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Sona Ability Rework Ideas

Cara Love ·4/16/2016, 9:31:34 AM·3 votes·1,572 views

Hello fellow summoners! I understand that Sona is one of our beloved support champions that we all know as a poke and heal style of bard. I've mained Sona since season 2, and I was hoping to help throw out some ideas to riot for the inevitable rework for this champion. **I want to push Sona towards a much more "supportive mindset" **, without removing too much of her poke and run playstyle for the players who enjoy that.

Sona Right Now

  • Very reliant on AP Heavy builds for success
  • **Difficult to make an impact when behind **(beyond a well placed crescendo)
  • Very assassin-like with the hit and run playstyle (with a lot of AP)
  • Power Chord Staccato is probably the best use of the passive for most of the game.
  • "Cheerleader" builds are not necessarily impactful

Sona's Identity and Direction

  • Whereas Soraka is known as the premiere healer in league of legends, Sona should be the premiere "buffer" champion of league. Every ability (save crescendo obviously) should empower or aid allies.
  • Each power chord should have some sort of effect that help Sona's team mates.
  • Building AP should strengthen her ability to empower her allies, rather than transforming Sona into an assassin.
  • Lack of Crowd Control. Aside from her ultimate, Sona does not have any sort of hard CC. I think this is something that is unique for her as a "buffer" support over a "debilitation support" (Janna Nami )

MINI REWORK IDEA We'll keep the snuggle zones as they are, but we'll be making them a lot more impactful in this iteration.

**(Innate) Power Chord **Damage 13-192 -> 14-184 ( 4 + 10 per level)

We will be removing Staccato's bonus 40% damage to power chord. The scaling changes are to help normalize power chord' damage in the early-mid, mid-game.

**(Q) Hymn of Valor ** Active Bolt Damage ~~40/80/120/160/200 ~~-> 40/70/100/130/160 Active Bolt Ability Power Ratio 50% -> 30% Aura Bonus Damage 20/30/40/50/60 -> 30/45/60/75/90 Aura Ability Power Ratio 20% -> 40% Power Chord Staccato 40% Bonus Damage to Power Chord -> Staccato inflicts vulnerability up, increasing the damage the target takes by 20% (+2% AP) for 3 seconds.

NEW! Hymn of Valor's Bonus Damage Aura can be applied through single target spells. (Using the same criteria for item 3116 )

REASONING: We're basically moving power away from the active component and moving it to the aura. Avid players of assassin Sona will still be able to do a large amount of damage, if they are willing to commit to the auto attack range. However, using the safer range of the active component alone will be a noticeably weaker poke.

** I think it is fair to apply the aura damage to single target spells in a similar manner as the item 3303 line of items, because there are some champions that have spells as their "auto attack" (ex. Cassiopeia Ryze ).**

Power chord Staccato will be a lot less selfish, and it's primary goal is to help Sona's team mates kill the target.

(W) Aria of Perseverance Active Healing 30/50/70/90/110 -> 40/60/80/100/120 Aura Ability Power Ratio 20% -> 40%

REASONING: With a much weaker reliable poke, there's room to help the other parts of Sona's kit. The healing of her W is abysmal at lower ranks in relation to it's mana cost, so we can help boost her base healing by a little bit.

Again, the aura is going to become the central part of the kit if she decides to build some AP hence the increased ability power ratio.

(E) Song of Celerity Active Self Movement Speed Buff 13%/14%/15%/16%/17% -> 12%/15%/18%/21%/24% Allied Aura Movement Speed Buff 10%/11%/12%/13%/14% -> The same as Sona's own buff

Durations and tagging self buff duration extensions stay the same!

REASONING: 1% increase per rank is ridiculous. How did that even get through?

Again, we're increasing the power of Sona's buffs.

tl:dr/Summary

  • Sona's reliable poke is reduced in exchange for more powerful buffs. However, she can still deal a significant amount of damage if she auto attacks.
  • Building AP heavily scales towards the power of the auras rather than Sona's personal damage.
  • Power Chord Staccato increases the damage the target takes from all sources for 3 seconds
  • Each power chord have their own unique uses: increase ally damage, decrease enemy damage, slow enemy
  • Building cheerleader is more viable with the increased power of the buffs and less selfish abilities.
  • Song of Celerity actually scales with rank

9 Comments

Pika3104/16/2016, 10:19:42 AM5 votes

I'd like to make a few corrections:

  • Staccato is in no way the best use of her Power Chord passive, since they blatantly nerfed it TWICE without any tradeoff whatsoever. They literally just chopped off power and didn't even pretend to give anything in return. HOWEVER, since Fearless intentionally ruined the cooldowns on Aria and Celerity, realistically you can never use anything other than Staccato for the blatant fact that Hymn has the highest uptime, in spite of Staccato being the outright weakest of the 3 Power Chords. Fearless did this on purpose to intentionally ruin Power Chord's usability.
  • Building AP doesn't help Sona at all, her scalings are really bad. In fact, they're amongst the worst AP scalings of the support class. The 2 items she has are not necessarily "AP items" per-say, that's just a misnomer. Her 2 main items, Echo and Spellblade are ARTIFICIAL NUMBERS, that just happen to also give AP as an afterthought. Hell, Sheen doesn't even give AP anymore, so that just further proves my point. It's not that Sona is building AP items, it's that she's building fake numbers. There's no way to translate this into focusing Sona on assisting her teammates, because she's not actually building AP in the first place, not intentionally. She builds these items out of necessity for the fact that her kit itself is literally unusable. Her spells are so weak, they may as well not even have effects. That's how desperate Sona is and it's evidenced in the fact that w/o both Echo and Spellblade, her winrate falls all the way BELOW 35%, because she doesn't exist. Picking Sona is near synonymous to just turning the match into a 4v5 AT BEST.
  • As for her lack of CC, you may not think this is important to her, but realize this: EVERY other mainstream support in the entire game has hard CC on a pre-6 ability. Matter-of-fact, off-supports like Kayle and Syndra still have better pre-6 CC than Sona and this is evidenced by the fact that Sona is the least-picked champion to be played as support in professional league going as far back as patch 4.13 when Fearless intentionally GUTTED her.

Now for your idea:

  • Removing Staccato from her kit entirely is a poor decision and shows a lack of understanding Sona's current problem. Staccato is her WEAKEST passive, it's only being used because Sona's cooldowns on Aria and Celerity are TOO DAMNED HIGH. Staccato needs to be buffed, I suggest increasing the bonus damage AND adding a new Debuff to it that either shreds the target's defenses or increases allied damage for several seconds. At the same time, all of her cooldowns need to be lowered back to 7 seconds.
  • Her "snuggle zones" are one of the worst-designed and most idiotic ideas to ever be created in league's history. Firstly and I want to emphasize this point very clearly: THEY ARE NOT AURAS Secondly, they're melee-range spells. In fact, the ONLY melee-range spells on ANY mage support in the entire game. This is their main problem: it's unreasonable to EVER tag an ally with these in ANY realistic scenario. Not just because they're melee-range, but also because their duration and effects are both so bad, they go completely unused well over 90% of the time. Sona either needs REAL auras returned to her or these shitty NON-auras need NUMEROUS MAJOR UNADULTERATED BUFFS.
  • Sona already has the lowest damage potential of the entire support class. Nerfing Hymn even further, when it's already the weakest damage spell amongst all supports displays a severe lack of understanding of Sona's current state in the game. It doesn't have an aura, so I'm not sure what you're suggesting in the 2nd part. Nerfing the AP ratio on the bolts literally won't do shit, Sona's not building AP. She's building ARTIFICIAL NUMBERS and nerfing her ratios won't lower her damage output in the slightest. Between your suggested nerfs to Staccato and suggested nerfs to Hymn, you very well will make Sona the lowest-damage champion in the entire game, not just amongst supports as she already damned well is.
  • Aria needs buffs, you've already got this part covered. Once again I'm confused about what aura you're talking about, since Sona doesn't have any auras anymore.
  • For Celerity, I'm really confused all of this part. You want to nerf her self-movement, but you don't mention a trade-off. Since Sona doesn't use auras, I don't understand why you're mentioning something that doesn't exist on Sona's kit.

In conclusion, your idea won't help Sona at all. You fail to address nearly all of Sona's current problems and worse yet have fallen victim yourself to the common misconceptions that the bleating masses believe about her. Overall, it serves to just nerf her already unusable kit once again and will further accentuate the problem of her building ARTIFICIAL NUMBERS to compensate for her lack of an existence.

only zhule4/19/2016, 4:55:48 AM3 votes

I would personally prefer to see her be more focused around the small windows of power. Like imagine if her skills all had 4-6 seconds added to their base cooldown. BUT in exchange all her auras give a constant buff while active, but require allies to be within the aura to get the effect. So Q is now more about giving your team a power push, to finish off an objective or turn the tide when the enemy team has more raw DPS. W is for defense, being either a heal over time or just flat large boost to armor and magic resist. Her E becomes the movement speed boost that does a lot more. You keep the part of her kit where the aura's last longer per ally tagged. Basically imagine her pre rework, now you have limited time windows of your auras, the range is much more reasonable, and you can't splice them together for huge bonus damage while also giving massive resistances.

I really want Sona to be THE ENCHANTER champion, like Soraka is THE HEALING champion. Instead of having a bunch of one and done abilities, Sona's focus is staying in the middle of her team for a prolonged time and dictating the flow of combat. This change would allow for her to still be fragile, but would make her more of a team player, rather then her current support into assassin game play style.

Mackenzie Zales4/16/2016, 9:33:32 AM2 votes

YAAAS SONA

EndGamer114/16/2016, 12:33:24 PM2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Cara Tron,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=0TG11XwE,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-04-16T09:31:34.472+0000)

**(Q) Hymn of Valor ** Active Bolt Damage ~~40/80/120/160/200 ~~-> 40/70/100/130/160 Active Bolt Ability Power Ratio 50% -> 30% Aura Bonus Damage 20/30/40/50/60 -> 30/45/60/75/90 Aura Ability Power Ratio 20% -> 40% Power Chord Staccato 40% Bonus Damage to Power Chord -> Staccato inflicts vulnerability up, increasing the damage the target takes by 20% (+2% AP) for 3 seconds.

NEW! Hymn of Valor's Bonus Damage Aura can be applied through single target spells. (Using the same criteria for item 3116 )

REASONING: . Avid players of assassin Sona will still be able to do a large amount of damage, if they are willing to commit to the auto attack range.

"We'll destroy her already pathetic damage values, but mage Sona players can still do damage if they combo in the wrong order and get in auto range"

Oh wait to have kill power Sona already gets in auto range for the power chord damage. RIP mid Sona.

Pukla Kupli Kipp4/19/2016, 2:18:40 AM1 votes

I like the idea of moving her towards a more supportive "enchantress" role.

Colgate Minuette4/19/2016, 2:23:15 AM1 votes

HOW ABOUT NO

I don't want ANYTHING changed about sona FFFFF that no way. I just got really into playing the champion I've just now reached 80k points on her DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING. She is perfectly fine as is.