Sona, viable mid lane or serious utility buffs please

So as the title suggest, this is a thread asking that Sona either get the buffs to be a viable mid lane mage, OR the buffs to be a viable utility support.

Let's be honest here, Sona is in a weird place. Your current kit is based around having a lot of AP, full CDR and most likely rocking a , BUT you are expected to do this while being behind on levels, and stuck with a slightly above average support budget ( will trigger more often then most other supports who use it, but you still won't have basically any creep score).

You can't really take her mid lane, since she lack range & damage to pressure from a safe distance; lacks burst scare or threaten enemy champions; and lacks crowd control/ mobility for safety. This also speaks nothing to just how bad she is at last hitting. Since her 1 offensive ability is auto target, you have to both choose between harassing the enemy with it while also constantly moving around so you can try to lane that bolt on a low health minion instead of the two near full health ones that are 10 units further forward. Assuming you don't get totally blown up due to you lack of mobility, low damage, naturally low health, and above average difficulty in securing CS; you are probably rushing a Lich bane or since you need that bonus damage to remain even remotely viable into the mid to late game.

On the other side we see a huge lack of power in her utility skills. The first couple levels of her heal is a joke. It's so weak that most ADC's will actually heal the same amount off 2-3 auto attacks. I know that it's suppose to be "balanced" around the shield, but this brings up it's own issues. That being that the shield is painfully short lived. One and half seconds means that you often have to land the shield in between your ally getting hit. You can't use the skill before hand, giving them added security when starting a fight. You can't land it a tiny bit late, because by that point it will often be of no further use or will fall off before negating the damage/attack you need it to. This then brings us to the other issues, those being that the spell is on such a long cooldown in the early game that you often can't heal/shield often enough to have the kind of effect you need for a healer. The spell has a very high base mana cost, meaning that you can't cast it often in the early to mid game without running out of mana and thus being useless. Probably the worst issue though, is that her shield like basically all of her abilities, requires you get be SUPER close to you ally, making you a huge target/ prone to easy AOE abilities. Ability is semi decent with a chunk of AP but as a support that's kind of difficult to build in the current meta, where games progress faster and end sooner.

If we look at her mobility spell, you find one of if not THE worst abilities in the game. Given Sona's low base movement speed, it would be wonderful if she had some sort of short range teleport like Ezreal, a reliable stun like Annie, or you know basically anything to offset the fact that you are made of glass and move super slow. instead she has an ability the gives her a very small movement speed buff, that loses potency half way through, and is on a VERY long base cooldown. Despite the lack luster power level of the ability, it doesn't even offer fringe benefits, like say the ability to negate unit collision or a passive bonus to her base movement speed if it was the last spell used. To add insult to injury, the spell also scales horribly with a pitiful 1% bonus per rank put into it (and a 2% bonus per rank in your ultimate). I am aware that it's suppose to be used on your allies and that the spell gets VERY MILDLY better with each ally tagged, but the buffs to them are also very lack luster, since their bonus movement speed only lasts for 1.5 seconds and is at a lower base modifier then Sona's bonus MS. Again the spell gets some what better when you can manage to stack a load of AP, but this is no small feat if you want to get your CDR and basic support items.

You can even look at one damage ability, and it's amazing just how BAD it is as a utility spell. You have a skill with a 8 second base cooldown. It offers a single use damage bonus. This bonus is ONLY a small damage bonus. It doesn't slow the opponent, it doesn't give bonus movement speed, attack speed, etc... to your ally when they hit with it. The bonus can not be used against structures, so it's useless as a siege tool. The bonus damage can't be tacked on to an ability (not counting Ezreal's skill shot) so it's often useless on mage allies who rely on their abilities rather then auto attacking for their damage. The damage bonus isn't even that impressive, it's equal to maybe 1/3-1/2 of an attack in the early game... assuming you can tag your ally after you used the spell to poke your opponent, and your ally is in range to hit the opponent with a basic attack against the enemy champion and doesn't have to waste the damage boost against a minion. As with Sona's other abilities, the power of this utility is tied heavily to how much AP you can manage to build. If you build Sona as a "traditional" support her utility numbers and her personal damage take a nose dive.

It seems so simply to fix if Riot wants to make her a utility focused support. Want to keep the aura's tiny? Make the buffs last as long as the ally(s) are within range of the aura. Want to keep the abilities as one shot bonuses? How about giving them good range, 600-700 units. You still have to risk your neck to poke, but you no longer have to kiss your allies cheek each time you want to give them a small utility bonus.