Sona's Current Problems (aka how to rework her)

My Sona guide ~ http://www.solomid.net/guide/view/47394-sona-build-guide-support-by-rheingoldriver I've played a ton of games of her and know a lot about her playstyle.

Ok so to start, what is the point of Sona? Sona is a champion for people who are WEAK MECHANICALLY but STRONG STRATEGICALLY. ie players like me. THAT PARADIGM IS VERY RARE IN LEAGUE OF LEGENDS AND SHOULD NOT BE REMOVED FROM SONA AS A CHAMPION. Sona is difficult to make decisions with, but easy to execute. I cannot think of another ranged champion who fits that paradigm. So keep that in mind for the rest of this piece.

While Sona may be balanced from a power curve standpoint, she kinda sucks to play in a lot of ways. Yes, I love her to death, but I still get frustrated playing her, and there's one central reason: SONA IS ALWAYS FKING OOM. Sona OOMs so much that EDward built a Tear of the Goddess on her in an LCS match, and it actually seemed like a decent choice.

But Sona -has- to be OOM constantly. Because her spells are just -too damn good-. Not only do you get a spell, but you also get a power chord stack, and power chords are insanely strong, at basically all points of the game (though the one that is strong changes throughout the game and in various situations, etc, it's a really nice mechanic and a lot of fun etc). If Sona has a reasonable mana pool relative to how expensive her spells are, she WILL be stupidly OP.

Also, power chords just passively sit there for a really long time. Due to her auras and healing, Sona has the ability to sit back in lane and not burn a power chord until she wants to, basically guaranteeing that she'll win a trade whenever she wants. So this is both (a) a reason Sona sucks to play against and (b) another reason Sona has to be OOM all the time (because you don't want her to be able to guarantee win that trade, whenever she wants to, for the entirety of lane).

What does Sona's laning curve look like? Well, at level 1 you're decently strong because either you win trades really hard and started Q, or you started W which lets you win trades really hard at level 1. At 2 you're weak, 3 strong, 4 weakish, 5 strong. Except that you'll be OOM nonstop starting around level 3 or so, because you'll spend all of your mana to get that advantage and then be like well...shit.

Ok, so Sona is OOM a ton. And we can't really give her any more mana without compromising the thing that makes her interesting (her power chords should NOT be nerfed in her power rework!!).

So, there are two other things that we can change in order to allow us to give her more mana. First of all. Sona gives invisible free stats to her allies. THIS TOTALLY SUCKS. AND NO OTHER CHAMPION DOES THIS ANYMORE. THIS IS SUCH A BORING MECHANIC. Great, so I just sit here and provide 12 AD at level 5. So exciting. Other champions give auras, yeah, but none just give it for free. There should be a cost. So have Sona's auras decay over time (probably each second it loses 1/4 of its power, so 4 seconds to 100-0). This gets rid of a boring, strong mechanic, and turns it into a much more interesting, and weaker mechanic, so we have room to buff Sona in other places WHILE ALSO making her more interesting! Yes good!

(W and E sort of both do this already, but they don't decay to 0.)

Second. Power chords are OP. And they're also something you can sit on for ages; and you're not punished really for doing that (unless you cast a ton more spells, in which case you're losing a manaless spell essentially). So, yeah, just make them decay, say if you haven't casted a spell in 10s then you lose a stack. This actually allows for some really interesting gameplay, because you might want to drop a stack when you're at 3 with a W chord primed, so that you can get an AA+Q+PC combo off the next time you trade. But overall it'll be a nerf in power in lane I think. The 10s should maybe be decreased a bit. Also it would be cool to have the duration decreased once you actually get the chord, but this could potentially be too confusing.

(So -- @ 1 stack, you lose it after 10s w/o a spell. @ 2, you lose 1 stack after 10s w/o a spell. @3, you lose all 3 stacks after 5s w/o a spell; obviously if you AA within 5s it consumes the chord)

So, what are we doing? We're reducing Sona's power drastically when she's not actively trading. You can't just cast a Q to get aura; you have to cast Q to win a trade, and then you get an aura for a few seconds as an added bonus. And you can't sit on power chord stacks; you have to actually use them.

Ok and then one final thing. Sona's ult is blatantly OP and is what forces her to be so weak (OOM/squishy) in other regards. Being able to stun generally at least 3 members of the other team for 1.5 seconds in every teamfight? Lower the duration to .5s if you're right next to her, and have it decrease to 1.5s for champions standing really far away from her. More interesting mechanics, still not too hard from a gameplay standpoint. She's rewarded for initiating rather than counter-initiating; and that should be the difference between Sona and Nami in fights, is that Sona initiates while Nami counter-initiates.