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Spells:
Clairvoyance
Flash
Ability Order
Salvation (PASSIVE)
Soraka Passive Ability
UNDER RENOVATION
Hello, and welcome to my first ever guide on Mobafire. I decided to do my first guide on
Soraka because she is by far the easiest champion to support with. And yet, I still see people messing it up. I see people in solo queue maxing
Starcall first in order to push the lane. My goal is to start small in the immense world of supporting and help people to become experts at a relatively simple support champion. Here we go...


This guide is strictly looking at
Soraka as a support champion. She CAN be played as an AP Mid. She also can be played as an AD Carry. Don't believe me? A buddy and I were duo queuing and our clients screwed up when we tried to trade. So we had a support
Graves and an AD
Soraka. We got
Soraka fed and my buddy carried the game. Crit bananas FTW. Is that the best role for her? Nope. Neither is AP Mid in my opinion.
A few assumptions are going to be made in this guide, and they are:
If your expectations for
Soraka differ, you'll want to look somewhere else.




A few assumptions are going to be made in this guide, and they are:
Soraka is playing bottom lane with an AD Carry such as
Graves,
Ashe,
Miss Fortune
Soraka is playing the support role as per the 0 cs meta.
Soraka will NOT be going for kills.
- We're playing on Summoner's Rift.
If your expectations for

Pros
- Very easy to learn / master
- Most sustain of any champion currently in game
- Allows your AD Carry to get farmed (due to aforementioned sustain)
- Doesn't fall off late game if you can get some AP items
- Easily countered in lane (
Miss Fortune with
Impure Shots,
Tristana with
Explosive Shot,
Varus with
Hail of Arrows)
- Cannot cast
Infuse on yourself anymore (not a huge problem with this build)
- Lacking in offensive capabilities
I have a fair number of rune pages for my Support champions, but I never seem to stray from this one when I use

9 x


9 x Greater Seal of Replenishment - Flat mana regen seals. I take flat instead of scaling because of the early game boost it gives (




9 x




3 x

Here's a detailed walk-through of my 8/0/22 masteries setup, starting with the Utility Tree and going from top to bottom and left to right.
Utility Tree



































Offense Tree







FAQ about Masteries:
Q: Why not go 0/8/22 for some more beefiness?
A: A lot of people do, and it isn't a bad way to build





Q: Why not use

A: Sounds like a good mastery, right? And for one point, why not? Because it is next to useless. 5% more range is equal to 55 extra range added to the sight ward's current 1100 range. You know how much extra vision that is? Seeing as the slowest champion without boots will have a movement speed of 300 (units per second), you will see this champion a full .18 of a second sooner than you would without the mastery. Since your reaction time is the same with or without the mastery, you will only react to the gank .18 of a second sooner than normal. Oh, and I just used the best case scenario. Imagine if their jungler is






Most Viable Picks














Less Viable Picks










Bad Picks That You Should Never Touch As Soraka EVER!!!
Don't do it....
Consecration Your passive. In the current meta, there isn't much use for it until teamfights. And even then, the magic resist bonus will more than likely be penetrated by their AP Carry, so this passive isn't very useful. However, if your AD Carry is doing exceptionally well in lane, it is viable to move








FAQ about Skills and Skill Sequence
Q: Why do you hold off on taking a point in

A: Like I said,







Your starting items will ALWAYS be


This is your core item build that you will shoot for every game. Build the Philosopher's Stone out of your






"...buy 5 wards..."
"...you should be able to afford

"...continue to prioritize leaving your fountain with wards."
"...while continuing to buy wards."
I can't stress this enough. YOU ARE THE SUPPORT!!! Your core build comes secondary to having vision of the map. Leave the fountain with at least 3 wards every time. Your teammates should be helping you with warding, but it is your job to buy the majority of wards. Generally, I'll get done with this core build at around 25-30 minutes into the game. Any earlier, and you probably aren't buying enough wards. If you can afford it, and no one else on your team is better suited, maintain an

This is an example of a very viable end-game build for

Note that everything bought after the




































Keep in mind that you are the support, and the odds of you actually getting to these late game items is actually kind of slim. For example, one game I played ended like this:
I didn't even finish the core build. However, we won, and I went 0/1/12. How is this possible? Support champions don't rely on items to be effective. So, understand that all of that stuff about late game items I was talking about just now is going to be useless to you in game about 50% of the time. And even if you do use it, you'll probably only ever get to buy one or two of those items. My personal favorite is to get



Honestly, there aren't that many bad match-ups for Soraka. However, there are a few that seem to really shine, such as:
Ezreal can do a lot of damage in a very short amount of time, but he burns a lot of mana if he just keeps spamming his abilities. Who better to lane with then a mana-bearing unicorn?
Pretty much the same deal here. In fact...
Same thing...
Yup...
You can match
Soraka up with any champion inhibited by mana and get positive results. This works, because a lot of champions need both health and mana in order to function, and
Soraka provides both of those in near infinite quantities.








You can match


ANY lane that has one of those three champions is going to be a problem for you. Why? Well, let's play some Tri-Bond. What do these three champions have in common?
HINT:



Yep, they all reduce the target's healing by 50% (but only when activated). That means your healing is going to do next to nothing when you try to save your buddy. Try to use


This is an example of a kill lane. Kill lanes are created with the purpose of trapping a champion out of position and dropping their health bar from 100% to 0% in a matter of seconds. This directly counters you since you can't do much other than silence one enemy when they jump on your AD Carry. And what are you going to do when








This is an example of a poke lane. Poke lanes are created with the purpose of "poking" an enemy champion until one swift combo will kill them. They excel at keeping their distance from the enemy and "kiting" them. While this strategy works really well on kill lanes since the kill lane won't be able to get close enough to catch them out of position,


Early on, your job is to create a safe environment for your AD Carry to farm up in. With
Soraka, your role is much more passive than other Supports such as
Blitzcrank or
Alistar. Since you lack any form of hard cc, your job is to let your AD Carry do the dirty work. Use
Astral Blessing and
Infuse to heal your AD Carry back up and give them mana so they can spam their harassing skills.





There are two locations you need to keep warded during the laning phase. The first two images outline those critical locations. The next two are optional but become critical at different stages of the laning phase.

Bot Tribush. Useful when you're on either team to spot ganks coming, as this is the most popular location for the enemy jungler to come from if you are purple. Blue team's jungler can also come around behind dragon and gank through this bush, so you'll be doing your lane a favor by keeping this bush warded at all times.

Notice how the ward not only provides line of sight on
Dragon, but it also gives line of sight over both of the purple-side jungle entrances. This helps both your lane and mid lane avoid ganks while protecting
Dragon in case the enemy team attempts a kill.

If you are the purple team and have lost your tower, or if you are blue team and you've destroyed their tower, warding this will help to keep you safe from enemy ganks. This ward is also great for offensive or defensive buff control.

Same thing, but in reverse.

Bot Tribush. Useful when you're on either team to spot ganks coming, as this is the most popular location for the enemy jungler to come from if you are purple. Blue team's jungler can also come around behind dragon and gank through this bush, so you'll be doing your lane a favor by keeping this bush warded at all times.

Notice how the ward not only provides line of sight on



If you are the purple team and have lost your tower, or if you are blue team and you've destroyed their tower, warding this will help to keep you safe from enemy ganks. This ward is also great for offensive or defensive buff control.

Same thing, but in reverse.
Your role doesn't change all that much from laning phase. In a team-fight, assuming you don't have any actives on your items, your job is to heal those who are dying, replenish mana to those who need it, silence the AP Carry when you can, and use R kind of like a "Oh ****, you're all about to die!!!" button.
Pro Tip: See those Champion icons on the left-hand side of your screen? If you hit W, and then click on a champion icon,
Soraka will heal that champion!!! That works with any friendly-target spell, and it helps immensely when the team-fights get intense.
If you do have actives, use them!! If you have a
Morello's Evil Tome, use it on someone. Preferably the enemy carry or a health-regenerating tank like
Dr. Mundo.
Pro Tip: See those Champion icons on the left-hand side of your screen? If you hit W, and then click on a champion icon,

If you do have actives, use them!! If you have a


Take all of the early game wards I showed you, add in their mirror images on the other side of the map, and add in these two locations and their mirror images, and that gives you a decent idea of where you should be warding throughout the game. These next two locations are all about spotting enemies moving around the map by having vision of the most traveled locations on Summoner's Rift.

Note the location on the edge of the brush while still in the brush. That gives extra vision along that left side path while still providing vision along the path leading to the
Crest of the Ancient Golem buff.

This ward gives a little less vision than we could get, but we give that up for more security. Most people (at least under 1200) assume that if you warded this crossroads, you did it in the middle of the crossroads. They don't think to check that brush, and this ward still serves the purpose of covering that crossroads.

Note the location on the edge of the brush while still in the brush. That gives extra vision along that left side path while still providing vision along the path leading to the


This ward gives a little less vision than we could get, but we give that up for more security. Most people (at least under 1200) assume that if you warded this crossroads, you did it in the middle of the crossroads. They don't think to check that brush, and this ward still serves the purpose of covering that crossroads.
Thanks for taking the time to read my detailed guide on Soraka: The Sustain Support. If you have any comments or concerns about this guide and
Soraka as played as a Support champion, feel free to voice those comments and concerns in the discussion below. I will get around to reading them all even if I don't respond to them all.
I view this guide as a learning opportunity for all of us. So, if you think something works better and you can tell me how and why, let me know! You can only benefit everyone here by doing so.

I view this guide as a learning opportunity for all of us. So, if you think something works better and you can tell me how and why, let me know! You can only benefit everyone here by doing so.
5/16/2012 - Published
5/16/2012 - Added a FAQ to "Skills and Skill Sequence" to address concerns brought up in the discussion by MissMaw; condensed "Summoner Spells"; expanded on "Enemy Lane Match-Ups"
5/17/2012 - Cleaned up some grammatical errors
5/23/2012 - Darius Patch - Added
Athene's Unholy Grail to items section
5/16/2012 - Added a FAQ to "Skills and Skill Sequence" to address concerns brought up in the discussion by MissMaw; condensed "Summoner Spells"; expanded on "Enemy Lane Match-Ups"
5/17/2012 - Cleaned up some grammatical errors
5/23/2012 - Darius Patch - Added

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