FOTM Report: Support Soraka

As a champion, Soraka fluctuates between "useless" and "completely broken". Somehow, she never finds a happy medium in between. Generally, her playstyle is extremely passive, making it difficult to see the direct impact she has on games. However, right now her kit synergizes insanely well with the transition from burst ADCs like Graves to hypercarries like Vayne and Jinx.

With razor-thin death defying saves transforming into pentakill snowballs, Soraka is definitely one of the most frustrating support champions on the rift at the moment. This translates into her position as the 2nd most banned support right behind Tahm Kench (who's also known for other roles).

Check out the details on her dominance below:

Introduction

As a champion, Soraka fluctuates between "useless" and "completely broken". Somehow, she never finds a happy medium in between. Generally, her playstyle is extremely passive, making it difficult to see the direct impact she has on games. However, right now her kit allows marksmen to trade to their heart's content with the knowledge that they have a massive health pool sitting behind them, safely out of harm's way.

With razor-thin death defying saves transforming into pentakill snowballs, Soraka is definitely one of the most frustrating support champions on the rift at the moment. This translates into her position as currently the most banned support on the rift.

Check out the details on her dominance below:

How to Play

Runes: 3 Ability Power Quints, Flat Armor Reds, Flat Armor Yellows, Flat Magic Resist Blues
Masteries: 0-18-12, Windspeaker's Blessing Masteries
Abilities: W, Q, E, then prioritize  R > W > Q > E
Core Items: Sightstone, Ionian Boots, Locket of the Iron Solari, Ardent Censer, Warmog's Armor, Randuin's Omen/Spirit Visage

Why She Excels

Insane Trading Potential
For 10% of her maximum health (about 55 at level 1), she can heal 80 health along with 60% of her AP.  This means she's able to give about 1.5x as much health as she loses for every exchange on extremely short cooldown.

Not only that, but her personal heal also provides a short term healing dot on allies as well when she uses Astral Infusion on them, allowing continuous damage mitigation while dueling if she can land her rather large AOE skillshot.

Not too shabby!


Instantaneous Channel Breaker + Zoning Ability
Grossly underrated, Soraka's E is both an amazing follow-up CC and an anti-channel ability. Having the power to instantly prevent users from Flashing or using a follow up move after flashing is insanely good.

If there's an enemy combo based champion on the team such as Talon, Riven or Diana, dropping E below their target also prevents them from finishing their combo. As the majority of assassin burst damage lies in good execution, she has the ability to completely prevent otherwise game-changing plays like a Lee Sin Insec maneuver as well.


Extremely Difficult to Kill
Not only does her silence prevent the majority of assassins from being able to close in on her, Soraka's passive is also grossly underrated as well. With the amount of raw movement speed it provides when nearby allies are low, she's nearly impossible to chase down, despite the fact that teams need to kill her to prevent the obnoxious 1.5x ratio on her healing power.

Potential Downsides

Weak Offensive Ability

Soraka's primary purpose lies in her defensive and kiting abilities. However, this means that from a purely offensive standpoint, she relies heavily on her teammates understanding how to play aggressively without draining her entire health and mana pool getting poked down while CSing.

Low Dueling Presence Early Game

Along the same lines as her weak offensive ability, Soraka also has somewhat weak presence early in the game. Although she can throw her Qs and autos out at enemies, against champions like Thresh and Blitzcrank it's highly advisable to remain safely behind minions. The reason for this is that although you can heal your partner for an amazing amount, this also means that every point of health you lose is two points that could have gone to your ADC.

Requires High Map Awareness
Part of what makes Soraka broken is also her global death defying ultimate. Using this spell to its maximum effect requires good map awareness. This means a bit of multi-tasking is necessary to play the champion properly, something that generally needs improvement on, myself included.

Conclusions

Soraka is an amazing support champion at the moment that gifts your ADC and your team with insane trading potential via her low cooldown, highly effective heal. She's very hard to kill despite the fact that she damages herself with every heal, and definitely difficult to beat in a solo queue setting.

Suggested Solo Queue Rating: God Tier Support

What do you think about Soraka? Beatable or super frustrating? Comment below!