Boards›Gameplay

What is Sona suppose to be?

only zhule·1/6/2020, 12:44:43 AM·24 votes·12,535 views

I think Sona needs a rework, but first and most importantly, i think we need to get a clear answer as to what exactly she is suppose to be. Once we have this, i feel it's a lot easier to get an idea as to what her kit should be / what she should be doing in game.

Is Sona The Enhancer support? Is she suppose to be the champion you pick, when you want someone to make your lane partner stronger? The champion you pick to make your lane partner hit harder, take a hit better, just generally out attack your opponent?

Is Sona The Team Enhancer? The champion you pick to make your team stronger, the one who's abilities are designed to effect 3+ people per cast? Is she the champion who turns a 50/50 brawl into a 70/30, simply by existing near by?

Is Sona The Skirmishing support?

Is Sona a hyper carry? Then why the heck is she in the support role? Give her the tools to hyper carry.

Is Sona suppose to be a champion who "breaks" items?

If i missed anything please feel free to add it in your reply.

Is she the enhancer champion? If yes, she needs to lose some damage and get a metric ton of power into her enhancements.

Is she suppose to be the "Team Enhancer"? If yes she needs to be balanced around her abilities being naturally global (a champion who is "balanced" around effecting 3.5 or more targets, is going to suck when they only effect 2). Another option is that her abilities divide a large pool of power based off number of allies effected. 700 points of shielding is a lot less impressive when split 5 ways.

Is she suppose to be the skirmishing support? Give her the ability to actually get in and out of combat safely, while doing reasonable chip damage that doesn't run her out of resources before being able to kill her target.

Is she suppose to be the late game hyper carry? Guess that means she isn't a support and needs a way to get there, that isn't based around someone else getting a pile of kills.

Is she suppose to be the support champion who "breaks" items? Make more items that she can "break", that don't cost 2000+ gold

65 Comments

VonCesaw1/6/2020, 3:14:17 AM11 votes

Hatsune Miku

chipndip11/6/2020, 5:28:16 AM9 votes

Well, to pitch in and answer the question:

Sona should be a support that thrives in large team fights. This should drive her game play towards the mid and late game. That part is generally sound. After all, Rakan does just that and he's a pretty solid champion design.

The issue comes with how strong/weak she should be at each phase of the game. Her late game is TOO strong and her early game is TOO weak. Unless they want to legit design her as a carry of sorts, they need to introduce hard cc in her base kit somewhere. A lot of shit about the kit needs to change, honestly.

The real question, though, is if it's even likely it'd EVER happen. I haven't seen a single champ with an ultimate skin get a large scale game play update, and I doubt it's happening now. As much as I feel like Sona's probably one of the worst kits in this game rn (seriously works better as a carry than as the support she's supposed to be, and the only reason why it's not exploited is because she sucks at farming...like really...), I don't think they'll ever actually take a crack at fixing her. They can't even get their shit together on Karma...why would they get the pistons firing for Sona and her DJ skins?

Sune1/6/2020, 3:35:39 AM9 votes

An outdated stat stick who should have been on the list

FakeGravity1/6/2020, 6:19:08 PM8 votes

her empowered passive with E should at least root, right now she is so immobile and so squishy to anything while also having a terribly inefficient heal early game that she cant survive the early game and a lot of the time you want to ignore E just to get more points in Q and W, however she use to be able to deal a lot more damage early on with her Q and passive, so they nerf that part of her.

sona is a champion that is balance around the fact that once she get levels and mana stop becoming a problem she just spam her whole kit doing much more than most enchanters, but the base of her kit is never even remotely as good as the rest of champions, and for comparison you just have to look at nami

nami have a movement speed for allies and herself, a heal that is more efficient and she can max to also provide her with poke, CC before level 6 and a way of buffing on hit damage for allies while also giving them a slow, and a powerful ult, she can do all sona can but better

sona's power budged is depleted on her impossible to miss Q that deals pitiful damage compare to the mage "supports" and her crazy late game that this days she never gets to, not like old sona was any better as a walking "my team have stats while im around" but her auras arent that inpacful and they should completely reworker into a combo base music playing support that use her skills as notes for different "songs" that grow stronger the more she play them, even better make her current auras a dual cast skill like follow:

for example W, she cast W she start playing the song giving allies a small healing overtime while around and after 5 seconds or if she press W again the song ends with a shield base on how long it was playing

Baby Ghoul1/6/2020, 1:37:08 PM6 votes

Sona used to be a great pick because of how versatile she was.

If you needed AP damage, she could build AP. If you needed her to lean into the enchanter/protective role, she did fine with enchanter items. You could go either way depending on the match and what the team needed. Almost anyone could play her competently as well. It's not hard to poke with Sona.

I don't think what makes her bad right now is the fact that she's outclassed. That's not new.

Right now neither enchanters nor mages are in the best place bot lane due to the rise of engage supports like Nautilus, Leona, and Blitzcrank. It's causing more people to realize that her kit is mediocre. There's zero reason to pick Sona right now because she's not as good as others in either of those roles, but she's still quite vulnerable to all-ins. Moreover, they're trying to create new types of hybrid enchanters which is kind like what Sona was, except that these new hybrids are safe, do poke damage, and still provide strong utility.

Flemman1/6/2020, 3:42:05 PM5 votes

she is a worst version of yuumi, that's all

Hirokikun1/7/2020, 5:30:04 AM4 votes

All supports are just mid ap characters now. There is only a handful of support items in the game and most of the time you get 1 of them and then build damage. It's fucking dumb.

xDogMeatx1/6/2020, 2:42:41 AM3 votes

shes a generalist like karma.

FSRER1/6/2020, 1:18:30 PM3 votes

She was specificaly made to be a jack of all trades. Little bit of healing, some poke damage, some speed up and some cc.

Smyrage1/6/2020, 12:15:55 PM3 votes

I don't think that Hypercarry and Support are mutually exclusive. Afterall mages went to botlane as Support, because they didn't want to give up their Carry potential, at the same time they prefer to use this potential to help their Carry to get fed without giving up the possibility of carrying the game themselves if the ADC is underperforming/falling off. She is a hypercarry in the sense that her Empowered AA + Q combo really pack a punch in all stages of the game. However she is also a hypercarry in a sense that at late game fights she can heal an shield out her entire team. She is one of the best supports to main, because of her single target damage and utility. When she has enough CDR and Mana, she just basically spams spells like no end and can stack her passive insanely fast. As others said she is generalist, teamfight oriented support, who happened to be a lane bully as well. She was meant to be extremely squishy and easy to run and focus down due to how well she can perform. Her major weaknesses include being super squishy, really mana hungry early game and not having hard CC until lv6. However I would never underestimate her, not because of her auras, but because of her passive. When fully stacked her next AA will have an extra effect on the target:

  • Q: Self-explanatory: more damage
  • W: Target deals reduced damage, now this can be a life saver if she hits crucial targets
  • E: Target is slowed down: not only it is useful to prevent targets from escaping, it is extremely efficient as self defense either

Overall I think Sona is a good champion. Her power is gated by skill, because she is one of the harder supports to play, not because her kit is difficult to pick up, but because a lot of Sona players don't even use her passive correctly, moreover she needs an ADC level of positioning to perform properly due to her squishiness, and of course mana manegement. Riot is trying to keep her in check, because due to her hypercarry nature she can quickly spiral out of control even if she is given the slightest buffs. Remember that she is taken as a midlaner as well, and of course the Taric & Sona strategy.

Janakin1/6/2020, 7:56:50 PM3 votes

Sona's been screaming for a rework for a long time. She should be the number 1 rework priority.

Linna Excel1/6/2020, 7:48:59 PM3 votes

Right now she's a poke and heal champ that scales as the game goes on. She also has terrible base hp, riot should up it so she's better than a minion. I'd say her biggest flaw is she doesn't have any CC until level 6 which makes it harder to gank bottom before then, especially with the dual lane XP nerf.

Before we think of anything to rework her, Sona is relatively easy to play. I'd really hate it if riot reworked her so that 99% of sona players wouldn't be able to use her any more because a #certainlyTwannaB decided to mess up her skill floor and ceiling. So whatever happens to her in the long run, she at least needs to be easy to play.

One thing I think riot should do is make her aura always on. Make E a toggle and let it switch between bonus damage, HP regen, and speed. Leveling it up makes is stronger. Maybe riot can move her passive to her E and let it decide which effect you get. Another idea to go along with this is when she ults, she and her team gets the benefit of all 3 auras for 4 seconds. This would give sona players an interesting decision of flash ulting or buffing the entire team and would also make her a good support option for a hypercarry ADC for both defensive and offensive reasons.

Arammus1/7/2020, 10:42:27 PM2 votes

big breasted?

Ionian Vulpix1/6/2020, 1:12:38 PM2 votes

Big Tiddy Bard

NelsieLisnen1/6/2020, 3:11:21 PM2 votes

in support terms she is one of the most useless, even Lulu outperforms her. Whenever I play an immobile marksman I pray that my supp will go anything but her

BrokenRayquaza1/6/2020, 3:19:35 PM2 votes

She's a stupidly hard scaling support that's bad in lane but stupid in teamfights

chipndip11/6/2020, 7:04:09 PM2 votes

I find it funny that, in a thread about what Sona's supposed to be, I've found 3 different comments from three different people that say "She's basically a worse Nami/Yuumi/Bard", each champion reference being from a different person.

I keep saying it: This champ has problems. And I continue to keep saying it because hopefully a Rioter is paying attention. This is the only champ I see this rhetoric for to this degree. At least Vi was replaced by ONE CHAMP and not "dang near anyone with a heal".

Aptest1/6/2020, 8:08:40 PM2 votes

Sona is a short to mid range skirmishing champion that works partially through allowing allies to "power up" with her and partially through being herself a play-maker for her team. play style wise Her strong point is prolonged exchanges, and her win condition is a "death by a 1000 cuts" style overbearing of her opponents through multiple rotations of her kit. Timing wise she is a late game hyper-scaling champion that contributes both supportive abilities and damage to her team once her items are complete and as such she should pose a kill threat to opposing non support champions once late game is arrived. Composition wise she is biased towards larger engagements, rather than smaller skirmishes.

Sona is weakest to committed pushes and assassinations, and weakest in the mid game where her bases fall off and her kit is not complete.

ZephyrDrake1/6/2020, 2:45:32 AM1 votes

She is and always has been a generalist. No matter who her partner is she is always an ok choice. She is also a scaling support. One who trades early game power for late game strength. She is also a very simple and easy to learn champion whose mastery is more on how well you can position yourself to maximize ability to buff your team while also remaining outside of the enemy range.