[Champion] Soraka, The Banana Princess

Sonnington

United States1107 Posts

April 11 2015 02:06 GMT

Soraka, The Banana Princess

I picked up Soraka this season and I've been basically dumpstering almost every lane in high gold. Despite popular belief she's in a really strong place right now with the tank meta. Mostly because I play her as a lane bully. Part of her strength is how underrated and underplayed she is. Also MAX STARCALL FIRST GUYS! THIS IS HOW YOU WIN LANE!

Summoner Skills

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Soraka gains 70% movement speed when moving towards allied champions below 40% of their maximum health who are outside of Astral Infusion.png Astral Infusion's range.

She becomes speed racer when her allies are low. The range for her passive is about as far as tier 2 tower is from tier 1. It's an awesome skill which allows you to heal an ally in trouble. Sometimes it helps Soraka escape a bad situation by running towards a low hp ally. Later bitches!

+ Show Spoiler [stats] +

Soraka calls down a star which lands after a 0.25 - 1 second delay depending upon the target's distance from Soraka, dealing magic damage to all enemies it hits.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 70 / 110 / 150 / 190 / 230 (+ 35% AP)
Enemies standing in the center take 50% increased damage and are Slow icon slowed for 2 seconds.
MAX MAGIC DAMAGE: 105 / 165 / 225 / 285 / 345 (+ 52.5% AP)
SLOW: 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50%

MAX THIS FIRST! Skill this first.

If you're trying to decide whether or not to max Q or heal first. Ask yourself these questions: 'Am I a complete pussy? Do I want to lose this lane at worst and break even at best?' or 'Am I a hot and sexy Unicorn goddess? Do I want to bully this lane and make them respect the banana?' If you're a pussy then by all means level heal first. Otherwise level Starcall first. Starcall has a huge AOE and does quite respectable poke damage on the edges. If you hit an enemy dead center it does rather high poke damage. This ability works a bit like Nami's Ebb and Flow. Once you put a point into W, Starcall will heal you for every enemy hit. This is great for keeping your hp up in lane and team fights. This skill also makes hitting level 2 first rather easy. Her W also makes for really excellent waveclear. Perhaps it's not the most important trait a support can have. I personally don't trust my laners to understand wave management and it's nice being able to nuke an entire wave in 10 seconds or less as a support. Another thing it does is provide vision in the FOW and is good for checking brushes before warding.

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PASSIVE: Each enemy champion hit by Starcall.png Starcall heals Soraka, increased by 1% for every 1% of her missing health.
HEAL: 25 / 35 / 45 / 55 / 65 (+ 40% AP)
MAXIMUM HEAL: 50 / 70 / 90 / 110 / 130 (+ 80% AP)
ACTIVE: Soraka blesses a friendly unit, restoring its health. Astral Infusion cannot be self-cast, nor can it be cast if Soraka is below 5% of her maximum health.
HEAL: 120 / 150 / 180 / 210 / 240 (+ 60% AP)

MAX THIS SECOND! Skill this second.

This is the definition of an altruistic skill. Ayn Rand would be mortified to see it. You heal your allies in exchange for 10% of your max hp and low amounts of a mana. This is what cements Soraka as a backliner and makes her positioning in team fights very important. If you get beat up before a team fight it'll make it much harder for your team to win. It's worth noting leveling this skill will also increase the self healing on your Starcall.

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ACTIVE: Soraka creates a zone at a target location for 1.5 seconds, dealing magic damage to all enemy champions standing inside as it is cast. All enemy champions inside the zone are Silence icon silenced as long as they remain on it.
INITIAL MAGIC DAMAGE: 70 / 110 / 150 / 190 / 230 (+ 40% AP)
At the end of the zone's duration, all enemy champions inside take the same magic damage and are briefly Root icon rooted.
TOTAL MAGIC DAMAGE: 140 / 220 / 300 / 380 / 460 (+ 80% AP)
ROOT DURATION: 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2

MAX THIS THIRD! Skill this third.

Yeah baby! AOE, ground targetted, instant cast, silence that lasts 1.5 seconds and snares all enemies at the end of the duration. This is the skill that really got me interested in Soraka. You can obviously use it to break channels like Katarina, Malz, or Warwick ults. But it can do SO much more. Use it to zone out enemy jungles who want to smite steal; although the silence won't stop the casting of smite. Use it as secondary, risky, undodgeable harassment in lane. Use it to zone enemies off of turrets during sieges. Counter turret dives by casting it on or around yourself as someone dives onto you. Stop enemies from flashing out of a Jarvan ult. Stop enemies from flashing, period. Use it to peel for your carry. Use it to kill steal from your carry.

Use the snare to help you escape. This is a bit tricky because of how far you need to lead the ability. The AOE is about 400-500 units in diameter. Considering champs will have between 325ms and 400ms on average, it's a safe bet to place the zone about one or two Teemos in front of them.

+ Show Spoiler [stats] +

ACTIVE: Soraka calls upon the stars, first removing Grievous Wounds icon Grievous Wounds and then restoring health to all allied champions on the field, including untargetable allies.
HEAL: 150 / 250 / 350 (+ 55% AP)
Wish's healing is increased by 50% on allied champions who are below 40% of their maximum health.
INCREASED HEAL: 225 / 375 / 525 (+ 82.5% AP)

Take a point whenever you can!

Soraka heals all allies on the map. Two things worth noting about this skill are the removal of grievous wounds before the heal takes place and the heal increases by 50% when Soraka or an ally drop below 40%hp. Pretty simple and straight forward. Use it to save allies in different lanes or to steal an assist. Don't ever feel bad about casting your ult to save one person in a team fight. It's almost always worth it.

Core Build

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These two items are core. These two items are so core. I can't stress this enough. Don't make me say it a third time. Both are for managing Soraka suicidal tendencies.
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1. Get Flask on your first back no questions asked. It's more important than wards. Worse comes to worse you and your adc take turns warding the river/tribrush with your trinket. You absolutely need that hp from flask and the sooner you get it the better.

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2. Mobility boots with homeguard because you're going to get low and you're going to need to back several times. Sometimes I skip over sightstone to get Mobis faster.

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Soraka is a god damn deviant bookworm. The more Fiendish Codexi you can afford the better. Her heals aren't massive like they used to be. They're rather small but come at a higher frequency. Building cdr is very important and allows her to spam her abilities. So basically any AP item that has cdr on it is good on Soraka: Morellonomicon, Crucible, Twin Shadows, Ardent Cencer, and Talisman of Ascension are all very good pickups for her.

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Talisman of Ascension is particularly good on Soraka because it gives her HP regen without increasing her max HP. While it also gives her and her team more of an escape/engage.

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There ain't nothin' funny about cash money. Spellthief's Edge is OP. Ok, maybe it's not OP, but it's a good item for any poke support and gives the most gold out of all the support gold generation items.

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Because you're a support. What do you expect?

High AP items like Ludens Echo, Zhonya's Hourglass, Deathcap, and Abyssal Sceptor are also good pickups. These are all acceptable items in their own right, but they shouldn't be prioritized above reaching max cdr.

Honorable mentions to Banner of Command, Frozen Heart and Iceborn Gauntlet. It's best if you can avoid purchasing these items because defensive stats and hp items aren't good on Soraka. If you absolutely have to, buy these items. The main reason is due to their passive and the cdr doesn't hurt.

Try not to buy these items:

Ancient Coin is for pussies. I'm sorry, but it's a pussy item. Sure, it makes sense to buy this to mitigate Soraka's health costs on W, but it won't help you pressure the lane. Flask and Homeguard/Mobi's should be more than enough to sustain your hp. In short it's an item for pussies. Every time I see a support buy it I think they don't know what they're doing and I'm going to try to stomp them in lane. After laning don't start building Talisman until you can afford Nomad's Medallion.

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Locket of Iron Solari sucks on Soraka. An item that increases her max hp hurts her because of her health cost W skill. I've tried going mass hp regen tank Soraka: Warmogs, Locket, Spirit Visage, etc. It sucks. She doesn't do any damage, she does lower healing than if she had bought hp items, and she still can't tank anything because she kills herself on every Astral Infuse.

Summoner Spells

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You take this every game.
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Ignite if you're confident.
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Exhuast if you're a scared, little, pussy, bitch.

Masteries

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The basic idea is dealing damages and poking the enemy early. While also avoiding masteries that increase your hp. You can make minor adjustments between Defense and Utility trees for preference sake. Or move the points from Arcane Blade and Archmage into Brute Force and Martial Mastery to beef up your banana damage. She has pretty high AP ratios though, One spell rotation has a 2.35 ap ratio at her lowest to 3.55 ap ratio at her highest. I also like Arcane Blade for applying Grievous Wounds with Morellos.

An arguement can be made that later tier offensive masteries are better on champs that build damage and have higher gold incomes, AKA carries. Which is a valid criticism. I value dealing 1 or 2 extra damage per spell/auto early game moreso than anything the Utility tree can offer. If I can create a 15 cs gold lead in the first 8-10 minutes. That's a bigger lead than all the gold generation masteries could have provided. Not to mention experience lead if I kick someone out of lane or if I hit the jackpot and get a kill or assist. I believe creating gold advantages by aggressive play is the most efficient way to play in solo queue. It's also something the vast majority of players don't expect a Soraka to do.

Runes

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This is just my standard page for AP champs. It's what works best for me. You can make a lot of changes to this for your personal playstyle. There's definitely valid arguments to be made for: movespeed, hybrid pen, hp regen per 5, or scaling cdr.

+ Show Spoiler [changelog] +

4-10-2015 - Created
4-11-2015 - Edit for clarity on Equinox. Edit on Starcall.

ticklishmusic

United States15977 Posts

April 11 2015 05:17 GMT

Nicely done guide, I agree with most of the points.

Exhaust is actually a pretty good spell. There's a cheese that I've been using in low Diamond. Basically, at level 1 you run into lane with your AD, drop exhaust then chain starcall on your opponent. The slow makes it easy to sweet spot the starcall, and the shred gives you some decent damage. If done correctly it will at least make them burn a flash and at best get you a kill-- on average you force them back.

You can either do this at lvl 1, or if you feel that their lvl 2 isn't strong (or as you said, you use q to push the lane and quick lvl 2). Take E, then exhaust and then E them to prevent escape and get a snare because they're slowed and Q as usual. The kill potential is higher on this one, but it's also a little more conditional.

krndandaman

Mozambique16569 Posts

April 11 2015 06:37 GMT

--- Nuked ---

GolemMadness

Canada11044 Posts

April 11 2015 09:43 GMT

I feel like you're really crippling your mid game by maxing Q first and going 21 in offense. You shouldn't need so much just to win lane; you should generally win lane just by being Soraka. I can't imagine team fights going very well if the other team is diving your carries and you have just 1 point in W.

nafta

Bulgaria18893 Posts

April 11 2015 12:20 GMT

On April 11 2015 15:37 krndandaman wrote:
hm i've been doing W max because it also increases the heal off your Q hits but I'll try Q max.

not sure about 21 in offense tho. I prefer most of the points into utility. Not a fan of 21 offense on any supports tbh.

but for the most part this guide is pretty gud. nice job!

How is the guide good when all it does is give a wrong way of playing a champion?

I know everyone loves dank memes and all but exhaust is better on soraka most of the time since you autowin long fights and the only way you can lose is to get bursted.

Prog

United Kingdom1470 Posts

April 11 2015 12:33 GMT

On April 11 2015 21:20 nafta wrote:
I know everyone loves dank memes and all but exhaust is better on soraka most of the time since you autowin long fights and the only way you can lose is to get bursted.

Which is also the reason why I'd recommend more defensive masteries and no scaling runes. The only thing that makes Soraka lose a lane is getting bursted early on and then snowballed from there, so you should prevent this from happening.

Ente

Germany1795 Posts

April 11 2015 15:12 GMT

I would go so far to say that ignite is bad on soraka, why would you take it? you cannot force the enemy to fight you, its their decision and you want to generally poke/push them out of the lane, killing is not very likely.
And as already said soraka only loses the lane by getting oneshotted which you can prevent by using exhaust - you will also very likely get ganked as a soraka because you want to push them into the tower so exhaust is even more useful

Sonnington

United States1107 Posts

April 11 2015 20:28 GMT

@ticklishmusic That's a really interesting all in tactic. At level 2 Soraka can deal a total of 245 base damage from abilities and 2.5 seconds of cc to prevent a flash. That's ridiculously strong.

I've never had a problem mid game with Soraka. Probably because I get my ADC so far ahead in lane. It's just ridiculously easy to bully the lane by leveling Q. Like I said, if you want to break even at best, lose lane at worst. Level W first. If you want to win lane and dominate, level Q first. Her Q has such a large AOE, does solid damage, and has a long range making it very safe to spam. To me, it seems like a waste of extreme bully potential to not level that first.

I'm sorry if you guys don't like my writing style. I've tried to make it as entertaining as possible while driving home the idea of aggressive play. There's something to be said for passive or safe play especially in the competitive scene. Considering solo queue is set up the way it is, passive play isn't I'm winning almost every game and absolutely dumpstering every lane, even with terrible ADCs. The playstyle I've developed for her is different than the norm and the results suggest it's a superior playstyle.

As far as masteries go, I'd actually like to start a new topic on the discussion of the utility tree on supports. In any event, defensive masteries are huge waste on her. Taking points in the flat hp regen has it's merits, but the rest suck. Soraka should not be in range to take significant damage in team fights. She also should, never build hp items so the defensive stats aren't don't get put to their full potential. The %hp healing is kinda crap since, again, she won't build hp items. Along with the tenacity/slow reduction/damage reduction spells not being very effecient on a champ who won't build any defensive items. Overall, I feel the defensive tree just isn't very strong right now for supports. Sure, throwing 9 points in it is great, but not so much past that.

Utility is a whole nother can of worms to get into. It suffices to say, utility encourages and rewards passive/safe gameplay by breaking a lane even and getting a gold advantage by passive income. Again, that's optimal in competitive play but I don't see it as good in solo queue. Like I've said earlier, I prefer to create advantages through aggressive gameplay rather than get a max of roughly 400-500 extra gold at 20 minutes in from utility masteries. I think it's a very complex and nuanced argument for 21 in offense or utility on supports that's best left to it's own dedicated thread.

Ente

Germany1795 Posts

April 11 2015 22:45 GMT

while I dont think I would agree with offensive masteries, if you go for them you should 100% skill spell weaving you are a ranged support - you WILL autoattack and it increases your dmg by a decent amount it will always be better than 2% ap most likely double edged sword will also be better than that talent you wont get that much ap anyway and even if you get 3-400 it will at most be 8 ap /point and thats just not worth it even with unrealistic high amounts of ap

Alaric

France45622 Posts

April 11 2015 23:00 GMT

#10

I go my standard 0-13-17 on Soraka in masteries. Maybe not the best, but whatever, I like being a bit beefy and all the summoner spells, mp5, additional gold utility.
Hybrid Pen/armour/MR/MS runepage like most supports too. Hybrid Pen is pretty great for early harass, and the MS is good to run around the map, but also try and stay in range of your annoying allies who don't realise your W has a short range (I've had a Sejuani I could keep alive Q past me right after I got in range, putting me in the frontline instead of holding the chokepoint with my help, and lost us a fight zz).

I think a second point in W at some point (usually 5, because I'm not skipping an ability as strong as her E, and I want my 2nd point in Q before my 2nd point in W) helps. It increases the base values for healing and Q sustain by almost 50% so it's a pretty valuable point.

Then in lane I play pretty aggressive because people at my level are bad at dodging Qs and I can usually bully them around, even 1v2 if I need too, using my spellthief + 2 health pots + 2 mana pots to spam Q at them, taking "bad" autoattack trades just to put Q's sustain to use. Obviously it's easier to use on Thresh than Leona, though...

ShaLLoW[baY]

Canada12499 Posts

April 12 2015 01:51 GMT

#11

You can still smite if you're silenced (in your description for her E you advocate using it to prevent smite steals)

Sonnington

United States1107 Posts

April 12 2015 02:54 GMT

#12

That's a good point. I update for clarity.

GolemMadness

Canada11044 Posts

April 12 2015 04:43 GMT

#13

Like I said, if you want to break even at best, lose lane at worst. Level W first.

Really, break even at best, with possibly the strongest 2v2 laning support in the game? This makes me think that you haven't tried maxing W first before.

Sonnington

United States1107 Posts

April 12 2015 17:25 GMT

#14

I don't mind the criticism, but could you provide more content or reasoning without making baseless accusations?

GolemMadness

Canada11044 Posts

April 12 2015 23:29 GMT

#15

You should practically always win lane with W max simply because you win every trade. All you need to do is stand behind your ADC and he basically 2v1s. W is significantly better in team fights because at max rank, you're basically healing 4 times more than at rank 1 (base heal is doubled, cooldown is halved).

With Q maxed, it'll do around 4 times more damage, but that's not Soraka's role. If you can keep your ADC alive, he'll do more damage than you ever will with Q's. If you can keep your front line alive, you're keeping the other team off your carries.

sob3k

United States7572 Posts

April 13 2015 01:47 GMT

#16

I tried playing like this, felt awful and useless.

Q is way too fucking hard to land, and if they trade back you lose the trade anyway, then you run out of mana because Q cost an absurd amount. Late game I felt worthless as well, the heal is not enough, range too short, cost too high. You get exploded or you provide nothing but ult.

I dont understand why you would Q max, its a terrible ability.

I feel soraka is really bad support.

Caiada

United States3052 Posts

April 13 2015 02:30 GMT

#17

Soraka is only useful if a) you teamfight/siege, b) those fights/sieges are long, c) you've had the opportunity to build max cdr, some ap, 0 HEALTH, and don't play her like old Soraka.

Niche at best and absurdly risky. (Coincidentally, all those things make her the most game-changing ARAM champ possible)

Q max is probably the best for trades. Heal costs too much health and you need to poke. Q's level 1 damage is *really* bad, and you *absolutely* need to be hitting it regularly to get anything out of Soraka.