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Why Sona's rework is a failure - A discussion about identity

Polaritie·7/29/2014, 10:44:04 PM·63 votes·10,175 views

Frankly, Sona's rework has been a disaster. There are two reasons for this. First, it has totally failed to address her biggest issue (she can't use her power because she's been made so squishy that even creeps are tougher than her, so closing is insanely risky). Second though, it totally abandons her identity and attempts to homogenize her.

I'd like to discuss the latter issue, as it's the bigger concern for me (numbers tweaks can happen after the rework anyways, but a total failure of kit is much more severe). This is from today's post going over the rework:

Instead of hanging back and winning a war of attrition during laning...

To me, this sums up the entire reason this rework has gone so badly. The team in charge completely abandoned Sona's identity. Sona [i]is/[i] the attrition support. She was initially released into a metagame that was heavy on poke, and her ability to provide incremental advantage to her team made her the strongest support in the meta in short order. This quickly established her identity, which remained mostly constant throughout all her nerfs (because lets be frank, about the only buff she has ever received was the secondary effects to power chord). The ability to provide sustained damage and health defined her, and it made her stronger the longer a fight went on. It also provided her inherent weakness, as she was significantly weaker than other supports in short fights because she needed multiple cycles of casts for her output to overcome theirs.

If we look at supports as a whole, this is relatively unique. Soraka is undisputedly the queen of burst healing. Taric focuses more on boosting armor than heals. Janna and Lulu provide powerful CC and shields to protect teammates. Compared to other healers though Sona is able to provide significantly more health in the long run at the cost of burst heals or clutch shields, and this was the main factor differentiating her from the field.

However, with increased cooldowns, and an apparent focus on the clutch and burst, her identity is being completely abandoned in favor of homogenization. Of making just another Soraka. This is not a musician, a constant source of power. This is just another generic healer. It is, frankly, running away from difficulty. Rather than keep her identity and work to balance her, I feel that instead the team has chosen to take the easy way out, make her the same as everyone else, and shove it live. This of course, while completely ignoring the issues she's had as a result of previous balance changes, and in fact adding mechanics that require playing in ways those issues don't allow.

196 Comments

Pika3107/30/2014, 2:04:19 AM32 votes

The changes were a good concept, but the execution has been rather lackluster. This being due to pussy-footing and fear of accidentally creating another Braum, Thresh, Morgana, etc.

As a whole, her passive has been nerfed with the increased CD's allowing it to trigger half as often as before. Staccato was nerfed without trade-off. Diminuendo and especially Tempo got indirect nerfs when her cooldowns became differed. Hymn having the shortest cooldown means it'll be her song that is (not)active most often. If she wishes to apply something other than Staccato, she will need to miss out on Hymn auto buffs as she waits. Not ideal when you have a fraction of a second to peel for the ADC.

Hymn keeps its rank 1 damage, but is now weaker at each rank-up than before. This can only be mitigated by being in queue and having vocal communication with the ADC. Also only if they have long-range poke, like Caitlyn. In teamfights, seeing as it no longer buffs teammate's spells, it's lost a lot of power short of having multiple auto-attack champs. If the buff triggered off abilities, like Leona's passive, that'd be decent, perhaps for 1/3 damage on AOE, but it does not. Even on a high AS/Crit champ, they still preferred Hymn's old passive as it gave higher dps and mages preferred actually benefiting from it at all. Then, Hymn no longer gives any turret-pushing strength losing Sona the majority of her objective-taking potential.

Inversely, Aria is now weaker at every rank until 4 or 3 depending and costs considerably more mana regardless of already being mana inefficient. The shield can only be applied once every several seconds for a very short duration, making it questionable if it's truly blocking more damage than a passive defensive buff would, especially the 3-second bonus defense of the original activation. If it can't be applied to somebody that is currently taking damage, or immediately takes damage afterwards, then the answer is that it does not.

Where do I start on Celerity? The base and scaling were increased, but this only makes up for not giving any passive movement, it's never off cooldown unless you save it for the perfect moment meaning zero margin for error. The short burst duration makes it fairly useless for chasing, but it may give you just barely enough time for a disengage. However, without the passive MS, Sona is now far less mobile and roaming capabilities are severely reduced.

The range on everything has been reduced to nearly 1/3 of what they used to be, Sona has to in the literal sense press her bosom against her teammates just to apply them, since they're practically melee and far lower than even Urgot's auto-attack range. This isn't a problem for Hymn, the only player on your team that can make use of it will usually be the ADC anyways. For Aria, Sona must venture into the front line and sacrifice herself or hope that an assassin jumps the back line so she can shield the ADC and look like she's being useful and not feeding. Fortunately Celerity gives a larger speed boost to herself, because you'll rarely if ever give it to a teammate. The idea of a "snuggle zone" is counter-intuitive as teams MUST maintain some distance to avoid making themselves vulnerable to powerful AOE like Nami, Orianna or Yasuo, just for example.

Despite Sona's passive and all 3 abilities seeing substantial nerfs, she now has longer and differentiated cooldowns too, making 40% CD mandatory in 100% of her games. Don't worry Sona, you'll have company with Olaf, GP and the immobile mages. Perhaps if your new actives were just added instead of replacing your auras, you'd still be playable... Assuming your numbers on Power Chord, Q and W as well as base stats weren't nerfed too.

Linna Excel7/29/2014, 11:03:37 PM19 votes

To me, this sums up the entire reason this rework has gone so badly. The team in charge completely abandoned Sona's identity. Sona [i]is/[i] the attrition support.

Well, that was Soraka's role, but she got gutted too. Right now riot hates backline supports. However they don't seem to get that if you aren't in the backline, you need to either be able to tank people, bully people, or delete people. Probably some combination of the three.

They don't want ball of stat champions, but if this new Sona wants to survive, I'm going to expect she needs to be more of a ball of stats now. She's got less poke to bully, no tank compensation, and it looks like her skills were directly nerfed.

I'm not going to lie, I'm expecting a 5% drop in her win rate within a week of this update. I hope I'm wrong though.

darkdill7/29/2014, 11:02:45 PM16 votes

As much as I agree with all this, let's be real: Riot won't give a f#ck. They remade Sona because they thought "her gameplay sucks", and expect you to take this remake up the ass, no matter how good your argument is.

And frankly, it's a good argument.

Flemman7/29/2014, 11:50:59 PM10 votes

Well, they just turn one of the few champ that you can play when you have a really bad streak of decision making (you know, a champ you can relax when you play it) in another "Oh look I must do flashy play all the time" champ. We already had lot of that kind of champ.

Ok, sona was more of a nich pick before but why turn her into a flashy play champ for poeple who don't like to play passiv when they already have a lot of option available? >-<

And don't give the "player didn't know what they do", Sona player actually knows and you take that from them for casual sona player :(

John Berserk7/30/2014, 1:53:27 AM8 votes

To be completely honest (and I'm getting downvoted into oblivion for this im sure), everyone always (ALWAYS) complains about a champion rework. So, people complaining about Sona surprises me not. I just dont see why they should be complaining, especially when it comes to her "losing her identity". If anything she has a more SOLID and individual identity NOW than she did before. You say they homogenized her?? What other champion has "snuggle zones" that give allies extra little bonuses?

Also, regardless of what people say about how she was supposed to be played, she was boring. So, so boring. Like, Shen levels of boring. At least with this new kit the Sona player can actually DO something other than move around and pressing buttons semi-mindlessly. Now they actually have to gasp pay attention..?

And no, she does NOT have to be on the frontline. That would be stupid of her to be on the frontline. She should be staying in the back by the ADC or range AP (Xerath, Ziggs, etc) to provide THEM the extra magic damage on hits or shields or MS if they need it because the enemy dived the back line. She's needed in the BACK, NOT the front.

JackYAqua7/29/2014, 11:51:51 PM3 votes

Weren't only her auras reworked? I mean, her Q still does damage, her W still heals, her E still gives MS and her Ult is practically unchanged. So what's the big deal?
I've read your thread about three times now, even googled the words I don't understand, but I still don't get it:
Could you be a little bit more specific and say what it is you think they did so horribly wrong?
I mean, isn't she even better at her role now than she was before? The enemy attacks you, you heal and shield your Marksman and win the trade. The enemy grows weaker, you remain strong. It's just like it was before.
You only have to stick to your Marksman for that to work, but that's not really a nerf, and even if it was (because of her apparent squishy-ness) it would only define with whom she works best even better, limiting her Marksman options and making her pick more tactically demanding. And anyways, the rework's only been out for like a few hours now, isn't that a bit too early to judge?