Hi, I'm Lupa and I main Soraka. I have nearly 2 million mastery points on her and I decided to write this guide as an exercise for myself. I wanted to map out all the knowledge I've gained while maining her. I hope you guys can learn something from it too.

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You can play the Summon Aery keystone in lanes where you can walk up to poke or trade.

Summon Aery triggers on spells and auto attacks and then slowly returns to you. You can walk towards this little projectile to get it off cooldown faster to surprise the enemy with some extra damage as shown in the clip below. Also don't forget that when your ADC is missing hp and pulling the wave, you can use a "dry" Astral Infusion to get some value out of the Summon Aery shield against the minions' auto attacks.

Choice Nodes

Nimbus Cloak and Heal both give a burst of Movement Speed which put together often surprises the enemy. When you play Nimbus Cloak you have to remember to cast your spells with a purpose or you will run out of mana. If you are playing Exhaust it can be hard to get value out of Nimbus Cloak and you might as well run Manaflow Band.

I personally pick Celerity in 98.6% of my games. It synergises nicely with Salvation, Boots of Swiftness, Starcall, the Movement Speed stat shard and Nimbus Cloak. Some Soraka players like Transcendence but I'm not one of them. If you're looking for a good usecase for Transcendence, you could use it to try to mitigate how hard Sona and Milio outscale you.

You can take Scorch if you have kill pressure in lane. For example when you are duo with a jungler that's playing around your lane, or if you feel like you are better than your opponent or have a favourable matchup. Enchanter vs enchanter lanes are pretty low volatility in higher elos where less mistakes are made. In these cases Gathering Storm is a great way to keep up with the scaling of enchanters like Sona or Milio. Your 50% AP ratio on Astral Infusion gets multiplied by your healing modifiers, so it's better than it seems.

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You can play the Guardian keystone in matchups where you can't walk up to Starcall. Typically those are one of two scenarios:

The enemy can catch you if you try to go for a Starcall. Think of Pantheon and Draven. In these cases you never want to be the one getting engaged on. You have to use your ADC as a meatshield, and when he gets engaged on you will hopefully be able to keep him alive and disengage, or even turn it into an extended fight when the enemy is already out of gas.

You are turbo outranged (think of Vel'Koz and Caitlyn). You should keep in mind that you should still look to dodge forward against these long range champs to get in range to Starcall. Summon Aery is better for this if you outskill your opponent, but Guardian makes it less of a hell-like experience when facing equal skill or better opponents.

Choice Nodes

This is the only rune that has any synergy with our kit and role out of this choice node. Unlike Solstice Sleigh, Font of Life does get amplified by bonus healing. You should also know that it doesn't count for the purpose of proccing Guardian because it's not an ability.

Second Wind is great against champions with damage over time effects like Brand/ Teemo/ Twitch/ Cassiopeia. It's also better when your Bone Plating can easily get poked out. Bone Plating is good when it's not easily poked out before an engagement. It has a 55 second cooldown so try not to let it get procced when the wave is far from your tower or when you are expecting a gank/dive.

The bonus healing is pretty good, but the secondary effect has an insane impact on how strong your Wish is. That said, I don't think it's mandatory. You can totally try out different secondary runes, like the Domination, Precision or Inspiration trees.

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WIP, not done researching and formulating thoughts about these yet.

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Heal is the best because it scales with bonus healing and can easily proc Nimbus Cloak. The biggest gain of all is to cast it before the enemy uses Ignite. This is a bit of a mindgame, and getting good at predicting when the enemy is committed enough to Ignite is a skill of its own. In order to get the most benefit out of Revitalize you can try to use Heal when your ally is under 40% HP. You can do this when the enemy used Ignite early and you know your ADC will survive long enough, or if their Ignite is on cooldown. You don't always need to use Heal defensively. There are times where it's perfectly fine to just pop it offensively. This is definitely a more advanced way to use the summoner and you might get some pings for it from people that don't understand why you used it.

Exhaust can help vs Garen/ Olaf/ Hecarim. These champions don’t deal (much) true damage, telegraph when they commit to diving your backline, are easy to Exhaust, cannot meaningfully be nullified by your Equinox and can just run past your frontline.

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Stealth Ward

Against champions with long range area-of-effect abilities such as Lux/ Xerath/ Brand you won't be able to control the bush. If they have Oracle Lens you can use it to ward against ganks. If they don't, you can use it to deny them control over a bush. If the enemy plays a hook champ you might want to ward the bush closest to your tower at the start of the game. While you can just walk into lane with your wave, your ADC is probably not that smart and god forbid might even leash your jungler.

Oracle Lens

You can start Oracle Lens if you expect to be able to abuse bush control to further your dominance in lane. It's nice to take it from the very getgo in these cases because then you will have two charges which guarantees you can sweep both the enemy support and ADC's wards in lane. If you spot a ward in your jungle before minions spawn, ping your midlaner to come clear it with you. The XP from clearing the ward will give them level 2 one minion earlier than their opponent.

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Smol Boots

Some very good enchanter players are content with just Boots. They know where plays are likely to go down and pre-move there way ahead of time. Their spacing and game-sense is impeccable and they prefer to hit their 2 item spike before upgrading boots.

A little gold efficiency comparison: Boots give 25 Movement Speed for 300g which is 12g per Movement Speed. Boots of Swiftness give 60 Movement Speed for 1000g which is 16.6g per Movement Speed.

Swifties

Boots of Swiftness help a lot with dodging, spacing and roaming which are some of Soraka's most important mechanics to master. The price was recently increased by +100g but the effects remain the same.

Luci Boots

Ionian Boots of Lucidity got nerfed harder than Boots of Swiftness. +100g gold cost and -2 summoner spell haste certainly hurts. These have some synergy with Nimbus Cloak. There are some very good Soraka players still buying these, but I'm not one of them.

Merc Treads

Even after the nerf (+100g, -5 MR), these are still a great way to punish the enemy team for drafting (nearly) full AP. While Plated Steelcaps aren't that great because you shouldn't get hit by auto attacks anyways, getting hit by the long range spells of mages is often unavoidable even if you play well.

Mobis

Symbiotic Soles' recall empowerment is like an infinite tempo glitch. They can feel good against Umbral Glaive users because it's so easy to recall for wards. They are also nice in lategame when your jungle is dark, an objective is spawning soon and your team won't escort you to ward. You can put out a buffer of shallow vision, recall fast and and then move up to ward a bit deeper with more safety.

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Moonstone

Sets you up for a super strong 2 item spike and scales the best. If you bought something else as a 1st item then you should always buy this as a 2nd item. Its passive effect benefits from your bonus healing twice; once when calculating the size of the original heal it copies a portion of, and then it multiplies the copied portion by your bonus healing again. The more bonus healing you stack from additional items, the more value Moonstone Renewer generates.

Echoes of Helia

This is the strongest 1 item spike, but doesn't scale well at all. Buy this as a first item when you are fighting a lot early and feel like the game is going to be decided by the time you get to your 2nd item. It's not never worth building 2nd or 3rd.

Redemption

Beefs you up a bit with 200 bonus health and helps with target access in drafts where you can't really heal your frontline without getting focused down. It also helps you sustain yourself really nicely. It doesn't increase your healing from Astral Infusion that much so you need to get good value out of the active effect. It's overall the best default 2nd item if you have no good reason to buy anything else.

Dawncore

It's very expensive at 2700g and doesn't have a fantastic build path but Blasting Wand juices your heals as much as two Forbidden Idols. You usually buy it 3rd which negates the downsides of the poor buildpath since you will only have bagspace for the best component which plays into the strength of Blasting Wand. You can, however, consider buying it 2nd if you are playing with a Nilah because her Joy Unending acts as yet another bonus healing / AP multiplier. If you're planning to build Warmog's Armor, Locket of the Iron Solari or Knight's Vow then Redemption and Staff of Flowing Water are better options.

SOFW

SOFW is a fantastic 3rd item when your team is AP heavy, or when you bought items that don't have mana regen for Dawncore's passive such as Warmog's Armor, Locket of the Iron Solari or Knight's Vow.

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Verdant Barrier

It’s going to win you games when the enemy Fiddlesticks or Neeko jumpscares you when you are grouped, because you won't be CC’d along with the rest of your team and can heal them. I wouldn't really upgrade it until last, unless you happen to base with 1250g and might as well sit on the Needlessly Large Rod for a bit (uwu).

Knight's Vow

You can buy a Knight's Vow against full AD teams, especially if the carry you are playing around has a lot of lifesteal or life drain like Nilah/ Samira/ Swain/ Hecarim/ Olaf/ Illaoi/ Vladimir. You can kinda think of the 12% damage reduction as 12% bonus healing for both your heals and their own self-healing.

Shurelya's Battlesong

Good if you are playing with a cheese bruiser duo like Darius. In these cases you can rush it as a first item. The enemy botlane is pretty much guaranteed to die every time that Darius connects with them because of how well his Crippling Strike and Apprehend pair up with your Equinox.

Mikael's Blessing

Good when you find yourself thinking "Geez, if that teammate didn't get shut down by [insert CC ability here] he/she could wipe out their whole team!". Another case this is useful is when the enemy team has both a Malzahar and a Warwick on it. That way you can use Equinox to cancel Nether Grasp and Mikael's Blessing to cancel Infinite Duress.

Vigilant Wardstone

As a support it is your job to keep an item slot free for Control Wards when everyone else is full build. You should always buy this as a 6th item.

Locket of the Iron Solari

I like Locket against champions that deal big AOE damage and will easily consume the whole shield on all targets I apply it to, such as Kennen, Aurelion Sol or Brand. It can also help you with stalling a bit between your first and second Astral Infusion if the person you're trying to keep alive is getting bursted 100-0 too hard. Bonus points for it not getting reduced by Oblivion Orb.

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These calculations are done under the assumption that we have rank 5 Astral Infusion and rank 3 Starcall. Our Moonstone Renewer double dipping into bonus healing is factored in.

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Ability Haste is difficult to quantify and should be weighed at your own discretion. You don't heal perfectly on cooldown all the time, but when you do it can certainly make the difference. Ability Haste is generally good for champions with long ability cooldowns like Equinox and Wish. However, levels in your Starcall and Astral Infusion give you all the cooldown reduction you really need for your kit to function well.

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This tier list is a guideline and not absolute. Some games bonus health is better. Some games glass cannon type stuff is better.

Forbidden Idol is equal to or better than Fiendish Codex (depending on how much you value Ability Haste) once you bought Dawncore.

Jack of all Trades makes it important to buy 2 stats that aren't already on World Atlas ASAP. I like Amplifying Tome/ Dark Seal, Boots and Glowing Mote for this.

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With rank 5 Astral Infusion the base cooldown is low enough that you can always cast it twice within the 2.5 second duration of the Rejuvenation buff that Starcall gives you. Both of those casts will copy a fresh Rejuvenation buff onto the targeted ally, and both of them will only cost mana to cast.

It's technically also possible at rank 4 Astral Infusion if you have at least 35 Ability Haste but it's very tight. You can reach this breakpoint with Moonstone Renewer's components + Ionian Boots of Lucidity.

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If you need to do big heals ASAP then you can milk two Rejuvenations out of one Starcall without any Ability Haste at rank 4 Astral Infusion. It just means you won't get the 10% health cost refunded on the first cast. You do this by casting Astral Infusion the exact moment that your Starcall hits the enemy.

You can copy the Rejuvenation buff onto an ally before the return projectile of Starcall actually reached you. The base cooldown of rank 4 Astral Infusion is 3 seconds, and the duration of the Rejuvenation buff is 2.5 seconds. That means you need the return projectile of Starcall that gives you the Rejuvenation buff to spend at least 0.5 seconds traveling to you. You can extend the projectile's travel time by running away from the target you hit Starcall on, but that isn't necessary if it was cast from max range.

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Wish heals for 150 at rank 1, and 250 at rank 2. That's nearly double! Now factor in your Moonstone Renewer double dipping in all that bonus healing you got, the fact that it heals for more on allies below 40% hp, and the fact that Revitalize amplifies that by another 10%. That's so many multipliers! If you aren't level 11 yet you should definitely try to soak XP from your teammates as they clear minions.

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It's easier to land Starcall on the enemy ADC when they go for a last-hit, but sometimes you'll have to bait out the spells of their support first. For example, I'll notice a minion is getting low, walk into Brand's Pillar of Flame range, dodge it, then I auto attack the enemy ADC as he goes for the last-hit to see if he dodges. If he dodges then my auto goes through and I Starcall after. If he doesn't dodge but autos me back then my auto goes through, I Starcall after and throw another auto before backing off.

You can also cast Equinox first to force the enemy to move out of it, and then place your Starcall where they move to.

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It also becomes a lot tougher on the mind of the enemy if you walk towards them and away from them a lot, rather than waddling left and right. You want to condition them. You want them to get used to your character facing in the direction of their character so that it isn't so obvious when you are trying to get in range to cast Starcall. Additionally, if you always throw your Starcall out as soon as an enemy is in range then it becomes very easy for them to read your rhythm. Try to get in Starcall range without using it, or auto attack a few times in a row while they shuffle around trying to dodge instead of hitting you back.

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Yasuo's Wind Wall and Samira's Blade Whirl destroy projectiles that touch them. While Starcall feels like it appears from the sky above, it actually technically shoots from the center of your character towards the destination. This means you can't Starcall over a Wind Wall, no matter how far past the Wind Wall you target it. It's also good to know that Starcall's Rejuvenation return-projectile gets destroyed by these abilities.

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Some very skilled Soraka players I've talked to advocate for putting points into Starcall early on because it's a highly overloaded ability. You get a LOT of numbers for each point that you put into it. In the past it was always 3 points into Starcall before switching to putting points into Astral Infusion.

Since season 13 or so almost everyone that recommended that in the past has switched to putting only 2 points into Starcall to not delay their lvl 9 powerspike to lvl 10, and to not fall behind the curve too much on their healing output.

Sidenote: at rank 2 Starcall you need an Amplifying Tome to have enough damage to set up the caster minions for Smolder's 25 stack Super Scorcher Breath. At rank 3 no additional stats are required.

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While doing analysis on Soraka players that are better than me I noticed that Ap0, whom I trust very much on all matters enchanter, always puts as many points into Astral Infusion as possible. He only puts points into Starcall when the game wont let him put more points into Astral Infusion. If I didn't know any better I would think that's the type of thing an egirl fingering herself in the back would do. Being such an excellent player, Ap0 must have a good reason to give up this offensive power from early points into Starcall. As such, I went into my games with that in the back of my mind, looking for clues. I realised that I would often fail to keep an ally alive in a pivotal moment of a skirmish because my Astral Infusion had under 0.5s cooldown remaining when they died. Way more often than the times where having a higher damage or lower cooldown Starcall would be the deciding factor in these skirmishes. In addition to the above, rank 1 Starcall has the perfect amount of damage to set up caster minions to have very little health left after a tower shot. It makes it easier to help your ADC last hit under tower when you are being pressured by lots of skillshots like against a Caitlyn and Lux lane.

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Ultimately it's an elo, playstyle and matchup dependent choice. His playstyle and skill point distribution are the way they are because of how the games in that elo play out. He can rely on his team to do their jobs so he doesn't need to force plays himself and can fully budget his power into healing. Personally I'd say it's worth switching to Ap0's style when you get to an elo (or matchup) where it's no longer trivial for you to land Starcall and dominate lane 1v2 all the time.

One point in Starcall nets you:

35 damage (85 base) 15 healing (60 base) 2.5% Movement Speed (20% base) 1s reduced cooldown (8s base)

One point in Astral Infusion nets you:

20 healing (90 base) 5% empowered health cost reduction (80% base) 1s reduced cooldown (6s base)

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This playstyle/mindset is pretty much the one Coach Cupcake teaches in his video which I link in the Recommended Reading chapter later on in this article. You rush Boots of Swiftness before anything else and really focus on making use of your roam timers as much as possible. You help your ADC to stack up a couple waves and crash them into the enemy tower, and then as the rebound wave slowly pushes towards your tower you roam. Your ADC might yap at you, ping you, over extend and die to greed CS because he doesn't understand that giving up 2 minions as the wave pushes towards your tower is perfectly fine, but you will be able to help your mid/jgl a lot. The main drawback of this playstyle is that XP-sharing was buffed and you will fall behind in levels relative to the other team's support pretty hard. This playstyle only works if the enemy can't dive your ADC, or if you are very punctual and make sure you are back in lane before the waves crashes into your tower.

I like this playstyle against poke lanes because they I want to rush Boots of Swiftness to dodge their spells anyways and they are not as good at diving as an engage lane so it's not a disaster if I'm back a bit late.

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This is your average lowelo support. Glued to botlane, but in our case it's not because we don't see the roaming opportunities. It's because we value XP, scaling and our ADC's mental more than perma roaming. With this playstyle you don't upgrade your Boots until you have your 2 item spike from Moonstone Renewer and Redemption. If you're going to do this playstyle you kinda want to make sure you have Revitalize so that your Wish is powerful enough to affect the outcome of those fights across the map which you otherwise may have wanted to roam for.

I like this playstyle against engagers because they are also likely to catch me in river when I'm roaming, and more likely to catch my ADC when he inevitably greeds for the wave because he's a dog.

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Attacking from the bush will reveal you for a few seconds. If you step out of and back into the same bush you attacked from then you will still be visible for the same amount of time. But if you step into a different bush than the one you attacked from then you will drop vision. This can be helpful during extended fights where you attacked from a bush but you really wanna hide fast.

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If you step slightly out of the bush before attacking then you can immediately step back into it to drop vision so the enemy has a shorter window to react. Ideally you step out and attack them right as they are attacking a minion, so that you are hidden again by the time their auto attack is off cooldown.

It's not always recommended though. If you are controlling this bush against a champion with an ability to use after their auto attack such as Nami or Janna and you are not at full health then you are often better off just using Starcall so that you don't reveal yourself. But if you're at full health then you won't be benefiting from the health restore of Starcall when you land it so you might as well take some return damage from their auto + ability.

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Contrary to auto attacks, Starcall is a ground-targeted spell so it doesn't reveal you.

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While Astral Infusion is unit-targeted, it's on an ally so it doesn't reveal you.

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Remember the paragraph about Windwall Abilities in the Hitting Starcall chapter? Casting Starcall from one bush to another does reveal the projectile because it travels from your character across the open area which the enemy has vision of towards the other bush.

That means if you are absolutely sure that the enemy doesn't have vision of the path your Starcall travels from you to the destination bush, they wont see that you are casting Starcall into that bush. I'd make a gif showing that but... it would just show nothing. It's meaningful in the sense that when you Starcall the tri-bush you know the enemy can't spot that from river if they have no ward in the bush.

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When you hit a Stealth Ward that is being disabled by a Control Ward, you briefly turn it back on.

When you kill a Stealth Ward it takes a few seconds before it stops giving vision.

When you kill a Control Ward it instantly stops giving vision.

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Equinox is really important to use well. It can be used to deny Flash/ Zhonya's Hourglass, to zone (though a lot of the time a Starcall would suffice), to scramble up the enemy's engage, to extend the crowd control chain on an already locked down target, or to delay a cast to buy yourself some time to get your Astral Infusion cooldown back up. Good enemies will be waiting for you to use it before they make their play. Just sitting on it can prevent a Katarina or Samira from jumping your backline, so don't feel pressured to use it just because it's off cooldown, as even without casting it you are getting value by occupying the mind of the enemy.

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Tracking enemy ability cooldowns is really important. You can't just follow your engagers into battle to heal them. You need to be sure that the enemy actually wasted their gap closers before you can get in there yourself. If you don't have Flash or fast reactions and the enemy Malphite still has Unstoppable Force off cooldown then you just have to sit back until its been used or until you figured out where the Malphite is and know he's not in range to be a threat. Dying to get off one more Astral Infusion on an overextended frontliner is never worth as much as you staying alive and getting many more Astral Infusion casts on your other allies.

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Spacing is closely related to cooldown tracking. Staying out of each enemy champions danger zone is just the surface of it. The danger zone of enemies changes depending on what abilities are on cooldown. Once the enemy Diana didn't get a reset on her Lunar Rush, her danger zone shrinks to just the size of her Moonfall. Now you can get in range to cast a Starcall, and if you know she doesn't have Flash or Hextech Rocketbelt you could even weave in an auto attack. Tracking this for all relevant enemies is how you find these windows to weave in and out and become an exceptional contributor in teamfights.

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Sometimes it gets messy and it becomes hard to mouse over specific targets or keep track of which nameplate belongs to which player. Luckily there are some other ways to do those things. I have my F-keys re-bound to my mouse buttons so I have an easier time moving my camera around to track where my allies are and what they are doing. But that is not the only thing they are good for. If you hold down your W key and then press the F-key that corresponds to the teammate you want to heal it will cast your Astral Infusion on them on key-down.

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Keeping track of the health of everyone in your team when they might not all be on your screen can also get hectic during fights. I use the portraits above my minimap for that, it really helps with timing your Wish. These frames double as yet another way to target allies with spells. If you mouse over one of these frames and then press W you will cast Astral Infusion on that player.

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Turn on timestamps for messages in your chat and always ping when the enemy uses Flash. You can press Z to bring up chat history when there is a break in combat and take a moment to do some maths. Just look at the timestamp and add the following:

Regular Flash

+5m then round it down a bit.

Cosmic Insight

+4m (it's actually 4m 15s but you can assume that your teammate pinged the summoner ~15s later when combat was done).

Luci Boots

+4m 10s (again its actually 4m 30s but add a ~20s margin of error to be sure the timers you send are reliable and the math is easy).

Rebirth & Cell Division

It's also very helpful if you track Anivia's Rebirth and Zac's Cell Division. Their cooldowns are 4 and 5 minutes, respectively.

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You can format it nicely for your team so it's easier to read and understand. I like to type them in order of how long is left on the cooldown so the one that is off cooldown the soonest comes first.

Example:
830ad 905sup 1120jgl 1130zacP

I hit CTRL+A and CTRL+C before I send it, so that I can easily spam it with CTRL+V. Then once for example the enemy ADC has their Flash back up, I open chat, hit CTRL+V, hold SHIFT and use the LEFT ARROW key on my keyboard to select the text and I stop just before the 830ad so it doesnt get copied and hit CTRL+C. Then I do CTRL+A into CTRL+V to overwrite it and send it a couple times again. I like to post it at least twice every time I send it in chat.

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Bone Plating can cause First Strike to not grant gold to the enemy. When you take damage during their First Strike window, 0.4 seconds later a little projectile is shot at you that deals the bonus damage. This damage can get negated by Bone Plating which causes the enemy to receive less or no bonus gold.

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Equinox's Silence will break if Ahri's Charm times out while the target is standing in your Equinox.

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Kittxnly & 1YANOU's guide has an excellent writeup on support matchups. I recommend you to check it out!

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Botlane's 2v2 matchups can be hard to grasp at first. This video from Skill Capped does a pretty good job of explaining how to understand what the enemy wants to do and what you should want to do, so you can do things with a purpose.

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ShoDesu made an excellent explainer video about roam timers. It's really important to make use of these because in low elo you'll have impact while the enemy support doesn't, and in higher elos you'll be outclassed if you don't.

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Coach Rogue made a nice educational video about tempo lines. If you stick to these you'll find yourself getting caught less often and able to support your teammates when a play goes down more often. You will know when to ping your ADC back on midwave in later stages of the game, and tell him to wait for the sidewave to push up before he walks up to the next wave. Highly recommend!

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Coach Cupcake recently published a video guide on our girl. He's by far my favourite support coach and advocates for one of two playstyles I think Soraka should be played with. Check it out!