Boards›Gameplay

PSA to all the new Soraka players

Quantum Weeb··7 votes·1,368 views

Hi, I've been spamming PBE Soraka over the last patch, and I'd like to help you with some of the most common mistakes.

What shouldn't you do?

  • DO NOT build health

Your health costs are % based, but your heals (including self heal) is flat. Seeing the problem? By building health, you are making your self-heals worth less, and your allied heals cost more.

  • DO NOT try to trade at level 1

Your level 1 is extremely weak. Try to avoid trading at level if at all possible. Take W if you expect to fight, Q if you don't.

  • DO NOT spam your Q from max distance

Its travel time is dependent on distance, you will end up wasting mana and putting yourself in a bad spot for your enemy to easily sidestep it. The only exception is if you see one of your lane opponents not even trying to dodge your Q, in which case spam it on them and collect freelo.

  • DO NOT spam your E

It is a very situational tool, however a very useful one. You should never be spamming it, as the silence and root can win an engage, secure a kill or stop a jungler from mauling on you.

  • DO NOT underthink or overthink your ult

If you only use ult for your lane or where you are right now, you will be wasting immense global map pressure with it. On the other hand, if you're constantly moving your camera away from your lane to watch other lanes, you may find yourself in a bad spot.

What should you do?

  • DO build resistances (armour and magic resist)

This will make you tankier without actually increasing your healing costs, and it will actually make your Q heal stronger (in terms of effective health.)

  • DO trade at level 2

You have an insanely strong power spike once you have both Q and W, use the opportunity to trade.

  • DO save Q for easy hits during trades

The travel time will be nearly instant, and you can heal back the health you lost over the trade. If you do it well, you'll be able to build a zone of control, since you can trade while losing very little health.

  • DO plan ahead to use your E

Since the skill is extremely finicky, you usually don't have enough time to use it to its full ability right when you need it. Plan when nothing is happening. If a jungler where to come in right now or a a hook were to land on someone, when and where should you be placing your E?

  • DO find the right balance for your ult

Make sure you are aware of the global map pressure you have, but you shouldn't be constantly moving your camera out of lane. One of the thing you will have to get good at is using teammate portraits to look at their health, and using the minimap to figure out what is happening without moving your camera. Above all, remember that winning bot lane is more important than top or mid. If you have to choose, always use ult to save your own lane.

Add your own, and I will update the OP!

15 Comments

Marthian1 votes

Any itemization/rune/mastery recommendations as well to make to new soraka players?

Kynami4 votes

A couple HP/5 quints and 3/3 Perseverance from the defense mastery tree goes a long ways early game because it doubles your natural regen rate. Some AD from runes along with a little armor pen makes that occasional banana you can sneak in hurt just a little more while also slightly increasing your damage to towers.

However do not use HP/5 seals, you still need armor and HP/5 runes fall off in effectiveness like a brick past lane phase. HP/5 quints share the same odd little niche as armor quints in being more than four times effective as a single seal of the same property.

With that said, Perseverance is useful throughout the entire match given that it scales with your max HP. The problem with it is that early game on a support who literally does not want to build health is that its contribution to your survival is small, thus the pair of HP/5 quints early game to enhance your survivability. As an example, for an almost dead level 3 Soraka Perseverance would be roughly 5 HP/5 while the same Soraka only down 100 health would only benefit from an extra 1 HP/5. The pair of quints is worth 5.4 HP/5 at all times, or in other words a "free" health pot every couple minutes for lane phase.

As far defensive items goes, your Q and W between them have some very low CD times meaning you can stack a Tear into a Seraph. A 500+ health shield that can be deployed during a team fight and doesn't raise your actual health (and thus sacrifice costs) is glorious. In the same vein a Frozen Heart proves quite useful, especially feeding into a Seraph's shield extra MP to make it larger and resists to make it more effective.

As an extra tidbit... Soraka's new E combos hilariously well with J4's Cataclysm. (Remember that being silenced or rooted blocks opponents from flashing or dashing away.)

Marthian1 votes

Never thought of using Tear. I will have to try this next time.

Edit: Soraka's E has a ton of synergy with a variety of champions. Orianna and Malphite is another notable example.

MrSc0tty1 votes

Any itemization/rune/mastery recommendations as well to make to new soraka players?

Soraka is the closest thing to an AP carry support that exists, second I suppose to Lulu. Unlike her old incarnation, or champs like Nami, she actually has sizeable ratios and reasons to want AP.

I build (after standard support items) Morellonomicon/Athenes, Zhonyas, and I try to stretch towards a Dcap. Basically, thanks to your Ult and Self heal on Q, each point of AP is an "effective" 2 points of HP. A zhonyas is almost as effective in terms of protection as a Sunfire for Soraka, AND it gives you zhonyas active for protection and it makes you heal your allies like a televangelist on a pledge drive.

Rinky Dinky1 votes

With new Soraka, i've become unsure of whether or not to buy sightstone. The amount of health it gives makes your heals less effective, yet it is a core supp item. Thoughts?

12tales3 votes

Vision control is worth a fuck ton more than than tiny changes in the relative power of a support's heal.

Rinky Dinky1 votes

Okay. thanks for the info. I was thinking that it would be worth it, but I just wanted to make sure. I've seen alot of tank raka's tho lately, gives me a good laugh when they heal someone and lose 300+ hp

Kynami3 votes

Sightstone is only 150 HP, that only tacks an extra 15 HP onto your W costs. That isn't like most tank items that would be tacking on an extra ~50 per cast. (Or extra 100 in the case of a Warmog...) Now the argument could be made that you'd never want to upgrade to the Ruby Sightstone though.

Not to mention your recovery via Q shots landing on champions scales on missing health so you will often be getting 50% of your AP value back on top of the flat amount from the passive dependent on W rank. Thus something like Rylai's that adds 40 HP cost to your W is also adding another 40-80 potential healing from Q shots landing.

You are only penalized for building straight tank items that grant health and resistances.

Quantum Weeb1 votes

Wow, lots of good stuff here. Thanks to everyone contributing, even I managed to learn a thing or two :)

kitcat3001 votes

Never played Soraka before the rework, so I don't know it this was already true then, but it seems many adc plays TOO passively with Soraka. Since I'm a dedicated healer, I cant help unless they being damaged/focused.

IMO, half the issue is that to many don't know how to lane with her either.

My tip: If your the adc, try to trade a little bit between the enemy adc when it feels appropriate. So long as the pressure is off me, my heal will out scale any damage you receive.

Think of it this way. Instead of dealing 500 damage to you, they only deal 100 damage "indirectly" to me.

Chromatic Eagle1 votes

I heard someone suggest spirit visage as an item. If you build ardent censer, does Soraka's ult buff the whole team with attack speed?

Quantum Weeb1 votes

Spirit visage is a great item on her, although quite expensive. I usually get it further towards the end of the game, due to it working better once you have ranks into Q and W.

As for Ardent Censer, it does indeed. Late-game, you can have it up on 2 people at the same time with your W alone, making it a nice utility item.

Chromatic Eagle1 votes

So would her build be coin, sightstone, boots, visage, and either censer, mikael's, or zhonyas?

Quantum Weeb1 votes

Guide: http://www.lolking.net/guides/308138

It's a work in progress, but the build is there.

Soleka1 votes

Also Do be careful with your Q, it's a lot stronger then you think. So when your in the midst of battle healing your allies and your trying to get that little bit of health back...well... I had a Jinx yell at me mid game for an inadvertent triple kill on my part.

So play a little bit of Psychology with your Q. Your Q can be easy to dodge, but you can force a dodge that causes them to overextend, or put them perfectly in a position for your ADC to kill. Don't forget your Q is also a wonderful escape mechanism. The little bit of Zig they have to do to get around it can be the difference between survival and death.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by Quantum Weeb

Riot doesn't understand that Dynamic Q will be frustrating even if it's balanced
Gameplay56 comments
191
votes
PSA: If you're calling support in chat, say "supp" instead of "sup"
Tips & Tricks41 comments
72
votes
Hey Riot, could we hear about some more scrapped abilities?
Gameplay33 comments
55
votes
Stopping flaming your Blitz/Thresh when they miss a near impossible hook
Gameplay33 comments
49
votes
If you think that having Soraka on your team means you can play like an idiot
Memes & Games34 comments
28
votes
Quinn's Vault is bugged
Report a Bug16 comments
23
votes