Help with Soraka

I start coin, back for sight stone, boots, and a few health pots (level 4). Next back switch to frostfang (normally level 6) and build a queens because slowing helps so much. But I also have 3 people I normally support for and they know that is my common set up. The coin will help me get gold and keep life till I can get more ap (Scaling runes) to keep them and my team alive. If you figure a less... gold waste set up let me know.

You can choose either - it depends what you're building it into. If you're building it into wards - later in the game Frostqueens in better.. Coin you pretty much want to sell at some point on Raka and just build an SS

I personally always use the coin, health return helps me heal others. The gold is there as well, if you accidentally kill a creep score you are not time punished until you get more passive out of the coin like the item for frost queen.

I feel team wide movement speed is also good for engaging or disengaging it adds a whole other aspect of utility to her, the spooky ghosts are cool to slow down but it's a question you need to ask yourself.

Would an item effecting 2 people over an item effecting up to 5 people be more situationally viable, if you're ahead I think frost queen is fine. If you're behind the movement speed of the coin could avoid an entire team fight by moving your men to safety in order to farm and stall for longer matches.

I prefer poking. Poking and poking and poking.

So I tend to run the frosty line of support items since they do extra damage when you hit the enemy with an ability or autoattack.

I think the real discussion are which of the 2 starting items you should be using.

Ancient Coin and Spellthief's edge are for 2 different play styles in the laning phase: the coin for passive style and the spellthief for more aggressive poke. If you use these 2 items for their 2 respective playstyles, you will have adequate gold. I have tried both and 9/10 matches I will alwasy be able to buy sightstone immediately on my first back. The one thing that would not work so well is playing passive with a spellthief.

I personally use the coin because you can still poke and zone the enemy if you want and you get health back from the passive along with the gold giving you more sustain and a longer time in lane to keep healing your ADC.

Getting into late game, I've found the Talisman of Ascension more useful for the movement speed GAIN when I need to run toward my teammates to heal them or to quickly disengage when I've healed so much that I'm too low and need to run (along with all my nearby teammates).

This seems more beneficial than the enemy movement slow that you get with the ghosts. The good thing about the ghosts are that they can be used as wards when you dont know where the enemies are, which could be good when you are behind and have low map visibility.
However, with Blue wards, sightstone, and Soraka's Q giving brief ranged visibility over walls and in brush, you can do without the ghosts.

If we wanna talk about AP, I would take Ardent Censer (with the Talisman of Ascension) instead of FQC because its got great effects and is only 10AP below FQC.

Why do people even bother with gold income items? bandit takes care of you, they are a waste IMO into a for later, then start on your with some base into picking up a and a can greatly help with healing sustain, and if you make it full, finish with a

the only reason for the & is because of her recent changes, previously I would have replaced both of those with & for beefier heals/return

It entirely depends on what you're facing in lane and how you plan on playing.

Take Ancient Coin if...

• You intend to max W first
• You wish to avoid interactions with the enemy laners whenever possible
• You're concerned about a strong engage opponent (Blitzcrank, Thresh, etc.)
• You're not confident in your ability to reliably land Starcall

Take Spellthief's Edge if...

• You know you can reliably and safely land Starcall
• You're facing a lane with weak sustain that you want to poke out
• You plan on maxing Q or E first and using W to transfer the buff for sustain

I typically take coin most of the time, with FQC as a choice against lanes with defensive or short-range tank supports like Braum or Leona.