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My own personnal thoughts on Sona...

Atik L Yar·8/29/2015, 3:29:47 AM·4 votes·784 views

tl;dr: Gut Q, buff her auras

Now, before you start reaching for your pitchforks, hear me out.

Sona's Q is one of the most binary spells in the game, and is currently her entire kit. It isn't even point and click poke, it is auto-cast poke. We are talking about an ability nearly as cancerous as Vlad's Q or Nidalee's spears. Simply put, as long as Q is a strong ability, Sona will need to be weak in all other areas.

But, for me personally, that is fine. I do not like Sona's identity amounting to "the poke queen". She is an artist, a musician. She is graceful and delicate, that should be her identity.

How you may ask? I point you to before her rework. Her old auras, as invisible as they were, embodied this identity and fantasy. She decided the flow of a teamfight, buffing her allies with armor/MR or damage or speed. Her stun was the applause; the curtain call to finish her beautiful show.

Basically, what I'm suggesting, is a straight nerf to Sona's damage. But, to make up for it, bring back her old auras in some manner. Buff their range, make Q's aura not absolute garbage, buff the shield from W, that sort of thing. Make Sona the conductor, and the match will be her greatest performance. Her allies are the band, the enemy team is the audience.

Let her knock them dead.

31 Comments

Ser Garland8/29/2015, 3:42:33 AM5 votes

Still no reason to gut it. Might as well keep her damage as it is and just buff her auras.

1000angrybees8/29/2015, 3:55:30 AM4 votes

Honestly? literally just make her spells meaningful and at least semi cost efficient.

Passive: buff W and E power chords. E isn't super terrible, but could use maybe a late game buff. W is all around below average. Doesn't help much and should have a more visible effect.

Q: no problems with her Q, personally.

W: Base heal sucks. Cost sucks. Ratio sucks. I'm okay with the percent missing extra heal. It needs to have its base upped a bit and/or it's ratio upped a bit. Either that or lower the cost. It completely feels not worth using until rank 4. And when you have more AP. Same thing goes for the shield. Also the duration is just... terrible. It should either extend based on the amount of teammates tagged or at least- at the very fucking least- last two god damn seconds. I know Sona isn't meant to be a super good healer, but there's a difference between having an ability that feels worth using and an absolute waste of mana.

E: Should be slightly better at rank 1, and should actually be worth ranking up. There's virtually zero incentive to level it up before any other ability, and that's why its always maxed last.

Ult: rank 1 CD is just... way too high for any ability. She's not going to have a lot of CDR at this point, so that hardly factors into it. 2 minutes and 20 seconds? that's ridiculous. should be 130/115/100, at the very least.

ZephyrDrake8/29/2015, 3:32:34 AM3 votes

so tldr nerf the 200 max rank damage portion of her Q? are you kidding me?

Marthian8/29/2015, 4:07:38 AM2 votes

Her old auras, as invisible as they were,

That's why she was reworked in the first place.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with her current kit and it's a lot more appreciated than her old kit. (She even has a respectable winrate over 50 and isn't crowding out other supports like Thresh/Leona are.)

Q-aura is the way it is because if her allies all proc it, it does some great damage. Q cast's damage is otherwise very low. Sona's early game lane bullying comes from combining Q with Q-aura, Power chord, and auto attacks, with auto attacking being pretty risky for sona since she's fairly squishy.

Atik L Yar8/29/2015, 4:47:29 PM1 votes

You must not of played past seasons.

Sona was, literally, the queen of bot lane. Her poke was so effortless, so unavoidable, and so relentless she shoved ANYONE out of lane.

And so she was absolutely gutted. Her auras were torn from her, her heal and move speed buff were nerfed. Only her Q and Ult were kept, because that is what people wanted her for.

And now, even with Q being practically her only spell, it too has been nerfed into the ground. Because it is simply TOO binary as an ability. Literally the easiest damage in the game. She is in a terrible spot BECAUSE people wanted to keep her Q. And it DIDN'T WORK.

She has a similar problem to old Nidalee, with only having one ability that means anything. But, while old Nidalee was allowed to remain strong until her rework, Sona has been smacked down time and time again, because her Q is too oppressive of a spell, literally one of the worst designed abilities in the game.

Now all she keeps is her Ult. And if she doesn't have power shifted away from her Q soon, she'll see that gutted before she gets buffs.

On an AP mid-laner you could maybe see her Q buffed, allowing her to be viable if cancerous, and Riot would just shrug and be like "We'll rework her eventually". But on a support, where she threatens the bot-lane meta, which is Riot's pride and joy, she needs to be smashed into the ground. That is how their balance team deals with one-spell champions. That has ALWAYS been how their balance team deals with one-spell champions.

So I'm suggesting we make her STOP being a one spell champion. But, similar to Nidalee before her, that means said spell needs to go away. Nidalee spears are hardly a shadow of their former selves, and similar must happen to Sona's Q.

Honestly, I would like if she got the Soraka treatment and saw a totally new damage spell, but that's just my feeling. (And I'm not asking for new Starcall. I hate new Soraka. Never again will I get to play my old freelo unicorn. <.>)

DJ Di08/29/2015, 5:01:34 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Atik L Yar,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=4EujwqpF,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-08-29T03:29:47.978+0000)

tl;dr: Gut Q, buff her auras

Now, before you start reaching for your pitchforks, hear me out.

Sona's Q is one of the most binary spells in the game, and is currently her entire kit. It isn't even point and click poke, it is auto-cast poke. We are talking about an ability nearly as cancerous as Vlad's Q or Nidalee's spears. Simply put, as long as Q is a strong ability, Sona will need to be weak in all other areas.

What they SHOULD have done is just make it a skillshot. That's what they did with Viegar, Ryze, Fiora, etc. and those champions are a lot better off game-health wise, even if some of them could use some tweaks.

But, for me personally, that is fine. I do not like Sona's identity amounting to "the poke queen". She is an artist, a musician. She is graceful and delicate, that should be her identity.

How you may ask? I point you to before her rework. Her old auras, as invisible as they were, embodied this identity and fantasy. She decided the flow of a teamfight, buffing her allies with armor/MR or damage or speed. Her stun was the applause; the curtain call to finish her beautiful show.

I liked the old auras too, but they shouldn't return. They weren't weak, but they were boring.

Basically, what I'm suggesting, is a straight nerf to Sona's damage. But, to make up for it, bring back her old auras in some manner. Buff their range, make Q's aura not absolute garbage, buff the shield from W, that sort of thing. Make Sona the conductor, and the match will be her greatest performance. Her allies are the band, the enemy team is the audience.

Sona's damage is fine; it's the reliability that's the problem this whole time. That's why I compare her to Vlad. In it's current state either the poke from her Q is negligible and she's basically a weak heal bot in lane; or her Q is too strong and zones people out to no end. If it was at least a skillshot there would be a lot more counterplay than just picking Leona.

Here's my ideas for her. https://embed.gyazo.com/c84de56aa4d9356303c9bd64db752e7f.png

Let her knock them dead.