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Small tips when playing as Soraka support

5000000000000000·8/30/2015, 4:23:30 AM·2 votes·2,390 views

Soraka is a great healer, but not great at anything else. You can abuse this, and I'm gonna tell you how to abuse this.

Almost always start heal first. Your Q does little damage without a lot of ranks into it, and it doesn't even heal you at level 1. Even if some sort of invade happens, level 1 heal will do more for your team than AoE silence or unreliable slow. Start with ancient coin. It gives you amazing health/mana sustain, and it builds into Talisman of Ascension, which is arguably the best of the three gold income upgrades.

Ask your teammate to start Long Sword+3 pot. You can give your ADC enough sustain, so your ADC doesn't need to waste gold on an item that doesn't build into anything. This works especially better if the ADC is rushing an item that builds out of Long Sword (such as Bloodthirster or Blade of the Ruined King).

Heal your jungler during first clear. This way you can make use of the sustain portion of the item starting level 1.

Take a camp with your ADC. Make the ADC tank it, but since you're Soraka you can just heal them. No need to juggle aggro.

Roam mid. You have no pressure to make any plays happen. Just heal your midlaner and go back to your lane. Quick and easy. Only do this when you think you're pretty safe, though. Ward dragon on the way.

Build AP, and don't build Warmog's. The health sustain is good, but if you build Warmog's you'll do more damage to yourself to heal your allies. You can kinda ignore the health cost with Warmog's, but know that your heals won't do much. It can be viable against a very poke-heavy comp, but otherwise it will suck in teamfights.

18 Comments

Only Play Darius9/3/2015, 4:07:54 AM2 votes

{quoted}

Take a camp with your ADC. Make the ADC tank it, but since you're Soraka you can just heal them. No need to juggle aggro.

I love how people just say "start a camp" and have zero consideration for the jungler on that team. As a support player you should know how aggravating it is to be treated as the team's bitch and expectations of you to feed someone else so they can take all the glory. Well that's exactly how junglers feel and they usually don't appreciate poaching.

Nick Valentine8/30/2015, 6:52:19 PM1 votes

item 2053 This is the secret op Soraka lane item

item 3512 Secret upgrade

I swear this is the BEST item for her. The stats are so good.

iluvalar9/3/2015, 3:57:54 AM1 votes

I disagree with several things you said. First you need starcall first even if it's worst. Here is how it break down :

1- I starcall the first minion waves as soon as I see it. You don't. i know you have heal now, you're doomed. 2- If by any chance your adc react fast enough and try to wave clear faster then my adc, I starcall again the minion wave aiming for him at the same time. Otherwise I don't to make sure the wave stay in the middle of the lane when I hit the level 2 first. 3- I step forward, i drink a red pot and I heal the minion who would give you the level 2. 4- You're now in trouble, 4-A if your adc try to get to level 2 over me, i just starcall him and use the health from the potion to heal the minion. Won't happen. 4-B If he turn over me. Well i'm level 2 and he is 1. I have an epic early game with hp5 runes and he is an adc so he's meant for late game powerspike... Won't end well for him 4-C Meanwhile all you can do is to heal my starcalls on him while my ADC, who is also level 2, take a huge chunk of your hp bar. 5- By the time you realize that you wont get to level 2 at all (if only you could starcall the minion there that i just healed), your lane is down to half health and half mana due to a rigged fight at level 2 vs 1 and you gonna be in a tough position (losing 1-2 cs per wave) until both of you back to base to refresh. But you are still level 1 so good luck with that recall, we'll be 3 before you make it back.

Here i made a raka vs raka scenario so you can see both side of the situation. But any support with any capacity to influence the minion wave could force you into the same bad early game.

For the start item, since the mastery changes, i really prefer starting with item 1027 . Grants 3 extra starcall and now 1 extra starcall per 2 minutes due to meditation. But that's just me. item 3301 isnt a bad start.

building item 3083 is extremely powerful, but as always you need a base AP first to not get drown into hp cost while you build it. That's where so many people fail, they try to upgrade their gp10 build a sightstone and then rush the warmog. NO!! this wont work. You need item 3027 into into item 3065 . In that order. Yes it's an extremely expensive core build for a support but it well worth it. The powerspike is just insane.

Hope it help someone...

iluvalar9/3/2015, 2:57:41 PM1 votes

There is several things wrong in your post. First gromp/krugs on the bot side is the typical starting camp for the junglers. You are expected to help HIM reach level 2 this way. The strategy clearly worth a few CS. No questionning there even doe good adcs and a bit of timing allows them to cs fine.

Tje inspiration mastery got buffed recently, the lines are a bit more fuzzy, but you also generate 30% more exp if you stay in exp range. So juggling the exp gain this way with your adc is quite impossible on short term. You'd need to leave your adc exposed for several minutes to have the slighest positive impact. Meanwhile you're just weaker.

I have excellent early game hp sustain thx to flat hp5 runes, starting with item 1027 gives a lot more mana and mana regen then the coin. You should do the maths with the gp10 items, it takes at best 10 minutes to repay for item 3301 and item 3069 takes 40 minutes. I'm not saying they are bad items if you make good use of the stats they are ok. But claiming that they help to build the remaining of your build is quite a stretch.

The hp of the roa is used to trigger the item 3083 and the ap cancel the negative effect up to that point. After the completion of the warmog, your regen is in % hp and even higher then the cost of the heals so the negative effect of hp on ROA is gone.

I'm not stopping you to build a item 2049 if you want. But it hurt your heals a ton if it's rushed. Buy the time it's reasonable to buy it, item 3361 is avalaible which grant more wards.

I don't need a pentakill to end my build, I reach it at level 15 with the 2 first ruby from item 3065 to reach 3k. I'm aware it's a bit late in game, but it is totally in the bound of a standard game. We are talkiing about 700hp5 heals with NO cost and the potential to scale it with the 3 next items. As a comparition, it's way bigger then a Nasus dmg output even he farmed in an empty lane all that long.

You are allowed to disagree, i'm not agressive i'm enjoying this chat actualy.