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Soraka Build Guide by

[11.6] THE ULTIMATE SORAKA SUPPORT GUIDE!

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7 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author M1sh0

Soraka Build Guide By Updated on

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Hey M1sh0, here's the review you requested. I'm a little sad that I got all the way through the cheatsheet of the guide that you linked in the thread, only to find you abandoned it and moved to this new guide. I had to start my whole review from scratch. T.T Anyway here you go:

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Mid Build

Some brief Notes on each rune page explaining when to take each of them would be useful.
Unflinching seems like a strange choice in Resolve over Revitalize. I don't really see why you'd prioritize tenacity over the boost in healing. You can always just get Mercury's Treads if you're afraid of a LeBlanc or Veigar or something.
There's a lot of redundancy in your First Back options that make it hard to read your build. Instead of listing all the components including what you've already purchased, just point to some early goals to focus on, like Lost Chapter, Boots and an optional Faerie Charm if you like.
Your next three Purchase Orders are also redundant. You can cut the First Item and Semi-Build entirely without adversely affecting the cheatsheet. Brevity is preferred in the cheatsheet so people can figure out what to build as quickly as possible.
It's currently unclear when you would build any of your situational items over your example build. There are no notes or categorization to help the reader decide what to build. If someone looks up your guide while they're in game, they're likely to either follow the main build only, or to build from any of the situational items at random.
Morellonomicon seems like a strange choice for Soraka mid. Even if you're more damage-oriented, it's not a great item for champions with non-damage AP ratios like Soraka's heals. You'd get a lot more out of getting your Rabadon's Deathcap or a defensive item earlier.
Rylai's Crystal Scepter also seems like a strange choice. The only abilities it would apply to would be Equinox's initial cast and Luden's Tempest's proc, assuming you didn't hit Q directly. in all other cases, you're getting nothing out of the passive, since Starcall's slow is stronger.
Even though this is a mid build, I'm surprised to see no mention of more supportive items like Athene's Unholy Grail, Ardent Censer or Redemption. Even with solo lane farm, you're still playing a support champion and you'll need to play through your teammates to win fights.

Top Build

I have doubts about Perfect Timing's viability after its nerf in 10.4. Perhaps Magical Footwear would be more useful here.
Dark Harvest seems super strange for Soraka in any role. You're not a burst mage or an assassin.
Not feeling the Attack Speed shard, even against melee champs. Surely you'd get more out of an Adaptive shard here for more Q harass. I could be wrong, but top lane mages rarely take attack speed unless something in their kit scales with it (like Neeko's Shapesplitter).
If Teleport is the only viable option, you shouldn't list other options. That said, before this patch, top lane Soraka players took Barrier. Perhaps Barrier isn't as unviable as you might think?
Again, your items here could be easily condensed into Starting Items, Early Buys and Full Build. Everything in between is really redundant and just makes the build harder to read.
I'm surprised to see so few items here. Your other builds have more options for items. Surely you don't build Banshee's Veil every game on Soraka top.

Support Build

Seems like you're missing the most popular (and arguably best) secondary page - that being the combo of Bone Plating and Revitalize. Up to you if you want to keep your current options as alternatives, but skipping over the meta page seems like an oversight.
Statistically, Barrier heavily outperforms other options for Soraka. It's really important to stay alive as Soraka since enemies are encouraged to focus you first to stop you from healing. Since a lot of people reading this guide aren't going to know what to take, it's important to put the best options first. Considering you also don't run Bone Plating, you will get punished at higher elos for running with such little defense.
Frostfang doesn't need to be included in your first back(s). You can't buy the item anymore. I also think these two "first backs" could be combined into more of an "early game goals" type of thing. They're almost identical.
You have some more redundancy in the next 3 purchase orders. It's good to try and keep the cheatsheet as compact as possible while still getting across crucial information, so people can figure out what to build at a glance. Your "First Item" and "Semi-Build (20 minutes in)" purchase orders can be entirely deleted without affecting the usefulness of the cheatsheet, since the "Full Build Raka" purchase order gets across everything you need to know.
Your skill order is a bit all over the place. For the first option, why is there a random point in W at level 7, instead of maxing Q as quickly as possible? The second skill order is even more random, with Q and W seeming staggered haphazardly.
Patch 10.4's changes introduced extra incentives to max W first on Soraka. I'm not a Soraka expert so I can't say this with certainty, but so far statistically the best skill order seems to be W>E>Q while the most popular order is W>Q>E. This is something you should investigate in order to reevaluate the best skill order for the champion. If you still want a setup with early poke for laning phase, 3 points in Q should be enough to accomplish that goal without heavily delaying your W max.

Presentation

I have mixed feelings about the heavy use of exclamation marks in the cheatsheet. On the one hand, it does give a little more personality to the guide, but I find it a little random and grating. Maybe you could come up with some other ways to inject more flavor into the guide without relying on exclamation marks so heavily.
Your guide is really inconsistent aesthetically. Some parts like the Pros & Cons are really nice looking (though the colors of "Pros" and "Cons" should probably be changed to match your guide), while other sections are mainly just walls of text. I'm guessing you've been making use of templates for some of the better-presented parts of the guide, which is why it's so split. While templates are definitely a great resource, I think your guide would greatly benefit from incorporating a few basic coding techniques to break up text more reliably.
Check out the BBCode Guide section on Columns (or Tables) and incorporate some of those techniques to add icons or other images alongside some of the text in your guide. A little bit of coding can go a long way to making your guide more readable and visually cohesive.
You can also increase your text size and Bold it (and maybe color it too) in order to make subheaders to help organize your content better within each chapter.
I'd recommend avoiding overusing colored text as a way to visually enhance your guide. While colored text can sometimes work well as a subtle highlight to certain important parts of your guide, overusing it (especially with a lot of different colors) makes your guide look more like a unicorn puked on it. I'd recommend picking 2-3 highlight colors that match your guide's theme, then using those throughout the guide. This'll make the colors less intrusive and it'll add more of an overall color scheme.
Since you use different skin splash arts for different roles in your guide, maybe you could pick 2 colors per role and use your visual presentation to help readers distinguish between sections even easier.
Your Runes section has REALLY large icons, to the point where they kinda warp the text around them and it doesn't look great. I'd recommend making the icons smaller and making sure they're in their own column.
You have some broken images in your matchups section. Make sure you use all lowercase for skin names. I think some of your URLs have uppercase letters which breaks the image path.
There's a lot of sketchy grammar in this guide. If you can, find someone you trust with a strong command of English grammar and get them to help you proofread and improve the writing in your guide.
Your "SUPP - Visoin, Warding and Map Control" chapter is WAY better visually. You should try to make more sections of your guide look like this. Bulleted lists, columns/tables and images make the guide way more engaging to read, so this section is a breath of fresh air.
Unfortunately, this section also seems to have duplicated. You're probably missing a [/columns], [/table], [/tr] or [/td] tag. See if you can find the issue yourself and add the tag back in. The duplication effect should be gone once you've identified the missing tag. If you still can't figure it out, let me know and I can take a look.

Content (Mid)

You mention in your 10.4 patch section that Soraka mid now has to build Archangel's Staff, but your cheatsheet doesn't reflect that opinion. This also seems unnecessary since Lost Chapter solves mana issues for most mid champions, and Soraka's mana nerfs don't seem to warrant the huge power trough that Tear of the Goddess puts you through.
I find it a bit weird that you say you "would not usually recommend" Soraka mid in ranked, yet it's the first big section of your guide. Maybe you could refocus your guide on support, then have smaller supplmentary sections for solo lane soraka later in the guide, if support is the main role people should be playing her in.
It's really debatable whether Soraka has "good CC" for a mage. Maybe "Good Kiting" would be more appropriate, since her spammable CC is a ranged AoE slow.
Your Summoner Spells don't match what you have in your cheatsheet. I also don't see how Heal would be a safer option than Barrier, considering it has a longer cooldown and is a less "selfish" spell.
You only have 1 rune page explained here. If you think multiple pages are viable, explain them in the guide and show people which one to take in different situations.
You have Dark Seal in the cheatsheet, but Doran's Ring in the guide.
As stated in the Build section, repeating the same items over and over is redundant and takes up valuable space. Try to avoid mentioning the same items again and again unless you're going to build multiple Doran's Rings or something.
When explaining items, it's best to focus on WHEN to build the item and WHY the item is good. Avoid simply stating what the item does. For example, you could say to buy Faerie Charm if you have the spare gold on your first recall, rather than just saying it gives mana regen. Same goes for the other items.
I don't think you want to take Heal against champions like Zed or Talon. You'll get eaten alive since assassins like those will usually run Ignite which cuts your healing by 40%. Barrier or Exhaust would be more appropriate in these matchups.
I think I stated this earlier in the build section, but Ignite seems pretty greedy. I don't think you'll get away with it against most mid lane champions, including Brand and Galio. It's more important for Soraka to stay alive than it is to secure kills. Poking your opponent out of lane and forcing them to recall is still fine.
This might be a bit vague, but I don't get a great sense of how to play Soraka mid from this short gameplay chapter. If you want people to actually play the champion to its potential in a solo lane, they're going to need more direction than what you have here. For example, casting Starcall when the enemy champion tries to last-hit a minion is a really common and useful tip, but isn't even included here. Your advice also ends at level 6, when there's still a lot more of the game to go. I think if you're serious about teaching Soraka mid, this section needs expansion.

Content (Support)

Soraka's early game damage is actually pretty high. It's more that she doesn't scale in damage well at all. (In regards to Pros/Cons)
I've said it elsewhere in this review already, but you seem to overvalue Ignite and undervalue Barrier. If you're going to break the mold and do something offmeta, you usually need a really good justification. Otherwise, it's best to stick with the popular & strong option like Barrier here.
As stated in the mid lane section, redundancy is an issue in your items section. Also Frostfang is not something you buy on your first back since it upgrades automatically, so it shouldn't be included here.
You don't have any situational items in your support items section. Items like Mikael's Blessing are definitely viable on Soraka and deserve a mention & explanation.
A lot of your matchup descriptions largely seem to boil down to "if you hit Equinox's root you win," but there's no explanation of how to reliably root enemies. Hoping for your enemy to take free damage isn't a great strategy for winning lane. I'd like to see some more specific ideas like how to counter enemy engages, which levels you can bully them at, and what you should look to do with the minion wave to win.
To get Zephyr instead of Zephyr, use the code [[ability zephyr]].
You say Magical Journey heals an ally champion to Bard. I think you meant to say Caretaker's Shrine.
Not sure why you say Nami has less CC than Soraka. Nami has more CC. Her Q stuns, her E slows and her R both knocks up and slows. Soraka just has her Q slow and E silence/root. They're comparable without ults, but Nami definitely has the stronger CC of the two.
Instead of explaining what each champion's abilities do, I'd rather you focus on the strategy and mechanics that are important to know for the matchup. If you want to help newer players who may be unfamiliar with the champions, just add in the ability icons below each champion's splash art. Then the reader can hover the icon for each ability if they're unsure what it does.
"Also its not great that Maokai is being buffed in patch 9.21" <- This is old news and can be removed.
"Now hopefully you have gone back once to get Frostfang" <- This is outdated; you can't buy Frostfang and you don't need to recall for it to upgrade.
One of the best times to roam is when you've crashed a wave into the enemy tower. You and your ADC can roam together to get deep vision, help your jungler secure scuttle, or even gank mid. The enemy bot lane will be stuck farming under their tower and won't be able to contest your roam.
While knowing where the enemy jungler is makes a roam safer, it can still be wrong to leave your ADC alone in a 1v2. I think this section could use some distinction between criteria you MUST fulfill to roam, and criteria that just make your roams better.

Overall, I think this guide has a lot of content which is a good starting point for improving it in the future. I think the two biggest things you could work on are cleaning up your guide presentation to make it more readable and engaging, and to improve the quality of the advice you give to your readers.

This second part can be tough since it takes a lot of game knowledge to be able to explain when and why to do things in a way that people will learn from, but you'll get better at it the better you get at the game. You can also research statistics and games from other high elo Soraka players and use that knowledge to improve your guide content.

Hope you found this review useful. Good luck with your updates!

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