Table of Contents

  • General Quick Guide
  • Why Soraka?
    • Pros
    • Cons
  • Detailed Matchups
  • Runes
  • Ambulance Equipment
  • Itemization Rundown
  • Skill Paths
  • Playstyle
  • Warding
  • Final Word

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EMT Soraka [Patch 13.1]

Operational Manual for League's Ambulance

Hïl

January 12th, 2023 ⸱ 9 min read



Soraka
is the de facto healing support champion that can make a big impact on a game if played well. She excels in keeping her allies alive and enabling them to make aggressive plays. However, she can be vulnerable to enemy poke and has no mobility spell, meaning that positioning is key to her survival.

General Quick Guide

Quick Soraka AP Support Build

Summoner Spells

Starting Items

Best Overall Build

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Why Soraka?

Pros

• Arguably the best healer in the game

• Very adaptive, can play both aggressively and defensively

• Global healing ultimate

• Turns into a speeding Ambulance, the second one of her allies is in trouble (i.e.: Under 40% health)

• Pretty skins lol

Cons

• Very squishy in the early stages of the game.

• Gets soft countered by fairly cheap items (Executioner's Calling, Chemtech Putrifier)

• Little to no mobility (if you don't count MS boost from hitting Q)



Detailed Matchups

Intro

She generally excels against low-range engage supports like

Alistar
,
Galio
or
Pantheon
due to her long range poke with
Starcall
and annoying
Equinox
Silence

that can interrupt or severly inhibit hard engages.

Her biggest pain points are supports with long-range engage or hooks like

Leona
,
Blitzcrank
,
Pyke
, etc, due to her lack of mobility and early game squishiness. While not unplayable, positioning against these champions will become the name of the game and your main objective will switch from "poke" to "survive". You can try out one of the tankier runepages against long range engage/hook champions for extra survivability.

I will recommend an optimal rune page for each matchup.

Matchups

Keep in mind that these are from personal experience and may be subjective.

Threats:

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Runes

Intro

Depending on the lane you're up against, you'll have to switch up your rune page. While "EMT Soraka" is the general denominator, "Pokeproof" and "Bulletproof" work very well to keep you alive during the laning phase and don't sacrifice too much when it comes to healing power.

• "EMT Soraka" works into almost everything, but if you don't feel confident in your tankiness you can opt for the other two below.

• "Pokeproof" against annoying supports like

Vel'Koz
or
Xerath
.

• "Bulletproof" when playing against teams/botlanes with ramping AS and hypercarries like

Vayne
,
Kai'Sa
,
Kog'Maw
or DoT champs like Brand.

Rune Pages

  • EMT Soraka
  • Pokeproof Soraka
  • Bulletproof Soraka (vs AS)

Note: If you run into AP threat lanes (i.e.:

Veigar
,
Syndra
or
Swain
) swap out your
Armor
for
Magic Resist
.

Ambulance Equipment

  • Everything you'll ever need





Soraka
's build is pretty flexible when it comes to itemization and Summoner Spells.

Summoner Spell Rundown



Flash
- always take it. You know why, I know why, they know why.



Heal
- you can take this one 90% of the time as it pairs well with your overall kit. You can swap it out with
Exhaust
against dangerous dive comps and/or if you don't trust your lane partner to take it themselves or if they refuse to swap out their own Heal for something else.



Ignite
- very aggressive choice that I don't recommend. It doesn't go very well with your overall kit and you'll rarely get more utility from it than the ones mentioned above. It can work in a fringe scenario against a healing botlane that you know that you will stomp out early(ex:
Draven
-
Soraka
vs
Ezreal
-
Sona
), but even in this scenario
Chemtech Putrifier
will end up doing it more consistently.



Cleanse
- good Summoner into heavy CC comps/botlanes. The low cooldown and MS bonus really help out at all stages of the game where it's vital that you survive.

Itemization Rundown

Starter Items



Spellthief's Edge
is by far the best pick for you in any scenario. Pair this with two
Health Potion
s and a
Stealth Ward
.

Boots



Ionian Boots of Lucidity
are cheap and provide vital ability haste and are an ideal first back buy if you can afford the 950 Gold.



Mercury's Treads
are your go-to against heavier CC comps (
Leona
,
Morgana
,
Ornn
, etc.).



Mobility Boots
turn you into an actual Ambulance in terms of speed, but that's about it. I rarely build them as the MS steroid from your passive usually gets the job done, but if you need to be all over the map providing healing and assistance, these are decent horseshoes for your hooves.

Mythics



Moonstone Renewer
is the premiere choice for any healing/shielding support like yourself. Starlit Grace and the Mythic Passive ramp your heals significantly and it's very rarely worth it to skip out on this item.

Shurelya's Battlesong
in situations where your team would benefit from the MS boost. (ex.: You have a
Sivir
or
Hecarim
-based composition)



Imperial Mandate
is a good choice if you want to play super aggressively, but I think the overall benefit of
Moonstone Renewer
tops this item's late game utility. Remember that your purpose in the later stages is to keep your team alive and well and slowing them with Qs is perhaps the last thing on your list of priorities. I don't usually build this, but if I do it's because I'm stomping the botlane with my lane partner.

Legendaries



Chemtech Putrifier
is a fantastic item for Soraka as its passive will extend the item's Grievous Wounds to any ally you heal/shield, basically removing their need to build
Executioner's Calling
.



Redemption
is a no-brainer for Soraka. Heal with heals.

Situational Items

From this point on all items are situational, based on the game. You'll have to feel these out yourself, but I'll try to expand on each one for clarity.



Ardent Censer
is very strong when you play with AS-based carries like
Vayne
,
Lucian
or
Kog'Maw
.

Mikael's Blessing
is basically a transferrable
Cleanse
, removing all CC except knockups and Suppression from yourself or allies (i.e.: You can't remove
Malzahar
or
Warwick
ultimates) and restoring some health.

Warmog's Armor
is good when you want to stop depending on Qs for regen, it'll give you that extra tankiness and a crazy amount of HP regen in the later stages of the game. I build this very often against burst champions.



Anathema's Chains
is an item I've grown to love on Soraka. It's very situational, but it pairs well with
Warmog's Armor
. I usually pick it against fed hypercarries like
Vayne
or
Kog'Maw
. It does take away from your healing prowess though, so only build it if you feel like they're seriously running you down. (P.S. At max stacks your Vendetta gets reduced Tenacity when near you, so coordinate with your teammates to CC them to hell)



Staff of Flowing Water
fits well when you have a strong AP threat on your team or lane. (
Veigar
,
Syndra
, etc.)

Skill Paths

  • Aggressive
  • Defensive

Soraka

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There's two Skill Paths (well, three, but E max is a trolling 99% of the time).

Aggressive means early points in

Starcall
, but you should still max out your W before level 10 as you will most likely be out of lane by then and your Q ability won't be your bread and butter anymore.

Defensive means full commit to maxing out

Astral Infusion
from the get-go. You can't go wrong by going defensive in any matchup, but you might lose out on some harass against weaker lanes.

Playstyle

Early Game

Your priority should be on poking out your opponents whenever you can, but keeping a safe distance. You don't want to walk up in front of your minions just to get the

Starcall
harass if you're not sure you'll get CC'd or traded back.

Level 1 can be make-or-break in a lot of games if you opt for an aggresive playstyle. Your

Starcall
has a fairly short cooldown and you can absolutely ruin a short range ADC's day (looking at
Vayne
and
Kai'Sa
).

After you get all three of your abilities you're able to be even more annoying by walking up and poking with E-Q. Whether or not you hit your Q doesn't really matter here, you just want to be annoying and zone away the enemy carry from farm. Note that this strategy applies when you aren't against a long range engage support like

Leona
that can turbo-stomp you into the ground with CC when you misstep, or stuff like
Blitzcrank
that will yoink you out of existence.

Important to remember: During the laning phase try to (almost) always heal your ADC after you hit a Q on the enemy.

Starcall
enhances your W heal by applying the same amount of overtime heal you receive to
Astral Infusion
and it also ends up costing you less HP to do so. (TL;DR: More heal if you W after you hit Q on enemy)

Mid Game

Mid Game is when you'll feel your role switching from Warrior Goat to Frank Andre. By this point you should have your W maxed out and you should be running around the map with one of your carries. (ideally the most fed one) Sit behind your carries and keep them safe, place wards in pincer positions so you don't get surprised by engages and do your best to assist your losing lanes and help them clear T1 towers if any remain.

Another important note: Always set up neutral objectives with your jungler. Have him join you to ward objectives and never ever go alone into the fog of war. Your survivability is almost 0 in 1v1 scenarios.

Late Game

Late Game is when you become the secret carry as your life becomes maybe the most important one on the team, as long as you are alive, so is your team. Sit well behind your backline and always look out for enemies with long range engages. Your flanks should always be warded and be absolutely sure that if the enemy team has a functioning frontal lobe, they will assess that you are the primary target, otherwise they lose almost any fight that's on equal ground because they won't be able to outdamage your heal.

Warding

Warding is a complicated subject and is very situational based on a lot of factors, like stage of the game (early, mid, late), state of the game (winning vs losing), which side of the map you spawn on, etc.

Since it's more of a "General Knowledge" thing I won't say too much about it, though I highly recommend giving Mobalytics' LoL Warding Guide a read. It's super in-depth, helpful and explains any scenario you might find yourself in.

Final Word

I don't have any stream or Youtube channel to plug, I just like playing Soraka.

League-Of-LegendsBotSorakaSupport
AUTHOR
Hïl

2 Comments

Share your thoughs, feedback, comments...

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Aton_Ix 2 months ago

Very informative guide, extremely helpful, and most importantly very user friendly with the lay out. Thank you for this.

2
binetu 5 months ago

so great! a really nice and comprehensive explanation.

Hïl
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