Hi, I'm Lupa and I main Soraka in low-masta. I have over 3 million mastery points on her across my accounts 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 can learn something from it too. No you didn't accidentally download a zip-bomb. This wall of text and images is just a product of my passion for Soraka. I promise it's all worth reading!

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Heal is the best because it scales with Heal and Shield Power. As soon as you and your ADC are missing some health, you should start looking to use Heal to proc your Summon Aery shield when your ADC is about to get punished for last hitting. Saving it for the last moment to bait the enemy isn't worth it, they're not stupid. Using it this way also has the added bonus of putting them under pressure to find a way to get their summoner spell's cooldown ticking. And you will never lose value to Ignite's healing reduction. Heal also has a way bigger range than Astral Infusion, so you can use it first if the person you want to heal is almost dead and just out of range of your Astral Infusion. Heal procs Dream Maker but not Guardian.

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Exhaust can help vs Olaf/ Hecarim/ Nilah/ Tristana. These champions telegraph their burst of damage and don't really have a way out once they commit. If you happen to pick it into Kalista, don't try to play the mindgame of Exhausting her Rend. Just use it early on while her Hail of Blades is active, or while her Pierce is not on cooldown.

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TL;DW:/b] Guardian sucks now and we got scammed with the so called "enchanter buff" to it. Summon Aery when used consciously (explained in the video) is better always.

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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. It shields for ~36 and damages for ~8 (numbers adjusted for resistances). It can be really good to use an unempowered Astral Infusion on your ADC in lane if you time it so that the Summon Aery shield gets value.

Choice Nodes

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Axiom Arcanist is very good. The cooldown reduction is not really the interesting part, it's the healing increase and the way it interacts with Moonstone Renewer, Revitalize and Wish's healing modifiers. You can learn more about this the Math for Nerds chapter. Manaflow Band is a crutch for when you haven't learned to cast your spells with purpose yet. Manaflow Band only gives max-mana, not current mana. This means you don't benefit from the rune until after your 1st recall. Noob-trap rune, IMO. Nimbus Cloak and Heal both give a burst of stacking MS, letting you escape ganks or reposition during skirmishes. It's better than Manaflow Band, but when you watch VODs of yourself playing you'll notice it's not making a difference as often as you thought. Axiom Arcanist is better.

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Transcendence is good. I like it. Celerity give about 3 MS baseline, 5 MS with Boots and 8 MS with Boots of Swiftness. It's okay but I prefer Transcendence.

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Scorch is the best and it's not close. You need a really good reason if you want to pick something else. This rune is mandatory to stand your ground in lane in high-elo. Gathering Storm is in my opinion not that good. Soraka isn't a scaling timebomb like Sona. She needs to make use of her early skirmishing strength. The only games I didn't regret not picking Scorch in were auto-wins regardless of what I would have picked.

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Guardian is bad. The cooldown is long (90s/75s/60s at levels 1/6/11) and it constantly gets procced by random stuff like jungle camp/baron/drake auto attacks. As of patch 15.14 it even procs from the baron's ranged random target spittle - in the past you could just avoid the person tanking the auto attacks but now any ranged person can trigger it. Not worth taking with the current tuning.

Choice Nodes

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Font of Life does next to nothing (7-35 healing based on level), with a 20 second cooldown. I personally prefer Demolish if I'm playing a Guardian page. Even if you can't actively siege, being able to punish the enemy for taking a bad recall by popping Demolish to take a plate when they're gone is very nice.

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Second Wind is great against champions with damage over time effects like Brand/ Teemo/ Twitch/ Cassiopeia. You can also consider it when your Bone Plating can easily get poked out and you don't need Bone Plating to survive against the enemy assassins in midgame. I pretty much always pick this into Sona and Sivir because I can't reliably play around my Bone Plating against them. Bone Plating has a 55 second cooldown so be conscious of when it's up and use it offensively. Don't let the enemy just poke it off you for free, click forward and fist them a little while your Bone Plating is active. You should know it only reduces damage from the person who procced it.

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Revitalize has an interaction with Moonstone Renewer and Axiom Arcanist that makes it get value multiple times when calculating the size of your heals. No matter how bored you get of Soraka's very limited rune choices, you just can't go without it. More info in the Math for Nerds chapter.

Stat Shards

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Adaptive Force is a happy medium between Attack Speed and Ability Haste, but I don't like it that much. Sure it's half an Amplifying Tome, but it doesnt *feel* very noticeable. Attack Speed increases your DPS from auto attacks at level 1 from 36 to 39. It doesn't sound like much, but it helps with getting push on the wave and in all-in. It also gives you a smoother auto animation, which is really useful when kiting and when stepping out of the bush to quickly fire an auto and step back into the bush to avoid retaliation (something you should be doing a lot). Ability Haste is the best scaling rune. It provides very little value in lane, since you don't use your spells every time they are off cooldown because you are only doing short trades. But it is the most gold value from any stat shard, and it can sometimes make a meaningful difference when you just barely fit in that one more Astral Infusion before your ADC would die during an all-in. I prefer this one over the others. Movement Speed is good because Soraka falls into the class of champions with the lowest base movement speed in the game (325 MS). And with this stat shard she has 332 MS so she can space 330 MS champs. And movement speed is tempo, which gets more important the higher elo you get. Health Scaling is never good. Health as a stat only matters in the earlygame for Soraka. Flat Health is really good, I always take it unless I'm going for Tenacity and Slow Resist. Tenacity and Slow Resist is good against Leona, Maokai and Ashe. It's overall very strong against slows, because both the Tenacity and the Slow Resist work on them.

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Stealth Ward

Always start Stealth Ward. If the enemy is playing a hook champ like Blitzcrank, use your Stealth Ward to cover a level 1 invade angle - trying to keep it for lane is not worth the risk. Always press [TAB] when they show for the first time to see if the enemy support has Oracle Lens. If they don't have it, you can use your Stealth Ward to deny the enemy from abusing a bush during the race for level 2. If they have Oracle Lens, get creative with your Stealth Ward placement and try to avoid common sweeper paths. There are several options: * ward ramp for your midlaner/jungler (try to place it so it also covers the exit of banana bush towards scuttle) * ward scuttle (when you only have a short window to ward and cant walk all the way to ramp) * ward enemy blue/gromp Note: It has been a long time since I played in low, so I don't know if ADCs still leash. But if they don't walk into lane together with the wave in your elo, you can consider early warding the bush closest to your tower so you dont get cheesed on your way into lane later.

Oracle Lens

If you have control over the lane and can force the wave to bounce, it's nice to swap to Oracle Lens on your 1st or 2nd recall to set up for your jungler. If you are getting pushed in then there's no point in getting Oracle Lens since you can't go sweep anywhere relevant without getting caught. At that point just use your Stealth Ward to wrestle control over the lane (warding a lane bush against a hook champ or lane gank) or use your Stealth Ward for other lanes - and buy a Control Ward and just safely plop that into your tri-bush when your jungler is about to gank. Note: The enemies get another charge of their Stealth Ward at 03:30. If they have Cosmic Insight, they get it at 02:50 instead. If the enemy support leaves vision around this timer, you know they went to ward.

Farsight Alteration

When you are behind in mid-lategame and have absolutely nobody to face-check for you, you can take Farsight Alteration. This trinket's usefulness scales with your IQ. Be smart with deciding if you should use it to check an objective, check a bush, ward a flank angle for a sidelaner or use it during a fight to cover a flank.

Control Ward

It's hard to teach how to use Control Wards well. Be critical of how you use them - 75g is a lot for a champion like Soraka who scales so well with items. But at the same time they are crucial for her, because having a pocket where you know you can safely stand is very important when approaching objectives. Please don't put Control Wards in your tri-bush for fun. Hold it until your jungler is clearing their botside, then place it to enable them to gank.

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Core
Ruby Crystal is good in general, and amazing against all-in.
Amplifying Tome is good if you already have a Ruby Crystal.
Faerie Charm is nice to have at least one of, especially against Milio because that lane is a battle of attrition.

OP Pseudo Items
Refillable Potion is good in general, and amazing against poke. You can sell it for 90g whenever you want, so it only really costs 60g.
Dark Seal is a good purchase if you and your ADC got the first takedown in botlane - or if you are confident you are better (smurfing).

Upgrading Components
Upgrading a Ruby Crystal to a Kindlegem gives you 50 HP and 10 AH for 400g. You'd rather have 20 AP from Amplifying Tome for your 400g because you're not going to be using your spells every time they come off cooldown.

TL;DR: in lane you should buy a Ruby Crystal, Amplifying Tome and Faerie Charm before upgrading to Kindlegem or Bandleglass Mirror.

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Brown Bags

If you are very ahead (passive tempo advantage, basing with enough gold to buy a tier 2 component every time) or very behind (need to get Redemption ASAP to keep up with the pace of the game), you can just sit on Boots until you complete your 2nd item if the draft allows for it (you can play fights reasonably well without tier 2s). The gold efficiency of upgrading them to tier 2 boots is not that good compared to just getting a full item 700g faster when you already have winner's tempo or are pushed into your base already.

Luci Boots

Ionian Boots of Lucidity are the default choice. Just get these if you don't have any specific reason to buy something else.

Swifties

A little gold efficiency comparison: Boots give 25 MS for 300g which is 12g per MS. Extremely gold efficient. Boots of Swiftness after the nerfs give another 30 MS on top of that for 700g which is 23g per MS. Definitely not as good as they used to be. When they buffed Symbiotic Soles to have 5 MS extra, it lead to the entire item getting reworked because it was so broken. That should give you an idea of how much that 5 MS nerf to Boots of Swiftness matters. That said, they still have their place against teams that lack reliable hard CC but have a bunch of slows & skillshots.

Tabi

Plated Steelcaps are only good against a fed Rengar or AD Shaco. Most of the damage in their combos comes from stacking effects that empower their auto-attacks ( Savagery/ Thrill of the Hunt/ Deceive/ Hail of Blades), and it can be hard to avoid them in some gamestates even if you play well.

Mobi Boots

Symbiotic Soles were nerfed quite hard and I don't recommend building them anymore.

Mercs Lamont

Mercury's Treads are not good for Soraka. If you need Magic Resist then just buy a Negatron Cloak and don't upgrade it. Tenacity is not going to give you enough value to make up for the 1250g price.

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Moonstone Renewer

Moonstone Renewer sets you up for a super strong 2 item spike and scales the best. Its passive effect applies healing increases to its output a twice (more information in the Math for Nerds chapter). The more percent healing modifiers you stack, the more value Moonstone Renewer generates. You always want this 2nd if you bought something else 1st.

Redemption

Redemption is arguably the strongest (support) 2 item spike in the game when paired with Moonstone Renewer. It's the most versatile 2nd item, so if you don't know what to buy just get this. It's only worth rushing as a 1st item if you are very behind and have 0 map control, can't walk or ward anywhere and can't match the pace of the enemy team. This way you can still contribute a bit when you are late to every play, and you can use the vision it provides so your team can still breach into areas around objectives that are swept and controlled by the enemy team. The cooldown is only 90 seconds (81 seconds with Cosmic Insight), so use it liberally. It doesn't have to be for teamfights only, you can use it to heal yourself and your team up so they don't have to recall and can stay active on the map for longer. It can situationally be nice to try to heal an ally that's not going to drop below 40% HP any time soon with dry Astral Infusion spam (but not to 100% HP!), bringing yourself below 40% HP so you get the Revitalize bonus when you use Redemption. Note: you can heal (super)minions with this item when sieging towers. Additionally, it doesn't work on units that are in stasis from Zhonya's Hourglass or Bard's Tempered Fate.

Staff of Flowing Water

Staff of Flowing Water is a mathematically ridiculously good item. The AP on it totals 1510g, the bonus healing is worth about 500g, and in drafts where you can play the game the 15 Ability Haste is arguably worth more than its 750g gold value because you are making use of it really well (all your abilities being used in these fights). These numbers total 2760g, excluding the AP you give to your teammates. The item costs 2250g. It's a good 1st item if you have an AP jungler and an ADC with AP scalings like Twitch/ Kai'Sa/ Kog'Maw/ Yunara - even if they build AD - because you give yourself and them 850g worth of AP (that's a Blasting Wand!) which is a big deal early on. It's also a great 3rd item because it has an 850g component in Fiendish Codex. When you are building your 3rd item you only have 1 inventory slot available, so having an expensive component there is really nice while you gather the gold to finish the full item.

Dawncore

Dawncore amps up the healing on your Wish the most out of every item. Just like Staff of Flowing Water, this item is good in drafts where your kit functions well (= you get value out of your healing spells). It's a decent 2nd item, but I prefer Redemption. You can make a case for it when your team has lots of stasis effects like Zhonya's Hourglass or Lissandra's Frozen Tomb. That way you can wait for healing reduction to time out (3 seconds) and then hit a super fat Wish. It's also a very good 3rd item because Blasting Wand increases your healing as much as 2 Forbidden Idols while only taking up 1 inventory slot. Note: If you recall with too little gold to buy a Forbidden Idol, don't just buy a Faerie Charm. Instead, sit on the gold and maybe on your next recall you can afford a Blasting Wand.

Mikael's Blessing

Mikael's Blessing is a good 1st item when your ADC has too much ego to pick Cleanse into Ashe + Leona. "I'll just dodge it." Yeah, sure you will :) As a 2nd or 3rd item you kinda have to play the teamfight in your head and ask yourself if removing [insert CC ability here] from the equation gains you a meaningful advantage. It's honestly a high-elo item, chances are you are better off just buying other stuff if you are playing below master. Note: you can use it 0.25s before the CC effect gets applied and it will buffer and cleanse it. That means you can use it to cleanse Leona's Solar Flare from yourself even though it stuns you!

Locket of the Iron Solari

Locket of the Iron Solari is pretty underrated. I like it on Soraka because its value doesn't get reduced by healing reduction and the shield scales with Heal and Shield Power and Moonstone Renewer. It's a good 2nd/3rd item against champions that deal big AOE damage and will easily consume the whole shield on all targets, such as Twitch, Kennen, Aurelion Sol, Fiddlesticks, or Brand (especially Brand because he applies Oblivion Orb so well). Sometimes it's also the only reasonable option you have to keep your carry (or yourself) alive against burst assassins such as a fed LeBlanc/ Kayn.

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Verdant Barrier

Verdant Barrier is really chill against Karthus/ Blitzcrank/ Thresh/ Nocturne. It stops Karthus from randomly taking 70% of your HP with Requiem, Nocturne from blinding you with Paranoia so you can time your Wish, and lets you walk near walls/bushes without worrying too much against hook champs. I wouldn't really upgrade it until last, unless you happen to base with 1200g and might as well sit on the Needlessly Large Rod for a bit (uwu).

Seeker's Armguard

Sometimes when a game is very close and you really need something to help you in the next big fight, you can buy Seeker's Armguard. You often won't be able to afford a full 3rd item anyways, so for 1600g it's a pretty potent effect and it doesn't matter that it's 1-time use because it's still better than sitting on an 800g component for the rest of the game. Some games you even buy this as a 2nd item, and the game goes long enough for you to upgrade it. It can be worth to upgrade it to Zhonya's Hourglass if you bought it 2nd because the enemy team has some form of engage that is really hard to avoid (like a fed Aurelion Sol with his Falling Star). The only problem is that Needlessly Large Rod is so expensive, which means you spend a lot of time just sitting on your gold saving up for that 1250g. The gold-efficiency of Needlessly Large Rod itself is S+ tier.

Negatron Cloak

You can buy a Negatron Cloak and not upgrade it in games where the enemy Kassadin/ Vladimir/ Fizz/ Katarina can't be stopped from r*ping you. It can throw off their estimation of how fast they can kill you, and catch them off guard when your team ends up dogpiling on them because they couldn't get in, kill you, and get out fast enough. This is pretty much the equivalent of buying 4.5 Ruby Crystals for 850g instead of 1800g (calculated at a conservative 1500 HP). If the game goes extremely long you could sell it or upgrade it to Kaenic Rookern.

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. Note: damage from Knight's Vow can cancel your Recall so if you put it on your jungler then don't try to base near them if they're clearing camps.

Shurelya's Battlesong

Shurelya's Battlesong is just not that interesting compared to everything else. It can be rushed 1st item if you are playing with a cheese bruiser duo like Darius. The enemy botlane is pretty much guaranteed to burn Flash or die every time Darius connects with them because of how well his Crippling Strike and Apprehend pair up with your Equinox.

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Warmog's Armor

Warmog's Armor makes you sacrifice a HUGE amount of gold and healing throughput just to have your health slowly tick up outside of combat. I think this item is huge noob-bait. You can sustain yourself nearly just as well by standing in your own Redemption when you are below 40% HP for Revitalize, and the same with your Wish. You could buy it when you are very ahead, to keep pushing your lead by making your team not have to recall, and so you are a bit tankier and less likely to throw your lead by dying. Not a great item, though.

Note: This item was actually gutted and now requires 1000 bonus health from other items in your build and no longer gives bonus movement speed. In the bin.

Ardent Censer

Ardent Censer is a bad item. Just read what it does. 45 AP is like 850g, 10% bonus healing is like 500g. The 4% MS is worth about 400g. That's totaling 1750g. The attack speed & on-hit (which gets reduced to about half by passive MR) does not have good uptime or utilization because Soraka without the old version of Font of Life sucks at applying it to her ADC. Your ADC is the last person to take damage in a teamfight, you're typically healing the frontline, and they don't use the attack speed well. This effect is not worth 450g because of how conditional its value is. It can have *some* merit if your ADC has Guinsoo's Rageblade because that increases the value of the on-hit effect.

Echoes of Helia

Echoes of Helia got hit pretty hard in the 14.19 patch which nerfed almost every item in the game, but some items a bit harder than others. It is no longer good on Soraka support, because it got tuned around champions like Milio and Sona abusing the item. It's still okay on those champions because they can trigger it so much, but Soraka can't. It is, however, worth considering as a 1st item rush on Soraka ADC. Without a proper ADC the team lacks damage, and since she has a lot of income on this role she can easily get to 3 items decently fast. So it's not too bad to delay her Moonstone Renewer and Redemption for it!

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Moonstone Renewer benefits from all percent healing increases twice. This includes Heal and Shield Power, Axiom Arcanist and Revitalize. First your spells benefit from all those modifiers, and then when Moonstone Renewer takes 30% of your heals and mirrors it, that mirrored heal benefits from all those modifiers again. The math ends up like this:

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Levels in your Starcall and Astral Infusion give you all the cooldown reduction you really need for your kit to function well. The way I prefer to evaluate AH is by deducting its gold value from the price of items when I calculate their gold-per-heal. That way you kinda still value the healing-per-second increase and Wish cooldown reduction that the stat gives you, without overcomplicating the maths. This sheet gives you some insight on what AH really gets you.

5 Glowing Mote 5+5 Transcendence 8 Ability Haste

10 Kindlegem 10 Fiendish Codex 10 Bandleglass Mirror 10 Ionian Boots of Lucidity 10 Locket of the Iron Solari 10 Knight's Vow

15 Legend: Haste 15 Shurelya's Battlesong 15 Staff of Flowing Water 15 Mikael's Blessing 15 Redemption

20 Moonstone Renewer 20 Echoes of Helia

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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. The following spreadsheet calculates what certain items do to a combo of one Starcall + one Astral Infusion. It also accounts for the 2 Rejuvenation buffs in this combo (one on yourself, one on the target of your Astral Infusion). It does not assume you double dip in the Rejuvenation to make sure it's accurate before level 9.

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Armor/ Magic Resist are not on the tier list because they are an entirely different topic. Their efficiency depends on the enemy team comp, who is fed on enemy team, who can get in range to damage you, your base Armor/ Magic Resist and how much HP you have.


You need ~850 HP for a Cloth Armor to be as good as a Ruby Crystal against full AD (750 HP in a vacuum but you get some base Armor per level as well). You need twice that much HP (1700) against a team with mixed damage for a Cloth Armor to be worth buying.

The baseline math for Magic Resist is the same 750 HP but you get much less base Magic Resist per level than you get Armor. For that reason you could argue that you only need around ~775 HP for a Null-Magic Mantle to be better than a Ruby Crystal against full AP teams, and 1550 HP against a mixed-damage team.

Magic Resist is typically very efficient, even when the enemy has % Magic Pen it's still pretty good because you are higher level at that point and have a lot of HP.

That is also why I suggest to sometimes buy Negatron Cloak on Soraka if the only person on the enemy team that can hurt you is something like a Vladimir, Kassadin or Fizz.

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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)

Rank 1 Starcall
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 or Karma lane if they got push. Those are typically the only lanes that fist you so hard you get stuck on tower and want to max Astral Infusion.

Rank 2 Starcall
Enough damage to set up the caster minions for most champions' waveclear ability to oneshot them, like Smolder's 25 stack Super Scorcher Breath or Caitlyn's Piltover Peacemaker. Gains you a significant amount of throughput compared to rank 1 without sacrificing much healing. Lets you inject one dry Astral Infusion between Starcalls without costing you any empowered Astral Infusion casts (try to proc Summon Aery with this one!). This should be your go-to in 90% of games.

Rank 3 Starcall
If you are playing a matchup where you are able to use your Starcall a lot, that doesn't mean you should put a 3rd point in. Having an extra point doesn't really change the outcome of the lane, but it does delay your rank 5 Astral Infusion powerspike by 1 level. You can fist the enemy perfectly fine with just 2 points in Starcall.

Landing Starcall & Trading
It 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. The enemy is constantly thinking about dodging your Starcall - and by holding it you are applying tremendous pressure to their mental stack.

It's easier to land Starcall on the enemy ADC when they go for a last-hit on a low health minion. You can auto attack the enemy ADC as he goes for it to see if he dodges. If he dodges then your auto goes through and you can Starcall after. If he fights back you can do a Starcall while he's animation locked and then one more auto attack and run away.

One thing to keep in mind is that during the very early levels you might not always want to auto attack if you don't have a bush nearby to drop minion aggro. Minions do a lot of damage early on, and if you're not careful about it you will find yourself losing the same amount of health as the person you are poking. Since Starcall itself doesn't aggro the minions you can always just keep it at that if you have no bush.

Windwall Abilities
Yasuo's Wind Wall, Braum's Unbreakable 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, but if you cast Astral Infusion as soon as your Starcall hits the enemy and the return-projectile is spawned, you can still get an empowered use of Astral Infusion before the windwall destroys it.

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Rejuvenation Milking
I made a video on this topic, but for those that prefer it written just continue scrolling.
1) The base duration of the Rejuvenation buff is 2.5 seconds.
2) The base cooldown of rank 5 Astral Infusion is 2 seconds.
3) The base cooldown of rank 4 Astral Infusion is 3 seconds.
4) You can already spread Rejuvenation to allies with Astral Infusion before the projectile reached you.
5) Astral Infusion checks for the Rejuvenation buff at the start of its cast time.


With rank 4 Astral Infusion you can use it the exact moment that your Starcall hits the enemy and then run away a bit as the Rejuvenation projectile travels to you. If you stalled by at least 0.5 seconds travel time, then you will still have the Rejuvenation buff when your Astral Infusion comes off cooldown so you can use it a 2nd time. You can't always pull this off due to how the people in the fight are positioned, but when you can it feels like a cheatcode.


With rank 5 Astral Infusion the base cooldown is low enough (2 seconds) that you dont need to kite to cast it twice within the 2.5 second duration of the Rejuvenation buff. This is your biggest powerspike (level 9).


This "travel time stalling" technique can also come in handy when Astral Infusion has around 3s cooldown remaining when you cast Starcall so you can still get an empowered Astral Infusion cast out of the tail end of the Rejuvenation buff.

Rejuvenation heals over 12 ticks, with the first 4 ticks each healing for 15% of the heal each, the next 4 ticks for 5.5% each, and the last 4 for 4.5% each. This means that you don't lose that much of the Rejuvenation heal when overwriting the current one with a fresh one.

Grievous Wounds
Sometimes you will have Rejuvenation after a trade but your ADC has the Grievous Wounds debuff. You might ask yourself, would it be more healing if I let my Rejuvenation time out and just send a dry Astral Infusion after the Grievous Wounds is gone? I ran the math and the simplified answer is it's never worth it. Just send your Astral Infusion before your Rejuvenation expires, even if that means Grievous Wounds is still active.

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Starcall & Equinox Combo
You can combo your Equinox and Starcall together to guarantee one of them hits. You just have to react to which direction they dodge the first one. Once you get good at Soraka you will be able to hit both of them in one combo pretty often. I use Starcall into Equinox the most because they always try to dodge, and if you hit the slow from Starcall then you are almost guaranteed to hit the root on Equinox.

Predicting Warwick Players
If you place your Equinox at your feet before Warwick leaps at you with Infinite Duress then it will cancel him and put it on cooldown like so:


Predicting Alistar Players
If you place your Equinox between yourself and Alistar when he charges at you with Headbutt then he will be silenced at the moment where he wants to input the buffer of his Pulverize, and you will actually get a free escape like so:


Countering Engages
When the enemy support engages your ADC in lane, you should nearly always use your Equinox to block the path of the enemy ADC so he has to walk around it to attack your ADC. When Nautilus engages he already puts all his stuff on cooldown in his first combo, and the enemy ADC still has all their stuff available.

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Level 11 Powerspike
Wish heals for 150 at rank 1, and 250 at rank 2. That's nearly double! Now factor in your Moonstone Renewer double dips in all that bonus healing you got, Wish heals 1.5x more on allies below 40% hp, and Revitalize amplifies that by another 10%. That's so many multipliers! This is your last powerspike from abilities. After level 11, try to stop taking XP because the best way to add more value to your team at this point is by giving them HP/ Armor/ Magic Resist from levels. Just stay out of vision and xp range behind your ADC while they clear midwave.

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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 "meteor" 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, they wont see that you are casting Starcall into that bush. I'd make a gif showing that but... it would just show nothing.

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When you attack a Stealth Ward that is being disabled by a Control Ward or Oracle Lens, you briefly turn it back on.

When you attack a trap (such as Noxious Trap or Captive Audience) that is being revealed by a Control Ward or Oracle Lens, you reveal yourself for 2 seconds.

When you kill a Stealth Ward it takes 2 seconds before it stops giving vision.

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

It is important to deny the enemy jungler any chances of making a play on botlane while your jungler is full clearing or ganking toplane. The gank timers in the first 5 minutes of the game are the most important, and the easiest to predict:

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02:30 - 3 Camp
This is when junglers finish their 3rd camp and are either crossing over to the other side of the map, or looking to gank you. It's mostly Shaco/ Jarvan IV/ Amumu/ Nunu & Willump/ Twitch/ Rammus/ Elise/ Kayn/ Warwick that gank on this timer.

03:00 - 6 Camp & Scuttle Fight
This is the most important timer. The enemy jungler is seconds away from finishing their full clear and the Scuttle Crab spawns in 30 seconds. This is when you want to place your Stealth Ward in the enemy tri-bush.

If your jungler cleared towards you then make sure your wave is pushed so you can help him fight for the Scuttle Crab. If your jungler started bot then you want the wave pushing into you since the enemy jungler is likely going to gank you after taking the Scuttle Crab and your jungler will be playing topside.

04:30 - Camp Respawn
If your jungler shows top after 04:00 then you can expect the enemy jungler to try to steal some bot camps, since they respawn at 04:15 and your jungler wont be there to take them on spawn. You can try to spot the enemy jungler or even bully him while he tries to take them to give information to your jungler.

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03:10 - Scryer Bloom Spawn
If you are playing on the blue side (left) team then you can go into enemy tri-bush and use this plant to check which camps the enemy jungler cleared or clear a ward for your jungler to gank.

06:30 - Honeyfruit Spawn
Honeyfruit spawns between 06:00 and 06:30. If you know the enemy jungler isn't sitting in river waiting for you, this is when you can go look for Honeyfruit between waves to heal yourself up a little.

09:30 - Blast Cone Spawn
After 09:30 you need to know that the enemy jungler can use the Blast Cones to hop over the wall at Dragon pit / Blue Buff. That means if you don't have a ward covering the middle of the river you can get ganked from there very easily. Even if you have a ward covering the river entrance near midlane.

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You should roam for Grubs if your jungler wants to do them (just look at the map, you'll be able to tell from which camps are up and where your jungler is walking) and botwave isn't frozen.

Ideally you help your ADC stack a couple waves and crash them into the enemy turret so the wave bounces back. Then if you have time you can recall, but I actually typically end up just running straight to mid and pushing the wave with my Starcall to get mid prio. You are not that useful on your own, you should try to un-jail your midlaner instead of going there directly yourself.

Also if your mid/top both have prio and you spotted the enemy support in botlane, you don't have to stay until the Grubs die. Don't stay just to auto attack the Grubs when you are not needed, head back bot.

It's possible to be level 6 for Grubs if you didn't miss any waves in botlane, and then hit level 6 on the midwave on your way there.

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Towers
You put yourself at risk by getting in auto attack range of towers and should 99/100 times just sit back. You barely deal any damage to them because you don't even build much AP since enchanters budget heavily into Heal and SHield Power.

Drakes
Your time is much better spent doing literally anything else than auto attacking the drake as well. You should only do that if you are worried someone is going to contest it and kill your jungler, or you have literally nothing better to do.

Baron Nashor
Your safety is definitely the #1 priority, so avoid the Baron pit and try to find an angle off to the side away from the enemy team where you can stand in a bush or around a corner. Only go inside the Baron pit if you think you can kill the Baron before the enemy team wipes you, and then either be healthy/strong enough to turn on the enemy or Flash out.

Rift Herald
This is the only objective that you can actually meaningfully help your jungler to clear faster. The Rift Herald's eye on her back has its cooldown reduced for every auto attack that hits her.

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Pressuring
While earlygame wards can be useful in the most random places, midgame wards require some discipline. If you are pressuring the enemy turrets in 2 lanes (like mid + top) then you want to try to create a vision bridge in the jungle between those 2 turrets and the enemy base. That way your team can safely rotate between the 2 pressure points.

Neutral Map
If it's 50/50 and you are wrestling for control of the map, you want to ward 2 jungle entrances in river around the next objective (or near your most pushed up sidelaner).

Defending
If the enemy is pushing you in, just place shallow wards over walls in places that are less likely to get swept (get creative and be OK with the wards being less than optimal - all the optimal places are likely to get swept).

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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 to account for delay of when it was used vs. pinged.

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 30s but round down a bit to account for delay. +3m 55s with both Cosmic Insight and Ionian Boots of Lucidity, I just do 4m, it's whatever keep it simple.

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 hit CTRL+A and CTRL+C before you send it, so that you can easily spam it with CTRL+V. If you always write the most recent timer before pasting the others after it, you can easily just backspace the oldest timer when it expires. I like to post it at least twice every time I send it in chat, because it's easier to read.

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Solstice Sleigh doesn't benefit from bonus healing because it isn't coded as a heal. It also doesn't apply Ardent Censer and Staff of Flowing Water.

Moonstone Renewer doesn't show a visual when it procs from Wish.
Moonstone Renewer has a different visual for heals than for shields.

Echoes of Helia works on Wish with unlimited range, but it will always prefer the pair of ally + enemy that are closest to you. This means that if you are in botlane, and both your mid and top are fighting their opponents, when you use Wish the Echoes of Helia damage will go to the midlane fight because it's closer to you. If you ask your midlaner to move away from the enemy midlaner a bit before you use Wish, the proc will be sure to go to the toplane fight. The range isn't very big so it's not really something you generally have to worry about.

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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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Cleanse doesn't remove the Grievous Wounds portion of Ignite.

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Starcall grants Rejuvenation even when hitting spell shields, or when intercepted by Braum's Unbreakable.

Astral Infusion's effects occur before the cast time.

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

Equinox's Root can prevent enemies from auto attacking you if you are behind them. Their character will not be able to turn around to face you. That means you can use Flash to go behind someone that's rooted in a super clutch moment where you are low health and would die from the next auto attack. Works against both melee and ranged attackers.

Wish will not benefit from Ability Haste or Ability Power if you spam the button when respawning, due to several character stats needing a moment to be recalculated each time a character spawns.

Wish will not credit Soraka with an assist/takedown if the target ally is at full health.

Wish can heal units that are untargetable. This includes effects from Guardian Angel, Zhonya's Hourglass and Zilean's Chronoshift.

Wish can heal allies that are phased by Mordekaiser's ultimate: Realm of Death.

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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 collapsed on 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 K made an amazing jungle tracking guide that is absolutely worth studying. Don't be intimidated by the 1 hour video length, because the midlane and toplane sections can be skipped. You may want to take some notes or revisit the video from time to time. It's super insightful and turns games that feel like "jgl diff" into "actually, it's me diff". This video teaches you when to trade, when to preserve health, what the jungle matchup means for botlane, how to know where the enemy jungler is and which moments he is looking to gank or invade.