So Now That Fair Is FINALLY Fair...
After 1 year, 4 months and 2 weeks, Crescendo's mana cost has finally received the fair treatment given to other champs. This wasn't a buff to Sona, no. Just a step towards equality and one singular discrimination being removed. Now it's time to discuss the countless other discriminations made by Fearless and the "balance" team to the rest of her kit.
Problem: *Low base stats - *
- AD: Discluding Lulu and Thresh who both have on-hit AA modifiers, Sona is tied with Soraka for lowest AD amongst the entire support class.
- HP: Sona has the 5th lowest base HP stat in the game and 2nd lowest of the support class to Zyra by only 3 points.
- Mana: Sona has the 3rd lowest base mana of mage-supports after Lulu and Zyra. 5th lowest if you wish to include Annie and Vel'Koz, but that still leaves 8 or more with greater base mana than herself placing her firmly in the lower half of the spectrum.
- MS: She sits in the lowest tier of MS in the game, despite being both highly immobile and completely lacking pre-6 hard CC or any reliable pre-6 CC for that matter. This despite certain other mage-supports possessing both of these traits and still having a higher-tier of MS.
Solution: Simple number buffs.
Nothing difficult to understand here, Sona lacks suitable base stats to fulfill her job, so just give them to her.
Problem: Short range/Lack of auras
Amongst the 4.13 nerfs, the most devastating was undoubtedly the removal of Sona's auras, her most defining trait, being replaced with weak single-use effects. Alone, Sona holds the 1st, 2nd and 3rd shortest-range spells amongst mage-supports at 350 units apiece. Whereas the 4th lowest is a massive 43% jump all the way to 500 units and 5th+ are all 550 or higher. Blue is roughly ~67% weaker, green is somewhere over a staggering ~83% weaker and purple just blatantly ceased existing entirely.
Solutions: Return Sona's auras -
- Full return: Basically a full revert. Put Sona back the way she was and start over from scratch or leave her alone. If starting over, this time appoint a different employee, somebody with a PROVEN track record for success, somebody actually competent who knows what the phrase "public relations" means. Somebody like Colt Hallam.
- Partial return: Bring back weaker versions of Sona's original auras, somewhere from half to 3/4 their previous strength. ABSOLUTELY DO NOT nerf her snuggle zones, they're already unreasonably weak as-is. Rather, re-tune their effects/numbers and INCREASE THEIR RANGE.
Problem: Power Chord
Staccato's damage has been repeatedly nerfed, unjustifiably and w/o compensation. Awkward and long CDs have made both Diminuendo and Tempo difficult to use and thus in-turn underused.
Solution: Compensation and/or reverts
- Part A: Return Sona's cooldowns to 7 seconds each. This solves multiple issues, the first of which being fixing her passive. Additionally, it returns a piece of her lost identity and some of her spells' lost power.
- Part B: Staccato -
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- Revert Staccato's scaling back to its original value.
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- Slightly increase Staccato's scaling and it now debuffs Sona's target, a few suggestions being: a mark to be detonated by ally damage; defense shredding; damage amping; applying Silence
Problem: Weakened spells
- The 2nd lowest damage output of the whole support class after Braum, Sona's lone damage spell, Hymn is tied for lowest base amongst support damage spells at 40 with a meager 3 others.
- The absolute weakest heal in the game, the weakest/shortest-duration shield of the support class and the highest mana cost for both of these. The value of each cast of Aria is so absurdly low(less than a 5% return from previous), Sona is metaphorically injuring herself with each cast. Ironic...
- No value in ranking up, Celerity is a boring, unrewarding, one-point wonder.
Solutions: Usable spells
- Part A: Increase Hymn's base damage. To compete with other supports, it needs at least it's original value. It may be necessary to grant it a new bonus effect of some sort.
- Part B: Increase Aria's healing, increase shield strength+duration and lower the mana cost. The standard amount that 4 of the 6 other healers have or are close to is 60, with Soraka being double that and only Nidalee being lower at 45. The heal needs higher base, perhaps additionally with either a return of the 1:1 % scaling or a return of the bonus Arm/MR. The shield requires a higher max rank and its duration at least doubled. Return the mana cost to its original value.
- Part C: Celerity requires an additional effect that can improve through rank-up.
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- Increased duration with a decay.
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- Removal of CC: Rank 1 slows; rank 2 roots; etc.
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- Tenacity.
Problem: Lack of CC
With the exceptions of rare and off-picks, Sona is the only support in the game lacking hard CC pre-level 6. Worse, her only slow is both short in duration and unreliable/difficult to access.
Solution: Add CC
Simple, find somewhere on her kit to place CC and add it. Perhaps overcharging her passive adds a stun; casting 5 or 6 spells or something. Or change Tempo from a slow to a root. The possibilities are endless.
A lot of these are suggestions I've compiled from many players over these long 7 and half months since Sona died. I still didn't even list them all, like moving the % on Aria from her heal into the shield. Point being, the more suggestions the better. Statistically, the more ideas are thrown out, the higher the chances some will eventually stick.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v636/pika310/DJ%20Sona%20Green_zps9pquj0d3.jpg
