As many guides for Soraka are outdated or slightly misleading in some points I decided to do my own guide for her. Forgive me as I don't know this champ to the bone because I just bought her yesterday as I saw this damn low "price tag" on her in the shop.

She is a real Tier 1 champ. Affordable for any newbie in League of Legends but this is also a little bit confusing as you need some game experience to play her really well.

Sorakas role can be clearly identified by analysing her skills. Three out of four spells are clearly defensive and supportive so you should play her that way.

To push Soraka to maximun healing/supporting performance I recommend to look for cooldown reduction where ever you can but be aware of uniqe passive effects on items and the 40% hard cap.
The masteries are pointed exactly that way to grab the 9% CDR via Intelligence and Sorcery.

I decided to put two points in Cripple and Haste as this are really good summoner spells to choose and they are that one point missing in Tier 1 to get to Tier 2.

This results in a 9/0/21 as seen above. If you dont like that summoners you can tweak that a little bit but in the Offense tree there isn't better skill to pick for Soraka as you won't jungle and you don't rely on crit. And for the Utility tree it is the same. You could grab Spacial Accuracy if you prefer that summoner skill over the recommended ones.

The remove the last bit of offense you could consider switchting the point from Archaic Knowledge to Greed . But greed is not worth that point in my opinion as it gives you 360 extra gold over a 60 minute game.

The chosen summoner spells are my recommendation for anyone who doesn't know what to pick.

Ghost
This will get you out of trouble in some situations or you can use it to move faster between the lanes. This depends on how agressive you and your team is playing.

Flash
As Soraka has no escape mechanisms (except from running and healing herself) this will get you of of dangerous fights alive. Then you can re-engage from safe distance.

Alternatives

Teleport
This may come in handy if you like traveling between the lanes. Soraka isn't the perfect champion for that but it can be that little bit of support need by yout teammates to gank, push or defend a turret.

Exhaust
My absolute favorite spell since it has been tweaked. You can easily stop one heavy damage dealer from killing your team or try to get away while you have this active on a champ chasing you.
Also it can be used as an offensive spell to slow champs who are trying to get away.

Clairvoyance
Some players like that spell a lot as it can save you from mean ganks. With a cooldown of 46 Seconds in that build it could help you a lot if you keeping it on cooldown. The only downside of this spell is that your enemies see and hear where his spell is cast and what can be seen. So there is only a little chance for a suprise attack.

All other spells aren't fitting your support role.

With the runes you should try to imrpove your skills as much as possible. The biggest improvement will be delivered by some cooldown reduction. After that you can either go straight for AP or try get rid of mana issues before you stacked some MP5 via items. All other runes aren't boosting Soraka's skills and should therefore not be used.

Quintessences

As pointed out in the introduction to runes you should grab the Greater Quintessence of Cooldown Reduction to get some decent CDR.

Glyphs

Same as on the quints. Get the Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction.

Seals

Hereyou can grab some mana regeneration seals. I would prefer the the Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration because they get stronger than the flat ones at level 5. From there on the bonus outweights them. And you can stay with one or two MP5 items without going oom.

Marks

Here is some place for your personal flavour. Primary runes would be AP but you get about 16 AP from Greater Mark of Scaling Ability Power which is around 4% of your total AP if you hit the 400 AP barrier. The more AP you have the less these rune matter to you. I suggest that Greater Mark of Magic Resist fits a lot better and you possibly got those for one of your tank builds.

As mentioned before most of Sorakas abilities are supportive or defensive. Let's look at them in detail.

Astral Blessing
That is one strong single target heal that scales perfect (1:1) with AP. Because of that excellent scaling you are going to stack as much AP as possible asap in game. A nice side effect of this spell is that the armor of the targeted unit is increased too. This spell works well in minions too. On the one handy this can come in handy as some bigger minion is tanking the tower shots. I managed to keep one of that alive to kill one tower on my own with only about ~200 AP. The downside of this is that you can accendently target a minion close to a friendly champ you wanted to heal. So be careful and don't spam your mouseclicks just to get that heal out.

Starcall
This AE ability is really weak on the early levels but becomes a nice minion killing tool later on. At about 400 AP you just need to do two Starfalls to kill a minion or complete waves with right positioning. This will give you the needed money to get past the three first important items.
The real big thing about this spell is the debuff that is applied to any unit hit by it. You are reducing the magic resistance of the target with every hit by [numers here]. The value can decline below zero which will be amplifing all magical effects. If you team up with a caster like Kassadin or Ryze (which will reduce the MR further with Spell Flux) this will boost their damage dramatically. It stacks up to 20(!) times but you won't come that far on any unit in the game as they die before or run out of range because you scared them!

Infuse
This ability should be chosen as first spell to put a point in. It is free of costs and initially on a 12sec cooldown. You will restore mana if you target a friendly unit (double effect if you target yourself) or it does some damage to your foes and silencing them for [numbers here] seconds.
My experience was that this effect doesn't need time to travel to your opponents (like many other spells) but is applied instantly. So you can silence a foe as they come in range.

Wish
The ultimate is a global heal that scales even better than Astral Blessing (1.3:1) which means you get 1.3 points healed for every point AP you stack. That results in a blasting ~700 HP heal at around 400 AP for every teammate alive as this is a global spell. On level three with some CDR stacked this spell is on 70 second cooldown. So will be able to use it in nearly every teamfight.
This will make the summoner spell Heal obsolete as this will decrease you healing efficiency for several seconds by the applied debuff.

Consecration
This is one nice passive that fits the role of Soraka. It gives you and your mates some magic resistance to increase survivability in fights. As you stack some MR later that will make hard to kill for any caster as you can easily counter heal that damage.

Skill Sequence

The order in which the skills are picked should be really depending on the game. In the first three levels get all skill and then decide on what is needed the most.

• Does your ally need a lot of mana? Infuse
• Are you pushing hard and need some more health? Astral Blessing
• Are you laning quietly and just kill some minions? Starcall

But beware: If the game is opened up by destroying some towers you should be able to heal and support well. So maxing out Infuse or Astral Blessing far before Starcall should be your normal way to go.

In my opinion there are tree must-have items for Soraka. As mentioned above we're about to stack some AP. As there are not any boot with AP you should get the Ionian Boots of Lucidity which are brand new and only cost 900g. So you don't have to worry about any other CDR item to get.

As first item at the beginning of the game you should buy a Meki Pendant as your first part to the Tear of the Goddess. Then get the boots later on.

To counter the possible mana issues (you will have to support you laning mate with mana and can't just use it all for yourself) get the Tear of the Goddess as soon as possible. Now your build order depends on the game. If you can farm as long as you can afford the Needlessly Large Rod grab that before upgrading your TotG to the Archangel's Staff. You should instead complete Rabadon's Deathcap before AS. Now you are having about 200 AP. This is the first real noticeable mark where things change a bit. Your heal now really should bother your foes as they have to do a lot more damage.

At this point you should grab items that suit the game best. The build order above is just an example of what item types to get.

If you are...

• main target in team fights: Get some defensive items. The Quicksilver Sash is worth every cent you spend on it. It's got a build in "improved" Cleanse (as it removes ALL types of debuffs). Further you could go for Banshee's Veil to give you bit more health, mana and temporary spell immunity if you can afford it.
• ignored by the enemies: Make them care more! Get AP! The Abyssal Mask is the most valuable item for you here. It isn't too expensive, supports your team (that's your job!) and makes your heals even stronger. After that you could go for any item which has much AP on it. Your possibilities here are:
  • Rylai's Crystal Scepter -- AP + a cool CC in combination with Starcall
  • Rabadon's Deathcap -- Adds another 200 (180*1.3) AP
  • Zhonya's Hourglass -- If you encouter much normal damage
  • Rod of Ages -- Nice stats overall, but expensive and needs time to stack
  • Soul Shroud -- Nice support item but you will exceed the CDR hard cap of 40%

There are a few items you should really ignore though they are very tempting. These are:

• Mejai's Soulstealer -- The stacks are like a big "PLS KILL ME" tag + you don't need the CDR
• Sheen / Lichbane -- You don't deal damage and especially not with you auto-attack
• Void Staff -- Again you're not a DD, you don't need this MgP
• Spirit Visage -- You got that CDR on your boots and you won't need that extra heal for yourself

At the moment I can't say really much about details playing Soraka.

But there are some points that should be thought of.

• Stay behind your lines.
• Don't play too agressive.
• Heal from the brush. So you cannot be targeted first.
• Try to put some of you MR debuffs to any offensive champs.

The enemy champs won't come close to you as you can stay far behind your laning mate and heal him.