Celebrating 200k points on 'Raka with my own Soraka guide!

I am currently Gold on EU West. If your play style is very aggressive, like mine, then read on to find out why Soraka is the right Support champion for you.

Its all about the money
You will find that in the end what matters is money - both IRL and in the game :P
Talking about money in the game is talking about *cost effectiveness* and *value* of [a situation|a skill|an item|runes|....]. For example, if you are level 2, having your Starcall and Astral Infusion; if you land a Starcall an on enemy and then heal your ally, Astral Infusion will heal your ally for 85hp + 45hp from Rejuvenation, and heal yourself for 60hp. Thats a total of 130hp heal on your ally, and a little bit over the 10% of your own health cost of Astral Infusion on yourself.
For comparison, a 50 gold Health Potion heals for 150hp! Thats great value!

Ultimately maxing Soraka value is about landing Starcalls during laning phase, and healing with a lvl 5 Astral Infusion coupled with 40% CDR during mid/lategame.

Preliminary remark: I am fixing lvl 10 as the breakpoint between earlygame Soraka, and battle/teamfight-ready Soraka. Explanation see section below.

Soraka is support and therefore your objectives as Soraka are straightforward:

• Make sure your ADC can farm minions safely
• Get some gold yourself, so that you are fully ready for midgame/teamfights and complete your quest early for the additional warding capabilities!

And all of this under the following constraint:

• Dont die.

If you have followed through my calculation in the Introduction section, you might imagine that Soraka has strong level 2 ganking potential. And so it is. With the above runes, seek to trade with enemy ADC at level 1 with your Starcall (you can eat enemy auto-attacks, just dont get all-in'd and die!). You might end up with 50% health, but so will their ADC, making it favorable for you and your team, thanks to your heals and Barrier.
Do pocket Flash for the *right* situation, but do not pocket Barrier; feel free to use it in an early trade; it has relatively low cooldown and therefore you can get a lot of value out of it if you use it more often.
Those runes and summoner spells are set up to survive burst; a Leona wont be getting through you if you have Barrier and Nullifying Orb.
Finally, dont do the mistake of following your ADC too deep into the lane/closer to enemy tower; the only thing as deadly as getting pulled by Blitzcrank is getting caught by enemy jungler while poorly positioned. Ping your ADC back and tell them "if enemy jungler comes Im dead".
That about covers how to not die with Soraka during laning phase.

As for farming gold for your Spellthief's Edge quest, practice hitting enemy ADC with Starcall, else use Equinox to poke safely every ~20 seconds. If possible use Starcall early in the game (say, lvl 1-3) and Equinox later (lvl 4 onwards) due to mana efficiency (Equinox mana cost doesnt increase with skill lvl) and because it is safer to Starcall before enemy goes first shop.
Dont be too greedy trying to hit the enemies for Spellthief's Edge gold-giving stacks all the time; you will quickly run out of mana early game. In hard matchups aim for 1( or 2) hits per wave.

Note on Ancient Coin instead of Spellthief's Edge: Some people think health regen is a good thing for Soraka. But please do consider that Soraka has the worst BASE health regen in the game: List of champions by health regen
So on Soraka you would need +300% health regen just to get the BASE health regen of a Vi. Cost effectiveness... ugh.

Level 10 is when Soraka turns from a pokey wimp to the goddess of heal. At level 10:

• Your Transcendence rune actives, giving 10% additional CDR,
• You will have a total of 30% or ideally 40% CDR (e.g. with Ionian Boots of Lucidity or by buying another Forbidden Idol after getting Ardent Censer),
• Your Astral Infusion will be level 5, with 2 seconds cooldown before CRD.

In summary, your Astral Infusion will heal for ~300hp with 1.2 seconds cooldown (with 40% CDR). On targets below 40% health you have additional 10% healing power from Revitalize.
Together with your ultimate you will easily put down over 2000hp worth in heals during a teamfight.

When a teamfight starts, do not wait until your ADC gets damaged and then start healing; start healing immediately the first champion that needs healing. With 1.2 seconds cooldown your objective is to heal as much as possible during the whole duration of the teamfight (getting the most value out of it). Do not be afraid to dive deep into the teamfight to get a heal on your tank, as you will find that enemies wont immediately target you [unconfirmed for Leagues Plat and up]. Consider also that if you play the remainder of Soraka's skill kit correctly, Soraka is decently good at running away (heals dont cancel Mobility Boots movement speed buff, Starcall slows the enemy and speeds you up for escaping, Equinox prevents them from casting a spell that would lock you down). When a teamfight starts to go long and everyone is about to die, sacrifice yourself for the team healing them up even if it leaves your with 1hp (and potential death). Since your Astral Infusion heals for a lot more than it costs your own health (at your lvl 10 it heals allies for ~30% of your max health, while costing you 10%) and you are not very useful after that fight anyway (if you have casted your ultimate already) it may be well worth it.

From then on its just about healing and some infuriating Equinox CC during teamfights.
Item wise i suggest the following paths:

• Frostfang > Mobility Boots > Ardent Censer

and then:

• [ I need 40% CDR asap: ] Forbidden Idol
• [ I need more Armor: ] Remnant of the Watchers > Knight's Vow
  
• [ Default: ] Remnant of the Watchers > Mikael's Blessing

and then:

• [ We are ahead and I feel safe / I got some extra money: ] Twin Shadows
• [ My only problem in tfs is i get stunned or magic-burst down: ] Banshee's Veil

Other nice to have items:

• Redemption
• Rabadon's Deathcap

The title "to bait and protect" refers to the ability to bait out enemy all-ins and dives and surviving them with the Barrier summoner spell; a tactic that got my team many kills on my road from bronze to gold playing Soraka only.

Thanks for reading, and looking forward to your comments :)