Hi, I'm Lupa and I main Soraka in low-diamond. I have over 2 million mastery points on her and I decided to write this guide as an exercise for myself. I wanted to map out all the knowledge I've gained while maining her. I hope you can learn something from it too. No you didn't accidentally download a zip-bomb. This wall of text and images is just a product of my passion for Soraka. I promise it's all worth reading!

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Heal is traditionally the best because it scales with bonus healing. The biggest gain of all is to cast it before the enemy uses Ignite. This is a bit of a mindgame, and getting good at predicting when the enemy is committed enough to Ignite is a skill of its own. In order to get the most benefit out of Revitalize you can try to use Heal when your ally is under 40% HP. You can do this when the enemy used Ignite early and you know your ADC will survive long enough, or if their Ignite is on cooldown. You don't always need to use Heal reactively. There are times where it's perfectly fine to just pop it offensively. I personally even use it out of combat sometimes, especially if the enemy has some way to apply Grievous Wounds on their next all-in, and my ADC is under 40% health for Revitalize with no base timer in sight. This is definitely a more advanced way to use the summoner and you might get some pings for it from people that don't understand why you used it. Heal also has a way bigger range than Astral Infusion, so you can use it first if the person you want to heal is almost dead and just out of range of your Astral Infusion. You can mouse over your spells to compare the ranges.

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Exhaust can help vs Garen/ Olaf/ Hecarim/ Nilah. These champions don’t deal (much) true damage, telegraph when they commit to diving your backline, are easy to Exhaust, cannot meaningfully be nullified by your Equinox and can just run past your frontline. It can also help you not lose lane too hard against Kalista. Don't try to play the mindgame of Exhausting her Rend. Just use it early on while her Hail of Blades is active, or while her Pierce is not on cooldown if possible. If you picked it into Jhin, you either Exhaust his first shot + Dancing Grenade + Deadly Flourish combo, or his 4th shot. Exhaust can also be nice in Hitler vs Hitler lanes, because the enemy will have Ignite for sure and they have enough damage to use it early so you can't minmax your Heal much.

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Ignite can be good when you have a Hitler botlane ( Draven, Kalista, Lucian, Tristana, Corki) and the enemy doesn't. In these matchups, enemies know they can't interact with you because you always win the all-in. You can use Ignite to increase your damage, that way when the enemy does make a positional error you can kill them before they manage to kite back to their tower. If you had Heal in these scenarios, you'd only be able to force them to Recall. If the enemy is playing a Femboy champ ( Seraphine, Hwei, Ziggs, Ezreal) it can be difficult to catch them out of position because they can waveclear so well that you can never bounce the wave off their turret. Or in Ezreal's case, he can CS from super far away and just chips at you with Mystic Shot when you walk past the wave to zone him. In these lanes, Ignite is kind of pointless unless the enemy is very unskilled. Note: When using Cleanse to clear Ignite, it only removes the damage over time portion. The Grievous Wounds debuff stays active for the full duration.

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You can play the Summon Aery keystone in lanes where you can walk up to poke or trade.

Summon Aery triggers on spells and auto attacks and then slowly returns to you. You can walk towards this little projectile to get it off cooldown faster to surprise the enemy with some extra damage as shown in the clip below. Also don't forget that when your ADC is missing hp and pulling the wave, you can use a "dry" Astral Infusion to get some value out of the Summon Aery shield against the minions' auto attacks.

Choice Nodes

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Axiom Arcanist is very good. The cooldown reduction is not really the interesting part, it's moreso the healing increase and the way it interacts with Moonstone Renewer and Revitalize. I linked a video explaining the interaction in the Dawncore item explanation in the next chapter. Manaflow Band is a crutch for when you haven't learned to cast your spells with purpose yet, or you overstay because you (or your low-elo ADC) don't know when to recall. Manaflow Band only gives max-mana, not current mana. This means you don't benefit from the rune until after your 1st recall. Noob-trap rune. Nimbus Cloak and Heal both give a burst of MS, letting you escape ganks or reposition during skirmishes. It's better than Manaflow Band, but when you watch recordings of yourself playing it's not making a difference as often as you think it does. Axiom Arcanist is better.

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Transcendence is fine, you could take it in drafts where you would buy Staff of Flowing Water 2nd to really lean into that Astral Infusion spam. In season 15 and high elo in general, Celerity is imo the best. The in-combat movement speed when you hit Starcall is noticeable. The out-of-combat 3-8 MS is nice to have for tempo/roaming. For reference: the 2% Movement Speed stat shard gives 7 MS. Celerity gives: No Boots Boots Boots of Swiftness 3 MS 5 MS 8 MS

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Scorch is good when you have kill pressure in botlane. That can be because you have a strong ADC, a good matchup, or because you are a lot better than the enemy. Always take this rune when smurfing. Gathering Storm is the default choice that can be good in matchups where you have no kill pressure early. It gives you nuclear scaling and doesn't require you to play any type of way to get value out of it.

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You can play the Guardian keystone in matchups where you can't walk up to Starcall. Typically those are one of two scenarios:

The enemy can catch you if you try to go for a Starcall. Think of Pantheon and Draven. In these cases you never want to be the one getting engaged on. You have to use your ADC as a meatshield, and when he gets engaged on you will hopefully be able to keep him alive and disengage, or even turn it into an extended fight when the enemy is already out of gas.

You are turbo outranged (think of Vel'Koz and Caitlyn). You should keep in mind that you should still look to dodge forward against these long range champs to get in range to Starcall. Summon Aery is better for this if you outskill your opponent, but Guardian makes you more resilient against equal skill or better opponents.

Choice Nodes

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Font of Life does next to nothing. Read the tooltip, it's 7-35 healing based on level, with a 20 second cooldown. I personally prefer Demolish if I'm playing a Guardian page. Even if I can't actively siege, being able to punish the enemy for taking a bad recall by popping Demolish to take a plate when they're gone is very nice.

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Second Wind is great against champions with damage over time effects like Brand/ Teemo/ Twitch/ Cassiopeia. It's also better when your Bone Plating can easily get poked out which is the majority of matchups. Bone Plating is good when it's not easily poked out before an engagement. It has a 55 second cooldown so try not to let it get procced before crucial levelup or gank timers. If you're good at the game and can actively play around having it up, I would recommend you take this into all matchups because Bone Plating is way better than Second Wind in mid/late.

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The bonus healing is pretty good, but the secondary effect has an insane impact on how strong your Wish is because they act multiplicative together. I think it's such a big deal that you should always have this rune somewhere in your runepage.

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You need Revitalize.
You need Revitalize.
You need Revitalize.

That is the lens through which we view secondary runes. That means most of the damage/mana oriented runes are not really interesting to us, because Guardian is good when you can't really land Starcall much.

Domination

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Cheap Shot is alright when you are playing with an Ashe because you can proc it every 4 seconds with your auto-attacks in an all-in thanks to her Frost Shot. Taste of Blood is nothing special. It doesn't heal enough to outperform the other 2 rows in this tree.

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Sixth Sense has a super long cooldown. It's ****. Grisly Mementos is also ****. Deep Ward is very good, it makes it so the enemy support can only clear 1 ward per use of Oracle Lens. If you can constantly shove the enemy under turret, you can maintain a Stealth Ward in their tri-bush for 6 minutes from 01:30 to 07:30. Note: If you pair this rune with Cosmic Insight, you can keep vision for 10 minutes. Not really useful for Soraka, but fun to know nonetheless.

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Treasure Hunter is meh. You get 450g but depending on how the game goes it can take really long to get that gold. You could make a case for this rune if you already know you will be building Dawncore 2nd, since you get more gold than from Magical Footwear but you'd be okay with the delay. Relentless Hunter is underrated. You get different levels of value depending on which boots you buy. Any movement speed bonuses that would cause a champion's movement speed to exceed 415 are reduced by 20%. Any movement speed bonuses that would cause a champion's movement speed to exceed 490 are reduced by 50%. It works out as follows: Boots Ionian Boots of Lucidity Boots of Swiftness Synchronized Souls 357 + 41 = 398 MS 377 + 41 = 418 MS 393 + 37 = 430 MS 422 + 32 = 454 MS (out of combat) Ultimate Hunter is not a good rune. The cooldown reduction applies after your sources of regular AH did their work, and after your levels reduced the cooldown of your Wish. Assuming you build Moonstone Renewer, Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Redemption and took +8 Ability Haste in your runes the math would end up like this: Level 6 with 28 AH 112s - 18s = 94s Wish Level 11 with 43 AH 85s - 12s = 73s Wish Level 16 with 43 AH 75s - 10s = 65s Wish

Inspiration

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Magical Footwear is the most effective rune for helping you get a very expensive first item, like when Karma builds Malignance. That said, Boots are pretty much the most efficient use of 300g out there and all of Soraka's first items are around 2200g so it's nothing special for us. Cash Back isn't good on a support budget. You get 132g when you buy Moonstone Renewer. Then at best you get 150g from Dawncore. Then another 138g from Redemption. Add all that up and you have 420g to spend on your Watchful Wardstone. It's trash.

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Triple Tonic is interesting because it lets you put 1 extra point in Starcall without delaying your level 9 powerspike. Unfortunately if you stick to my advice to always have Revitalize in your page you can only go Inspiration secondary with Guardian. We established Guardian is good when you can't land a lot of Starcalls in lane, which kind of defeats the purpose of putting points into Starcall. Time Warp Tonic kind of lets you fit 1.5 charges of Refillable Potion into a skirmish that would otherwise be over before the duration of the first charge even finished healing you. It's a very niche rune that's good for all-ins. I guess it could help protect you against dives from the previously mentioned Pantheon & Draven type lanes, but I don't think I would personally take it over Magical Footwear and either Cosmic Insight or Jack of all Trades. Biscuit Delivery isn't nearly as good as it used to be. You can't pair it with Time Warp Tonic to cheese all-ins anymore, since they share a row now. Let's say you have 600 total HP, and you use a Total Biscuit of Everlasting Will when you are at 30% health. You would be missing 400 HP, and 12% of 400 is 48. If you proc Taste of Blood twice, it already heals more. The only merit to these is they increase your max HP, but we don't really care about HP that much after laning phase. They're good for ADCs, though.

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Cosmic Insight is not as good as people make it out to be. Same as Ionian Boots of Lucidity. The Summoner Spell Haste isn't that good, because you don't pro-actively use your Flash like engagers do. They want to trade Flash with you, and since they have that rune they know they have ~45 seconds where their Flash is up, while yours is still on cooldown. If your Flash is down, you can just play a bit safer. The Item Haste takes your Oracle Lens cooldown from 160s-100s down to 146s-92s. This nets you 1 more use of Oracle Lens every 16.5 minutes. Not very good. Jack of all Trades is better than you think. If you get Boots or Glowing Mote, and a Dark Seal on your first base then that's 200g worth of AP and 250g worth of AH from Jack of all Trades on your first recall. You're realistically only ever getting the 10 stack bonus if you build Mercury's Treads and Ardent Censer, but you don't need to hit that amount of stacks for this rune to be good. I think it's by far the better choice on this node.

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Stealth Ward

Always start Stealth Ward. Always press [TAB] when the enemy shows to see if they have Oracle Lens. If they have Oracle Lens, make sure you place your Stealth Ward a bit further down the river where it's not likely to get swept. If they don't have it, you can use your Stealth Ward to deny the enemy from abusing a bush during the race for level 2. Note: In low elo it can be nice to place it in the bush closest to your tower as soon as the game starts, because your ADC will probably leash your jungler and then arrive to lane late and get cheesed instead of walking together with the wave.

Oracle Lens

If the enemy is pushing a lot, it's nice to have Oracle Lens on your 1st or 2nd recall to set up for your jungler. If you are the one pushing the most, you can delay getting Oracle Lens until you finished your support item quest. Note: The enemies get another charge of their Stealth Ward at 03:30. If they have Cosmic Insight, they get it at 02:50 instead. If the enemy support leaves vision around this timer, you know they went to ward.

Health Potion

In some matchups you can decide to take only 1 Health Potion. When the enemy picks something like Pantheon & Draven you know you are not even going to try trading with them because you will get caught. They don't really have any way to deal damage to you other than by going all-in. It's good to have 1 Health Potion just so you can pop it the moment they start dealing damage to you, because if you use it early on in the fight it acts as a pseudo Ruby Crystal for only 50g. But do you really have any use for a 2nd one?

Control Ward

Only buy Control Wards when you have control over the lane and can defend them. Never place them in your own tri-bush, they should be used in pixel bush or the enemy tri-bush. Try to limit yourself to purchasing only 1 Control Ward until you finish your Moonstone Renewer. You can start buying 2 Control Wards every recall once you run out of bagspace for additional components.

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Brown Bags

If your macro is good enough to consistently predict where the next fight will happen and pre-move, Boots are just fine until you have your Moonstone Renewer, or even 2nd item if you are ahead (by being ahead you get some passive tempo advantages). You don't need to upgrade them to be able to maintain proper spacing and the gold efficiency of tier 2 boots is not that good compared to just getting a full item 700g faster.

Luci Boots

Ionian Boots of Lucidity are heavily overrated in my opinion. The bump in MS and AH feels good, but the Summoner Spell Haste isn't really that big of a deal since you don't Flash offensively as Soraka. I think this item is being purchased mostly because the playerbase (even in high elo) hasn't realised yet that you just don't get that much value for the gold you invest in it.

Swifties

A little gold efficiency comparison: Boots give 25 MS for 300g which is 12g per MS. Extremely gold efficient. Boots of Swiftness give another 35 MS on top of that for 700g which is 20g per MS. If you get good benefit from the slow reduction, then you could argue you are paying 420g at 12g per MS and 180g for the for the slow reduction. These are great when you have a roam- and skirmish-heavy playstyle, or have to deal with a lot of skillshots/slows ( Ashe/ Seraphine/ Brand/ Hwei) in your botlane matchup. These are by far the best in season 15 when you are winning the Feats of Strength objective and the enemy doesn't have a lot of CC.

Mobis

Symbiotic Soles' recall empowerment is like an infinite tempo glitch. These are life savers in lategame when your jungle is dark, an objective is spawning soon and your team won't escort you to ward. You can put out a buffer of shallow vision, recall fast and and then move up to ward a bit deeper with more safety. The recall empowerment is what the majority of their power budget is put towards, it's okay to build them later on in the game after you got a couple items, too. They can also be nice when you know you won't be able to run from one lane to another because you have no control over your jungle, and have to recall and roam from base instead. In season 15 you can buy these when you really want to upgrade your Boots, but don't have enough gold for Boots of Swiftness, or when you are behind or the enemy has a lot of CC.

Tabi

Plated Steelcaps are only good against Rengar or a super fed AD Shaco. Most of the damage in his combo comes from stacking effects that empower his auto-attack ( Savagery/ Thrill of the Hunt), and it's hard to avoid even if you play well. In every other case you are better off buying a Knight's Vow if you need Armor, because you should not get hit by auto-attacks a lot when playing correctly.

Mercs Lamont

Mercury's Treads are not good for Soraka. If you need Magic Resist then just buy a Negatron Cloak and don't upgrade it. Tenacity is not going to give you meaningful value if you play well and dropping 1250g for boots on a support budget is crazy. If you get caught by CC as an under-leveled enchanter support then you are probably dead anyways.

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Moonstone Renewer

Moonstone Renewer sets you up for a super strong 2 item spike and scales the best. Its passive effect benefits from your bonus healing twice; once when calculating the size of the original heal it copies a portion of, and then it multiplies the copied portion by your bonus healing again. The more bonus healing you stack from additional items, the more value Moonstone Renewer generates. In 85% of cases you want this 2nd if you bought something else 1st.

Dawncore

Dawncore is a good 2nd item, you probably won't be able to afford it as a 3rd item. If you're playing Axiom Arcanist then this is a great item because it amps up the healing on your Wish the most out of every item. It's currently very strong because of this interaction, which I explain in this video: Note: If you recall with too little gold to buy a Forbidden Idol, don't just buy a Faerie Charm. Instead, sit on the gold and maybe on your next recall you can afford a Blasting Wand.

Redemption

The main selling points of Redemption are the vision it provides when your team is fighting around a bush/corner that has been swept by the enemy, and the self-healing you can get from it. The self-healing is good against either poke or when the enemy team is too dangerous to hit with Starcall (so you have to spam dry Astral Infusions and lose hp), but you do have some semblance of frontline (so your frontline doesn't get blown up before the Redemption hits and you can stand in it too without getting pushed back). It can situationally be nice to try to heal an ally that's not going to drop below 40% HP any time soon with dry Astral Infusion spam, thereby bringing yourself below 40% HP so you get the Revitalize bonus when you use Redemption. Note: you can heal (super)minions with this item when sieging towers. Additionally, it doesn't work on units that are in stasis from Zhonya's Hourglass or Bard's Tempered Fate.

Staff of Flowing Water

Staff of Flowing Water is good to buy 2nd when you have a front-to-back draft. Meaning both teams are looking to just clash head-on, with the tanks/bruisers in front and the carries/enchanter in the back. Soraka usually doesn't take much damage in these fights, and can just hide behind her frontline and spam Astral Infusion. That's exactly what this item is good at. You don't really need to care about if your team uses the AP effect well, you need to think about if the draft fits those conditions. Mathematically it's a ridiculously good item. The AP on this item totals 1510g, the bonus healing is worth about 500g, and in these drafts the 15 Ability Haste is arguably worth more than its 750g gold value because you are making use of it really well (all your abilities being used in these fights). These numbers total 2760g. The item costs 2250g. It's also a good 1st item if you have an APC in the botlane, because you give them 850g worth of AP.

Locket of the Iron Solari

Locket of the Iron Solari is pretty underrated. I like it on Soraka because its value doesn't get reduced by Grievous Wounds and the shield scales with bonus healing and interacts with Moonstone Renewer. It's good against champions that deal big AOE damage and will easily consume the whole shield on all targets, such as Kennen, Aurelion Sol, Fiddlesticks, or Brand. When the enemy team has a dive comp that just kills your team faster than you can heal, this item is worth considering instead of Redemption. It's also sometimes the only reasonable option you have to keep your carry (or yourself) alive against burst assassins such as a fed LeBlanc.

Mikael's Blessing

Good 1st item when your ADC has too much ego to pick Cleanse into Ashe + Leona. "I'll just dodge it." Yeah, sure you will :) As a 2nd or 3rd item you kinda have to play the teamfight in your head and ask yourself if removing [insert CC ability here] from the equation gains you a meaningful advantage. Also better against Grievous Wounds than Redemption in most cases. Note: you can use it 0.25s before the CC effect gets applied and it will buffer and cleanse it. That means you can use it to cleanse Leona's Solar Flare from yourself even though it stuns you!

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Verdant Barrier

It’s going to win you games when the enemy Fiddlesticks or Neeko jumpscares you when you are grouped, because you won't be CC’d along with the rest of your team and can use Equinox to stop the Bountiful Harvest and freely heal your team. I wouldn't really upgrade it until last, unless you happen to base with 1250g and might as well sit on the Needlessly Large Rod for a bit (uwu).

Seeker's Armguard

Sometimes when a game is very close and you really need something to help you in the next big fight, you can buy Seeker's Armguard. You often won't be able to afford a full 3rd item anyways, so for 1600g it's a pretty potent effect and it doesn't matter that it's 1-time use because it's still better than sitting on an 800g component for the rest of the game. Some games you even buy this as a 2nd item, and the game goes long enough for you to upgrade it. It can be worth to upgrade it to Zhonya's Hourglass if you bought it 2nd because the enemy team has some form of engage that is really nice to avoid (like a fed Aurelion Sol with his Falling Star).

Negatron Cloak

You can buy a Negatron Cloak and not upgrade it in games where the enemy Kassadin/ Vladimir/ Fizz/ Katarina can't be stopped from r*ping you. It can throw off their estimation of how fast they can kill you, and catch them off guard when your team ends up dogpiling on them because they couldn't get in, kill you, and get out fast enough. This is pretty much the equivalent of buying 4.5 Ruby Crystals for 850g instead of 1800g (calculated at a conservative 1500 HP). If the game goes extremely long you could sell it or upgrade it to Kaenic Rookern.

Knight's Vow

You can buy a Knight's Vow against full AD teams, especially if the carry you are playing around has a lot of lifesteal or life drain like Nilah/ Samira/ Swain/ Hecarim/ Olaf/ Illaoi/ Vladimir. You can kinda think of the 12% damage reduction as 12% bonus healing for both your heals and their own self-healing. Note: damage from Knight's Vow can cancel your Recall so if you put it on your jungler then don't try to base near them if they're clearing camps.

Shurelya's Battlesong

Not a bad 2nd/3rd item when your team has a hard time gap closing to initiate a teamfight at an objective against teams that kite back. This item kind of dodged nerfs in the 14.19 stat squish patch because it was already nerfed a fair amount in 14.10. I think it's lowkey pretty good in season 15. Can also be rushed 1st item if you are playing with a cheese bruiser duo like Darius. The enemy botlane is pretty much guaranteed to burn Flash or die every time Darius connects with them because of how well his Crippling Strike and Apprehend pair up with your Equinox.

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Warmog's Armor

Warmog's Armor makes you sacrifice a HUGE amount of gold and healing throughput just to have your health slowly tick up outside of combat. I think this item is huge noob-bait. You can sustain yourself nearly just as well by standing in your own Redemption when you are below 40% HP for Revitalize, and the same with your Wish. You could buy it when you are very ahead, to keep pushing your lead by making your team not have to recall, and so you are a bit tankier and less likely to throw your lead by dying. Not a great item, though.

Note: This item was actually gutted and now requires 1000 bonus health from other items in your build and no longer gives bonus movement speed. In the bin.

Ardent Censer

Ardent Censer is a **** item. Just read what it does. 45 AP is like 850g, 10% bonus healing is like 500g. The 4% MS is worth about 400g. That's totaling 1750g. The attack speed & on-hit (which gets reduced to about half by passive MR) does not have good uptime or utilization because Soraka without the old version of Font of Life sucks at applying it to her ADC. Your ADC is the last person to take damage in a teamfight, you're typically healing the frontline, and they don't use the attack speed well. This effect is not worth 450g because of how conditional its value is. It can have *some* merit if your ADC has Guinsoo's Rageblade because that increases the value of the on-hit effect.

Echoes of Helia

Echoes of Helia got hit pretty hard in the 14.19 patch which nerfed almost every item in the game, but some items a bit harder than others. It is no longer good on Soraka, because it got tuned around champions like Milio and Sona abusing the item. It's still okay on those champions because they can trigger it so much, but Soraka can't.

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Core
Ruby Crystal is good in general, and amazing against all-in.
Amplifying Tome is good if you already have a Ruby Crystal.
Faerie Charm is nice to have at least one of, especially without Manaflow Band.

Choose One
Refillable Potion is good in general, and amazing against poke.
Dark Seal is nice when you are just sitting in lane and using Wish.

Upgrading Components
Upgrading a Ruby Crystal to a Kindlegem gives you 50 HP and 10 AH for 400g. In a laning scenario you'd rather have 20 AP for your 400g from Amplifying Tome because you're not going to be using your spells every time they come off cooldown.

TL;DR: in lane you should buy a Ruby Crystal, Amplifying Tome and Faerie Charm before of upgrading to Kindlegem or Bandleglass Mirror.


Jack Stacks
Jack of all Trades makes it important to buy 2 stats that aren't already on World Atlas. I like to pair either an Amplifying Tome or a Dark Seal with Boots for this.

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Armor/ Magic Resist are not on the tier list because they are an entirely different topic. Their efficiency depends on the enemy team comp, who is fed on enemy team, who can get in range to damage you, your base Armor/ Magic Resist and how much HP you have.


You need ~850 HP for a Cloth Armor to be as good as a Ruby Crystal against full AD (750 HP in a vacuum but you get some base Armor per level as well). You need twice that much HP (1700) against a team with mixed damage for a Cloth Armor to be worth buying.

The baseline math for Magic Resist is the same 750 HP but you get much less base Magic Resist per level than you get Armor. For that reason you could argue that you only need around ~775 HP for a Null-Magic Mantle to be better than a Ruby Crystal against full AP teams, and 1550 HP against a mixed-damage team.

Magic Resist is typically very efficient, even when the enemy has % Magic Pen it's still pretty good because you are higher level at that point and have a lot of HP.

That is also why I suggest to sometimes buy Negatron Cloak on Soraka if the only person on the enemy team that can hurt you is something like a Vladimir or Kassadin.

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Levels in your Starcall and Astral Infusion give you all the cooldown reduction you really need for your kit to function well. The way I prefer to evaluate AH is by deducting its gold value from the price of items when I calculate their gold-per-heal. That way you kinda still value the healing-per-second increase and Wish cooldown reduction that the stat gives you, without overcomplicating the maths. This sheet gives you some insight on what AH really gets you.

5 Glowing Mote 5+5 Transcendence 8 Ability Haste

10 Kindlegem 10 Fiendish Codex 10 Bandleglass Mirror 10 Ionian Boots of Lucidity 10 Locket of the Iron Solari 10 Knight's Vow

15 Legend: Haste 15 Shurelya's Battlesong 15 Staff of Flowing Water 15 Mikael's Blessing 15 Redemption

20 Moonstone Renewer 20 Echoes of Helia

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These calculations are done under the assumption that we have rank 5 Astral Infusion and rank 3 Starcall. Our Moonstone Renewer double dipping into bonus healing is factored in. The following spreadsheet calculates what certain items do to a combo of one Starcall + one Astral Infusion. It also accounts for the 2 Rejuvenation buffs in this combo (one on yourself, one on the target of your Astral Infusion. It does not assume you double dip in the Rejuvenation to make sure it's accurate before level 9.

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One point in Starcall nets you: 35 damage (85 base) 15 healing (60 base) 2.5% Movement Speed (20% base) 1s reduced cooldown (8s base)

One point in Astral Infusion nets you: 20 healing (90 base) 5% empowered health cost reduction (80% base) 1s reduced cooldown (6s base)

Rank 1 Starcall
Has the perfect amount of damage to set up caster minions to have very little health left after a tower shot. It makes it easier to help your ADC last hit under tower when you are being pressured by lots of skillshots like against a Caitlyn and Lux lane.

Rank 2 Starcall
Has enough damage to set up the caster minions for most champion's waveclear ability to oneshot them, like Smolder's 25 stack Super Scorcher Breath or Caitlyn's Piltover Peacemaker. Gains you a significant amount of throughput compared to rank 1 without sacrificing much healing. Lets you inject one dry Astral Infusion between Starcalls without costing you any empowered Astral Infusion casts.

Rank 3 Starcall
Delays your level 9 powerspike. Good for beginners because it makes you a bit stronger so you can hold your own when trading in lane. With this you don't have a low enough cooldown on Astral Infusion to milk your Rejuvenation so you just Starcall into Astral Infusion every time.

Landing Starcall & Trading
It becomes a lot tougher on the mind of the enemy if you walk towards them and away from them a lot, rather than waddling left and right. You want to condition them. You want them to get used to your character facing in the direction of their character so that it isn't so obvious when you are trying to get in range to cast Starcall.

Additionally, if you always throw your Starcall out as soon as an enemy is in range then it becomes very easy for them to read your rhythm. Try to get in Starcall range without using it, or auto attack a few times in a row while they shuffle around trying to dodge instead of hitting you back. The enemy is constantly thinking about dodging your Starcall, and by holding it you are applying tremendous pressure to their mental stack.

It's easier to land Starcall on the enemy ADC when they go for a last-hit on a low health minion. You can auto attack the enemy ADC as he goes for it to see if he dodges. If he dodges then your auto goes through and you can Starcall after. If he fights back you can do a Starcall while he's animation locked and then one more auto attack and run away.

One thing to keep in mind is that during the very early levels you might not always want to auto attack if you don't have a bush nearby to drop minion aggro. Minions do a lot of damage early on, and if you're not careful about it you will find yourself losing the same amount of health as the person you are poking. Since Starcall itself doesn't aggro the minions you can always just keept it at that if you have no bush.

Windwall Abilities
Yasuo's Wind Wall, Braum's Unbreakable and Samira's Blade Whirl destroy projectiles that touch them. While Starcall feels like it appears from the sky above, it actually technically shoots from the center of your character towards the destination. This means you can't Starcall over a Wind Wall, no matter how far past the Wind Wall you target it. It's also good to know that Starcall's Rejuvenation return-projectile gets destroyed by these abilities.

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Rejuvenation Milking
I made a video on this topic, but for those that prefer it written just continue scrolling.
1) The base duration of the Rejuvenation buff is 2.5 seconds.
2) The base cooldown of rank 5 Astral Infusion is 2 seconds.
3) The base cooldown of rank 4 Astral Infusion is 3 seconds.
4) You can already spread Rejuvenation to allies with Astral Infusion before the projectile reached you.
5) Astral Infusion checks for the Rejuvenation buff at the start of its cast time.


With rank 4 Astral Infusion you can use it the exact moment that your Starcall hits the enemy and then run away a bit as the Rejuvenation projectile travels to you. If you stalled by at least 0.5 seconds travel time, then you will still have the Rejuvenation buff when your Astral Infusion comes off cooldown so you can use it a 2nd time. You can't always pull this off due to how the people in the fight are positioned, but when you can it feels like a cheatcode.


With rank 5 Astral Infusion the base cooldown is low enough (2 seconds) that you dont need to kite to cast it twice within the 2.5 second duration of the Rejuvenation buff. This is your biggest powerspike (level 9).


This "travel time stalling" technique can also come in handy when Astral Infusion has around 3s cooldown remaining when you cast Starcall so you can still get an empowered Astral Infusion cast out of the tail end of the Rejuvenation buff.

Rejuvenation heals over 12 ticks, with the first 4 ticks each healing for 15% of the heal each, the next 4 ticks for 5.5% each, and the last 4 for 4.5% each. This means that you don't lose that much of the Rejuvenation heal when overwriting the current one with a fresh one.

Grievous Wounds
Sometimes you will have Rejuvenation after a trade but your ADC has the Grievous Wounds debuff. You might ask yourself, would it be more healing if I let my Rejuvenation time out and just send a dry Astral Infusion after the Grievous Wounds is gone? I ran the math and the simplified answer is it's never worth it. Just send your Astral Infusion before your Rejuvenation expires, even if that means Grievous Wounds is still active.

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Starcall & Equinox Combo
You can combo your Equinox and Starcall together to guarantee one of them hits. You just have to react to which direction they dodge the first one. Once you get good at Soraka you will be able to hit both of them in one combo pretty often. I use Starcall into Equinox the most because they always try to dodge, and if you hit the slow from Starcall then you are almost guaranteed to hit the root on Equinox.

Predicting Warwick Players
If you place your Equinox at your feet before Warwick leaps at you with Infinite Duress then it will cancel him and put it on cooldown like so:


Predicting Alistar Players
If you place your Equinox between yourself and Alistar when he charges at you with Headbutt then he will be silenced at the moment where he wants to input the buffer of his Pulverize, and you will actually get a free escape like so:


Countering Engages
When the enemy support engages your ADC in lane, you should nearly always use your Equinox to block the path of the enemy ADC so he has to walk around it to attack your ADC. When Nautilus engages he already puts all his stuff on cooldown in his first combo, and the enemy ADC still has all their stuff available so you are actually meaningfully silencing them.

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Level 11 Powerspike
Wish heals for 150 at rank 1, and 250 at rank 2. That's nearly double! Now factor in your Moonstone Renewer double dips in all that bonus healing you got, Wish heals 1.5x more on allies below 40% hp, and Revitalize amplifies that by another 10%. That's so many multipliers! This is your last powerspike from abilities. After level 11, try to stop taking XP because the best way to add more value to your team at this point is by giving them HP/ Armor/ Magic Resist from levels.

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Attacking from the bush will reveal you for a few seconds. If you step out of and back into the same bush you attacked from then you will still be visible for the same amount of time. But if you step into a different bush than the one you attacked from then you will drop vision. This can be helpful during extended fights where you attacked from a bush but you really wanna hide fast.

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If you step slightly out of the bush before attacking then you can immediately step back into it to drop vision so the enemy has a shorter window to react. Ideally you step out and attack them right as they are attacking a minion, so that you are hidden again by the time their auto attack is off cooldown.

It's not always recommended though. If you are controlling this bush against a champion with an ability to use after their auto attack such as Nami or Janna and you are not at full health then you are often better off just using Starcall so that you don't reveal yourself. But if you're at full health then you won't be benefiting from the health restore of Starcall when you land it so you might as well take some return damage from their auto + ability.

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Contrary to auto attacks, Starcall is a ground-targeted spell so it doesn't reveal you.

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While Astral Infusion is unit-targeted, it's on an ally so it doesn't reveal you.

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Remember the paragraph about Windwall Abilities in the Hitting Starcall chapter? Casting Starcall from one bush to another does reveal the "meteor" projectile because it travels from your character across the open area which the enemy has vision of towards the other bush.

That means if you are absolutely sure that the enemy doesn't have vision of the path your Starcall travels from you to the destination, they wont see that you are casting Starcall into that bush. I'd make a gif showing that but... it would just show nothing.

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When you hit a Stealth Ward that is being disabled by a Control Ward or Oracle Lens, you briefly turn it back on.

When you hit a trap (such as Noxious Trap or Captive Audience) that is being revealed by a Control Ward or Oracle Lens, you reveal yourself for 2 seconds.

When you kill a Stealth Ward it takes 2 seconds before it stops giving vision.

When you kill a Control Ward it instantly stops giving vision.

It is important to deny the enemy jungler any chances of making a play on botlane while your jungler is full clearing or ganking toplane. The gank timers in the first 5 minutes of the game are the most important, and the easiest to predict:

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02:20 - 3 Camp
You have to just respect this one by not starting an all-in and only pushing the wave as hard as is necessary to maintain a small minion advantage. It's mostly Shaco/ Jarvan IV/ Amumu/ Nunu & Willump/ Twitch/ Rammus/ Elise/ Kayn/ Warwick that gank on this timer.

03:15 - 6 Camp & Scuttle Fight
Place your Stealth Ward in the enemy tri-bush at 02:50. It's the safest time to do so because the 3 camp gank timer is over, and the 6 camp one hasn't started yet.

If your jungler cleared towards you then make sure your wave is pushed so you can help him fight for the Scuttle Crab. If your jungler cleared away from you then you want the wave slightly pushing to you since the enemy jungler is likely going to gank you after taking the Scuttle Crab.

If you spot the enemy jungler bot at this time and your jungler is topside, ping him to invade the enemy's top camps because they respawn no later than 04:30.

The same goes for your jungler ganking top after 04:00. If he does that then you can expect the enemy jungler to try to steal some bot camps and you can try to defend them (it's worth it if you can!).

04:30 - Post Recall Gank
At 04:30 the minor camps in the quadrant that the enemy jungler started on will have respawned. This is a common time for lane ganks (where they sneak into the bushes from base through lane).

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03:10 - Scryer Bloom Spawn
If you are playing on the blue side (left) team then you can go into enemy tri-bush and use this plant to check which camps the enemy jungler cleared or clear a ward for your jungler to gank, and simultaneously deny the enemy from using it.

06:30 - Honeyfruit Spawn
Honeyfruit spawns between 06:00 and 06:30. If you know the enemy jungler isn't sitting in river waiting for you, this is when you can go look for Honeyfruit between waves to heal yourself up a little.

09:30 - Blast Cone Spawn
After 09:30 you need to know that the enemy jungler can use the Blast Cones to hop over the wall at Dragon pit / Blue Buff. That means if you don't have a ward covering the middle of the river you can get ganked from there very easily. Even if you have a ward covering the river entrance near midlane.

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The value of a 1st Grubs roam depends mostly on how hard the enemy botlane can punish your ADC while you're gone (depends matchup, wavestate, are you winning lane), and if your toplaner is playing a splitpusher.

Ideally you help your ADC stack a couple waves and crash them into the enemy turret so the wave bounces back. Then you can recall and roam to Grubs, but try not to show yourself (it's almost always best to Recall and roam from base so you don't walk over a ward in bot river). The enemy won't make the mistake of fighting at a numbers disadvantage if they know you are there. Just sit in banana-bush (blueside) or the mid-top river bush.

If the wave is pushing away from your ADC, it could still be worth roaming if you have for example a Trundle top. Your ADC just has to accept they're not the main character for 1 nanosecond and play disciplined by giving up CS and XP. Your average pisslow ADC will complain in chat and die while trying to hit the wave. A challenger ADC will complain in chat while sitting safely on tier 1 (or even tier 2) turret.

If the enemy botlane is strong enough to zone your ADC off the tier 1 turret, it's almost never worth losing 3 plates and 2-3 waves over a Grubs roam.

Also if mid/top have prio and you spotted the enemy support in botlane, just recall. If the enemy gave up on contesting Grubs, just recall too. Don't stay just to auto attack the Grubs when you are not needed.

For 2nd Grubs you should be level 6. If you are still level 5 then you roamed/died too much. Here you have to decide where you want to allocate your power. You can be physically in one place, and use Wish in the other place. If my Wish is enough to save my ADC from getting dived, I'll happily roam to 2nd Grubs. If it isn't, then I'll stay bot and use my Wish to help the fight for 2nd Grubs. Or if I can guarantee taking plates if the enemy support roams for 2nd Grubs, then I'll stay bot and do that and use my Wish for the 2nd Grubs fight. This obviously doesn't work against Seraphine ADC with her infinite waveclear.

This whole paragraph is a grave over-simplification, but while writing this I'm constantly thinking "IT DEPENDS JUST THINK FOR YOURSELF". I'm doing my best to simplify it without being too vague, but Grubs roams don't fit into a simple flow-chart. I'll do a video on it at some point because this wall of text is getting too long, and it's difficult to format the information in a palatable way.

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Gold from Turrets
Global: Given to everyone alive or dead.
Local: Split among everyone that qualifies. 1200 range damage-less or 2500 if you dealt damage within 10 seconds. If no one qualifies the gold is lost.

Tier 1 Turret:
Global: 50g/player (250g total)
Local: 250g
Turret Plates: 125g (x5 plates = 625g total)

Tier 2 Turret
Global: 25g/player (125g total)
Local: 425g Mid / 675g Top & Bot

Tier 3 Turret
Global: 25g/player (125g total)
Local: 375g

Nexus Turret
Global: 50g/player (250g total)
Local: 0g

Mid tier 1 turret is the only one that actually meaningfully "opens up the map". All other turrets are only worth their gold value. Sidelane tier 2 turrets give about 700g local gold. All other turrets are not worth destroying your tempo over, only take them if it's free.

Unless you're going to get first turret bonus gold (150g local gold) then you are basically always better off just recalling instead. It's not worth the risk and loss in tempo to greed for the turret, you can get your team that global gold later and just use the turret to your advantage by making it eat up your minions for now.

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Towers
You put yourself at risk by getting in auto attack range of towers and should 99/100 times just sit back. You barely deal any damage to them because you don't even build much AP since enchanters budget heavily into bonus healing.

Drakes
Your time is much better spent doing literally anything else than auto attacking the drake as well. You should only do that if you are worried someone is going to contest it and kill your jungler, or you have literally nothing better to do.

Baron Nashor
Your safety is definitely the #1 priority, so avoid the Baron pit and try to find an angle off to the side away from the enemy team where you can stand in a bush or around a corner. Only go inside the Baron pit if you think you can kill the Baron before the enemy team wipes you, and then either be healthy/strong enough to turn on the enemy or Flash out.

Rift Herald
This is the only objective that you can actually meaningfully help your jungler to clear faster. Whenever the Rift Herald auto attacks it applies a debuff to its most recent target that makes them deal 50% less damage. If you tank the Rift Herald's auto attacks for your jungler then he can kill it much faster.

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You play 1-3-1 (one person in each sidelane, you and usually your ADC in midlane) by (slow)pushing out midwave and getting a ward as deep into midlane as you safely can. Once you did that, you and your ADC go with your jungler and make it a 4-0-1 or 1-0-4 on whatever side of the map your jungler wants to go take a tower or get a pick. Ideally this is also the side where the next objective spawns, and you use this pressure to get some wards out in river/enemy jungle beforehand.

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Equinox is really important to use well. It can be used to deny Flash/ Zhonya's Hourglass, to zone (though a lot of the time a Starcall would suffice), to scramble up the enemy's engage, to extend the crowd control chain on an already locked down target, or to delay a cast to buy yourself some time to get your Astral Infusion cooldown back up. Good enemies will be waiting for you to use it before they make their play. Just sitting on it can prevent a Katarina or Samira from jumping your backline, so don't feel pressured to use it just because it's off cooldown, as even without casting it you are getting value by occupying the mind of the enemy.

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Tracking enemy ability cooldowns is really important. You can't just follow your engagers into battle to heal them. You need to be sure that the enemy actually wasted their gap closers before you can get in there yourself. If you don't have Flash or fast reactions and the enemy Malphite still has Unstoppable Force off cooldown then you just have to sit back until its been used or until you figured out where the Malphite is and know he's not in range to be a threat. Dying to get off one more Astral Infusion on an overextended frontliner is never worth as much as you staying alive and getting many more Astral Infusion casts on your other allies.

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Spacing is closely related to cooldown tracking. Staying out of each enemy champions danger zone is just the surface of it. The danger zone of enemies changes depending on what abilities are on cooldown. Once the enemy Diana didn't get a reset on her Lunar Rush, her danger zone shrinks to just the size of her Moonfall. Now you can get in range to cast a Starcall, and if you know she doesn't have Flash or Hextech Rocketbelt you could even weave in an auto attack. Tracking this for all relevant enemies is how you find these windows to weave in and out and become an exceptional contributor in teamfights.

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Sometimes it gets messy and it becomes hard to mouse over specific targets or keep track of which nameplate belongs to which player. Luckily there are some other ways to do those things. I have my F-keys re-bound to my mouse buttons so I have an easier time moving my camera around to track where my allies are and what they are doing. But that is not the only thing they are good for. If you hold down your W key and then press the F-key that corresponds to the teammate you want to heal it will cast your Astral Infusion on them on key-down.

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Keeping track of the health of everyone in your team when they might not all be on your screen can also get hectic during fights. I use the portraits above my minimap for that, it really helps with timing your Wish. These frames double as yet another way to target allies with spells. If you mouse over one of these frames and then press W you will cast Astral Infusion on that player.

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Turn on timestamps for messages in your chat and always ping when the enemy uses Flash. You can press Z to bring up chat history when there is a break in combat and take a moment to do some maths. Just look at the timestamp and add the following:

Regular Flash

+5m then round it down a bit to account for delay of when it was used vs. pinged.

Cosmic Insight

+4m (it's actually 4m 15s but you can assume that your teammate pinged the summoner ~15s later when combat was done).

Luci Boots

+4m 30s but round down a bit to account for delay. +3m 55s with both Cosmic Insight and Ionian Boots of Lucidity, I just do 4m, it's whatever keep it simple.

Rebirth & Cell Division

It's also very helpful if you track Anivia's Rebirth and Zac's Cell Division. Their cooldowns are 4 and 5 minutes, respectively.

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You can hit CTRL+A and CTRL+C before you send it, so that you can easily spam it with CTRL+V. If you always write the most recent timer before pasting the others after it, you can easily just backspace the oldest timer when it expires. I like to post it at least twice every time I send it in chat, because it's esier to read.

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Solstice Sleigh doesn't benefit from bonus healing because it isn't coded as a heal. It also doesn't apply Ardent Censer and Staff of Flowing Water.

Moonstone Renewer doesn't show a visual when it procs from Wish.
Moonstone Renewer has a different visual for heals than for shields.

Echoes of Helia works on Wish with unlimited range, but it will always prefer the pair of ally + enemy that are closest to you. This means that if you are in botlane, and both your mid and top are fighting their opponents, when you use Wish the Echoes of Helia damage will go to the midlane fight because it's closer to you. If you ask your midlaner to move away from the enemy midlaner a bit before you use Wish, the proc will be sure to go to the toplane fight. The range isn't very big so it's not really something you generally have to worry about.

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Bone Plating can cause First Strike to not grant gold to the enemy. When you take damage during their First Strike window, 0.4 seconds later a little projectile is shot at you that deals the bonus damage. This damage can get negated by Bone Plating which causes the enemy to receive less or no bonus gold.

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Starcall grants Rejuvenation even when hitting spell shields, or when intercepted by Braum's Unbreakable.

Astral Infusion's effects occur before the cast time.

Equinox's Silence will break if Ahri's Charm times out while the target is standing in your Equinox.

Equinox's Root can prevent enemies from auto attacking you if you are behind them. Their character will not be able to turn around to face you. That means you can use Flash to go behind someone that's rooted in a super clutch moment where you are low health and would die from the next auto attack. Works against both melee and ranged attackers.

Wish will not benefit from Ability Haste or Ability Power if you spam the button when respawning, due to several character stats needing a moment to be recalculated each time a character spawns.

Wish will not credit Soraka with an assist/takedown if the target ally is at full health.

Wish can heal units that are untargetable. This includes effects from Guardian Angel, Zhonya's Hourglass and Zilean's Chronoshift.

Wish can heal allies that are phased by Mordekaiser's ultimate: Realm of Death.

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Kittxnly & 1YANOU's guide has an excellent writeup on support matchups. I recommend you to check it out!

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Botlane's 2v2 matchups can be hard to grasp at first. This video from Skill Capped does a pretty good job of explaining how to understand what the enemy wants to do and what you should want to do, so you can do things with a purpose.

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ShoDesu made an excellent explainer video about roam timers. It's really important to make use of these because in low elo you'll have impact while the enemy support doesn't, and in higher elos you'll be outclassed if you don't.

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Coach Rogue made a nice educational video about tempo lines. If you stick to these you'll find yourself getting collapsed on less often and able to support your teammates when a play goes down more often. You will know when to ping your ADC back on midwave in later stages of the game, and tell him to wait for the sidewave to push up before he walks up to the next wave. Highly recommend!

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Coach K made an amazing jungle tracking guide that is absolutely worth studying. Don't be intimidated by the 1 hour video length, because the midlane and toplane sections can be skipped. You may want to take some notes or revisit the video from time to time. It's super insightful and turns games that feel like "jgl diff" into "actually, it's me diff". This video teaches you when to trade, when to preserve health, what the jungle matchup means for botlane, how to know where the enemy jungler is and which moments he is looking to gank or invade.