Hi, I am slater and why am I doing this? Because why not. I am a Soraka main that has been playing since season 6. I got her because she was cheap and I wanted to fight other people and got tired of playing bots. So i played her a couple games and started to like her. She is the second support i mained where the other one was Janna, however i stopped playing her for Soraka a long time ago, however I do play her every so often. Last season I decided to go for my promoes and just played Soraka support, and for my first time doing ranked i think I did decent, I ended up being in Silver 5, even though I lost most of my promoes so I thought i did pretty well. I used Soraka for my promoes for this season and ended up with bronze 3 or 4, even though I had 4 games where I had S- or S so yeah I was pissed at that. But at the time of writing this I am silver 3 and ready to go up to gold before I leave college. Soraka is the only one where I am mastery 7 on so I think I have at least some understanding on how to play her.

These are the masteries that EVERY Soraka should use, unless you are doing something funky like ad Soraka. These runes focus on your healing and nothing else, you are a healer not a fighter, I don't care if that Sona has 1 hp, don't chase after kills and don't go for kills, you all have no idea how many times I have died and other Soraka have died because they thought they could kill the target when in reality they may as well have a sign over there head saying, "kill me"

I don't have all these runes, however I do think these could work on her, with all the scaling and no cd besides coin and your masteries, yes your early game is going to suck, so if you want to you can change these runes around so it can fit more to the situation like if you think you need more cooldown reduction for the early game, however there will be a problem with that, because once you get all your items you already have 45% if you follow this build, however if you want the cd for the early game then I would suggest just the straight cd runes.

There are a reason why I use these items, they balance you being able to survive and healing potential. There is some confusion on items with the same unique passive, such as Mikael's Blessing and Redemption with there increase healing and shield power even though they are the same unique passive, they don't cancel out. Unique passives only do not apply if you already have that item, however there is a exception, like with boots, it does have a unique passive however they all have the enhanced movement tag (I am not sure if that even has a name) because it is categorized as enhanced movement, you can't have more enhanced movement passives, that is why you can't have like all boots and just run around the map.

Now these tips are not in any particular order, these are just some stuff I figured out by playing Soraka and some of these I have noticed other Soraka not doing so hopefully these can help you be more effective.

Taking your q for level 1 is a good way to get some poke damage on your enemy. Yes taking your w is a safer route, however being level one you don't have any sustain and your q can help with sustain and damage.

If a assassin is on your adc like a Zed just ulted him, put your e down as soon as possible on the assassin, it will not only save your adc from dying to his ult, but it will also stop the enemy if you time it right.

Do not heal your teammates if they will reach 100% health, chances are you are wasting your health. Your healing still takes 10% of your health even if you heal them for more then enough for 100%.

YOUR ULT IS GLOBAL!!!! You have no idea how often I see Soraka not use there ult to save teammates. Being someone that is mostly a cleric or healer in games such as world of warcraft (don't play anymore the constant paying make me broke) and lotro, I am used to constantly micromanaging other peoples health bar, so I am used to it. I can see how Soraka players not do that because they are not used to it, but it tilts me when I see a Soraka have her ult, but I am playing Fiora and just need that extra bit to get a kill, but I die because that Darius just ulted me and now I am dead. Map awareness and health management is the key to Soraka

Going back to the ult. Don't waste your ult on someone if they don't need it. What tilts me the most is someone almost dying and I ult them to try to save them, but then after I heal them they go in and die. How does this effect you? Well think of it like this, you just get your ult at level 6, then Fiora and Riven are fighting, Riven uses her ult and uses that air slash on your Fiora that's about to kill her, but then you ult and save your Fiora, but then she goes right after the Riventhinking she can kill her, but then she gets ganked and dies. Right after that you see your mid laner dying and if you had your ult you could of saved him. Now because you used your ult its on cooldown for a bit, that means you can't help your teammates (you yourself in some cases) from dying.

Yes we are continuing with our ult, got a problem? Well to bad. Before you ult someone who is low health, try to position yourself in a safe spot and see what the situation is before you ult them. You don't want to try to ult to save someone if it is impossible to save them, don't do it, it will be wasted. To help this, I bought a cheapish mouse on amazon that has a few buttons on the side, why is this relevant? Well in the options there are some options to snap your camera to the person assigned to that button, say person 1 in the options is the top laner and person 2 is the jungler. Well I can now quickly snap my camera on them when I see they are low health instead of trying to find where they are on the minimap. This helps a lot in a game like this. If I remember correctly the buttons are already set to F1 F2 and so on.

Soraka is a tilting machine if you play her right. A Soraka can easily make fights feel unfair if she is alive. There are so many times when someone on the enemy team was doing good, but then I show up and heal whoever is getting attacked by them and end up tilting them and make them play worse and worse. Yes half those times they were Riven players.

With the skills I always max my w first, I seen some people max there q first and then their w because if you hit someone with your q and then heal a ally you apply the buff that your q gives you (health over time and a speed boost) to your ally, and more levels in q the more health you two get, however there are downsides, such as you need to be able to land your q on a enemy to get the healing, and not only is there a cast time on your q, there is also travel time and a marker saying where the q is going to land, so good luck trying to land that on a Vayne who can barrel roll out of it. There are also more reasons why you should max your w first, such as the cooldown on your w, its ridiculous its about 7-8 seconds without cd at level 1 and each levels in your w makes it a lot shorter. Depending on what the enemy team has and who your adc is you should max either your q or e second. If you have a adc who can stun a enemy like a Vayne who can stun a enemy to the wall, or if your enemy team has a assassin or someone who has to jump on your adc to do damage then you should max e second, however if you want that healing potential and feel relatively good about the matchup then go for your q

There have actually be a bunch of summoner spells that I used while experimenting with Soraka, I for awhile used to actually bring Teleport on her, yes I got a bunch of people asking for me to bring exhaust, however I didn't and ended up saving them during the middle of a game with a tp to heal them. And also to scare the enemy team, think about it, if you proc tp on ward next to a enemy and your ally fighting, they might get scared and run away, letting the other guy to hit them in the back and if you feel like the ally isn't going to need your help then stop your tp, its like playing Shaco, mind games was the key. I also brought Heal and made it a double Heal bot lane, that also has saved my laner and other people as well, my reason for that was because the summoner Heal is a larger range then the w, so as soon as someone in trouble got low on health and I couldn't reach them in time, I would hit my heal on them get a speed boost and healing the person fighting, maybe letting them live another hit and if they lived then I would be able to heal them which turns the battle. If you are reading this guide and if there is anything that you will listen to, listen to this, don't be afraid to experiment with items or summoner spells, just don't do it in ranked, only do that off meta stuff like I mostly bring heal in ranked because I feel good with bringing it, get some practice in normals then bring it to ranked if it works.

Pros
She is a healer
In early elos she isn't focused on
You have a global heal
Can fit in any team
Your basic attacks actually do quite a bit in the early game as well as your q

Cons
Is squishy
Can't fight
Is focused in higher elos
Has to rely on your team
Your heals take your own health
Your early game sucks
You can save literally everyone on the team at once with a ult and redemption and be the reason why that yi got his pentakill and you still won't get any respect (yes that happened to me months ago and I am still salty over it)
In the early game your adc seems to go all in because they think you can heal all the damage at level 1
Needs items before you really become a healing machine
Before you get more items you are fairly mana hungry especially if you spam your e.