Can we please buff Sona's early game

only zhule·Aug 26, 2015·6 votes·977 views

I understand she's meant to be a late game support. That said i don't feel that should mean her early and mid game should be as bad as they are. I honestly play the champion and feel like it takes me till around level 13 to finally have the items and power in my abilities to really be of any use to my allies (or my lane gets a ton of early game kills, 4-6, and i can afford the big items i need).

She feels like she needs 30-40% CDR to really be able to use her spells in proactively. Her damage has been cut so heavily that you aren't much of a threat in the laning phase (often feels like more of a liability). Her base stats are some of the worst in the game, making her a big target and an easy kill through out the entire game.

Her late game looks great on paper, but when you really look at it her power isn't all that impressive. The heal and shield are rarely going to go off more then once in a team fight unless your side is already winning. If she wants to surprise you and deal a ton of damage she's going to need a , her powercord online, all her spells off cooldown, and a ton of AP and CDR to try and combo off two empowered attacks. and then pray that it's enough damage to kill you. Because otherwise she's dead in the water. Think about that for a moment, if you were up against a mage with 400+ AP, and lich bane, who managed to surprise you, wouldn't you expect to take a ton of damage? So why is it when Sona does that damage she's too strong/ toxic?

Over all though i think she needs to be less reliant on items, especially high cost AP items. Look at the other supports who get played. While items help, their kits are designed to not need a metric ton of any one stat to be useful. They have stuns/ grabs, or good utility skills that work without needing items to power them up. Sona needs to build like an AP carry but on the budget of a support, this puts her at a disadvantage for far to much of the game. No champion should need to drop 5-7K gold to simply function as a character.

TL:DR

Sona's laning phase needs to be stronger, either better utility or a boat load more damage to make her scary.
She shouldn't need to build like a carry to play as a support. Most fights are decided by the time she has cast one heal and used her ultimate.

The real reason why they aren't so prominant is because engage supports have much more going for them (which is mostly due to sheer utility and pretty high base damages.)

If you are using just Q to poke, you are doing something terrible wrong. You use Q-enhanced autos and your passive to poke as well. Not to mention if you took spellthief line, you get some more damage off that (A Q+enhanced auto attack procs all 3 charges, and it is some pretty good damage early game: 50 AD+40 Base Q+20 Bonus Q+18~ Power Chord+.98 AP=128 Mixed Damage, 143 if you proc spellthief all three times on them, and before any AP you might have.) At level 1, that's about a fifth of a carry's health. And don't bring up risk of doing so, she has the same auto attack range as the average carry and out-ranges a lot of supports. And no reason not to have some armor runes/defensive masteries while doing so. (And if they are healing up, they are paying for it somehow: Nami's healing isn't cheap, and if Soraka's there, you just poke her instead.)

The real reason why they aren't so prominant is because engage supports have much more going for them (which is mostly due to sheer utility and pretty high base damages.)

It makes it a niche item, which there's nothing wrong with that. (Remember when people wanted buffs for Runaan's? It's now core on Kalista and basically core on Kayle.) Keep in mind buffing support itemization too much will make it more possible that other roles may pick it up or it may make support itemization expensive and out of reach of the champions that it was intended to be bought by.

Ultimately, that's pretty off topic. The point of your thread was buffs for Sona, which she clearly doesn't need. She doesn't need nerfs either, she's in a good spot. She should have some weakness somewhere (early game being squishy) due to the fact she has very strong team utility. If they pick a comp to counter grouping up, then play differently or play another support that better matches your/counters their composition. Champions are generally not supposed to be the best in role and counter everything that comes at them (there are some outliers such as some ADCs crowding out other ADCs from play, and that definitely needs looked at, but that's another topic. Similar case for other roles.)