Sona is outclassed, and kinda boring. She needs some changes.
To me, Sona is a late game support that scales well with AP, and has auras to help her team in team fights. That's how I see her, team fight support, she's kind of a jack of all trades, master of none.
However...
Why pick Sona for poke damage when you can pick Karma? Why pick Sona for heals when you can pick Soraka or Nami? Why pick Sona for an all-ins with AOE CC when you have Annie, or tankier champs like Nautilus or Leona? Why pick Sona for utility when you have Lulu, who is even more of a jack of all trades than Sona is?
All these supports outclass Sona by quite a lot. Sona's best feature is her poke, and it's quite short ranged, not to mention getting that close is dangerous since she is EXTREMELY squishy, with less than 500 HP at level 1. And let's be honest, Sona is kind of a spammable champion, and can be a little bit boring.
She is supposed to also shine in team fights, but honestly, she doesn't. She spams her weak auras, lands a good ultimate, and maybe lands some risky-to-hit poke and probably gets blown up. I'd rather have Janna or Lulu or Thresh or Nautilus or Braum or Annie for a team fight, they provide much more utility and CC for the team, whereas Sona just provides unreliable short-ranged poke that can barely be used to siege.
I have some ideas for Sona. These changes would not really buff her laning phase, since she is more of an AP-scaling late game support that is supposed to provide utility with her auras rather than buying support-ish items, in my opinion (besides the essential Sightstone). Also, a high-heal high-poke support would be a bit oppressive in lane. Rather, these ideas are to make her MUCH more interesting and useful in team fights, and make her feel much more impactful in the late game! Feel free to compliment or criticize, and provide ideas of your own. These are NOT necessarily all supposed to be on her kit at once, they're just ideas to make her more useful!
SONA'S PASSIVE
The Problem: Sona's passive is probably the most interesting part of her kit. However, you can only use one of its 3 components at a time, which kind of sucks. In lane, one is just fine, since you use Q for extra damage, W for disengage so the ADC can't kill you, or E for kiting and chasing. However, in team fights, there are multiple targets, and you can only use one. Provided that most of Sona's utility is in her passive, it sucks that you can only get 1 or 2 passives off in a team fight.
The Solution: When Sona uses her passive, for a few seconds (maybe something like 10 seconds?), she will be able to reactivate her passive again using by another ability, essentially gaining "charges" on her passive. The amount of charges would depend on her Ultimate's Rank. Rank 0 would be the current 1 charge, Rank 1 = 2 charges, Rank 2 = 3 charges, Rank 3 = 4 charges. To help balance this though, I think Sona's passive would have to be harder to charge, perhaps requiring 4 stacks instead of 3 stacks to activate the passive.
Here's an example of a level 16 Sona with a Rank 3 Ultimate in a teamfight:
- Uses 4 basic abilities to gain 4 stacks, and now her passive is ready.
- Uses her passive, at which point she has 3 MORE charges, since she has a total of 4, and she has about 10 seconds to use up the charges before they expire.
- Uses her W for the heal, then uses her passive on the enemy Rengar to reduce his damage.
- Uses her Q for damage, then uses her passive for more damage on an enemy squishy.
- Uses her E for the movespeed, then uses her passive for the slow on a diving bruiser to help kite.
This would make Sona WAY more useful in teamfights, while not making her lane oppressive.
SONA'S Q
The Problem: It's a boring spell, with low damage, and you only really use it to use the Q passive, which is the high damage component of the spell.
The Solution: Slightly nerf the base damage on Sona's Q, but have it mark enemies that it hits for a few seconds. If you or an allied champion lands a basic attack on that enemy, they take some bonus magic damage.
If that enemy is a CHAMPION, then if the mark gets popped, Sona could also be refunded some mana/some cooldowns/some other reward? This way, teamplay would be much better with Sona, and you'd be much more likely to try and land BOTH parts of the Q on both the enemy support AND the enemy ADC so you could pop both marks and get a reward.
SONA'S W
The Problem: The heal is weak at all stages of the game, especially late game, and the shield is tiny and short-lived. When using it in team fights, you have to choose between using the spell to heal someone or using it to shield your team from AOE spells. It's such a stupid spammy spell with no thought behind it right now
The Solution: Let Sona target who she wants to heal, and if she targets nobody, then it will target the lowest % HP ally.
Also, keep the early healing the same, but let it scale into the late game with missing % HP that scales with AP. For example: "For every 100 AP, your heal restores a bonus 5% missing HP." (Something like that anyway.) This would prevent early game abuse but allow the spell to actually be useful late game.
Finally, slightly increase the duration of the shield so it's more useful and not so fleeting, and let shielded allies get a small base heal, since you have to get right next to them to heal them after all. It feels like I'm spamming a shield on my allies for no reason just to heal one ally right now. Also, perhaps the aura duration could be extended for each ally I hit, so I can shield more allies, which is just how Sona's E works.
Perhaps the cooldown could be increased to compensate for the added power that the spell has after these changes.
SONA'S E
The Problem: All you use this spell for right now is to get around the map faster, or pitifully try and help your team escape the League of Gapclosers. It's a useless spell right now, really, and quite boring.
The Solution: Make it more useful to allies by increasing the speed boost it gives them. Also, for each ally Sona gets in her aura, perhaps Sona's own speed boost could be increased, and then she could use the high speed from hitting 5 allies to "catapult" into the enemy team to land an ult? That would make the skill much more interesting.
SONA'S ULTIMATE
The Problem: Okay I will admit, her ultimate is probably the part of her kit with the least problems. However, I do think it could be more interesting if it interacted with her passive somehow.
The Solution: So what if when you had a passive stack, then you ulted, your ult would consume the passive and gain different effects based on the passive stack you had?
- Q passive would make your ult do more damage.
- W passive would make your ult cause damage reduction on all enemies hit, after the stun wore off.
- E passive would slightly increase the stun duration and then slow enemies after the stun.
What do you guys think?
(Riot, duh)
