I have over 1.7 million mastery on Soraka over 2 accounts, and peaked at plat 4 in Season 9. In season 10, I peaked at gold 2, and then started playing tons of ARAM instead. I have since had a lot of fun trying out "nonmeta" builds in aram and trying to figure out what works best.

So you can take this guide with a grain of salt, but I can only hope it leads to some enjoyable games with this banana goat. <3

To many, the natural (and perhaps only) choice would appear be to play her as a healer, since she is so good at this in Summoner's Rift. However, I feel playing her as full damage early (and transitioning into heals later) is a fun and viable way to play her.

Here are some pros of playing this way over a healing-based build

• People need to die to go buy anyways, especially early game, so saving them isn't as helpful as it would be on the rift.
• The relics already give AOE sustain for your team and most (smart) people already include a lot of sustain in their build paths in ARAM. This makes your ult and heals a little redundant, especially early game.
• In the early game, she's likely to run out of health and mana fast if she keeps healing everyone (and then die because she can't back).
• All of her spells are AOE, and it's not hard to hit many people at once on Howling Abyss.
• Her damage is actually quite high in the early game, if you manage to land her Qs. The regen from Q is also super helpful, allowing you to stay healthy while trading blows.
• If your teammates get low on health, you can use her passive to kite a lot more effectively. Running around really fast also helps charge Luden's Echo for your next Q/E.
• You can easily transition your damage into powerful heals later on with Athene's Unholy Grail and the large amounts of AP in this build.

And here are some cons

• Getting support items and warmogs is definitely another viable way to play her, and mitigates the health and mana problems for the most part. Perhaps I will test this more and write a guide at some point.
• If you want to actually feel really oppressive, you do need to get a lot of gold fast (e.g. Ludens+Sorcs+Deathcap by 10 min). However, you will still be useful mid/late even if you fail, so the risk isn't too bad.
• Even if she snowballs early, her damage will still fall off mid/late game. Also enemy damage dealers will likely be able to 1-shot you if you get close enough to land Q. However, we mitigate this by buying Athene's and transitioning into a more supportive role around when she starts to fall off.
• Your team may spam ping you or even AFK when you don't heal them, unless you get a LOT of kills early. Even if you do get early kills, they may just yell at you for kill stealing. Mute as needed.

From my experiences with this build, it's often easy to get the most damage to champs of anyone, even meta damage dealer champions like Lux/Xerath. So I recommend trying it out. :)

• Especially with a snowball-focused build like this one, it's important to buy often to keep yourself relevant. I reccomend dying approximately every time you can afford a new completed item. (e.g. Luden's Echo, Death Cap, Athene's, etc)