I thought Riot didn't want her to build tanky, esp health. In fact I clearly remember them saying something about how soraka being a tank was bad for the game.
Oh right, her new W kills her so she has to build health even if the game punishes her for it. Silly common sense, always interfering with riot's design intentions.
Fluppets14 votesThose stats are deceiving: alot of times people buy a certain item because they are winning, rather than winning because they bought it.
StoryDuck1 votesToo True. I main Soraka and the only time I have bought Warmogs was when we were ahead by a bunch. I've also bought a lot of other odd items once winning to see how they go. Warmogs itself (while nice) doesn't really add a lot to Soraka. I keep her health low on purpose as it makes potions more effective and her Q can more easily restore her health. Warmogs can help to reduce the chance to get burst down but if you are that far ahead get a Zhonya's instead for the AP to heal more and the stasis will save you far more then a bit of extra regen.
Linna Excel1 votesWhy not buy it while behind so you can survive damage better?
StoryDuck1 votesSurviving damage will be the least of your worries if you are behind because if people on your team, like your ADC, fall behind then they are in danger of being burst down before you can heal them. Soraka has a hard time being valuable if your carries are getting burst down in under 1 second. In this event getting 
should become priority so you can help get lanes pushed out to help buy time for your team and you provide extra defense to your allies so they can survive instant death allowing a moment for you to heal them and hopefully save them.
Linna Excel1 votesI agree it can be deceiving, but I look at it as one of three things.
Fluppets1 votesFor 3. it is actually the best item to buy when you're ahead and want some general tankyness. All you need is a little more time to kill the enemy :)
Vistha Kai9 votesI think it's because of how much regen Warmog gives.
Phoenix Kotori 3 votes[{quoted}](name=Vistha Kai,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=gJBJlzqE,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-07-28T17:29:36.391+0000)
I think it's because of how much regen Warmog gives.
Especially out of combat
Origami Kaiju2 votesYeah, and healing isn't considered "in combat" so it wont disable the passive.
Duke Anax1 votesI think healing is actually considered "in combat", but Warmogs doesn't care about combat, only about taking damage.
Origami Kaiju1 votesIn regards to items such as 
Healing is not considered in combat.
Linna Excel1 votesI actually think this is the big reason people buy it. If you are low, you can't self heal unless there's an enemy around to Q. This prevents her from having to return to base as much as she would without it. If you are in combat and the other team is good at dodging, you might get an extra heal or three off depending on how the teams are interacting.
GroundRuleDouble7 votesHer heal costs a percentage of health, so the more health you build, the more health it costs. Therefore, building a ton of HP on Soraka isn't as beneficial as resistances. If she has 1000 health, her heal will cost 100 health. If she has 2000 health, her heal will cost 200 health.
The exception to this rule is Warmogs. This is solely because of the passive of the item that regenerates health. If you were building other pure health items, it would be wrong. Warmogs, however, has great synergy with her.
YumaS2Astral2 votesHer heal costs a percentage of health, so the more health you build, the more health it costs. Therefore, building a ton of HP on Soraka isn't as beneficial as resistances. If she has 1000 health, her heal will cost 100 health. If she has 2000 health, her heal will cost 200 health.
The exception to this rule is Warmogs. This is solely because of the passive of the item that regenerates health. If you were building other pure health items, it would be wrong. Warmogs, however, has great synergy with her.
In that situation, wouldn't better to buy a Spirit Visage? Sure, the health regen can't be compared, but... Spirit Visage still gives a great amount of health regeneration. But the main reason to take it would be because not only it lets Soraka heal more when she hits Starcall, but it also makes Astral Infusion heal her teammates for more, especially if Soraka focuses on building some AP after that. Also, Spirit Visage has synergy with other health regeneration items, such as Talisman of Ascension.
GroundRuleDouble2 votesIt doesn't increase the heal of her Astral Infusion to anyone but herself. There is an argument for Spirit Visage for the increase health regen on Starcall and the Magic Resistance, but it's not enough to outweigh the health regen on Warmogs. If you get both, that's potentially okay, but overall, there are better items than Visage. The health regen from Starcall isn't enough to rely on, so you're better off building AP or straight resistances (in addition to Warmogs).
Sire Hippington1 votesthe main reason you get warmongs is so you don't rely on hitting starcall for selfheal, and SV only increases healing you recive, not the healing you give.
Linna Excel1 votesHer heal costs a percentage of health, so the more health you build, the more health it costs. Therefore, building a ton of HP on Soraka isn't as beneficial as resistances.
Your reasoning has one error from a purely logical sense. Who's to say I'm healing my teammates with my W? What if I just sit on that health knowing someone is probably going to dive me and hoping to catch me low after I pressed W a few times?
I'm going to be honest, when I'm playing soraka, I hate pressing W.
GroundRuleDouble1 votesThen don't play Raka. Most Sorakas are heal bots. And I'm not saying don't build defensive. Resistances and health regen are very good on Soraka.
DJ Di06 votesNo one builds her as a full on tank, they build her with Health Regen 
I find that going AP is a much better use of her stats, though. You heal yourself and allies for a lot more; you just have to be more careful with positioning.
StoryDuck1 votesYep, Soraka is all about positioning. The more AP you have the more useful you are.
Linna Excel2 votesYes, I understand that. However at the moment I'm not a fan of health regeneration in the game. It's either too weak or too strong.
Since we are talking about soraka, she's got a base regen of 11 @18 and 1855 health. So one W will cost you 185 health. Without items or hitting Qs, it'll take her 18 seconds to recover from just one attempt to heal an ally. Note that this is pretty close to her old Heal's base cooldown. That's a pretty long time. If you press W more than twice and there's no enemy champs around to Q, it's better to just base.
I think that a healer needing to build health recovery items to do her job is just absurd and why I hate the rework.
And yes, I find her more useful as AP artillery than a healer at this point. Build AP and mana regen and spam your Qs to zone out or soften up the other team. That said, I don't think she does enough damage in that role as her ratios are weak if you ask me.
CrazedPorcupine1 votesYou've obviously never played against an AP soraka in ARAM before where she builds Full AP. Her Q damage is bonkers.
Linna Excel1 votesI've played and played against soraka in ARAM. That map is a little different than SR.
On that map at least, it is better to go AP with her.
Lost R2 votesIt's not that she should build health (though it would help her generally survive getting blasted), but rather health REGEN. People are buying Warmog more for the huge regen it gives (though I'd sooner buy Visage, myself, as it will boost the heal on her Q, which is much more reliable than passive regen).
GroundRuleDouble1 votesYou get more from the passive of Warmogs than you would from relying on Starcall for regen.
Linna Excel1 votesSituationally, this is correct. If you can regularly spam your Q and hit 2 champs, starcall is better while you have mana. Since I'm talking about mana, Soraka has one of the worst mana burn rates in the game. This is another thing I hate about her rework.
Sir Yamazuki1 votesI'm confused, when did Riot state they didn't want her building tank, I thought they wanted her to from what I read ages ago... She would be a threat through heals rather than damage or a ton of cc, so she would -need- to be focused, which that fact alone encourages a Soraka to build tanky so she doesn't die the moment someone looks at her.
Origami Kaiju1 votesThey don't want her to be tanky and un-killable like pre-rework AP-tank raka. You couldn't focus her because she could just heal herself and live forever (while shredding your mr with Starcall), and you couldn't focus her allies because she could just heal them instead. It was a lose/lose for her opponents.
That's why they implemented the %hp cost on W, to try to gate Soraka's sustain in a way while also opening a window of counterplay for opponents to kill Raka.
They always encouraged building armor and mr though, just not health.
Linna Excel1 votesBefore she was nerfed and reworked, she was able to be a tanky battlemage. Riot didn't like that because her strength back then was drawing out fights to the point she and her team had the advantage. It was more or less a healthy playstyle back before they linked her starcall to her heal. What happen though was they screwed with her, and she became toxic because of it. Instead of realizing they made a mistake and roll it back, they centered her playstyle around the mistake they made and tried their best to punish her for building armor at all.
For a time during the rework (on PBE I think), she actually lost a percentage of the armor that she bought in addition to losing health when healing.
I really miss the old soraka.
Fashion Mage1 votesAs a huge fan of healers, even I think that healers being tanky is a bad thing and it's pretty lame to play against. So if she really can get away with building tanky, then something should be done about that.
Although, you're not taking into account the popularity percentage of Warmog's as well as other factors, such as when in the game is bought. The low popularity and high win rate could imply that the item is bought at a point in the game where the match is essentially already won.
Linna Excel1 votesAs a huge fan of healers, even I think that healers being tanky is a bad thing and it's pretty lame to play against. So if she really can get away with building tanky, then something should be done about that.
Old soraka was a healer who was a multirole champ. Back in S3 she was a viable but niche mid/top if you were happy with a farm lane. At one point you could actually jungle with her as well and go for the mobile ambulance role.
Her old W used to have an armor buff as well as the big heal but it had a long CD. What riot screwed up was they made her Q lower the CD of her W, meaning she could spam damage that shred MR and that let her heal up more often. What people figured out after riot screwed her up was that they could build her mostly tanky and still have her do good enough AoE damage while healing the team. She wasn't toxic before her rework.
It was basically the solution to one problem turned into another problem. The rework was a solution to the new problem but it created its own problem. Not a lot of people like hurting themselves to heal others, which is why I moved on to sona after being a soraka main since I started playing. Sona has none of the bitterness, memories, or sheer stupidity in design mixed with dev intentions that failed that soraka has for me.
Stellafreyja1 votesI'd get it on Soraka because of the health regen. It's helpful when getting away from a teamfight because then you can just regen health instead of depending on landing a Starcall. I find it helpful.
Linna Excel1 votesIt is helpful. Unfortunately, it's the exact opposite of what riot wanted on her.
Titanium701 votesMaybe a Soraka with enough money to buy warmogs is always ahead?
Vayne with IE has 65% Winrate = Vayne IE rush OP? NO! Ofc not. Other: Ahri with Mejais has 75% Winrate! Riven with GA has 70%...
BTW: TankSoraka is always better than AP or CD - simple logic, before killing anything you have to kill Soraka!
Linna Excel1 votesWarmogs has a very easy build path. The most expensive single thing is upgrading your ruby to a belt.
Meep Man1 votesProbably because out of combat Warmog's regenerates 3% of her max health every 5 seconds, meaning in 16.777 seconds or so she gets a W cast.