the problem with going against graves is that his kit provides him with everything except sustain, so when you're looking to counter pick theres no real glaring weakness to exploit against him alone ( as opposed to other ads like cait who doesnt have a steroid or kog'maw who doesnt have an escape). to this end picking soraka to deny him the best sustain is a good move, however that still leaves open sona, and a graves/sona lane is actually a bit scarier than a graves/soraka lane due to the amount of things their kits combined can do. if you do end up facing graves/soraka it largely comes down to timing your harass and engage correctly. if playing as lulu or sona against that lane you have amazing potential for harass as long as you keep control of the bushes. sona just straight up does a lot of damage with Q+power chord, and as long as you have you ad to cover your escape you shouldnt take more than one auto attack from him and it will be easy for you to heal off that damage. the best time to do this harassment is when you think hes about to go for a CS, this is to force him to react to you and miss the CS as well as hitting him when his true grit isnt up. while its true that soraka will just be able to heal off your harass, you can harass and do damage faster than soraka can heal which sets up you main opportunity to do damage. if you can force soraka to heal him while hes still trying to CS then you can wait for the astral blessing armor bonus to run out and then Q+power chord him again but this time with your ad going in for a few hits as well. then you pop E and back out just slightly. this will force him to play defensively until astral blessing is back up and you can use this time to do stuff like ward dragon or just keep poking with Q. when you go in for the engage you can also Q and wait for you ad to do a hit or two then E and E power chord graves to make sure he cant chase. if he dashes up to hit you hes blown his escape trying to initiate and hes distanced himself from his support. this would also be a great time to crescendo as you'll be able to stun him near your AD while he wont have too many true grit stacks. Lulu plays really similarly but there are some pretty cool things you can do with her kit. if you see soraka coming too far up using help pix on her can scare her back which will set up an easy glitterlance on graves. i think you can also do this by using help pix on a ward in their bush but im not sure. a lulu in brush is actually really annoying since she can help pix the creep your're trying to CS and get a point blank glitterlance, which both causes grave to lose cs and hurts him. its important to not kill any creeps with glitterlance though and its really important to make sure that if you do harass graves then your glitterlance actually hits since lulu is so slow if you dont you'll take a lot of damage. you also need to be safe with your mana and make every glitterlance count.
as far as AD's go urgot is really powerful in lane against graves soraka because he has great poke, builds tanky, and one of his core items is brutalizer which does well versus astral blessing and true grit. i dont know if i would recommend him though as his damage falls off late game, and though he is still useful in initiating and picking off champs, you really have to rely on the rest of your team for the bulk of the damage in team fights. the second route you could go is MF and just try to win your lane super hard. with MF its all about using impure shot before you think soraka is about to heal him, and timing the opponent sorakas cooldowns can be very useful. MF falls off hard late game compaired to graves but against a sustain support you have a really good chance of winning lane. lastly you could go with Kog'maw or corki. both are really strong against astral blessing due to their poke being magic damage. graves will still get a bit extra magic resist due to soraka's passive but with kog'maws W and corki's everything you can nullify the amazing armor buff soraka gives which limits when graves and counter initiate on your poke. also kog'maw and corki are just hella strong in general.
and harass a lot before soraka hits 3 cause at rank one astral blessing is pretty underwhelming and even at rank two its not really spectacular.
as far as AD's go urgot is really powerful in lane against graves soraka because he has great poke, builds tanky, and one of his core items is brutalizer which does well versus astral blessing and true grit. i dont know if i would recommend him though as his damage falls off late game, and though he is still useful in initiating and picking off champs, you really have to rely on the rest of your team for the bulk of the damage in team fights. the second route you could go is MF and just try to win your lane super hard. with MF its all about using impure shot before you think soraka is about to heal him, and timing the opponent sorakas cooldowns can be very useful. MF falls off hard late game compaired to graves but against a sustain support you have a really good chance of winning lane. lastly you could go with Kog'maw or corki. both are really strong against astral blessing due to their poke being magic damage. graves will still get a bit extra magic resist due to soraka's passive but with kog'maws W and corki's everything you can nullify the amazing armor buff soraka gives which limits when graves and counter initiate on your poke. also kog'maw and corki are just hella strong in general.
and harass a lot before soraka hits 3 cause at rank one astral blessing is pretty underwhelming and even at rank two its not really spectacular.
