Sona revisioned
Sona
Maven of the Strings
After reading RiotScruffy’s dev post “on the champions of 2016” it inspired me to redesign Sona’s playstyle and tune her ability kit to fit it. A quote that inspired me was:
“We are looking for the ideas and characters that League needs. Something unique or clever isn’t enough here; we want to make champions that capture the imaginations of players and hook them with new mains for life” ( http://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/2017/02/dev-on-the-champs-of-2016/ )
RiotScruffy’s plea, for ideas that League needs, provoked me to think about what doesn’t exist in the game yet. I thought how League’s food chain is decided by damage. After all League is a PvP game where killing other players is the goal and high damage is the best way to do it. What’s the other end of the spectrum? No damage. This made me ask myself a question:
**How much utility can you give to a champion who deals no damage? Literally 0 damage. Not even basic attacks. **
A role that match to the question was the support. Supports are the utility based role that shouldn’t focus on dealing tons of damage. Instead of creating something new I wanted to inspect the current support champions in League. All of them had at least some kind damage ability in their kit. Several of them made sense lore wise and visually, but out of all the candidates one stood out and it was Sona. Currently she has the most non-support playstyle, yet being played in the support role. Her lore doesn’t promote her to hurt other people, instead it’s all about inspiring and enhancing them through music. Sona would fit perfectly to the question.
I based my design choices on my own play experience, feels and forum posts others have about Sona. I posted this few weeks ago on "Concepts & Creations", but it was deleted as it wasn't the right sub forum. I decided to post my thoughts again. Especially now since recently she aroused discussion on these boards. I’m very aware of players who likes to play Sona as a glass-cannon and enjoys her current playstyle. This post is not to meant to offend anyone, but to explore a plausible concept that League doesn’t have yet.
Without further ado.
Sona’s current complications:
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Sona has only one viable playstyle which is known as “shotgun Sona”. The term means she builds offensive AP items and plays like a mage, shooting high damage spells from a range. That’s not support playstyle pattern.
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“Shotgun Sona” playstyle isn’t fun for the enemy players and not always for the player himself. Being behind often creates bad gaming experience.
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Sona’s poke is unfair during the lane phase. Hitscanning enemies isn’t intuitive and doesn’t promote much decision making. Enemies can’t prevent the damage happening.
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Rest of her kit abilities are counted towards the best-case scenario, which is enhancing all her teammates. This creates very underwhelming ability use experience. Over the course of time, Sona’s kit is tuned to support herself more than others. Leading Sona further away from the support role she was originally designed for.
What this design tries to achieve:
- Establish more decision making on her abilities.
- Restore the identity of an enhancer support.
- Create truly unique playstyle which describes Sona.
- Return aurae back to her kit
- Maintain familiarity of her spells.
- Low skill floor high skill ceiling.
Passive: Power Chord
Sona can't harm anyone.
After using an ability Sona empowers herself depending on what song Sona last activated. While Sona is empowered Sona can only target champions and epic monsters for various effects. The target can only be affect by one Power Chord every 12 seconds. The effect depends whether she hits an ally or an enemy.
Staccato: Enhance an ally for 6 seconds, basic attacks deal additional magic damage. Enemy target deals less damage for 3 seconds.
Diminuendo: Bolster an ally for 6 seconds, reduce incoming damage. Enemy target takes increased damage for 3 seconds.
Tempo: Boost an ally for 6 seconds, increasing attack speed. Enemy target is slowed for 3 seconds.
Designer’s insight:
What you are looking at is the bread and butter of this new kit. The unique idea of “can’t do damage” shows with the ability to basically “attack” your own allies to give them power. Giving power to your allies is well telegraphed to enemies as they can see the cast and the travel of the buff. To separate good Sona players from the great ones, there is a decision to make. Do I buff ally or do I de-buff enemy? In what order, should I activate abilities to get the most out of the situation? Locking enhancements behind 12 second time interval increases the decision making. Making all the choices equally attractive promotes different ability leveling during the lane phase. Every spell has an option for offensive and defensive action. I want the player to consider lane partner and the enemies he is facing when leveling and using abilities. This design version mean she doesn’t normally do basic attacks unless empowered. I could see her having two stacks of power chord per one ability cast, to spread the decision-making bit more. Lastly, getting rid of the three-cast component makes player feel less restricted when making these decisions.
Q – Hymn of Valor
Active: Empowers Power Chord to Staccato.
Melody: Sona gains an aura for 3 seconds. Allied champions that enter the aura will gain an additional magic damage on their next attack.
Aura: When being out of combat for 5 seconds Sona gains Aura of Valor. Allied champions that stay inside the aura regain % missing mana each second. Aura is lost if Sona engages combat or casts another spell. Allied champions don’t gain this bonus if they are in combat.
W – Aria of Perseverance
Active: Empowers Power Chord to Diminuendo.
Melody: Sona gains an aura for 3 seconds. Allied champions that enter the aura will gain a shield that prevents damage within the next 3 seconds.
Aura: When being out of combat for 5 seconds Sona gains Aura of Perseverance. Allied champions that stay inside the aura regain % missing health each second. Aura is lost if Sona engages combat or casts another spell. Allied champions don’t gain this bonus if they are in combat.
E – Song of Celerity
Active: Empowers Power Chord to Tempo.
Melody: Sona gains an aura for 3 seconds. Allied champions that enter the aura will gain movement speed for 3 seconds.
Aura: When being out of combat for 5 seconds Sona gains Aura of Celerity. While the aura is active Sona gains bonus out of combat movement speed. Allied champions that stay inside the aura gets their movement matched with Sona’s. Aura is lost if Sona engages combat or casts another spell. Allied champions don’t gain this bonus if they are in combat.
Designer’s insight:
All the basic abilities stay somewhat the same as our goal is to keep the familiarity of the spells. They all have active component, instant small combat aura and out of combat aura. All of which I go in detail in this insight.
Let’s start with the hardest one to revision, Hymn of Valor. To strip Sona from her damage the Hymn of Valor needed to lose its damage missiles. Her new passive provides unique utility and offensive actions through ability activation, which lessens the burden to always max Q first. Creating completely new abilities isn’t what we are trying to achieve here either, maintaining familiarity is desired. Hymn of Valor keeps its identity of damage ability as its Power Chord increases allies damage. Keeping the old melody is fine as spells should have instant effects as well as the empowered power chord. Removing direct damage component from the spell gives more room to increase Melody’s numbers across the board. I decided to leave the numbers be for now as they are fine-tuned when testing stuff, this post is more about the concept.
The next spell is Aria of Perseverance. Currently Sona heals low amount, with high cooldown and mana cost. This leads to a bad gaming experience as it feels punishing to cast a spell. Most of the time you just end up spamming W since there is always someone who is hurt and needs healing. This removes the decision making from the ability. If player would want to have strong heals, he wouldn’t pick Sona over Soraka. This design approach gives Sona strong identity as a buff enhancer as you are casting this spell to prevent damage rather than auto cast. It would be interesting to explore stronger heal options with buffs. Something like bolstered ally heals himself based on the damage he deals (mini life steal) or marking enemy target that when attacked allies get healed (stoneborn pack effect).
Aura of Celerity movement speed match is meant to keep the slowest party member in the ability range. Giving more satisfying feeling when everyone moves in sync, and Sona doesn’t have to wait the slowpoke.
What is new is the out of combat aura. The concept of “out of combat” isn’t very strongly present in current League, although we are seeing more items which provide movement speed when out of combat. I decided to delve into the idea and came with quite unique results that allows aurae to exist in League, without being as invisible power to enemy team. Out of combat aurae job is to provide effect for the whole team when traveling together from object to object. I designed the aurae to be a thing to consider when moving as a group. Do we have to get there fast? Are we low on health? What about our mana users? What is the next encounter we are going to face? The idea of gaining mana or health out of combat based on your missing % might sound scary powerful, but as I like to think in these kind of situations: everything can be balanced with numbers. Besides League already have a powerful out of combat regeneration, the ocean drake buff. Lastly, since Sona can’t damage enemies I put the rule of “or when casts another spell” to prevent switching out of combat aurae on the fly.
R – Crescendo
Sona plays her ultimate chord cleansing all stuns, roots, taunts, fears, silences, and slows on allied champions within range and grants them slow immunity for 2 seconds. Successfully cleansing an effect this way grants the ally 40% movement speed for 2 seconds.
Designer’s insight:
Currently Sona’s ultimate has been reduced to be nothing but a pale shadow of its former glory. I was hesitant to change this spell as its quite iconic to Sona, but after thinking it through it mostly was all about flash plus ultimate to make that big play. It didn’t feel right to take away the damage and just increase the stun duration as a cost. There are other ways to make ultimate feel powerful. After pondering, what would be the powerful and fair ultimate enhancer could have, I came up with this version. The idea originated from Mikael’s crucible, as it is strong item that creates noticeable effect yet horribly underplayed item. We have several supports with strong initiation and/or peel ultimate already in the game, but not even one to counter them. Think of it as a reverse Amumu ultimate.
This version of Sona is more for players who like to focus on the tactical side of the fights over maxing damage. My experience, when playing as the support, is that I’m constantly looking at ally movements and how they are trying to get at the enemy. When they overextend, or gets caught, I’m there to help them out. And by helping I mean in other form than straight up killing the opponents.
Thank you for reading.
TL;DR
Out of combat aura. Ultimate rework into reverse Amumu ultimate. Power Chord can hit allies to boost them. No damage ratios on any ability, max utility.
No explanation, just