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I used to think ricklessabandon had a clear idea of what he wanted to do with Sona...

Rozzeta·6/18/2016, 8:28:59 PM·4 votes·394 views

Right now I'm seriously regretting that.

After his first set of experimental changes, he arrived to some conclusions on how the changes would affect Sona, and one of the things he said was considerably interesting to me: the idea of sona as a fast character able to dodge Skillshots or the like. Not actually something I agree with, but for the very first time since Shurelia reworked her, a Rioter had an idea of what they wanted to do with her, instead of what they didn't want her to do, which how they have been changing her.

Last Week we had a first set of changes, mostly aimed at cutting Lane Sona's power (mostly on W), but increasing her teamfight potential by making her the spammiest spammer who ever spammed. Accordingly with the vision he previously had, E CD was increased (to adjust as per new R passive) but her personal and allies speed up was increased, and Mana cost was reduced. Ultimately, a late game Sona would be able to move considerably fast due to the 64% CD, which in turn would allow her to keep tagging allies even without the extended duration of her "auras".

Now, when I went to check S@20, I find a competely new change on E: for 3 seconds, next autoattack has 25/50/75/100/125 Range. It's an interesting change, playing completely in favor of the Power Chord, still retaining allies bonus speed, but at the same time goes against everything that has been done and said by Riot so far. Sona now depends on building speed from items in order to tag the allies, is now completely void of escape mechanics other than ultimate. This does empower her poke, the most nerf prone aspect of Sona, as a result of alleged lack of counterplay which is getting even worse by new E, and is pretty much bound to get her damage or mana costs nerfed in no more than 2 patches.

The intend of this is obviously to have E not be a 1 point wonder, and therefore prevent people from leveling up W in lane, but I frankly can't believe that in order to do that you would be going against your prior ideas and into new random experimentation, the same kind that got her these "auras" in the first place. I dont see anything good coming out of this change in E in the long run.

5 Comments

EMeta6/18/2016, 8:39:50 PM2 votes

His prior idea didn't work. So he's trying something else. On paper, it's really hard to see how stuff turns out, so he's having it tested. I wish Riot would do this a lot more, not less. Try random crap, see how it works.

Personally, I think this sounds really interesting. It gives her more safety for most of teamfights, while not allowing the speed-up, catch-everyone-with-ult, run-away gameplay that was problematic with his previous attempt.

SaltyKracka6/18/2016, 8:42:17 PM1 votes

Frankly, it's fairly obvious that at this point Rickless is just throwing changes at the wall and seeing what sticks.

It's not the worst idea, but the way errbuh getting anxious about the PBE needs to kinda cool down a little.

chipndip16/19/2016, 7:37:08 PM1 votes

Here's the thing: Riot wants to make changes to Sona, but for one reason or another, they aren't committing to it enough to fix her actual issues...again...just like the last time.

In a nutshell, Sona was designed when Riot thought it'd be fine that Sona was just pushing out numbers from behind 4 champs. Riot's balancing philosophy doesn't reflect that anymore, so they made it so Sona has more need to be up close. However, she still has the weaknesses from her old play pattern, where, if she was caught, she was insanely easy to blow up (seeing how she's supposed to be far away, up to 1000 units). So we have an issue here between her positioning, which would usually warrant high reward for her danger-close ranges (think Annie, low range mage with INCREDIBLE burst), her simplicity, which causes Riot to cut off the top of her reward, and the amount of space she (and anyone else) has to make a kit with, which means you don't get 1 million tools to fix these problems. The simplest way to remedy this would be to just change Q into a skill shot. I know Sona mains don't like the sound of it, but there's no way to fix the range and positioning issues without cutting into something else she needs given her current kit. If you make Q a skill shot, you can have her play from farther away, and that makes significantly more sense given how she's this squishy because she's supposed to be farther away.