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I've legit found the best Sona runes.

Darth Juan··1 votes·1,462 views

I have always had an infatuation with Sona as she was my first support champ. And lately I have been spamming her in normals, getting ready

for the new ranked season and i have tried so many different builds/rune pages. I've been looking everywhere and I have tried out so many different

possibilities. And fellas, I think I may have found the winner. I won't bore you with too many details, but I will give you the disclaimer that I am a silver player, so take that as you will. But even if you are high elo I urge you to at least try it out. You may be surprised. I also play an aggressive Sona , so if you play a rather passive Sona this may not be the build for you.

Runes- Primary- Dark Harvest, Cheap Shot, Zombie/Eyeball, Ultimate hunter. Secondary- Presence of Mind, Coup de Grace. I double up on adaptive force for offensive and flex and take 5 armor for defense.

I don't think I need to explain why I take these runes as they are pretty self explanatory. The combination of Presence of Mind and Ultimate Hunter make the CD on her ultimate ridiculously low. If you can stack your dark harvest, even slowly, you will be an absolute monster late game.

This will probably be controversial, but I take barrier on Sona. The way I see it, the longer I can survive, the longer I can help team survive. Start item 3310 and do the normal poke game trying to stack it and get gold. First back always buy item 3070 , if you can't afford it just buy item 1027 or item 1004. I know some people disagree with tear on Sona , and the cost for item 3003 is quite high for a support. But trust me, once you stack it into item 3040, you will almost be unkillable, and combined with barrier, no longer will you fear the fed assassins on the other team.

But once you have your item 3070, rush item 3057. The extra damage from it combined with Dark Harvest will tilt your lane opponents. Fit your boots in whenever you can, I always get item 3009 to help with kiting. Get item 3098 when you are close to getting enough gold to complete quest. Once you have the first 3 components item 3070 item 3057 item 3009 , finish youritem 3003.
Now just focus on stacking your tear while you do the normal Sona things.
At this point I usually finish my item 3100. If you are really far behind you can build a item 3114 item, but the sheer amount of damage and you start to put out with item 3100 is incredible. The extra AP will help with the heals.
From here, it is all situational. I usually grab a item 3116 for some more kite/chase potential, and some extra survivability from the hps. If the game has gone on this long, you are almost guaranteed a win if you or your team doesn't make a major mistake. By now you will have your item 3040 and be almost unkillable, while pumping out damage like a true born mage.

If you are a Sona player please give this a try and see what you think. It may take a game or two of adjusting, but I feel as if you won't be disappointed.

Love always, Darth Juan.

12 Comments

DuskDaUmbreon4 votes

You really need to upgrade spellthief's to frostfang on the first back. Doing so doubles your gold income.

Also, while Lich Bane is nice, you really need an Ardent and Athene's. Ardent is huge on Sona because of her relatively low CD team-wide shield, and Athene's gives a surprising amount of AP. A tear before either of those is probably fine, but I wouldn't upgrade it until after them. But however you do it, you cannot afford to delay Frostfang - quite literally.

Darth Juan1 votes

{quoted}

You really need to upgrade spellthief's to frostfang on the first back. Doing so doubles your gold income.

Also, while Lich Bane is nice, you really need an Ardent and Athene's. Ardent is huge on Sona because of her relatively low CD team-wide shield, and Athene's gives a surprising amount of AP. A tear before either of those is probably fine, but I wouldn't upgrade it until after them. But however you do it, you cannot afford to delay Frostfang - quite literally.

Yea, you are right. I am just a hungry tear stacker though. haha i'll rush frostfang and check my productivity:P

Darth Juan2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Darth Juan,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EE80OHKz,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2018-12-02T10:17:44.992+0000)

Yea, you are right. I am just a hungry tear stacker though. haha i'll rush frostfang and check my productivity:P

Confirmed, you were right xD

Illabethe1 votes

{quoted}

You really need to upgrade spellthief's to frostfang on the first back. Doing so doubles your gold income.

Also, while Lich Bane is nice, you really need an Ardent and Athene's. Ardent is huge on Sona because of her relatively low CD team-wide shield, and Athene's gives a surprising amount of AP. A tear before either of those is probably fine, but I wouldn't upgrade it until after them. But however you do it, you cannot afford to delay Frostfang - quite literally.

Not in this meta unfortunately. Atm, the highest win Sona builds are AP ones, not support ones. It's actually common for Sona supports to build Luden's right now over support items, because of the Season 7 end Heal/Shield nerf/rescale ratio to AP.

If we were talking about Nami or Soraka, I'd agree.

DuskDaUmbreon1 votes

If we were talking about Soraka, I wouldn't have mentioned Spellthief's in the first place.

It's objectively terrible on her. Your gold income is shit, you don't get much value out of the passive, and it's overall a shit-tier item on her.

Fucking Relic Shield would be a better gold item on her. At least you'd recover some HP for your healing with that.

Illabethe1 votes

{quoted}

If we were talking about Soraka, I wouldn't have mentioned Spellthief's in the first place.

It's objectively terrible on her. Your gold income is shit, you don't get much value out of the passive, and it's overall a shit-tier item on her.

Fucking Relic Shield would be a better gold item on her. At least you'd recover some HP for your healing with that.

Who mentioned Soraka? Or Spellthief?

But while we're at it: You are horribly wrong about Spellthief and Soraka lol. Soraka can guarantee procs on E, almost always can land Q's, and also gets in many auto attacks when played correctly. Then again...... I average 18-24k damage a game on Soraka.....while doing 25-35k heals. And that's with a Phase Rush Keystone.... so again..... no damage. I've been playing her recently just to get Mastery 7 on her, and exploit the Pajama skin. She has no problems at all proccing Spelltheif. I usually end the game with more gold than 3 of my teammates. And I don't steal CS....

Edit: I did mention Soraka...... but not in terms of her Gold income item..... I was talking in terms of Athene's/Ardent. Which most meta Sona's don't build right now..... or at least until late game and after they've personally snowballed.

Illabethe1 votes

Something to consider if you want to climb with a Seraph:

Consider getting a item 3025 over a Lich bane. In most games it will secure more kills, and Sona is a pseudo exception to how Iceborne damage procs. You only lose about 9% damage efficiency, and gain an almost perma slow, tankiness, and you can redeem the lost AP by taking Transcendence.

I disagree on presence of Mind...... you really don't need it, and it gives you no gold, and there are better scaling secondary trees. Try Sorcery secondary with Transcendence/Gathering Storm, and you'll probably get better results.

Darth Juan1 votes

{quoted}

Something to consider if you want to climb with a Seraph:

Consider getting a item 3025 over a Lich bane. In most games it will secure more kills, and Sona is a pseudo exception to how Iceborne damage procs. You only lose about 9% damage efficiency, and gain an almost perma slow, tankiness, and you can redeem the lost AP by taking Transcendence.

I disagree on presence of Mind...... you really don't need it, and it gives you no gold, and there are better scaling secondary trees. Try Sorcery secondary with Transcendence/Gathering Storm, and you'll probably get better results.

I do get iceborn sometimes, but usually only if they are really ad heavy or talon or zed are giving me trouble. And yea, I love gathering storm with her. Presence of mind is really just for early to mid game dominance. Oh and the coup de grace is pretty excellent combined with the dark harvest and an Q empowered auto.

MrFawknSunshine1 votes

as a sona support main who has played her since season 3 your build takes to long to stack and too expensive for sona.

my current rune set up for her is this: avery, mana flow ban, transcendence, gathering storm , bone plating and revitalize for flex Adaptive force x2 and then HP rune

typical build is item 3092 item 3174 item 3107 item 3020 item 3100 with typical game about 30 mins long +20 ap from flex runes, +48 ap from gathering storm + +35 ap +80 ap +30 ap for a total of 213 ap 40% cdr + the 10% cdr from transcendence giving me a 20 ap then we calculate the passive of item 3174 giving another 60 ap so i end up with about 293 ap on sona while still having supportive items and builds.

Wolfalisk3181 votes

{quoted}

as a sona support main who has played her since season 3 your build takes to long to stack and too expensive for sona.

my current rune set up for her is this: avery, mana flow ban, transcendence, gathering storm , bone plating and revitalize for flex Adaptive force x2 and then HP rune

typical build is item 3092 item 3174 item 3107 item 3020 item 3100 with typical game about 30 mins long +20 ap from flex runes, +48 ap from gathering storm + +35 ap +80 ap +30 ap for a total of 213 ap 40% cdr + the 10% cdr from transcendence giving me a 20 ap then we calculate the passive of item 3174 giving another 60 ap so i end up with about 293 ap on sona while still having supportive items and builds.

When do you find is the correct time to get the Sheen?

MrFawknSunshine1 votes

the way i play sona is as a support 1st damage 2nd

so im not worried about lich bane unless im ahead hence why its 5th in my build. i will flat out forego sheen/lich bane if i need more supportive items of for some reason i need to be tankier ( i know im sona whats the point? ) but if i get blown up easy i cant heal/shield my team and their damage out goes way down so a lot of time ill get a defensive armor/hp item to just sustain more damage.

zoliking1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Darth Juan,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EE80OHKz,comment-id=,timestamp=2018-12-02T09:42:55.673+0000)

Runes- Primary- Dark Harvest, Cheap Shot, Zombie/Eyeball, Ultimate hunter. Secondary- Presence of Mind, Coup de Grace. I double up on adaptive force for offensive and flex and take 5 armor for defense.

Interesting, I see some potential in that, go on.

This will probably be controversial, but I take barrier on Sona. The way I see it, the longer I can survive, the longer I can help team survive.

It's not ideal, a bit of a dick move, but it's very far from trolling, okay.

Start item 3310 and do the normal poke game trying to stack it and get gold.

Cool.

First back always buy item 3070 , if you can't afford it just buy item 1027 or item 1004. I know some people disagree with tear on Sona , and the cost for item 3003 is quite high for a support. But trust me, once you stack it into item 3040, you will almost be unkillable, and combined with barrier, no longer will you fear the fed assassins on the other team.

No. Fuck no. Get item 3098 first, don't worry about anything else until it's done.

But once you have your item 3070, rush item 3057. The extra damage from it combined with Dark Harvest will tilt your lane opponents. Fit your boots in whenever you can, I always get item 3009 to help with kiting. Get item 3098 when you are close to getting enough gold to complete quest.

If you do that it won't be complete for the first half of the game, laning will most certainly be over. The point of rushing item 3098 is that it doubles your gold income from poking and halves the remaining time needed to complete the quest. You know, so you can properly ward during the second half of the laning phase.

Once you have the first 3 components item 3070 item 3057 item 3009 , finish youritem 3003.
Now just focus on stacking your tear while you do the normal Sona things.
At this point I usually finish my item 3100. If you are really far behind you can build a item 3114 item, but the sheer amount of damage and you start to put out with item 3100 is incredible. The extra AP will help with the heals.
From here, it is all situational. I usually grab a item 3116 for some more kite/chase potential, and some extra survivability from the hps. If the game has gone on this long, you are almost guaranteed a win if you or your team doesn't make a major mistake. By now you will have your item 3040 and be almost unkillable, while pumping out damage like a true born mage.

Cool.

Aside from the 1 major problem with not upgrading item 3303 first it looks like a good build.

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