrong database linking with inside the rune section

Everything else is ok, nice guide!

(6) |

Hey there, thank you so much for catching these mistakes. Hard for me to get all of them! Appreciate your kind feedback as well.

(1) |

%heal effect from all % heal items got reduced in latest patch 8.12 NOOOOO #notlikethis

(191) |

Voted -1

Where to even start with this mess of a guide...

wrote:

As I explained further back in the comments, W start and Q start are both good choices, but W start often takes prevalence when you need to give a hard leash or you are playing into a cheese oriented jg that can kill you at level 2.

So first of all, this is just wrong. W start is extremely situational at best and if you tell any player they're about to lane with a W start Soraka, they'll start searching for the nearest cliff to jump off of. By starting W, you are basically completely surrendering the lane. Against any sort of decent players, you are going to get permanenely pushed into your tower and you're just going to be trying to keep your ad carry alive for the entire laning phase, falling hopelessly behind. You will have absolutely no lane presence and it's just going to be an absolute nightmare of a laning phase for your ad carry. What's worse about it is the fact that Soraka brings absolutely no follow up to ganks, so it's going to be really difficult to punish the enemy bot lane even if they are overextending.
By starting Q, you can establish control of the lane right away and have some sort of lane presence, which allows your ad carry to actually do things.
Also, you don't even mention putting additional points into Q over W in winning lanes, which makes me believe you are just a KDA player who really doesn't understand the dynamics of bottom lane at all.

Your runes are also quite a mess. Since the Aery nerfs, it's no longer a no-brainer. It's still a good choice, but Arcane Comet definitely deserves a mention.
Ultimate Hat is a very overrated rune and on a champion like Soraka is just not worth taking over Manaflow Band, a rune that'll make your laning phase a lot smoother and stronger. Gathering Storm is pretty gash compared to the early power of Scorch, which on top of Aery/Comet makes Soraka really hard to deal with.

Your item builds are extremely questionable. No mention of Warmog's at all, which is a really powerful late game item for Soraka once you reach the health threshold (which, with a proper build, you do)
What really blows my mind is that you don't even mention Locket, which is often a very important item for every support champion. You simply cannot leave it out of the guide, or even the core build. Especially paired with Warmog's later on, it's a really powerful item and just an extra tool to keep your team alive.
And for the love of god, get that hourglass/rylais out of there.

And finally, can people please stop linking their champion ranking as some sort of proof of their skill. It's the most meaningless statistic you can find, and only exists to stroke the ego of delusional one trick ponies. No, my friend, you are not the 14th best Soraka in NA and certainly not the 86th in the world. Any Diamond 4 or higher support main who picks up Soraka will automatically be better than you and that is a fact, not a personal attack.
This whole guide just screams to me that you don't understand how the bottom lane works at all and I guarantee you if you show this to any Diamond 5+ ad carry main, they will cringe and put you on some sort of dodge list.

(6) |

First of all, W start has strong benefits. It definitely isn't an option 100% of the time, there are times where the pressure from Q start is necessary for lane. I will do a better job to express this and the other choices you can make with skill selection. Your statement that I do not mention Q max is just flat out wrong, and clear evidence of the fact that you didn't bother to read the guide carefully and are making conclusions as a result of your haste.

Arcane comet is a lane dominance rune, and is pretty worthless in the late game. Why would you take it when you can get an added shield put into your kit? Again, this is a stylistic choice for Soraka that I don't agree with. It fits a certain agressive playstyle, but Aery offers more to her team.

Manaflow band is certainly a choice you want to play up in lane, but it isn't hard to manage your mana and do fine without it. I will mention it in the runes.

All your suggestions for rune choices cater to a different style of playing Soraka, one that I feel improperly makes use of the runes available to her. Sure it works fine but it synergizes poorly with the playstyle I detail here, and this guide is about my own way of playing Soraka in a very particular way.

Warmogs is an item I feel caters poorly to the late game healing fantasy of Soraka, as does locket. These items are part of a combo for a Soraka build that focuses on extended sieges with weaker overall heals. Different playstyle than the one I am trying to detail here, which focuses on supremacy in explosive fights where bursts of healing are needed. Locket is bad when you don't have a large health pool.

The champion ranking system is the most accurate measure of who is the best at a certain champion. It sounds like your issue is with their algorithm, not me. I believe my statistics and personal performance merit that fact, and I feel as though I can climb higher than my current position when I get down to bushiness.

All in all, your comments are based off of your idea of how Soraka should be played. Whether or not that is the generally accepted view, it is not how I play her, and this guide is a guide on my own tactics and strategies. If you want to learn how to play her in a general more "meta" manner, you should find another guide.

Thanks for your feedback and arguments.

Best,

- Spection

(336) |

I'll throw 1 more input. Feel like I've said more than needed already but eh. Many of the negative opinions here are coming from ppl that have played at a high elo. Once one has experience getting matched with around master tier players, one will realize the importance of the smallest things.

Losing 1 auto attack, minion, lane control after entering lane... these are the smallest of small things that highly impact how the rest of the lane will play out. I mained top lane while playing tanks with low kill potential early so I'd have to invest in learning how minions work in lane and how I could get gold lead/roaming opportunities off minions.

I could instantly tell the next 3-4 waves would be absolutely terrible to play out if I'd lose lane control during the first few minions. At higher levels it starts to be pretty common knowledge (hopefully at least) to understand how lane control works, how to play the minions out and how certain variables effects the future.

Your strat/preference/recommendation to take W first over Q is in my opinion - and many others' opinion, a bad option. It's giving away pressure and potential you can have with Soraka. This is your style of playing as you mentioned but I don't have to agree with it.

If you were doing it, sure that's fine but the problem comes in when it's being recommended to others, potentially creating more Soraka mains that start out with W. This will become a habit and harder to get rid of. Playing healbot strat is not working towards the goal of improving and will hurt you over the course of climbing the ladder.

You speak of risks a lot and how it's risky to pick Q or do a certain thing. In order to improve, you need to take those risks, make mistakes and learn from them.

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(6) |

You make a good point. I have become convinced more of the importance of starting Q, but I disagree that it is 100% prevalent. There are situations where W start does more good and provides more safety. I have played and analyzed games at a higher level than this, and I can tell you that Q start doesn't do that much more to help out level 1. In fact, you run the risk of getting ahead of yourself and draining your mana to generate said pressure before the lane really begins, often to no end. Soraka just isn't a champion for lane pressure, even with the right runes she still isn't very good at it.

You don't have to agree with my decisions, they work for me and the purpose of this guide was for other people to experiment with them too.

Again, you're treating every player like a high elo player. Very few players have the skill and game knowledge to capitalize on that and pressure her. W or Q start is simply inconsequential in lower elos, where there are so many factors that influence the outcome of a game.

This build is inherently risky. I mention that multiple times. The reason you must play so cautiously and so far back is because of the total fragility of the champion. It's good to get into that mentality so you can survive team-fights by positioning cautiously.

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