Making Sona's Voice Heard - Out with the old, and why we want change.
I'll get right to it, Sona isn’t in an amazing spot right now, and hasn't been for quite a while. She does a lot of damage, she has a good winrate, so why and how is she not in a good spot? Well, it’s a handful of things.
Sona’s quite an old champion; and even after receiving a rework, many aspects of old, out of date game design were left in her kit.
She needs AP for her kit to be particularly effective, but loses out on all the beneficial aspects of building support items. It’s one or the other. She’s either all kit, or all auras and actives that any other champion could buy. If Sona chooses to go the support-centric item route, her kit is very unimpactful, and Sona ends up being not much more than “The one who rushed the Aegis 
” to a team.
This ambiguous play pattern and role in a team is why her pickrate is so low, and why her seemingly high winrate isn’t telling the whole story.
It’s not really buffs that we want; It’s change. Changes that are ultimately better, and give Sona a proper place and purpose of her own in League.
These are a few of my ideas that I think would help bring Sona up to speed with other supports, while also differentiating her from other champions of the same archetype.
This isn't a "waaah waaah" screaming baby post (like I know there's a lot of lol), it's just me putting into words, specifically, what is clunky about Sona's kit, and why she's not very satisfying to play.
- Aria of Perseverance (W) is actually a decently engaging spell, when used optimally. It functions better as less of a sustain tool, and more of a damage negating tool. Using it just as poke (Mystic Shot, Zap, etc.) is about to hit you, you can make full use of the shield and heal. Let’s emphasize this concept, and make it a unique aspect of Sona’s heal and kit overall.
The shield currently lasts 1.5 seconds long and shields for 35(+20% AP) points of damage. By nerfing the shield duration to 1 second, and bringing the base value up (high enough to negate most of the damage of these skillshots when used properly), a new layer of interactivity and skill is introduced to Sona’s kit that will actually make a difference in the long-run when comparing an experienced Sona player to a new one. Sona will have to keep her eyes peeled to make the most of the ability. This would greatly differentiate the ability from the likes of Soraka or Nami’s heal, which are commonly used after taking damage, or Janna’s shield, which is a much more offensive tool.
Additionally, and this is more of a quality of life buff, Aria’s heal missle-speed is slow. It’s very, very slow. At least every other game that I play as Sona, an ally dies due to, not being out of range of Aria’s heal range, but it simply being too unreasonably slow to reach them in time to save them (or at least keep them alive for an attack or two more). It’s not a very strong heal either, and that’s absolutely OK. Sona isn’t the “premier healer” that Soraka is or anything like that. It’s just a really consistently frustrating quirk with her kit, and is in desperate need of being brought up to snuff, when the only other heal that has to even travel in the entire game is Nami’s (and I want to reiterate that it is not a particularly potent heal on its own).
I opened with this thought on W because I think that this would be a particularly great addition, and would effectively differentiate Sona from other popular mage supports, as kind of a “counter-poke” champ, rather than an “anti-poke” champ.
- I honestly think Song of Celerity (E) is in a mostly fine spot, despite being a common point of concern for how little it provides upon ranking up past rank 1. It’s a really great one point wonder. It gives considerable movement speed, it allows you to stack your Power Chord more efficiently, and the Power Chord attached to the ability itself is really underrated. It gives Sona enough movement speed at rank 1 to outrun all champions with unboosted movement speed for the 3(+.5 seconds per ally effected) it’s active.
Despite all of this, many Sona players opt to not take it until as late as level 9. Other Sona players actually really like the skill, and get it as early as level 4. I think that this is actually a good thing. The player gets to decide “Do I want hang back and get an extra point in my W for the laning phase?” or “Do I want to take a slightly more offensive approach and get the more frequent passive stacks and slow from E?”. Or, maybe if the enemy Udyr (or any jungler that runs at you) started on the top side of the jungle, Sona might want to take it as early as level 3 to escape his potential 3:30 gank. There’s fairly engaging choices to be made with when you put a point into your E, and it makes every game a little bit different.
The problem with Song of Celerity lies in how little it affects Sona’s allies. Sona’s E gives 10% movement speed for 1.5 seconds to ally champions tagged by the aura. This duration is simply laughable. Sona’s E is a very selfish skill because of this, and is ultimately of little benefit to her allies. I know that the balance team fears giving too much “invisible power” to her auras, but the current bonus is really just… underwhelming. The miniscule amount of time your allies are sped up is absolutely horrendous, and makes the skill only really useful to yourself.
- Crescendo (R) is a strong ability… in theory. On the Rift, it’s an underwhelming ultimate that has definitely been left in the dust. In the wake of Annie’s rise in popularity as a support and Braum’s release, Crescendo is really in need of some fine-tuning, to bring it up to the standards of the game that we play today, and not the game we played 2 or 3 years ago.
First and foremost, the biggest problem with Crescendo is absolutely it’s 0.2 second cast-time. This is a LONG cast-time. Combined with Crescendo’s unimpressive missle-speed, it’s a frustratingly sluggish and unsatisfying skill.
While it technically does have a considerable 1000 range, Crescendo’s “practical range” is quite short, because of its horrendous delay. Bringing the cast-time down, missle-speed up, or both(?), Crescendo would be an ability that actually demands respect from the opponent, instead of being a minor inconvenience. Maybe even demanding a little bit too much respect; I’d say that if these ability-responsiveness buffs were to go live, to also bring the maximum range of Crescendo down to about 800 (possibly less) or so. This would make it much a more satisfying and reliable skill to use.
- Staccato (Q Power Chord). Not going to beat around the bush about this one. If any of the changes above were to go live, Staccato would likely need to be toned down to put Sona at a reasonable strength.
The most obvious solution would be to change it from 40% bonus Power Chord damage, to 20/25/30/35/40% bonus Power Chord damage, scaling with Hymn of Valor rank. This would alleviate some of the damage and pressure that Sona puts down during the laning phase, and opens up a little bit of breathing room for minor buffs to be reasonably put in place.
Another solution would be to leave it at 40% bonus damage, and bring the base damage on Power Chord down a little bit. This would make all of her Power Chords a little bit weaker on the damage side of things. However, although Staccato would be slightly weaker overall than it is on live; It would be a bit stronger early game, and weaker later on, than if it was changed to scale with Hymn of Valor rank (the alternate solution).
Staccato might be able to remain unchanged in conjunction with the changes above, but I would absolutely have to play around with it personally before taking a definitive stance on whether or not it would have to be brought down a little, with other parts of her kit going up.
- #tl;dr Sona's kit is slow, selfish, and outdated. Some ideas to differentiate her from other support picks, bring her up to date, and make her more responsive and satisfying to play.
Closing thoughts. Sona is a champion that has really just been left behind. And with every new patch that goes live, she’s falls further and further below the rest of the support cast.
Her kit has frustrating and archaic flaws that prevent her from being continually satisfying to play from a gameplay perspective; Or even live up to the standards of supports today.
Doing a good chunk of damage to a carry is only gratifying so many times before you start realizing that the majority of her kit is just plain slow, clunky, and unrewarding.
I really believe that Sona is worth the time spent balancing, and can become a champion with a refined identity and place in the League.
-#RiotPls consider some of these changes. Thanks for reading. 
