This build is not cheap, so you will need to be a bit more aggressive than you are used to being with Soraka. Hail of Blades is good to help Spectral Sickle get gold for you, but best is when you can spam Q at the enemy. For Q spamming, you'll need lots of mana and CDR; note the early item list in the above section. At level 10, you'll hit 40% CDR. By then you'll have tons of mana, and you can spam Q with reckless abandon. To some degree, you'll be doing this before that point too -- because you have to try and land them to help rake in gold.

Here are a few tips I have for getting the mana and CDR to spam your Q. First, Soraka sucks initially at stacking Tear of the Goddess. You'll want to get both Sapphire Crystals before you buy Tear, and you'll want to get Lost Chapter first as well. Complete Archangel's Staff, which stacks twice as fast as Tear. Then buy Fiendish Codex.

Beyond tagging enemy champions, take some minions and push into the tower aggressively to get plating. Soraka is possibly the most dominant champion in the game at early levels. Nobody can trade with her 1v1 and come out of it well (except Yuumi and Bard) unless they can dodge Soraka's Q consistently. Use your early game power while you have it. Ever since they restored Q's damage, Soraka is a beast again. Just be sure to ward the river.

After getting Soraka's needed mana and CDR, it is time to assess the game and decide where your gold will go next.

If you will need to focus on your healing, complete Nashtor's Tooth and get your Rabadon's Deathcap. The Nashtor's Tooth is only important to complete first if you'll get Stinger before level 10, but you do get 55 AP from completing Nashtor's. I typically go ahead and complete my Nashtor's before assessing the game, but technically this is just a bad habit of mine. You should assess the game state at the moment Fiendish Codex is built.

If you are having trouble landing your Q or are being kited by something annoying like an Ezreal, Frozen Mallet is the right call first to absorb the poke and then to catch the target. After Frozen Mallet completes, you can decide whether to go back into AP or go ahead and tank up with Warmog's Armor so that you take longer to focus down in team fights (because Soraka is ALWAYS the enemy team's #1 target because of how rapidly she heals teammates). I prefer to complete Nashtor's Tooth before starting Frozen Mallet because I am a creature of habit, but you definitely don't need to do so if you need the slow sooner rather than eventually. Completing Nashtor's Tooth is a 2100g delay. The Frozen Mallet if it helps get assist gold will pay for the Nashtor's.

As an alternative to Warmog's armor, you can build Blade of the Ruined King. This turns Soraka into an ADC, as you'll have enough ADC items to operate that way. She does not make the greatest of ADCs, but she is ranged and can carry sometimes. You won't be able to 1v5 but in some cases you'll be able to 1v2. E becomes important once you have committed to being an ADC, to temporarily turn the fight into a ranged auto-attack war. Against melee champions be sure to place E so that it clips the target and covers the ground between them and you, so that they can get stunned if they run at you to try and trade.

Often I see Soraka players waste the value of R. It's a clutch feeling to press R to save someone from death (when it works), and it always feels wise to save it for yourself or at least your ADC since you can better assess whether it will be worthwhile. Some Soraka players use it to rake in free assist gold, which is actually legit if you know your team won't be needing your ult later before it comes back online (basically this is how you snowball in behind a fed teammate who is about to get another pentakill). But none of these are how Soraka's ult "should" be used.

The best time to press R is immediately. As soon as it comes up, look for an excuse to press it. Are two teammates hurt, but neither is looking to recall soon? Good enough, BAM they are healed. Are three teammate in need of a top-off? Sure, ult time. Your teammates can better assess whether they can stay in lane, whether they can take a fight, how aggressive they can be, etc etc... if you heal them ahead of time instead when one of them is about to die. Soraka gets a lot more healing in per game when she is keeping her team healthy instead of MAYBE keeping one of them alive.

What I suggest is watching the other two lanes. As soon as you see some fighting happening where you have multiple teammates that would be healed... heal them. Don't wait and see if they will survive without your help. Hit the ult and get its cooldown ticking down again. You'll get at least 2-3 more useful ults off per game this way, and often far more than that. There's literally nothing worse than a Soraka who plays for 30+ minutes and only ults four times because she is always waiting for that perfect moment.

The best thing about ulting more often, rather than waiting so much, is that it snowballs the game. Health is is stat that wins fights, and you are handing it out. Every person you heal will be doing a little better. Ult by ult, that advantage stacks up. It's true that sometimes you have a player who could have 20k health and would still find a way to lose their lane. But unless your whole team is bad (in which case you are likely doomed regardless; but at least this build can make a fight of it), on the whole you are snowballing your team. Ult as often as you can, any time there is a clear benefit of any kind to doing so, Think of it like going for a high score -- get in as much R healing for the game as you can.

Hail of Blades is important to getting gold early, to assisting your Nashtor's Tooth in peppering in extra damage between Qs, and ocassionally to converting into ADC mode should the game call for it.

Taste of Blood is better for cautious poking than Cheap Shot. Cheap Shot is Q + auto, which requires you to stand still for one auto. Taste of Blood is for when you can land the Q, but you can't safely get in the auto afterward. It heals you up extra, to keep risking another Q poke. I prefer Cheap Shot, which "turns on" once you have Frozen Mallet to proc every 4s.

Ghost Poro is better than Zombie Ward for squishies, since you can't face check brush as safely. Once you have Frozen Mallet it can be better to have Zombie Ward, allowing you to have some pretty amazing vision placed as you roam.

Ultimate Hunter is MANDATORY on every Soraka, imo. There is no other rune that comes close to this for her. It always shocks me to see Soraka players ignore this rune.

Transcendence in this build is mandatory because you'll be building 50% CDR. Transcendence will give you +60 AP at full build. It's too good to pass up.

Manaflow Band is acceptable over Gathering Storm, but Gathering Storm give Soraka a way to continue to ramp her offense. Boots are Soraka's enemy; her Q is reasonably deadly because of its cooldown, but it has a delay that makes Q easier to dodge as champions get boots and begin to move faster. She needs a way to compensate for that, and I think Gathering Storm is the best rune to do it.

Soraka is the game's best healer, but it's not all she can do. Q is a slow with pretty decent damage and a super-short cooldown. E is a silence that can root. Soraka thanks to her Q is pretty much always regenerating, and she's the ultimate bait. Even Teemo tilts players less than a Soraka that keeps healing the person they want to kill, so they get tunnel vision for Soraka -- a behavior you can use to win team fights even if you never actually hit W or R.

If you've read through my build guides, you'll note that I really like Hail of Blades... seemingly on everybody. That's not entirely true. Actually I just really like the rune, so I play a version of my favorite champions that makes use of it. There are a lot of champions that I think are horrible with that rune -- I just don't play them, because they don't suit me (one exception being Ziggs I suppose; I don't run Hail of Blades on him because it really sucks there).