I know Sona's sort of a controversial topic around these parts but
Sona's W without Windspeakers is quite, well to put it shory, quite bad, and being a Sona main I've realized this quite a while ago, but only recently have I played Sona without Windspeakers and realized it again
Discuss?
Pika3107 votesWith or without Windspeaker's, Aria is factually one of the worst spells in the entire game. The entire spell as a whole is outclassed by literally every other heal and shield of the entire support class. It has a combined value of 65 points, but over half of that has both an unusably short duration and is melee-range, making it unreasonable to use on allies. Not to mention despite being the weakest amongst all heals AND shields, it still boasts the most expensive mana cost as well, on a champ that has always been heavily mana-gated. It's the weakest spell on her kit, which says alot considering all of her spells are already shit.
The champ herself is just unplayable and this is inherently-proven by the fact she has the lowest pickrate of any champ played as support in competitive League. She has the lowest damage of all supports that aren't Braum, no reliable pre-6 cc, a shitty ult, no mobility, the weakest sustain of her class and is still the 2nd-squishiest support in spite of all of this. Not to mention she's the only mage support with melee-range abilites, which is actually half of her entire fucking kit.
La Barbotte3 votesa shitty ult.... the whole reason she was picked back then was the ult, nothing else, as her sustain and damage wasnt her reason to shine at all
Pika3109 votesAnd as Aphromoo has already stated, she stopped being picked for her ult when professionals realized Annie's is a better version of it. With a larger hitbox and longer range in addition to not having a cast or travel time, Tibbers replaced Sona's niche as an engage support. Not to mention the flexibility Tibbers grants by being a unit that can be used to tank objectives gives it far more utility than Crescendo. Let's also not forget the addition of projectile-blocking abilities like Yas and Braum, which Crescendo counts as a projectile.
"If you want engage, pick Annie and NOT Sona." - Aphromoo
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v636/pika310/SonaBuvelleRIP10_zps0704b155.jpg
La Barbotte1 votesyeah
Masala Chai2 votes200 + 40 (initial damage) = 240 Magic Damage
60 + 18 + 10 ( Additional Magic Damage from Q)= 78 Magic Damage
Sheen proc is 70 physical damage
with Power Chord is 115 + 22= 137 Magical damage
Auto attack is 70 magical damage
Add all numbers and you 595 damage before resistances (140 Physical damage, 455 magic damage
Kalista HP is 1077 at Level 9
With 39 MR (9 MR blues) is total magic damage taken .7246376... magic damage is then calculated to 330 magic damage.
Armor would then be 51.6 with 9 Armor Yellows on Kalista would .6596 physical damage taken. 92 physical damage.
422 damage taken by Kalista. which would be roughly 40% of her health. Level 9 80 AP Bard + Sheen +20 meeps
Rank 5 Q
260 + 52 = 312 Magic Damage
Sheen Proc= 72 physical damage
Empowered Meep Auto= 80 + 24 = 104 Magic Damage
Auto Attack = 72 physical damage
144 Physical Damage + 416 Magic Damage = 516 total damage with Q plus Meep Auto + 60% Slow or Potential Stun without factoring in resistances. Don't even need to do the rest, because damage before resistances is less than Sona's before resistances.
That's assuming the Q hits. Sona's Q will auto target (prioritizing enemy champions), and auto attacks are undodgeable.
I haven't even gotten to the fact that allied champions can reapply the Q secondary damage with Sona, (adding another 78 raw magic damage on hit)
Sona's Q can also easily target two ally champions at the same time. Whereas the only way Bard can hit two champions at the same time is if they have abhorrently awful positioning.
Both champions have FQC, and Sheen and Amp tome + 10 AP from runes. Magic Pen boots and Magic Pen/ Hybrid Pen Runes were not factored here.
And let's forget that some supports don't even have heals 
. Relic Shield is a 40 heal on a 60 second cooldown.
Deceiver. 
Quepha3 votesI don't see the point in discussing how good a champion is when you deliberately avoid using something that makes them good. "Tristana's really bad if you don't build IE on her!" That doesn't mean anything, you just pick the talents that work well, you build the items that work well, and you succeed. Maybe someone finds a different combination that works as well or better, and that's cool, but that isn't the same as making the developers make something else work better.
Aeolian Melodies3 votesAnd as long as Windspeaker's is in the game, forget buffs to her W. It is very powerful with the mastery, especially the AoE shield.
Oh look, Bulwark is back when I press W!
67chrome2 votesSona's W without Windspeakers is quite, well to put it shory, quite bad
Perseverance is a pretty solid skill with or without windspeakers. It's just...more of an over-time skill than a bursty one. Perseverance allows Sona and her allies to persevere in situations they'd otherwise be whittled down to low to act in, such as preventing her allies from being poked off of a tower/dragon/baron in a siege, granting allies enough HP to be a serious factor in rotations rather than needing to base, and allowing allies to ultimately win a poke-war.
It's not terrible when trying to stop a 100%-->0% against an ally if that 100%-->0% combo barely allows a clean-kill: which Perseverance's bases alone along with it's shield do an OK job at dealing with, provided the ally you tried to save doesn't feel like surviving with 10% of there HP means they should charge headlong into danger.
As a Sona main I've also got issues with my favorite champion's kit: but those are more around Celerity's ranks 2-5 not existing, and Nami being almost exactly the same champion kit-wise.
RedCyclone2 votesYou need AP I primarily play Sona with Stormriders and really don't have a problem with healing low
however the problem that she needs so much AP is there
Atuko6 votesHer base numbers have been nerfed quite a bit, iirc
Probably one of the sources of her problems
Emmy Cha0s4 votesExcept AP doesn't actually do shit for Sona, she has absolutely trash AP ratios, even by support standards. It's not AP, but ARTIFICIAL numbers that is used to mask her unplayability. She's the weakest support in the game, no bases, no scalings, no utility. A damned caster minion could do her job just as well, since it's all fake numbers a'la Spellblade/Echo.
Quepha3 votes[{quoted}](name=Emmy Cha0s,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bwRV06wH,comment-id=00060001,timestamp=2016-03-19T05:40:22.923+0000)
Except AP doesn't actually do shit for Sona, she has absolutely trash AP ratios, even by support standards. It's not AP, but ARTIFICIAL numbers that is used to mask her unplayability. She's the weakest support in the game, no bases, no scalings, no utility. A damned caster minion could do her job just as well, since it's all fake numbers a'la Spellblade/Echo.
you say fake numbers and artificial damage, but the enemy still dies.
Emmy Cha0s3 votesIt's been mathematically proven that's not even realistically possible. Her maximum damage potential even after both Lich Bane + Luden's Echo falls short of killing even an Ezreal in any realistic scenario. It's just not possible, in complete contrast to the widespread hallucination that Sona actually does damage. You're more likely to die from minion aggro than from any pathetic damage contribution a Sona could provide.
Quepha3 votes[{quoted}](name=Emmy Cha0s,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bwRV06wH,comment-id=0006000100000000,timestamp=2016-03-19T06:07:44.080+0000)
to the widespread hallucination that Sona actually does damage.
http://champion.gg/statistics/#?roleSort=Support&sortBy=general.totalDamageDealtToChampions&order=descend Oh god, they've gotten to champion.gg and faked statistics to show Sona deals the 6th most damage of any support!
How deep does the conspiracy run?! Where will they strike next?!
Crett1 votesAs long as Sona is an obnoxious poke bot in the bottom lane, I don't think buffs to other parts of her kit would be healthy. I don't think I like what Sona is right now either, personally
Atuko5 votesI personally am not big on what she is currently either, but there isn't much I can do about it, it's up to Riot
Crett2 votesWhat happened to her being an aura champion??? I think current Sona is kinda weak thematically, or at least kinda boring... Not to say she's poorly designed, however. Riot's done a great job. I just wish she could go farther with her concept.
Miraweave1 votesWhat happened to her being an aura champion??? I think current Sona is kinda weak thematically, or at least kinda boring... Not to say she's poorly designed, however. Riot's done a great job. I just wish she could go farther with her concept.
it'd be cool if they shifted some power from her initial abilities to the aoe they create. A straight aura-based champion is a really boring design.
That said, a huge part of Sona's identity is her harass, and they'd have to cut back on that a lot if they wanted to buff her utility. As-is she's closer to a mage than a support in terms of the way she scales: she's not a support who's useful without items, but she scales like a monster if she gets them.
LankPants3 votesNot to say she's poorly designed,
She's terribly designed, like bottom 15 in the game at this point. Sure she's not as bad as someone like Taric or Kalista but she's a really bad design.
Pika3105 votesTaric actually sees more professional play than Sona and has a competitive niche, so I'd argue to say Sona's design is even worse than his. Everyone knows Kalista is unbalanceable, so you're right on that part.
LankPants1 votesSeeing play isn't the equivalent to being well designed. Taric's poorly designed because whenever he's at all good there's literally nothing you can do to play around him.
Pika3105 votesYet after countless nerfs and innumerable meta shifts, he's found a place where (comparatively) he has a strategic niche without becoming overbearing. Sona on the other hand has no niche, she has nothing unique enough to her to make up for the severe power gap between herself and every other support. Any other support in the game blatantly outclasses her in not just one, but multiple different aspects each. Then you have both Nami and Bard who are just blatantly better versions of her.
Miraweave3 votesYet after countless nerfs and innumerable meta shifts, he's found a place where (comparatively) he has a strategic niche without becoming overbearing. Sona on the other hand has no niche, she has nothing unique enough to her to make up for the severe power gap between herself and every other support. Any other support in the game blatantly outclasses her in not just one, but multiple different aspects each. Then you have both Nami and Bard who are just blatantly better versions of her.
Again, badly designed =/= bad champion. Kalista is one of the worst designs riot has ever done and she's perpetually good in pro play.
Sona's badly designed because if she's remotely strong her laning phase is impossible to beat, impossible to play around, and very difficult to outscale.
Her level three aa -> Q -> aa with passive up does almost as much damage as LB's level three all in, except with absolutely no counterplay whatsoever, on a champion with lane sustain.
I pulled about an 80% winrate with her in ranked before the W nerfs because it was literally impossible to lose lane against anything other than the absolute hardest possible counter.
LankPants1 votesEh, personally I'm more of a fan of Thunderlords, although it makes utterly no sense that Sona's Q-AA+Powerchord+Qaura counts as 2 hits, by all logical systems it's at least 3.
I'd say Sona's E really needs an overhaul though. It's just such a nothing spell. If she had some semi-reliable peel or something like that instead she'd probably be a playable champion, but until she has some way to peel for her allies she's never going to be a good support.
Pika3105 votesThe ironic part is that in Fearless' very last final Sona post before going silent forever; he claimed that Rito were in the process of testing major buffs to both her W and ESPECIALLY her E. Yet in complete contrast to this lie, her W was nerfed even further and her base MS was gutted as well.
Then more recently Meddler threatened her with more nerfs to come, despite the fact of her being the weakest support in the entire game is becoming more common knowledge with each passing day.
Stars Shaper1 votesMeanwhile Lux can proc it with Spell+AA
Akali is SO HOT1 votes#BUFFSONA'SDAMAGE
