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Soraka Build Guide by JanwulfTheGreedy

Support Let Me Guide You

Support Let Me Guide You

Updated on December 11, 2014
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League of Legends Build Guide Author JanwulfTheGreedy Build Guide By JanwulfTheGreedy 7 3 74,646 Views 6 Comments
7 3 74,646 Views 6 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author JanwulfTheGreedy Soraka Build Guide By JanwulfTheGreedy Updated on December 11, 2014
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Choose Champion Build:

  • LoL Champion: Soraka
    Spam Spells Support Soraka
  • LoL Champion: Soraka
    More General SupportRaka
  • LoL Champion: Soraka
    CarryRaka

Introduction

Hi guys, this is my guide to playing the new Soraka! I’ve noticed a lot of current guides to her are old builds, pre-rework, that haven’t been adjusted to her new kit and the values of her abilities. I decided to bring my viewpoint as a support main to this high risk, high reward support champion with what I truly believe to be one of the most versatile build paths in the role.

This is my first guide, I would really appreciate any feedback, and if you felt like my guide helped you, an upvote would make my day! ^_^
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Summoner Spells


Flash! This is a must have on almost every champion. This is best used as an escape because you have no real escape as Soraka, but I've also used it to get next to my allies to heal them when they're in a tough spot and provide some additional damage and chase while doing so. There's nothing more satisfying than flashing over a wall while being chased, knowing you've now gotten away.

Exhaust is a must have on Supports in my opinion. It allows you to cut the damage of enemy carries by more than half and allows you to turn the tide of battle. I almost always get this spell as a support.
Other Options:

Heal is decent for bot lane, especially if your ADC didn't take it. In the current meta most ADCs take it for the heal and movement speed buff. My brother likes taking this spell on supports too, for a powerful double heal bot lane. I still prefer Exhaust.

Ignite is good if you're going for either a kill lane or trying to zone out your opponents but it's really subpar otherwise. Raka doesn't really go for a Kill Lane strategy and while you have a great kit for Zoning she's doesn't really need the extra damage from Ignite to do her job.
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Masteries and Runes

I have 3 main mastery and rune combinations I choose from, and I choose based on my team and the opposing laners. This one, however, is my favorite.

Runes

Precision
Press the Attack
Electrocute
Lethal Tempo
Predator
This is a custom build I have been working on since her release. I like starting with 20% CDR if I really believe in my ADC. I have 2 friends I play bot lane with, both are successful gold ranked ADCs and so I can rely on them to lane effectively. This means I can afford to lose the mana regen or tankiness of the other pages in favor of a fast transition to mid game. Soraka at 40% CDR is ridiculously powerful, and the less you have to invest to achieve this, the better. I usually build an off-tank Raka so late game you won’t miss the resistance and health stats from the other pages and you’ll really appreciate the rest of the stats you get from this build.
Remember you're best at poking and zoning your opponents, and healing your allies. Having 20% CDR to start allows you whittle down your lane opponent's health with Starcall and quickly heal your lanemate during all-ins by your opponents with Astral Infusion. This is risky however, because you'll be squishier than usual so again do this with caution.
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Pros / Cons

Pros
    Best Healer
    Lots of Zoning
    Great Poke
    Global Pressure
    Flexible Build
    Passive Gives High Mobility

Cons
    Weak and Inconsistent CC
    No Escape
    Low AP Scaling
    Squishy
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Skill Sequence

This is my skill rank order
Ability Sequence
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Obviously your ultimate is important and powerful, like every other ultimate in the game. I max Starcall first because you should be spamming it in lane and you should be in lane till level 8-9 so the added punch from maxing Starcall is considerable. However if you or your carry is getting poked too hard max Astral Infusion first. In addition to increasing the heal amount for your carry you will heal more from your Starcalls because the passive stacks with Astral Infusion not it. The most important parts of Equinox are the silence and snare and zoning. At level 3 it’s really a one point wonder. If you’re building AP the damage scales really well with AP but only if your opponents get struck by both parts of the spell. Leveling it up also increases the snare but you'll only be landing once in awhile, when your opponent's make a mistake or you chain CC with your allies. I max it last because it's better in team fights post-laning, it'll be good in lane so rarely.
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Skills


Passive: This passive is AMAZING. Your ability to move around the map is terrifying thanks to your passive. If your team can play with it, it’s even better. For example if you get poked down in lane early and forced to B likely your ADC will get poked down while you’re gone. It then becomes beneficial for them to run down the lane to you in order to sort of leash you back to lane to defend while they go B themselves or get healed back up by you. The same thing can happen during sieges, team fights, etc. Being a highly mobile health battery is an effective way to help prop up your team for an easy victory. Because of the strength of this movement boost I like to run boots of swiftness or mobility but I will discuss them more in the items section.

Q: This is your main source of damage, gold, and self healing during the first few levels of the game. It does extra damage and slows if you strike a target with the center of the blast so learning to hit champions with that center circle is a great way to carry your lane by zoning out the other carry. However if you can get both the support and carry in the blast I feel like that’s better because it doubles your heal from W’s passive which allows you to heal your ally more. A note for the delay, the further you are from the blast the longer the delay so make sure to lead your opponents a little. This makes it useful for laning against melee supports because it’ll be easy to land the center blast on them and get that extra damage, slow, and heal on them.

W: Healing for your friends! You don’t want to spam this because you might get killed thanks to the health cost but W-Q is your bread and butter combo, healing your lane ally, poking the opponent, and healing yourself to replace the health lost while healing your ally. Also when I’m about to B I like to top off my ADC for the road while I get healed up at the fountain.

E: This is good for extended engagements as it creates a temporary no go zone at your discretion. The damage, silence and root are incredibly powerful which incentivizes your opponents to play around it. Unfortunately it doesn’t damage minions or it’d be great for CSing. I personally like to save this ability for ganks, either cutting off the opposing gank or helping out an ally gank with the CC.

R: Your ultimate did not change much with the rework so nothing new here, but I’ll still go over it. It’s a global heal for your team, which is great for saving allies all over the map or picking up assists. It’s important to note that if your allies are below 40% hp the amount healed is increased. If there are multiple engagements across the map or a team fight save your ult for multiple low health targets. However if you wait too long and they die then the amount you heal is reduced because they’re dead! This ult also gets rid of Grievous Wounds which is nifty :D
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Using Your Skills Together

There are just a few combos with Soraka because she has only two damaging spells but I'll quickly go over some of the main ways to use her abilities.
Starcall-> Astral Infusion
Use Starcall to give yourself some spare hit points that you can then dump into an ally with Astral Infusion.
Equinox-> Starcall
Follow up Equinox with Starcall and try to land Starcall's slow. Hopefully this is enough to land the snare on your opponents. You can even follow this up with an Astral Infusion to heal your ally for a full
Equinox-> Starcall-> Astral Infusion combo. Another option is to Starcall onto their escape route from Equinox, sometimes they'll try to jook Starcall and get caught by Equinox.

Timing Astral Infusion and Wish properly can be difficult, but in the end there are a few ways you can play it. Cast Astral Infusion repeatedly on someone who is being focused, saving Wish for when more of your allies have taken damage so as to get maximum effect from it. This allows you to wait for as many people to reach that 40% HP point where they will receive bonus healing from your ultimate. Alternatively ult if someone is getting burst down really hard, prevent them from dying so that at least each of your Astral Infusions weren't wasted and your Ultimate will likely heal off minor damage your other allies have taken.
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Items

One of Soraka's greatest strengths is her ability to build to deal with a specific situation. So many items are good on her and she benefits from many different stats in different ways. I will go over some of the major items here.
Starting Items
vs
I start with Spellthief's Edge because I know I can land my Q, so getting bonus damage from the Edge is beneficial to my early laning phase. However Ancient Coin is a good option against a lane that is either very aggressive, or has better harass than you do. I've never regretted the instances I picked Coin over Spellthief's.


I get these consumables as part of my starting items and replenish them each back I don't have the gold to build one of my core items. Taking the mastery for Biscuits is basically granting yourself free gold because you stretch the value of that 35 gp pretty far. I get Mana Potions because I tend to have mana problems early, and well you should be warding, so get wards every chance you have until you have Sightstone.
Early Core

Get boots of speed. I know it seems simple but I'm still in Silver, and I can't tell you how often I see people fail to pick up Boots by the end of a game.
Catalyst the Protector
I've started rushing this item for Mana regen and such during laning. With Sightstone and Catalyst you actually get a nice chunk of tankiness and mana both which you desperately desire as Soraka. A great early buy, especially since you'll probably want to build Righteous Glory by the time team fights start.

I used to like to rush my Chalice first, picking up Wards as needed. The extra gold spent on wards is almost never missed, but having a healthy dose of mana regen early game allows me to spam my spells as needed. However I've moved towards building Catalyst instead, but if you need the MR or if you want to build Mikael's for those heavy CC teams that's still a strong option.

The best support item, such a money saver. I would argue that this is the most cost effective item in the game. I don't know if I need to explain this, because it's repeated in every other guide but here goes.
Wards. Win. Games. Vision is powerful, and it will never fail you if you do it right.
Wards are love. Wards are life.
I upgrade this after I have 6 items and everything else is upgraded.

You should always have one of these on the map, they are incredibly high value items giving you vision of an area often for upwards of 5 minutes! There are many great places to put them, Dragon Pit and Baron Pit are two of the best if no one else is getting these.
Offensive Items
There are so many options here, so I'll go over my top 5 in detail.

This is my favorite high AP item on Soraka for its defensive stats and active. 120 AP is nothing to scoff at, this dramatically increases your healing and landing both sides of your E has 80% AP scaling. I like using the active defensively, buying yourself some time to get off cooldowns to get back to either healing your allies or healing yourself with your Q.

Again I really like the AP buff and defensive stats that this item gives. The slow also makes it easier to land the snare on your E by giving the initial damage a little bit of a slow. You can follow this up by hitting them with the center of your Q for a stronger slow to really rack up a lot of damage and allow your allies to dispatch the target accordingly.

Landing the center of your Q will trigger the double damage on Liandry's, and Rylai's is already a good item on Soraka for landing the second half of your E so you should have at least some slow being laid down with every spell cast. This is a strong option if you're going for a battle/carry Raka build.
/
These items are amazing on Soraka, giving a bunch of stats that you love to have. CDR, Mana Regen, AP and with Morellonomicom the Grievous Wounds passive. Unfortunately for the way I build Soraka 20% CDR can end up a waste as you already have 20% CDR from your runes and masteries. When running the high CDR build you want to just build 2 10% CDR items, the rest being pure tank or damage without CDR. Of course if you want to have a huge power spike early, getting one of these will achieve that by giving you full CDR if you take my build.
I no longer build either of these early now though, I prefer Righteous Glory as an early buy because the Catalyst passive is amazing.

Again, AP CDR and Movement speed are stats that Soraka really appreciates. The active is good for chasing and scouting. I've only built this item once among all the times I've played Soraka since the rework. I liked it, but I could have lived without it. That's how I feel about a lot of the other offensive options, but they're all viable in some situation. The time I got Twin Shadows was against a fed Rengar, but my ADC was able to carry the game and I only activated Shadows once, which was when we chased down low health targets together.
Defensive Options
This section is meaty, I'll go over my favorites again. However it should be noted that usually you'll want to build a few more of these than your offensive options. Off-Tank Raka is stronger than BattleRaka because being alive longer allows you to heal more before you either die or the teamfight is over.

This item is nuts on Soraka. MR, CDR, and Health are all great stats for an off Tank Soraka but the passive is amazing. The extra Healing from your Q allows you to stay in combat longer and both heal and poke longer. I can not stress how good this item is on her, it literally does everything you want it to, and more.

Righteous Glory is a great item on this form of Soraka. The passive, the active and the base stats are all wonderful on a chasing, poking, and resource hungry champion like Soraka. While the active doesn't have the escape power of Talisman, it does work well with Frost Queen's Claim to practically perma-slow the enemy team. I haven't done a whole lot of testing with it, but every game I've built it I've loved it.

I love Mikael's and it is my preferred upgrade from Chalice. The mana regen and magic resist are good, along with the 10% CDR stacking with another 10% CDR item for a perfect 40%. The active is wonderful for saving your carries from strong CC, and for giving yourself a little self healing when enemies aren't visible for your Q. Every game I build this item it proves its worth to this build.
With the new season I've been finding myself ignoring this item when not dealing with heavy CC from the opposing team. Instead I like building more CC on Raka, like Righteous Glory, Frost Queen's Claim and Twin Shadows.

This item can replace Spirit Visage if your team is more orientated towards team fights than skirmishes. The shield is very powerful when you're surrounded by your allies, and can help protect them from strong AOE. The passive is also good for protecting your squishes from Magic damage. Overall a very cost efficient item in team fights.

As far as straight tanky Armor items go Randuin's Omen is one of the best for Soraka. The health stacks well with the Armor and the active is great for team fights and skirmishes. Frozen Heart is an option if you don't have the 20% CDR from Runes and Masteries as it gives a huge CDR buff.
A Note on Ardent Censer

I've seen a lot of discussion on Ardent Censer for healers and shielders. Some people say the item sucks, others say it's sleeper broken. Here's my opinion for Soraka. It's not worth the stats it gives you without the passive. The passive might be nice for your ADC as it gives them a nice buff in AS but you don't want to be spamming your heals to give your allies an AS buff because it's costing you Health. I built this a few times to try it out and the most effective I ever saw it was when I cast Wish during a Baron fight to clear it faster. Not a big fan for Raka. (I do like building it on Janna though :D)
Boots
Which boots are best for which situations?
vs
This comes down to a matter of preference, do you prefer to be a warding machine? Getting in and out of jungle quickly to place wards all over the place, in spots that help you keep track of the enemy jungler or other laners at the cost of in combat movement speed? Or do you prefer to lose some of that speed for movement speed in combat, moving between your beleaguered comrades, healing them as necessary? I personally really appreciate the reliability of Boots of Swiftness but sometimes wish I had Mobi.

I love these boots against heavy CC teams, keep them in mind if you're going against Annie supports and such.

The best option against heavy AD teams, they really increase your survivability.

I don't get these, because other boots give better stats or abilities. But if you need a cheap CDR steroid these are the best option.
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Early Game


Your early game should be all about Zoning your opponents. What you're zoning them away from depends on your lane match up and whether you're ahead or not. If you're ahead or have a favorable match up you want to be zoning them away from the minion wave. Starcall behind their wave to make them afraid to approach the Minion Line, if done right they will be zoned away from precious CS and XP. If you're behind or have a bad matchup then use Starcall and Equinox to zone your lane opponents away from you and your lane partner. I generally prefer save Equinox for ganks like specified in the skills section, but if I need to save my lane partner I won't hesitate to do so.

Outside of Zoning don't forget you're the ward machine for bot lane. Keep vision of the gank paths available and also make sure to have vision of the lane bushes. Winning the vision war with your opposing support is the key to victory! After you pick up Sightstone you should switch Stealth Ward to the Sweeping Lens. Once you have those two, keeping vision up will help tell you where your opponents have placed wards, so you can go to those locations and sweep for the gold and vision control.
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Mid-Late Game


In post laning you should be wherever the push is, moving between the front and back lines so that you can heal your allies and zone your opponents away from your carries. Provide vision in the immediate areas to prevent getting flanked. When defending you should be on the backlines, healing anyone that takes too much damage and needs to back out. At dragon and baron you should not be tanking, but healing whoever is doing so. If you’re the tankiest (which might happen) then of course tank the damage for your team. Remember Wish is global so if you can save an ally, do so, especially if you or someone else is already en route to their location. Those extra hit points may be the difference between them getting killed and turning your enemies back while getting kills. In late game you should be pretty tanky, so nearly unkillable thanks to Starcall and other healing abilities. Use this to your team's advantage and heal up those squishies or keep your tanks and bruisers healthy!

Keep up your team's vision and don't be afraid to ask your allies to ward for you. You can only place 4 wards, make sure they're good ones and make sure they're not the only ones!
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Winning

I currently have a 75% win-rate with Soraka, as she is my new main and I play her every chance I get now that I have an effective build I like to play with. If you liked my guide or it helped you win with her please send me your victories and I'll post them here :)
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Conclusion

Soraka is a great zoner and healer with a kit that lets her excel at building for whatever the needs of the team are. I hope you liked the guide will try out the new and IMO improved Soraka!
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Bibliography, Changelog, Credits

Formatting Learned from: jhoijhoi's Making a Guide
More General Support Raka Runes and Masteries adapted from Emikadon's Lulu Guide:-A Whimsical Wonderland Support-

Changelog


December 10th: v1.3 Updated for Preseason, Added Righteous Glory and its build path, deleted Warmog's. Edited Chalice build paths.
November 7th: v1.2-Updated Example Final build to properly display final build in searches, added more in depth discussion on mastery and rune choices.
November 6th: v1.1-Updated coding and links, cleaned up language in all sections, added Bibliography, Changelog, Credits Chapter
November 3rd: v1.0-Completed, and Published Guide
October 18th: v0.1-Rough Draft of Guide, Not Published

Credits


Emikadon:For teaching me to love Support and Writing the Guide that started my Journey as a Support Main
Starstalker:For giving me advice on the guide, and pointers. Also first like and comment! Thank you very much :D I feel like your advice really helped me improve the guide substantially.
And my Team!
NagashTheUsurper
AlexTheConquerer
BAL the Brawler
The Iron Solari
Inv4derZim
Without you guys I probably wouldn't have ended up playing League, you're the best team a scrub could ask for! ^^
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