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Why the radio silence on sona

Shadow Hazard··11 votes·740 views

Rioters are loving the false information about yas, so they can jump on it to try and paint the loud part of the community as being out of line but what about sona.

There was notable outcry that the nerfs were too much when they were on pbe, and that wasn't even taking into consideration the nerfed runes that would be affecting her too. We saw lots of defense from the play testers and also in the semi weekly quick gameplay thoughts defending the decision. But RIOT WAS WRONG and the COMMUNITY WAS RIGHT. It was actually as simple as that. Why the hell do you balance an enchanter support as if they are building like a midlane mage. If a champ that is realistically as brainlessly easy as sona is doing as bad as she is right now, it is a clear problem. And the icing on the cake of this joke is that all the forbidden idol items are in line for nerfs on the pbe.

Riot loses ground to defend decisions that the community doesn't agree with when there are so many points that we have seen riot take gentle balance approaches on one champ at the same time they go freddy krueger on another.

36 Comments

Pandemic Punch5 votes

Because people don't use radios as much anymore

HalcyonDweller4 votes

I feel like these are great concerns to have, but I'm a little disappointed that you decided to preface them by implying that Riot intentionally ignores some topics while addressing others just to progress a selfish agenda (an agenda of who's existence we have no proof in the first place).

Daedric Etwahl6 votes

In all fairness, they sure aren't doing anything to disprove any kind of bias on their part.

Prime example being the Forbidden Idol nerfs, despite even Meddler saying that Enchanters aren't out of line right now. Not to mention how hard they came down on Sona this past month, while being careful with other, worse outliers.

HalcyonDweller3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Daedric Etwahl,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=RuihF8QF,comment-id=00030000,timestamp=2017-12-11T22:14:26.080+0000)

In all fairness, they sure aren't doing anything to disprove any kind of bias on their part.

Lack of evidence to the contrary is no substitute for evidence in support of.

Prime example being the Forbidden Idol nerfs, despite even Meddler saying that Enchanters aren't out of line right now. Not to mention how hard they came down on Sona this past month, while being careful with other, worse outliers.

This is still not evidence of a hidden agenda. Maybe miscommunication, or incompetence of some sort... but using this to claim there is some sort of hidden agenda is still a leap of logic I'm unwilling to make. It is unreasonable.

Daedric Etwahl4 votes

I don't mean to say the subject matter is black or white, but as I said, the way they're acting when it comes to feedback is annoyingly dodgy for seemingly no reason. I hadn't seen a single Rioter comment on Sona all month, meanwhile as soon as the Yasuo threads start cropping up, I start seeing red posts on them.

I don't really like to start a witch hunt, but at the same time it's really not at all surprising that people think this sort of thing.

HalcyonDweller3 votes

I find it surprising. it takes an extra long leap of logic to reach that conclusion. Conspiracy theory levels of mental gymnastics.

It's not proven, people only question it or suggest it because they've seen or heard it suggested somewhere before - usually by malicious mis-informants who want people to hate Riot.

GigglesO2 votes

So that is why some champions don't get touched for multiple seasons. Volibear, Olaf, Morde, Skarner... While others get significant changes often. Yasuo, Lee Sin, Vayne...

HalcyonDweller2 votes

{quoted}

So that is why some champions don't get touched for multiple seasons. Volibear, Olaf, Morde, Skarner... While others get significant changes often. Yasuo, Lee Sin, Vayne...

Correlation does not equal causation. We still have no evidence to connect these events to the opinions or intentions of Riot(ers).

Simply saying, "Well it could be true, so it must be!" is not good reasoning.

Occam's Razor only works when you have eliminated all other possibilities. Otherwise you're just cherry picking a theory that fits with your world-view whilst ignoring other perfectly reasonable possibilities.

Historically Yasuo, Lee Sin, and Vayne have had balance, counterplay, or strength issues that needed addressing. So Riot nerfing, buffing, or reworking these champions does not mean they are pushing a secret agenda. It could just as easily be that those champions presented a large balance issue because of how overbearing they could be, and are more volatile in the meta. And Volibear, Olaf, Morde and Skarner have been less volatile in the meta and so they might require less balance tuning.

Just an example of how you're using Occam's Razor without eliminating all the possibilities.

GigglesO4 votes

{quoted}

Correlation does not equal causation. We still have no evidence to connect these events to the opinions or intentions of Riot(ers).

Little old, still applies.

https://imgur.com/4jfzIfM

HalcyonDweller2 votes

Certainly relevant, however balance policies have changed over the years. And Lee Sin has since passed from the spotlight.

Edit - Counterargument: Riot jumped on Sona pretty hard recently despite player outcries

GigglesO4 votes

Sona also didn't have 35% of the player base playing her. (which was lee's playerbase at the time of morello's post)

HalcyonDweller2 votes

Regardless, Riot is big enough now that they don't have to cater to the desires of the playerbase when it would be better for the game overall to change balance one way or another.

chipndip11 votes

{quoted}

Little old, still applies.

https://imgur.com/4jfzIfM

Can't we apply that to why they won't buff Yasuo outside of major cases like this current one?

LankPants2 votes

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/6EEk9efX-musings-on-fun-and-clunkiness?comment=00000000

There's this one too, that was only a year ago. They've had the same philosophy on Lee for at least 2.5 years, why would I ever believe it's changed recently.

GigglesO2 votes

It’s absolutely hilarious when they let it slip that they aren’t changing something to keep someone popular, or changing them so they can remain popular. The best part is when they are like “ oh yea, but we aren’t biased”. Bull shit they aren’t.

LankPants1 votes

As I've mentioned before there's two possibilities for what happened with Sona

  1. They're incompetent and thought this nerf was OK

  2. They're completely biased and didn't.

One of these two has to be true, there's really no way around it.

GigglesO1 votes

{quoted}

  1. They're incompetent and thought this nerf was OK

You act like this is new?

  1. They're completely biased and didn't.

As if we didn't know this already?

One of these two has to be true, there's really no way around it.

No, really. I just wish they would admit that they don't always know what they are doing, and that it is truly impossible to be impartial. Both reasons make this game unbalance-able. This type of balancing also leads us to seeing the same reoccurring game state over and over. We had league of one shots the beginning of last season, and we are getting it again.

LankPants1 votes

It doesn't require mental gymnastics at all, in the first few days after Sona's nerfs they posted all their anecdotes and must have said "They look too harsh but really they're not" at least 5 times, brushing off the initial data that had already surfaced which showed they were far too harsh.

As of the last patch we've seen 0 comments on Sona, in fact we've seen 0 comments on Sona since about 2 days after the patch before last despite the fact that during that 2 day period there were several comments on Sona all to the same tune.

Tell me how you justify this? I'm curious.

HalcyonDweller2 votes

Oh I'm not justifying it. I think they should do better and give the community more transparency.

However I do not take their response to Yasuo posts and lack of response to Sona posts as a sign of willful incompetence, like the conspiracy theorists out there seem to like doing.

GigglesO1 votes

They are trying to close down threads with clear intent to call them out on their bias.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Otbcp5TK-were-buffing-yasuo-because-he-has-a-large-playerbase

Without using data to back up their arguments they are always going to sound biased.

Attticus Finch3 votes

From where I'm sitting she has an above 50% win rate in high elo with a very respectable play rate. With those stats I don't give a shit about Sona being "too weak". Why should Riot?

Meriipu2 votes

sona and pantheon are pretty disgusting for how much skill you need to pull off big plays with them

PhDs Nuts2 votes

It's not radio silence. It's cosplay.

Attticus Finch2 votes

From where I'm sitting she has an above 50% win rate in high elo with a very respectable play rate. With those stats I don't give a shit about Sona being "too weak". Why should Riot?

Gives No Lux2 votes

Press tab and click on the musical note next to DJ Sona's bar, then you can hear the radio again.

UnboundHades1 votes

its called learning to adapt to changes not building the same things no matter what making her nerfs more drastic then they really are

Daedric Etwahl3 votes

There's adapting to changes, and then there's being railroaded into specific things when you used to have options. Honestly it doesn't really feel like I have options as far as runes and items early go anymore.

Moreover, Riot has been completely silent about Sona, there's no arguing that. They respond to so many Yasuo threads yet won't say a word on Sona. They're nerfing the champion, her runes, and now her items, and then they'll just leave her like that without saying a word.

RedCyclone1 votes

I started going tanky Sona now, and honestly it's been going well, no where near as fun as her good old AP glasscannon build but it actually feels good to play and makes Sona more relevant faster for the tradeoff of making her lategame not as good It may just be normals but i'm actually making decent scores, I'll have to try it out more and see how it works in ranked

Daedric Etwahl1 votes

I myself never built AP glasscannon, but lately (even before preseason thanks to all the lethality divers and blue Kayns everywhere) I've been building item 3110 along with my usual Healing utility build. If the enemy is a lot of magic damage I'll build item 3065

They really help with the survivability, I dunno if I can go back to not using it!

chipndip11 votes

{quoted}

its called learning to adapt to changes not building the same things no matter what making her nerfs more drastic then they really are

...we already build tears of the goddess.

hoyohai1 votes

Does that make a champion bad? If so Ryze needs to be buffed as well as Sona.

chipndip12 votes

{quoted}

Does that make a champion bad? If so Ryze needs to be buffed as well as Sona.

Difference: item 3070 is a mid lane mage item

Ryze is a mid lane mage

Sona is a bot lane support

This is the equivalent of a mage being dependent on something like Frozen Heart or IBG. No one would appreciate that.

hoyohai1 votes

O. Then again Sona has a higher winrate than Ryze. Wait whats IBG?

chipndip12 votes

{quoted}

O. Then again Sona has a higher winrate than Ryze. Wait whats IBG?

Once again. Difference:

Ryze 's worth isn't proven in solo queue. It's proven in the LCS. Ryze can be perfectly fine, power-wise, and still have generally abysmal win rates because he's hard as hell to play and requires coordination to use his ult well, something we won't have much of in solo queue (but may have in in Riot's upcoming project).

Sona 's the exact opposite. Even when crushing solo queue, she had a 30% LCS win rate. If Sona's "meh" in solo queue, she's basically just shit because there's literally no reason to pick her, regardless of how you look at it. Right now, you could just pick Nami and be done with it, as far as the stats go.

hoyohai1 votes

Fair enough. But then again, Ryze had a 32.1% winrate at worlds. Lower than his solo queue one. What's IBG?

Daedric Etwahl1 votes

IBG is Iceborn Gauntlet item 3025

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