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Recommended Items
Runes:
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health
Spells:
Exhaust
Flash
Items
Ability Order
Salvation (PASSIVE)
Soraka Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Blitzcrank
Yay, a skillshot champ (okay that was sarcastic...)! So he's one of your nightmares. Stay behind minions, make sure you have vision all the time and try to silence him or go aggressively against him AFTER he's failed a Q. But be aware that he somewhat might not start his combo with a Q but W and R. So get mobility boots asap.
Caitlyn
Caitlyn
Champion Build Guide
Guide Information → Summary → Famous Last Words → Change Log & To Do List |
Champion details → About Soraka → Pros & Cons → Abilities |
Pre Game → Skin display → Runes → Summoner Spells |
Gameplay → Items → Teamwork → Warding & Gameplay |
Hey, I'm Wicked Cherry, I'm playing mainly Support since season 4. Welcome to my guide to Soraka. Soraka has a huge carry potential although she is super squishy and doesn't have a lot of CC. She is known as the ambulance of League of Legends in a humorous kind of way and in this guide I will try to teach you on how to improve (and hopefully climb) with the help of the star child. |
+ can spam heals to everyone + compatible with many ADCs + huge sustain potential + very adaptive playstyle possible + can carry pretty much every team + can interrupt many enemies' ultimates and casts with her silence |
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- can't really force teamfights - needs at least one frontliner & CC - especially aggressive playstyle of your team can be quite health-consuming for yourself - squishy but can heal herself - not much CC - struggles hard when being focused - kind of relies on fed carries |
Q |
Soraka literally calls down a star which will deal damage and also slows targets. It will heal herself if it hits an enemy champion and activate its passive "Rejuvanate" which will give her some movement speed for a short amount of time. This passive can be transferred to allies when using Astral Infusion on them right after hitting an enemy with Q Starcall. |
W |
This is your healing spell which you will want to spam constantly - especially in late game. But you cannot heal yourself or allies when YOU are below 5% health. However, after a successfully cast Q Starcall you can pass on its passive Rejuvenate (movement speed) to an ally. |
E |
This ability will silence enemies who are within its circle. If they stay there for too long or move in while it's duration ends, they will be rooted. So please do not underestimate this ability, it can be quite powerful - especially if you want to annoy that Katarina who just tried to ult you. ;) |
Ultimate |
If everything goes wrong and your allies tank too much damage, make sure to hit R for your ultimate Wish. It will heal all allies - not matter if your bot and your top laner is about to die - so pretty much every ally out on the rift with you! And what's even better, you can heal allies that are not targetable (like a Zed or Kayn in their ultimate). It's affects are improved if allies are below 40% health but that's pretty much always the case when you'll use it anyway. |
Since Summon Aery consists of two components: Damage and Shield power, it's what you'd consider as perfect match with Soraka's playstyle since you will have to damage and enemy with your Q Starcall to heal yourself and when you heal an ally with Astral Infusion they will gain a shield on top. Also, Aery gives you some early game aggressiveness that you need (since your early is not really that awesome) and the ability to shield your allies. With the extra damage you will gain some more health when hitting an enemy with Starcall. |
Since you are relying on mana to heal yourself or silence the enemy, it can be quite mana-consuming, especially when playing against your counters. But you can also swap this rune if you feel like you won't use it to its full extend. See the "Alternative Runes" sections below for more information on that matter. |
The additional free cooldown reduction will allow you to either buy a rather aggressive item (like Liandry's Torment) instead of another CDR item. Also, if you exceed the limit, the abundant amount of CDR will transform into adaptive magical damage which should also be something you can’t really decline, especially because additional AP means more effective health with Q Starcall. |
I know most people prefer Scorch, but I like the adaptive damage more in late game because it works so well with your Q Starcall. Keep in mind: More damage = more health for yourself with your Q. So you will also be able to heal a lot more. |
Alternative Rune choices
This rune will give you some movement speed for a short amount of time, right after casting your ultimate Wish. So you might be able to run to allies faster or escape when being low. You can use this rune instead of Manaflow Band, but personally I think it's not the best decision on Soraka but it's up to you and your playstyle. |
You can't say No to movement speed because you're basically the running "ambulance" of the team. I promise you, there won't be a moment when you're realizing that you've joined a fight too early - rather the opposite, that you've been too late. |
Basically, this is a damage rune. It will allow you to deal enough magical damage with your Q Starcall. You might notice that enemies will try to evade getting hit by you because they want to drain your health. Furthermore, even if you’re being forced to go completely defensive, you’ll still have at least the damage from this rune to help you heal yourself again. |
Healing your allies should be your main focus (just right after it comes silencing them). This rune just works really well with the slow of your Q Starcall and is a must for Soraka players. In low elo, it even seems to help your team mates to focus more on certain champions because you have an extra visual effect. |
It's just the round up of a perfect combo together with all your heals ( Starcall, Wish, Astral Infusion and Redemption) you'll do. Stronger heals and shields - it's like the rune version of Redemption. |
This should be your standard item if you're up against enemies that won't bully you too hard because you've picked Soraka. Typical enemy champions in this case would be Janna, Braum, Bard, Nami, Karma, Morgana, Sona etc. It's one of the most valuable items because it will transform from Spellthief's Edge into Frostfang and finally into Shard of True Ice. With Frostfang it will become your warding item by itself. For more details on warding, check out my Warding section below. Since Shard of True Ice (including all previous stages) your is a support item, it will provide you with Gold by hitting enemies or enemy objectives (turrets, inhibitor etc.) which will help you to not fall behind compared to other roles. Try to harass whenever you have Mana and the situation allows it. You should try to get into harassing range and after you've dealt your damage, stay behind and wait in a safe distance to harass and recharge again. |
This is a probably somewhat unusual pick on Soraka, but it provides you with extra health. The catch that comes along with it, is that you'll have to attack minions to gain gold from it. It is not an item I would highly recommend but I can imagine it working when you're up against hard CC and damage lanes, like Brand, Vel'Koz, Leona. |
You cannot not buy this item as Soraka. It basically just boosts your abilities so much that you will want to rush this item in most situations. It improves your shields and even boosts your carry's Attack Speed. Celerity can even stack with Ardent Censer and they therefore enhance one another. |
Redemption also enhances your healing and shielding power. But it also grants you more access to mana which means: More heals, more damage, more Soraka plays! Furtermore, you can heal your allies with its active. Whenever a teamfight starts, I make sure to use it as soon as possible because it takes 2,5 seconds to become active. Try not to bait your own allies into a bad situation just for the heal. It also provides vision to the area it's casted but you should prefer using your warding item for vision. ;) |
standard Boot Upgrade. The additional ability haste (cooldown reduction) allows your to actually become the "ambulance" your team might need. If it doesn't, it will still need heals and silences. You can swap these for Boots of Swiftness if the enemies have a lot of Crowd Control. |
Why should I spend gold on this item? It's a fair question but when you think about Soraka and that every heal slowly drains her health, especially in team fights and that she's a very easy target you will come to the conclusion that building her a bit tanky would certainly not hurt. If you manage to accumulate enough health (3000 HP right now) on her to enable this item's passive - regaining 5% of health per second after not taking any damage for 6 seconds -, you will soon realize that not only worth the gold you've spent but a really decent item. For more health, I would recommend building Rylai's Crystal Scepter and Redemption. With your warding item upgrade you should have enough health to activate the passive. |
Defensive item choices
- If you decide on building Warmog's Armor, make sure to pick up more health items so activate its passive - but that works usually well with items like Redemption.
- Mikael's Blessing is very helpful against catch or all in combos like Morgana, Lux, Veigar - also currently the only magic resistance item that makes sense building on a squishy support like Soraka.
- I would mainly recommend items that provide you with more basic health or health regen in general because your W Astral Infusion might drain your health bar too much, especially when behind.
- Bulwark of the Mountain is a more defensive alternatie when it's difficult for you to get in range of the enemies to harass them to stack Frostfang.
- Moonstone Renewer is a passive healing item that helps you when your heals feel just a little too weak.
Aggressive Choices
- Chemtech Putrifier is your go-to item for anti-healing. Super helpful against champions with self-healing or building healing items.
- Staff of Flowing Water is a somewhat aggressive option but it's mainly utility to improve your heals. It comes with some nice chunk of AP and some ability haste which is always helpful.
Flash is pretty standard. I allows you to handle small positioning mistakes or jump into teamfights if your team unexpextedly dashed forward. |
Exhaust is also a standard support summoner. It slows the targeted enemy by 30% and reduces their damage by 40%. |
I do not recommend using Ignite when playing Soraka although it is not an uncommon approach. In my eyes it puts you into more danger when igniting the carry since you don't want to use it on their frontline, but it's up to you. It damages the targeted enemy for 5 seconds, dealing true damage and canceling out all healing effects by 40%. | Choosing Heal is a bit uncommon but you can pick it if your Marksman decides to go Barrier. However you two should communicate that matter in advance to rule out any misunderstandings. |
Barrier helps you to maintain a healthy whenever by providing you with a shield for yourself. You cannot heal your allies from the provided shield but it actually works well to deny some (mainly burst) damage. As Soraka you're usually focused a lot and Barrier simply helps you to die less by buying you time to run away. |
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Jokes on you: You are the ambulance of your team. So everyone expects you to make sure that ...
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I could probably point out many things more but I think it's really important that you at least try to keep the basic ones in mind and focus on them. I know it sounds a lot at first glance but you'll get used to them more and more. Like try to focus on one or two things you want to improve on several games. Once you feel aquainted with them you can focus on the next ones. :) |
Since there are different situations and game phases, I will try to point out the ones that occur most of the time.
Early to Mid Game
You're winning the lane and are ahead
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You're behind and risk losing the lane
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One more thing about early game: Ask your Jungler and/or Toplaner to ward the Rift Herald because you don't want to give one (or more!) Towers for free to the enemy team, do you? They might even come bot and destroy your winning lane this way. That's not your intention - is it?
Mid to Late Game
You're winning - Yay!
- You should use that advantage nicely. Ward objectives!
- If you notice that the enemies tend to prefer one side of the map, e.g. topside, try to ward the one slightly more.
- Ward the enemy jungler's buffs or often used bushes and pathways, such as the area around the Red Buff .
- Animate your teammates to ward if they aren't doing it already! You can't ward the whole map alone with 3+1 wards!
You're losing - oh no! Time to turn the game around.
I know that warding alone will not win you a game, you'll also have to pay very close attention to the mini map and it is not a joke when I'm saying that it should become one of your very best friends in the game. Like I'm only Gold but I'm kinda spending 40% of the whole game's time watching the mini map, looking out for ganks or where to position my next ward because once you notice a certain behavior, you might realize what the enemy might want to do in their next couple of moves. Okay, I get this might sound like you should take a look into the fortune teller's crystal ball but it's not that mystic or weird.
Say you realize that the enemy team kinda keeps pushing mid and bot lane. Meanwhile you see that the enemy Jungler or Support clear out your river wards. What would they want to do next? Right! They'll go for the Dragon . Another crucial point is to keep an eye out for the timers, like Dragon timer or Baron timer, but you might also want to know about the Buff timers to at least roughly guess when enemies will show up in that area - which is also always nice to catch them off-guard. But beware because you will probably want to ward the area carefully before you set up your surprise trap.
So let's get back to warding when losing:
- Keep an eye out for objectives and ask teammates to go warding with you because let's say you only have all base towers that remain but want to ward Baron . The likelihood that you'll get caught is at about 65% roughly guessed.
- Try to have as many pink wards out as possible - I'd recommend close to buffs.
- Ward around camps, such as the wolves .
- Use the vision plants whenever it is possible and safe
When you're going kind of equal.
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Here's an example for warding especially for the bot side (you're team blue and start at the left bottom of the map):
- Icy blue dots are for your vision cones. Do not hesitate using them unless you want to save them for special events like a soon spawning dragon .
- Red dots are for the blasting cones (bomb plants).
- Green numbers are for your usual vision wards. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 display the best vision spots where you should want to place your wards every time. I know that it's not always possible for various reasons (like you don't know where the enemy jungler and/or mid laner are or you're losing the lane and you don't really care about having vision of the enemy jungler). For these situations, I added the numbers 4 and 5. However, you should try to ward the blasting cone inside the enemy jungle as well.
I know there number 5 is there twice but that's because ensuring vision of one of the side brushes will depend where you are "tower hugging" or the enemy's freezing the lane.
Why ward the blasting cone instead of the brush underneath it?
Well, imagine that the enemy jungler just finished Gromp and now checks if they could gank bot lane. He'd probably walk through the tribrush and either use the blasting cone (ward 3) or walk back to the blue buff and then walk through ward 2. Either way, you'll spot him. If you just warded the brush below the blasting cone,you will still see him but by that it'll be probably too late to escape - especially if you've pushed the lane.
- Lastly, pink numbers are for Control wards. The lower the number, the better the position. If you feel that you need a Control Ward in your tribrush, you could always ask your ADC to buy one. When you're playing rather defensively, I would advice placing a Control ward at position 1 or 2. But if you're going equal or winning, you should definitely try to place it as deep into the enemy jungle as possible (one of the number 3 positions). I wouldn't recommend putting a Control Ward into position number 4 because both number 3s are more valuable and the enemy will walk through either your stealth ward or the Control Ward in position number 3. :)
Since this whole chapter is already quite detailed, I'll try to keep it short, promise.
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Laning Phase & Early Game Personally, I like to think that this phase of the game can be one of the most important. Why? You might say that you're not able to do much but that's not completely true. Remember how they say when you see a person the first few seconds will manipulate your opinion of them? It's not that much different from that. I'll give you an example. I once faced a Lucian and a Brand or Sona (doesn't matter that much, really). I knew that they would probably ruin my game pretty much, especially our early. So we played bot quite safely but without showing them our respect towards their champions' abilities. Which means that we didn't force fights but focused on farming and denying their damage by my heals and silences. The enemy jungler could not really gank us because we had wards pretty much everywhere where (s)he would show up. As Soraka, your power spike is mostly around mid and late game when you can spam abilities (basically heals) and most enemies won't even try to focus you because you're standing somewhat behind your own team's backline. But getting there can be tricky. So keep a calm mind and don't show enemies your potential fears or even allow yourself to make mistakes. I know it's not that much of an awesome story but sometimes you don't need something special when basics do the trick as well. |
Mid Game
In mid game you should have the feeling of where this game will go. Will it turn out in your favor or do you have to work hard to keep up with the rest of your team?
Winning lane & being ahead Most people think it's easier but it's actually the same - keep it cool and...
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Losing lane & what it means to play passive
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Late Game
Late Game is mostly the same as Mid Game but you should consider your steps more carefully, because the enemies might have full builds as well as your team, therefore ...
- check the builds of your carries and see what the enemies' answer is in their builds. Do they build Armor because your ADC is fed? Does your ADC have Armor penetration in return?
- What do you need as last item? AP or rather some Armor or Health?
- Waaaaaards! Try to animate your team mates to ward with you.
- Don't fall into traps and watch your enemies' movements closely to be able to prevent potential objective losses. You woudn't want to risk losing a Baron Nashor just because your whole team showed on bot lane half a minute ago.
- Try to go in groups or communicate if split pushing would be an option to obtain more objectives.
Roaming
You can or should roam when ...
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As you can see, there are sooo many possibilities to roam. Of course there are also quite some things to consider (Is it worth it? Do I have enough vision? Will my team benefit if I roam right now?). Now, I can't answer these questions for you because they're situational ones. But I can say that if you roam, the likelihood that you'll help your team even more and you can give them some advantage will be higher compared to not roaming at all.
Also, you probably realized by now that mid lane will be your most favored lane to roam to. You can also roam to top lane but this will most likely only happen when the enemies have already diminished the first tower and are pushing towards the second while your top laner is exasperated and can only watch. It's not always favorable too because you cannot simply run back to bot lane which would allow the enemies to pressure your lane freely.
It's favorable to roam with your ADC but not completely necessary.
Recalling
You should consider recalling, when ...
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One more thing. Never forget that League is a team game - you will most likely not win this game all alone by going solo. It's just not happening. You're with the people you entered the game with until it's over. So make sure to treat everybody accordingly and with honor and niveau - just the way you'd expect them to treat you plus another 10% of honor, because you can make this community better by your own behavior. If they flame you, don't get triggered. We all make mistakes but we can only change ourselves. |
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The Starchild
"An age ago, when time itself was young, the inhabitants of the celestial realm regarded the fledgling races of Runeterra with growing concern.
These creatures deviated wildly, unpredictably, and dangerously from the great designs intended for them by those above. The guidance and fates that had been woven into the night sky often went unseen—or worse, were misinterpreted by their simple mortal minds, leading to chaos, uncertainty, and suffering."
(copyright by RiotGames, see here.)
You can find a short story about her here.
"May the stars remember this day!"
"Fight without hatred in your hearts."
You've made it so far, thank you for reading my guide to the very end. I hope I could help you with possible questions or decision to make! I'm happy to help and I'd appreciate it if you left a comment to let me know what you're thinking about this guide.
Cheers, Wicked Cherry!
Change Log:
- 20/09/2019 Creation of the guide (yay!)
- 21/09/2019 Added some pictures & graphics
- 22/11/2019 Preseason adjustments added
- 14/12/2019 Added Barrier to builds and summoner spell chapter with explanation. Thank you, PsiGuard. :]
To do List:
- Match up section with explained synergies
- Adding Tips & Tricks
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the pictures (animated or still) shown on this website.
Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
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