So is no Rioter going to come forward about the decrease in Sona's Q range to 650 from 700?

Postal Miku·Sep 8, 2014·22 votes·18,998 views

It's been 700 since she was released 4 years ago all up until the rework she had, it was changed with no intention to do so, nothing about her range being reduced was said

And now we are being told that is was always 650 range Sona players see the difference, heck even non Sona players see it, in almost every Sona balance thread the core thing discussed is her decreased range on her Q

Why does Sona need 700 range Q's? because it's the only time she can surely poke without getting smashed with a ton of auto attacks, mainly VS Cait and Ashe

We want clarity on this subject, with the whole "we listen to the community" thing you keep sprouting off, where is the listening? Explanations as to why it ended up reduced in the first place and hopefully some confirmation that it will be reverted back to the range she has had the entire span of her existence in this game

Other then her Q range inconsistencies I have nothing else to complain about Sona other then "muh downgraded Arcade skin" her balance would be great if she had her strength of harassing reimbursed.

81 Comments

RiotRiot BaconhawkSep 9, 201412 votes

Hey Miku--there is really no need to come out swinging. Just ask your question... We ARE listening!

That said, I'll forward this thread on to the champ team and make sure they are aware (I work on Skins so I have no idea... and I play Janna and Karma support sooooooo)

Thanks for the headsup!

BroteinSupremeSep 9, 201414 votes

We ARE listening!

I doubt it. No one wants half the changes that your company is making.

RiotRiot BaconhawkSep 9, 201416 votes

"No one wants" is a very strong assumption without any backup.

And we are listening.

Kao AtlantisSep 9, 20149 votes

I like the game changes that have been happening. As someone who has played for a number of years, I believe that the game is in a stronger point than it ever has been. The balance team seems to test things adequately before anything gets to live, and when balance mistakes are made, they are corrected faster than ever before. I doubt the opinion that Riot isn't listening is the majority opinion, and judging by the votes, I think I'd be right.

Also new lore hype!

Psst!! ...I would however, like Sejuani to have a skin where she rides a giant poro with a Moustache. I trust you can make that happen. The only criticism i have is we don't have an adequate amount of Poros in the game to make up a fluft. :P

RiotRiot BaconhawkSep 9, 20149 votes

I agree. I've been playing since mid-season 1 and I got hired at Riot in March of 2013. I played a year and a half and now that I'm on the inside I see the passion that drives us to balance the work we put into gameplay, new champs, skins, updates (splash/old champ kits/VUs/TUs/etc), esports, new game modes, helping old ones (Dominion... we still love you...), updating the client UI, and things I can't mention.

Things have been getting steadily better since I've been here--exactly a year and a half today--and I love the game more than ever. I will fight to keep it going in that direction, and I know that I'm surrounded by like-minded folks who will read piles of emails, get a cup of coffee, go to meetings, make hard decisions, read the forums and cringe/smile at whatever's there, watch LCS and root for [insert team here], and maybe play a game or two during the day: ranked, team builder and ARAM are the favorites at the office.

As you might have noticed--we are normal people who happen to love League as much as you do. Trust me (or 1v1 me, whatever you want).

Hnnnggg we need moar poros, poros errywhere roit pls kthx

/end bacontalk

Swift2568Sep 17, 20141 votes

An official Poro plush would make Riot a fortune by itself...

Postal MikuSep 9, 20146 votes

Thanks for the comment and sorry for seeming so "hostile" about it But you should see why some of us are frustrated, to have her range reduced (something that is practically bonded to most Sona players minds) but it be undocumented and then for the guy who reworked her say she had 650 range on her Q the whole time, when this is wrong

I'd like to add that I believe the Sona rework was a success, this one problem what screws with her laning pretty hard is the only balance problem I see, I don't care if she is technically not a good call to pick her in higher up games, I don't care that she is outclassed by Nami, I just care that she is fun to play, but overextending for her lower range with her has massive risks what are just not worth it and this does not make her fun to play

ratcharmerSep 15, 20143 votes

Personally I'm reading through the opening post and I'm not seeing where they're getting the hostility from--it honestly reads pretty level-headed to me.

You found an undocumented change, you've been asking about it and not getting responses, so you asked if a Rioter was ever going to comment on it. Seems reasonable to me.

Neo CyrusSep 14, 201418 votes

No you're not. 99% of us told Fearless we hate the Sona rework and you shoved it down our throats, but not before a slew of nerfs before the rework was released to respond to everyone saying it feels weak.

Aaaand now this Cass rework and the texture butchering.

"Hay guise this isn't a nerf we just removed all her damage! She's a hyper carry really!"

"Hay guise we're removing all detail from all character textures and making everything a flat dull colour so metals and hair look like plastic! Much cleaner and better! You're welcome."

This board is the ultimate suck-up area, post your ideas or condescending "we know better than you" lines (yes that's precisely what it sounds like) anywhere else and be prepared to be buried by opposition. The structure of this entire reddit nonsense is built around that, so you employees plug your ears and hide your eyes from reality and only hear praise.

Every poll with a massive amount of votes over the last year anywhere else has completely disagreed with what you have been doing. Meanwhile here people tell you you're wonderful and to continue doing whatever you please. Guess why so few people from the old forums come here. Valid complaints fall on deaf ears and are responded to by either nothing or condescending straw-man arguments which attempt to invalidate the point with nonsense, ignore the point, or just plain attempt to change the subject.

RiotRiot BaconhawkSep 14, 201416 votes

Again, no need for the personal attacks and negativity. We do listen—but that absolutely does not mean we are going to do everything the community asks for.

I think we've been doing pretty well so far.

(Also, who is this 99% you speak of? The Sona rework has been successful afaik)

Neo CyrusSep 14, 201424 votes

Successful based on what? The zero percent pick rate in the pro scene? The mountain of complaints from Sona players? The regular 0% pick rates per weekly samples from Challenger? The sub 50% win rates at high Elo (excluding Challenger due to the 0% pick rate) which are going down as time passes?

Take a poll outside of these boards from players who are not in the super low Elo range see what sort of responses you get. I'm quite serious about this.

To be clear I was not saying you personally don't listen (you're actually one of the few who I see take time to respond outside of these boards), but as a whole I have yet to see Riot this year say "Yeah we screwed up, here's what we're going to do about it:". Instead it's just more of what you just responded with; denial along with a statement that provides nothing. Fearless is the worst offender of this, much of what he's ever said could be summed up as "No you're wrong because I say so". There has been nothing concrete behind many of his statements which at best were straw-man arguments, at worst he was just trolling or saying whatever just to shut people up.

Changing a champion into a style that's extremely stressful and clunky to play is not a success. Changing a champion into a style that's extremely easy to shut down immediately keep shut down throughout the entire game is not a success. A 5-6% drop in win rates that're continuing to drop as people figure out how easy it is to shut down Sona is not a success.

I legitimately want to know why you think anything about this unwanted rework was successful.

HellioningSep 14, 201414 votes

She's still not picked very often; in fact, her pick rate has been steadily dropping for weeks now. Definitely not picked in pro games due to Braum, Thresh, and Nami's dominance. Win rate's been hovering around 50%, so she might be balanced, but I don't find her nearly as fun to play when I not only have to hope that I make the right plays, but so do my allies, or else I'm much weaker. Sure, all supports have that problem, but it's much easier to see with Sona. When you Lulu ult someone, just barely saving them from the nick of death, only to have them run straight back into the fight and die anyway, you can go 'I tried, but he's an idiot.'

When you use your Q and attempt to give your ADC a damage bonus to his next attack, but he, purposefully or not, manages to avoid you for the next 3 seconds, you don't think 'man, I could have positioned better.' You think 'what the hell is he doing!?'

By what metric is Riot judging the Sona rework a 'success'? Like, it's not the worse thing in the world. It could be the Cass and Karma reworks. But I wouldn't consider it a success.

EnvyDragonSep 14, 201410 votes

If you're on the skins team, don't look at the gameplay forums too often, and don't play Sona, I can understand why you might have missed it, but people have been complaining about her rework SINCE ITS LAUNCH and nobody has said anything about it.

Sona used to be one of my mains. Now I only play her in Ascension because, well, she makes a great Ascended babysitter and her team stops losing teamfights when she gets the buff herself.

The thing is, the goals of the rework made sense. Give her a visible buff-zone, make it feel concrete. And it DOES feel like I'm doing something when I bubble players - there's a lot of visible feedback when I get somebody in the bubble - but 1) the buff I apply often gets wasted, and 2) nobody else seems to care.

Playing Sona feels like playing a living Thresh lantern at times because of how often you activate an aura and have to chase an ally who is running away from a buff that will save them.

The buffs themselves are either (q) barely noticeable unless you hit your entire team, (w) unlikely to help unless you happen to be within range of an ally just as they get targeted, or (e) weak as tissue paper.

The zones are too small, making you and your ally an easy target for AoE abilities.

The autoattack buff can only be applied once and the person who gets hit by it rarely notices it's there, and rarely has the time to land it on a good target.

The shield is nice, but clutch shields aren't going to happen unless you babysit ONE target, and then - again - you'll both get smoked by AoE.

The movespeed buff is barely there.

People have been saying all this stuff since the rework hit PBE and the only response we've heard is "HMM, OUR INTERNAL TESTING SAYS YOU'RE WRONG" which is kind of silly because when hordes of Sona players say that Sona feels awful, they aren't wrong, even if their reasons might be.

We've been providing feedback since forever and we are explicitly being ignored, even as the evidence (winrate, playrate, pro pickrate) seems to be supporting our side.

Postal MikuSep 14, 20145 votes

You are a skin man right? You work on skins?

Can you do a little simple task, take Classic Sona and Arcade Sona, put them next to each other and compare the differences Because Arcade Sona got severely downgraded through the texture rework, she is much smaller, sounds are not as cool, particles removed ect. Why does there always have to be a midget Sona skin?

HowPlayGAEMSep 15, 20146 votes

The Sona rework has been successful afaik)

I'd like to know what you're basing this on, because every piece of objective data I see points otherwise:

No pro picks
Nearly no challenger picks
only 4% diamond pickrate, with bronze maxing out at 6%
Vast majority of forum feedback is a form of complaint, even some people who like the changes say she could use some more tweaking to feel better.

Also winrate should not be the sole method of balance, as it feels you guys are doing.

ratcharmerSep 15, 20145 votes

Even her win rate is only decent in bronze & normals.

(PS, is anyone else noticing that a whole bunch of replies to Baconhawk's comment that had like 6 or 7 upvotes just vanished?)

Neo CyrusSep 14, 20146 votes

I just want to say this generally rather than responding to a specific post:

I think people are just frustrated that after all this time no change has been made and Fearless is still adamant in his position that Sona should have no more power. This reverse power creep goes a bit too far in giving weaknesses. Usually when this happens a champion is not considered viable and has poor showings at Diamond until everything else is nerfed.

I don't think anyone is afraid of Sona being too strong, even with significantly more power she was a niche pick and had high win rates only due to fitting certain comps. The same could be true for the current 54%+ win rate supports. Janna certainly doesn't work well in many comps.

Iceshield99Sep 17, 20143 votes

While we are talking about supports, look at lulu. She has an extremely strong kit, and decent ratios. She is strong enough to be in top lane and mid lane, abandoning her original support role. She has strong poke, strong wave clear, ungodly saves, enhanced auto attacks, and is oppressive from early to mid game. Sona has only 1 non ultimate spell that has a meh ap ratio, and can only target 2 units. The increased cd times reduced her power cord availability, reducing her poke, and utility. Sona has "healing", "shields", and "speed boosts". Each one is so low that they are extremely mana inefficient. After the healing becomes efficient -- less than half health, healing slowly becomes inefficient, so returning to safe laning health becomes a huge drain in mana, making it useless unless trades are involved. However trading damage with popular all in/strong supports like Leona , or Morgana ... Sona often dies pre 6 with a single mistake during poking, as she herself is one of the squishiest champs in the game with no hard cc besides her ult. The rework makes her look more obvious, but she basically turned into a gas station-- "next aa does 50 more damage""slight healing/shield here" or "speed up a little here". the only big plays sona can really do are ult, and speed people up. Nami fills this nitch much better, and as a result is a top tier support. Her q is essentially a knock up, all her spells benefit her allies, her ult is similar to sona, except longer range, and it does more damage. She needs some sort of buff to her w and e, otherwise she becomes a more passive nami with less cc and damage

Straight JackinSep 16, 20146 votes

As a Sona main with over 300 ranked games pre-rework, I don't enjoy playing her anymore. Even though her W is overpowered now, she has was less lane presence due to her Q nerf. She has no safe poke, it will get you killed.

What's even worse than her laning nerf is her mid-late game nerf. IMO her E was her real bread and butter mid-late. Her E nerf is what killed her for me. I'm tired of having to now take mobility boots (Id rather go ionian) just to try and chase a team mate down to give him a lil speed.

My deaths have gone up with her. Items I now feel like I have to take on her for survivability (that I used to only situationally/occasionally take):

mobi boots coin adent censor twin shadows

I like some of the concepts of new Sona but just dont enjoy her atm. weaker early AND late game, less item choices, less laning pressence...

MarthianSep 9, 20144 votes

because it's the only time she can surely poke without getting smashed with a ton of auto attacks, mainly VS Cait and Ashe

You just answered your own question. There should be a risk to trying to hit the enemy with Q. Previous Sona kit she could poke a lot and outside of staying out of range (that's not good counter play) you couldn't do a thing about it. Also note her Q gives an Auto Attack enhancer, and if you proc both hits, it deals a lot more than her old Q.

ModUlanopoSep 9, 20142 votes

Explanations as to why it ended up reduced in the first place and hopefully some confirmation that it will be reverted back to the range she has had the entire span of her existence in this game.

Fearless was actually pretty clear about this.

The range on Q was reduced to make it more risky and more difficult for new Sona to have the same level of poke as old Sona. While poke seems to have been a popular reason to pick her, Fearless' reasoning was basically that you can't have a poke champion and a sustain champion on the same frame because the lane flow becomes toxic.

When a normal poke support gets ahead, you can counter it with poke of your own or a good initiate/cc. This is an inherent weakness of poke support.

When a poke support also has sustain, they are able to widen the gap to the point where counter-initiation is simply not viable. In fact, the opponents will likely start doing less damage as they lose the ability to take risks. There will come a point where the opponents can do nothing but cower under the tower or back. "Once she gets ahead, she stays ahead" is not good design.

If we compare old Sona to Alistar, Nami and (current) Soraka, we see that none of them are nearly as strong in this particular combination.

Nami's pressure comes more from Aqua Prison than anything else and that's fairly binary. It either lands and you're in serious trouble - which is satisfying for Nami - or it misses and does nothing at significant CD/mana cost, which feels good for the opponent. Nami's sustain is also harder to use for full effect because you have to clip an enemy.

Soraka's sustain is stronger, but it's on a much longer CD, which makes for more meaningful decisions. Her poke also puts her at vastly increased risk.

Alistar has potentially the strongest sustain of the healing champions, but he doesn't really have poke. He's a disruption tank like Leona, which means that he has to be in the scrum to do his job.

On a personal note, I think that this perspective on Sona should have been made more clear. I also think that being more direct about the poke nerfs would have allowed him to reduce Q damage but keep the range, which I believe is a more dynamic choice. I would find it more satisfying to be doing things more often, even if the net effect is the same. I think the range decrease made Sona a more passive champion, which is almost always a bad idea in my book.

A2ZOMGSep 10, 20145 votes

When a poke support also has sustain, they are able to widen the gap to the point where counter-initiation is simply not viable. In fact, the opponents will likely start doing less damage as they lose the ability to take risks. There will come a point where the opponents can do nothing but cower under the tower or back. "Once she gets ahead, she stays ahead" is not good design.

Seriously? Are you mistaking Sona for pre-rework Nidalee or something?

Let's take a look at BOT LANE IN GENERAL.

Leona or Annie get ahead, then oneshot your lane with insane base damages and stay ahead.

Alistar gets ahead. He just point clicks you all day and wins every exchange, and heals. And later he tower dives you because he ignores it with his ultimate. And then he stays ahead.

Janna gets ahead, her AD becomes an unkillable semi-tank that can't be reached and she stays ahead.

Morgana gets ahead, she basically walks up to you when ult is up and you die, and she stays ahead especially because she basically can't be ganked.

I could go on, but Jesus, are you new to snowballing? Old Sona is hardly the most toxic snowballing champion because she's terrible at peeling and for the most part really can't just walk up to you and kill you without her ultimate which has a really long cooldown, and she's also one of the most vulnerable supports to ganks because of that. Unless your jungler is an idiot and feeds her double buffs, in which case, okay. Double buff Sona is probably the most unfair thing to lane against, and probably STILL is.

The rework doesn't make new Sona much healthier, if at all, to be frank. Level 1, you go invade with Sona because Q aura is retarded for level 1 skirmishes and basically lets you instakill people who get caught. And really, Sona's play pattern is pretty much THE SAME THING. It's all about damage and sustain. Just it was nerfed in ways that feel really awful, mostly the range nerf on Q is highly invasive. Sure, I agree with mana cost nerfs on heal, because it made old Sona really retarded at running other supports OOM, but missing Qs that I feel should have hit is just not nice.

Then if you reach lategame, Sona Q aura still is there to oneshot people, and then Sona basically gets access to old Zekes aura by spamming W with Ardent Censer which allows insane objective clearing. I dare you to call that interesting.

On a side note, Sona's rework has succeeded in making her more broken in ARAM where insane aura numbers are much easier to take advantage of and Sona's higher mana costs matter a lot less.

ModUlanopoSep 10, 20143 votes

Seriously? Are you mistaking Sona for pre-rework Nidalee or something?

Yes, Nidalee and Sona have the same flow problems. Post-rework Nidalee is better, but she's still problematic.

I could go on, but Jesus, are you new to snowballing?

It's not the snowballing that's the problem. It's how they snowball. The matchups between champions without heals come down to who plays better. The problem with healing champions is that they erase progress between engagements and they do so in a way that can't be countered. All those champions you mentioned have counterplay, with the possible exception of Alistar [1] - and his heal is on the chopping block according to the devs.

The Soraka rework is a perfect example of how Riot is trying to fix this problem. Yes, she can heal, but she has to interact with her enemies - in the form of landing Starcall - in order to keep it up.

Fearless went with a mix of clumsy and subtle fixes to Sona's heal:

By nerfing Sona's poke, he made it so that her heal could be stronger.
He increased the cost and the cooldown.
He encouraged making choices about when to heal by increasing the effect on more damaged targets.
He married a proactive effect (the shield) with a reactive effect (the heal) so that you usually have to choose which is better.

On a side note, Sona's rework has succeeded in making her more broken in ARAM where insane aura numbers are much easier to take advantage of and Sona's higher mana costs matter a lot less.

As much as I agree with you, Riot has made it perfectly clear that they have zero interest in balancing specific champions in ARAMs.

[1] - I would argue that the heal on Alistar is probably okay because it's expensive and his role as a disruption tank means that there is counterplay. In my experience, he's really only a problem in ARAMs and I've already talked about that.

A2ZOMGSep 10, 20146 votes

Old Sona doesn't have pre-rework Nidalee's mobility, and firstoff, when she goes to hit you, she is consistently in range to be engaged on. Old Sona already promoted dynamic skill plays THAT HAVE COUNTERPLAY based on positioning. The only thing that was really stupid about old Sona was mostly the superior mana efficiency on her heal when specifically healing 2, which basically made Sona vs other poke supports a game where she simply ran them out of mana. Though even that actually has SOME counterplay by strictly investing all effort zoning Sona to attempt forcing more suboptimal use of her heal.

Heals don't simply erase progress. Mana bars exist. Arguably, Chalice and Athenes shouldn't exist because resource trivialization is one of the more toxic fundamental parts of League of Legends.

You want to argue the Soraka rework is good because Soraka has to interact with enemies. Guess what. Pre-rework Sona did exactly that, because she ALWAYS stepped in engage range when poking and survived on skilled positioning, and furthermore her mechanics ENCOURAGED it because of optimal case usage for Sona's heal by ensuring you are healing two people after trades. Sure, I'm fine with removing her free stat auras because Caitlyn is the most toxic range AD in the game especially paired with old Sona, but now current Sona almost basically needs Caitlyn or Lucian because of how much more conditional Sona's current Q is to optimize for trades. Also sadly enough, Caitlyn lost one of her few reliable lane counters by Sona getting nerfed, and Caitlyn DOES need more hard counters due to the sheer toxicity of her kit.

And yeah, Alistar's heal shouldn't exist. For one, it's not actually a very expensive spell. Alistar's heal for clarification costs less mana than old Sona's heal at early ranks (rank 5 heal costs the same), and numerically heals for a greater base total amount in an optimal use case scenario for the duo lane. And secondly, I don't get how you believe Alistar has a better play pattern than Sona. Outside of the mana cost for WQ, which got reduced not too many patches ago, Alistar is basically THE SAME CHAMPION AS IRELIA. And I'm pretty sure you know why "better nerf Irelia" is a meme. It's because Irelia (and Alistar likewise) has one of the most toxic and overloaded kits that exists. Alistar doesn't have counterplay outside of picking Ashe, Cho'Gath, or Vel'Koz (mass slows, knockups, and true damage are the only real counters to Alistar). He clicks on you and kills you if he's stronger, and you can do NOTHING about it especially since it's a point click knockup. In THIS situation, having a point click hard engage that can confirm into kills easily COMBINED with a heal that further prevents retaliation from enemies is extremely toxic.

I dunno man. Sona has to position carefully multiple times to make her Q poke effective, and she can't actually just simply kill you by running at you unless she burns her long CD ultimate which CAN be feasibly Flashed on reaction. Alistar? You can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about his engage and heal, except be stronger than him or have mass slows/knockups/true damage. So when Alistar is ahead, he literally does run up to you and just kill you. Having a heal + a point click knockup engage is basically THE most toxic play pattern that exists.

Let me clarify, I agree with some of the changes to the Sona rework, but do they make Sona a more interesting, unique, and healthier champion? They more do the opposite. Reworked Sona thrives on a few fringe abuse cases dependent on grouping, and provides considerably more generic buffs to teammates that several other champions are already capable of doing (we need MORE onhit magic damage procs?). This isn't the same as old Sona who had a versatile kit that could be utilized well but not generally abused heavily by any comp and teammates.

ModUlanopoSep 10, 20141 votes

Look, I don't disagree with you that the Sona rework made her a more passive champion in the laning phase. I only attempted to explain Fearless' reasoning and place it the context of Riot's new mandate to "fix" healing.

The reality is that Fearless gave Sona a ****ty early game because he opened up a huge abuse case in her interaction with Ardent Censer. A 25% AS buff with 70-80% uptime is right on the border of unacceptable. He made it so that Sona might not be able to get it in time.

Also, I don't know why you have such strong feelings about Alistar. He has seen limited LCS play and the only support he beats in win % in NA is Soraka. Clearly people have figured out how to counter him.

A2ZOMGSep 10, 20145 votes

And see, the point is, the Sona rework is poorly thought out and hinges on abuses. So basically Sona is really abusive in teamfights, but feels awful to lane with. It's basically a knee jerk rework based around this misguided ideal that Sona somehow wasn't making enough cool plays and that her laning lacked counterplay, the latter of which was true to SOME EXTENT mostly in terms of mana costs, but the former of which is just insane and shows a bigger problem with the knowledge and observations of various players.

And the reason Alistar is not played often and doesn't statistically beat many supports nowadays is because he has been nerfed a million times. And he needed to be, because when Alistar is strong, he runs up and kills you, and there's absolutely 0 counterplay to it. You can't poke him down, because he heals, and you can't even hug turret against him when later he just dives you with his jungler and ignores the tower. Riot buffing Alistar recently was easily one of the worst decisions they made this season, because the champion DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO BE COMPETITIVE. Current Alistar being competitive ruins the game, because he's effectively identical to Irelia, where both ignore disables, both point click engage/disable you, and both heal obscene amounts at trivial cost.

When Sona in contrast is strong, she at least is still strategically and skillfully beatable. She's bad at peeling, and her options for contesting hard engages are limited and depend on SKILLED PLAYS, and then there's the fact she's always been one of the most vulnerable supports to ganks, which means in the first place you can't just automatically win lane without playing smart. That's why the previous iteration of Sona was a fine and balanced champion, especially because in that design, her optimal build was glass cannon AP for maximizing her auras lategame, meaning you effectively needed to be fragile, but could be really powerful by building that way. Now current Sona's best itemization options are mostly tank + Censer, which again, is a more abusive design choice where you have a healer that becomes hard to kill later in the game and can afford to build tanky because base numbers on abilities + auras are stupid.

If there's one thing that especially baffles me and ticks me off about the Sona rework, it's the fact that it's basically taking her back to Season 2 where she built nothing but tank items and mana regen. Which combined with Sona's original free Aegis Aura was objectively ludicrous, and of course needed to be nerfed. The new auras are basically melee ranged but have stupid bases, which...yeah. Right when I learned to appreciate previous Sona's tradeoffs and strengths building glass cannon.

ModUlanopoSep 10, 20142 votes

And see, the point is, the Sona rework is poorly thought out and hinges on abuses. So basically Sona is really abusive in teamfights, but feels awful to lane with.

My impression is that the top-level devs issued a mandate for getting rid of Sona's auras just like they got rid of dodge. There was also a need to make her post-laning phase have a noticeable impact outside of her ult. I think the "snuggle zones" were viewed as a creative way to keep the feel of the auras without them actually being auras. From there, they struggled to balance them and fell short of the mark.

A2ZOMGSep 10, 20145 votes

I doubt Sona's new auras are actually balanceable. Because of the whole melee range requirement, either you have cases where Sona gets to use them and then they're potentially too good, or you have cases where Sona can't really reach her teammates with them and suddenly she's lost a lot of power. Or alternatively the way to look at this is Sona is STILL STUPID IN GROUPED STANDOFFS. Hell, hasn't Riot learned already that teammate buffs in general are STUPID TO BALANCE? Look at Lulu, Zilean, and Morgana. And now they decide they have a problem with Sona's auras?

Sona's new auras powerwise are insane when you do the math, and because there's this idea that Sona needs to make more plays, you create the Blitzcrank problem all over again. Blitzcrank's problem is being Feast/Famine. If he and his team are strong enough and he gets hooks, he's extremely OP. But if he can't get hooks, then he's effectively one of the worst champions in the game. Although Sona's sadly enough probably a bigger mess than Blitzcrank because she's WAY BETTER lategame than Blitzcrank due to being ranged, not being trolled by items lategame (hello Banshees), and offering teammate buffs IF she can use her auras.

The way I see it, DISREGARDING ACTUAL BALANCE (the rework is a nerf, but let's ignore that), the Sona rework creates more problems than it solves about Sona's gameplay and health. And of course, the range nerf on Q is unnecessary and just more feels terrible above anything.

Emmy Cha0sSep 13, 20144 votes

I'll agree, the new way Sona's abilities work is more difficult to balance than her old ones. They basically walked in the opposite direction they had intended, instead of sustained abilities over time it's all been put into a burst. Unfortunately, that's been balanced below the equivalent amount old Sona would've put out in an identical time span leaving her with both weaker burst and a complete lack of persistence. On top of that, there's nothing innovative about her kit. They just copy/pasted abilities from other champs, lowered their numbers and put them on a pathetic 1/3 range (non)aura.

I still fail to see the hype around Ardent Censor. Are teams intentionally picking 4 auto-attackers? Short of that, it's a lackluster item that just looks like it's doing something when in fact it is not. Like Sona herself. It's rare to ever see more than 2 auto-attackers, the ADC is always one and then sometimes the jungler.

Sona's new auras powerwise are insane when you do the math

I've done the math, I'm a math major and every calculation has come back favoring old Sona by varying margins of width, but I digress.

A2ZOMGSep 14, 20141 votes

Sona's winrates in ARAM which as I recall are actually are BETTER today than they were pre-rework I believe is fair enough evidence that her auras are insane theoretically. I don't have complete history, but I'm pretty sure in the past her winrates were more in the mid 60% range. Now it's closer to like 70%. Which goes back to my point that her reworked auras are actually more stupid to balance. Also it's harder to cheese Sona with Ignite in ARAM due to how her new heal works, and furthermore in ARAM where creating picks with burst damage is a big deal, Sona's Q aura fits the meta better there. So as I stated, I'm pretty sure there's math that proves her new auras are insane theoretically, which basically only matters when you're grouped during standoffs and have excess mana regen (which ARAM helps tremendously).

Ardent Censer is broken on Sona because it means you clear objectives faster. Objectives win the game. Though I'm too lazy to math it out right now, to give you an idea, clearing towers 3 seconds faster, or Baron 6 seconds faster is a HUGE deal. It's why old Zekes had to be nerfed, because free AS aura = stupid fast objectives. Furthermore all the stats synergize strongly with how Sona works. You want CDR, mana regen, movement speed, and some AP. This makes your ability usage much stronger in every way possible.

Emmy Cha0sSep 14, 20143 votes

Ardent Censer is broken on Sona because it means you clear objectives faster.

You're right, Ardent does compensate somewhat and take the place of her old Q when taking objectives. It's questionable whether 20 AD/AP or 25% AS is better for this, but fact still stands a Xerath is not going to stand in the middle of an actual fight, autoing.

A2ZOMGSep 14, 20141 votes

A well positioned Xerath actually has a lot of time to autoattack in teamfights especially because he peels for the backline and has significant downtime in between ability rotations, though this more just means that Lich Bane is a situationally viable item on him. But back on topic, someone like Karthus, Ryze, Eve, Fiddlesticks, or Cassiopeia would in general have better things to do than autoing during any given teamfight. But that doesn't stop Censer from being a broken core item on Sona. It's highly stat efficient on her, and faster objectives universally is very powerful.

Emmy Cha0sSep 14, 20143 votes

he peels for the backline

He IS the backline, who is he peeling for? Himself? The point of playing Xerath is so you can outrange champions like Kog and a well-positioned one will never be in auto-range unless cleaning up.

Eve would in general have better things to do than autoing

What? Why would the Elder Lizard+BoRK and maybe Tri-Force Eve with an AS steroid on E not be autoing? You've finally lost me and everyone else completely now.

LstrikeSep 22, 20141 votes

The question is.. why would Eve be near Sona? EVER..

RiotFearlessSep 12, 201414 votes

This is just not correct. Sona's range reduced is not intentional. The damage changes are, but the range is intended to be the same. I've been looking into this, but don't want to say that we've got the fix until we're sure we've fixed the issue.

Still exploring ways to improve satisfaction with W and E especially. I have heard this feedback and want to find ways to improve these situations, but improving these are going to add some power. Figuring out where we can remove power in ways that don't hurt more than the improvements is going to take time.

ModUlanopoSep 12, 20148 votes

Figuring out where we can remove power in ways that don't hurt more than the improvements is going to take time.

Is she currently tuned so tightly that any changes have to be effectively zero-sum?

Emmy Cha0sSep 13, 201416 votes

My thought's exactly. Why the heck would they ever have to remove power just to move it elsewhere on the 121st most useful champion in the League? Sona was sub-par before, they know as well as we do she's even weaker now. There is 0% justification to make trade-offs and not buffs. We saw the trade-offs made for an embarrassingly pathetic 50 extra range on her (non)auras and 2 less seconds CD on Hymn. This trade-off will just be yet another nerf added to her tragic history.

They should just admit it already, they plan to remove Sona from the game with Azir's release.

Swift2568Sep 17, 20142 votes

Have some faith. They did not remove Eve when she was a problem. They will not remove our favorite lady.

ratcharmerSep 17, 20143 votes

. . . but they did nerf Eve down to a 35% win rate and left her there for two years. I'm afraid your example has shaken my faith in Riot rather than helping.

Neo CyrusSep 14, 201413 votes

Her "very much on the winning side" (thanks Fearless) win rate of 49% at high Elo (and dropping) says that she has rooms for buffs compared to the previous Sona's 50-55%. This isn't unusual, Blitz and Janna also sit at 54-55% regularly at higher Elos. That certainly doesn't make them LCS picks, they work in niche situations as Sona did. Now Sona doesn't work well in any situation.

The reason it's dropping is the same reason everyone already mentioned, she's way too easy to completely shut down and deny at all stages of the game right from the start.

ratcharmerSep 14, 20147 votes

I wish I could upvote this comment twice.

They heavily nerfed a character who clearly was not overpowered, yet for some reason even the tiniest of buffs isn't even worth consideration. I don't get it.

A2ZOMGSep 14, 20143 votes

W heal by itself alright, but frankly the shield could scale harder and have a .5 second longer duration so that Sona doesn't feel nearly as awful for building AP when you factor that she effectively needs to be in melee range to have access to a large amount of her power. And honestly, I'm annoyed that the heal needs to scale with missing health. It's like we want to promote more baiting, which is really scrubby and insulting. Insulting that you would expect us to appreciate it as playmaking. I'd rather have something closer to the old heal base values and scaling, which aren't going to be broken with the nerfed mana cost and lack of free resists but rather will reward Sona and her AD better for making good exchanges. I hear a lot from Riot that players should be rewarded for playing well. The new heal is like...what? You get more out of it after poor exchanges?

E aura should cost slightly more mana, and have better overall values. I'd prefer a base cooldown of 10 seconds, and Sona should have at least 20% self bonus movement speed at rank 1. Also I don't understand why the aura movement speed can't scale better when the aura itself only has 350 range, which is REALLY TERRIBLE for a movement speed buff support ability. I mean...I don't know where else to begin, but just look at Karma, Lulu, Zilean, and even Nami.

As I've stated, the rework partly disappoints me because it currently forces Sona to basically default to tank builds, because her abilities with auras have abusive base numbers in grouped situations, but her scalings don't justify being in melee range to take advantage of her auras. Old Sona actually I appreciated as a glass cannon, because it had FAIR tradeoffs in conjunction with skilled positioning. Your abilities could feel good if you were a good enough player to position carefully, ESPECIALLY with Sona's old E aura, which at 1000 range could easily reach your frontline, which was the real underappreciated power of lategame Sona for initiating fights. But you can't really do that anymore with current E because the aura range is bad and the values don't really compensate for it out side of minor reaction skillshot dodging.

Also, I dunno many things to suggest for Q aura, but it disappoints me because of its functionality. It's silly for invades or generally focus firing a single disabled target and oneshotting them. At the same time though, the way its designed makes Sona less unique, and also limits her laning options, making her optimal laning partners strictly champions that somehow have a way of reliably right click harassing (and waveclearing), which is effectively Caitlyn and Lucian. I wonder at times what's so bad about a shorter duration AD/AP aura buff which would maintain Sona's versatility.

Another thing that's semi-annoying is Sona is overall one of the worst supports at contributing waveclear (which is something ranged supports in general really shouldn't have), but she's also one of the most vulnerable supports to ganks, which is another small reason the loss of the AP/AD aura on Q makes me sad.

EnvyDragonSep 14, 20141 votes

Have you heard the feedback about her Q satisfaction? Because that's also kind of important.

SuperPewPewSep 14, 20144 votes

I'm still not sure why Sona is tagged secondary as Mage, her poke doesn't even feel good at Rank 5 and reducing her damage dealt for a pathetic 2s lower CD doesn't seem really justified, she would now need 100 more AP to even get to the base damage she dealt pre rework (And sadly the base damage she does in comparison keeps getting lower after Level 2)

@Fearless, i'm pretty sure you've heard before for feedback on her Q, but i haven't seen you mentioning it anytime (aside that one post you did about the CD reduction trade-off), are you sure you won't make any tweaks to it?

Her W doesn't really feel good at all, actually, because the max amount needs my target... dead. (Also, if you use your W on somebody before they use Zhonya's or similar effects it just doesn't apply and won't heal at all, Fizz as an example, not sure if it is intended, because well, wasting 90 MP and 105 HP + considering Fizz got 50% health doesn't feel good at all, it sorta doesn't happen to Vlad or Elise because they aren't invulnerable if Sona's user her W before)

About her E... the flat % isn't really helping, nor is the AP ratio (So if i don't have AP, am i actually hurting my team...? Lower damage, lower heal, lower utility...)

Also... why do you need to "Figure out where you can remove power in ways that don't hurt more than the improvements", it can't take TOO long to calculate what the results are, and there is the testing on PBE too...

It only seems to look like You're The ONLY one actually working on it... and that NEVER works...

The Yetii RiderSep 14, 20141 votes

Just nerf Crescendo then. Seriously, so much of her power is in her ultimate that all of her other skills feel weak and if there are people expressing dissatisfaction with her kit, to the point that you feel necessary to give her some love, then balancing her kit between her base skills and her ultimate seems like the best way to go.

Suggestions:

Increase the cooldown of Crescendo to 140 at all ranks.
Reduce the duration to 1/1.25/1.5 seconds
Remove the damage entirely. The skill is about a team wide stun, it doesn't need to be mini-burst along with it.
Give Crescendo a cast time. Have Sona play a chord for 1 second before she fires it, or have her channel with some cool musical theme and an interesting channel animation before firing it.

SuperPewPewSep 14, 20141 votes

Well, the 2nd suggestion is just good, not bad.

The first instead, well, that amount of CD is too damn long without 40% CDR, but it can be dealt with, unless TF's are going too often, Sona should have it ready all the time, i guess it is actually reasonable.

But, however, removing the damage seems to harsh, unless you're planning to increase ALL her numbers... a lot. Removing 150/250/350 damage + 0.5 AP to 1-5 enemies would hurt her kit a lot, how would you compensate that?

Nami got a similar ultimate too, with the difference that it knock ups, slows, and it doesn't go so fast. (It is a, Team wide knock up paired with a slow and a longer range, would that mean the damage should be removed too?)

The channel time... isn't effective. She would either get stunned or give time for the enemies to avoid it, and put her on an even worse spot, one second is enough to either make her miss or easily dodge it, and without her ulti Sona doesn't have CC other than the miserable slow from her E.

Swift2568Sep 17, 20141 votes

As a Sona player I couldn't care less about her E. E is the dump stat. you take a rank in it then cycle through it to stack her passive. I would much rather have range and effectiveness with her Q. And given that her attack stat is her healing stat, I would say that anything you do to improve Q is going to improve W.

If you are interested in satisfaction, why not try rolling her back to what she was and not tinkering with things that are not broken?

Straight JackinSep 18, 20142 votes

As a Sona player I couldn't care less about her E. E is the dump stat. you take a rank in it then cycle through it to stack her passive. I would much rather have range and effectiveness with her Q.

I'm completely with you on the Q range. What percentage of players started Q at level 1 pre vs post-rework? That's a stat Riot should have access to and ponder.

E being the 'dump stat' is a misconception many players have about Sona. E was the real "Hidden Power" that the devs talked about wanting to remove from her kit. The cooldown on her Q and W increased but not as much as E. The range on Q decreased a tiny bit and we sure do feel it but think about how much range her E lost! Her E also lost its passive which was there to compensate for her being slow and squishy. Now we have "short bursts of compensation" with cooldowns that cost mana. Thats why my deaths are going up now vs then, she's slower but just as squishy and has less itemization options. So now I have 1 viable boot choice > mobis (also recently nerfed). More deaths per game directly as a result of the E changes. Her Q isn't causing my to die 30% more every game because her over-powered heal compensates enough to get me through laning phase. Yet that heal isn't going to compensate for the loss of E's nerf when I get engaged upon because my 'short burst' wasn't long enough or I was out of mana. If E was such a 'dump stat' then why did it get nerfed so much harder then her Q or W? SINCE the rework, E has now become THE dump stat.

The Sonas who thrived on her old Q in lane and then proceeded to build a lot of low AP utility items (crucible/locket/etc) are less likely to have realized the true worth of her E. Any Sona main who regularly went the high -AP route knows what hidden power was unlockable in her E and what it was capable of doing for her team mates mid to late game with enough AP.

When the average person on your team becomes x% faster than the average person on the other team then 2 things happen:

1 - mistakes made by your team mates become more forgiving 2 - mistakes made by people on the other team become easier to capitalize on.

There is a certain point where enough X (AP) will start to give your team a **chance ** to turn the tide of a game believed to be lost by everyone else on your team except you. But to get enough AP on squishy Sona to do this you have to be extremely good at positioning, vision, and supporting. You needed her old E. Yes the reward was great but the risk justified it.

How many varied builds did you see on Sona pre vs post-rework? Everyone builds cookie-cutter now.

High AP Sona worked for me in SoloQ mostly because of her E. She was balanced and their were quite a few supports I had a very hard time laning against (Annie and Voli come to mind.) Her Q early game is what got me to the point late game to leverage that E but Q didn't win games, just lanes and some trades. E (not Q) was way more of a factor in winning these games

AlexKondratzSep 22, 20141 votes

Still exploring ways to improve satisfaction with W and E especially. I have heard this feedback and want to find ways to improve these situations, but improving these are going to add some power. Figuring out where we can remove power in ways that don't hurt more than the improvements is going to take time.

Her E affected minions before rework. Wouldn't be nice to have that back? It was such an unique interaction that old Sona had and I think every Sona player would be more than happy to have it back. It would be nice for some minor tower pushing, probably a fixed value that doesn't scales so minions don't become ferraris if she goes AP.

As another idea she could gain an small ms amount for every minion tagged, could be usefull for chasing or avoiding ganks (I'm not saying she should get away from every gank, but it would be a pretty cool feature for her). Think Yasuo and his dash, but a small ms boost (we don't want her suddenly becoming Usain Bolt) instead of the dash, and ally minions instead of enemy ones.

Maybe it could only apply to moving minions so she doesn't becomes abusive with E + minions + Q during laning phase.

Just a suggestion. Can't wait for her Q fix to hit live, man, how many Qs I have missed since the 50 range reduction bug.