The Current State of Sona - In Depth Analysis

So while I am not a hardcore Sona main, I do main support at Masters. I have played a substantial amount of Sona over the past seasons and I feel I have a fairly good grasp of her current state power wise. Since her rework in 4.13, she has all but received nerfs and dissapeared in competitive play, and consistently fails to see play even in upper levels of solo q play. Until fairly recently, aggressive supports that naturally had the edge over Sona were still fairly popular. It didn't help that she received no buffs to compensate for the popularity of champions like Blitz and Leona. Fast forward a few months, most of the supports that are played in both higher levels of solo q and competitive are typically more passive and lack the strong threat of kill pressure that Sona typically crumbled under (i.e. Soraka and Janna). So why does Sona fail to effectively function in an environment where she SHOULD be stronger?

In a nutshell, Sona is outclassed. The nerfs to her damage over the years were aimed to reduce her ability to bully non-aggressive supports out of lane, causing her to lose severely to aggressive supports. Now after non-aggressive supports are becoming popular again, she STILL lacks 1. The damage to effectively bully them out of lane, and 2. The ability to scale past the laning phase.

1. Lack of Damage in lane This is arguably debateable, because there are instances where Sona can bully people out of lane. I will first say that her Q range is 850, easily outranging all AAs. There is one problem though. The rework in 4.13 pushed her damage out of her Q and into her AA. That is where the issues regarding Sona arises. Pushing her damage into her AA weakens her poke (even if the combined raw damage is higher) because it FORCES her to move up substantially closer (550 range) to trade (which she won't be able to consistently do). This wouldn't be a huge issue on its own, but her immobility, squishiness, and poor sustain present massive problems. There is no way that any decent player in higher levels of play will LET Sona AA them consistently. Proper positioning by the enemy bot lane will cause Sona to either take return harass if she positions even slightly poorly, or even be engaged on. Her method of mitigating harass is her W, which is half a shield, half a heal. The issue with this is the absurdly high mana cost. If you're forced to use Q and W in a trade, you're going to go oom before you can even dream of poking someone out of lane. In other words, Sona is extremely effective against champions who either lack the ability to return trade (very few examples exist, but I will briefly discuss this later), or against players who are less skilled in lane positioning and trading. The latter which will be largely absent in higher levels of solo q, as well as completely absent in competitive play. Any other matchup where Sona is forced to use W will cause her to go oom very quickly because the nerfs to her numbers have consistently rendered her ability to poke people out of lane gimped. What's even worse (but potentially not as relevant now) is by moving her damage to her AA, she has become easier and easier for aggressive supports to deal with. By forcing her to walk closer to even do her job in lane, she is literally one step closer to being killed. And don't even get me started on her passive. Pre-rework Q-Powerchord did 2x damage. Now it's only a pathetic 40% bonus damage (which is somewhat justified back when she could dominate passive laners, but holds little ground now)

tl;dr, pushing her damage into her AA increases her risk/reward, but at a very lopsided ratio due to a combination of both comparatively lower damage due to her passive nerf, as well as due to most matchups/skilled players being able to both read and react to this kind of harass. This in turn causes her to be forced to rely on a nerfed W to mitigate harass in combination with Q, which will consistently run her oom.

2. Lack of Scaling This is the biggest issue with Sona. While I believe her laning has a few issues besides just her lack of damage, nothing is as bad as her clear lack of scaling. Once again, the biggest culprit is her rework in 4.13

Riot's incentive for reworking Sona was that she lacked tangible impact for the player who was playing her. This is not surprising, I do understand and accept this reasoning. Pre-rework Sona relied on both stance and aura mechanics that gave passive/active stat bonuses. It is much harder to appreciate this than it would be to appreciate say, a bonus damage AA, or a shield. That doesn't mean it actually makes her gameplay stronger Pre-rework Sona's Q + W could be kept nearly indefinitely with enough CDR, and provided 20 AD/AP, as well as 10-20 AR/MR. Her E is stronger now for her than pre-rework, but consistently weaker for her allies.

So how does 100 bonus damage compare to 20 AD/AP? (This is an argument on scaling, not early game, thus I will use rank 5 values to make an argument. In any case, I concede that bonus damage on AA means more than 4/8/12/16/20 AD/AP in lane, but this is mitigated by the fact that her old Q did more damage + she didn't always need to AA after her Q to DEAL THAT DAMAGE). It doesn't. It can't. Firstly, casters will probably never use that empowered AA. Secondly, using an ADC as an example with a standard late game build, 20 AD -> scales multiplicatively with AS, Crit, and Lifesteal. Also, the 100 bonus damage is MAGICAL. ADCs don't build magic pen, and this bonus damage will be entirely negligible as the game progresses (also because Sona needs AP, which I'll get into later on). Same with the 20 AP. That kind of buff scales with every skill as long as it scales with AP. In other words, not only will AP casters consistently do more damage with Sona, but they'll actually be ABLE to because the 100 bonus damage on the AA is worthless for them.

Next up is her W. How does a 115 + (20/40, depending on Ult rank) compare to 10/20 AR + MR? This one is a little closer. 20 AR + MR in the long run will mitigate more than a shield with a base value of 115, but what is important is the duration. Sona's current W lasts 1.5s. Assuming the shield instantly expires, 20 AR/MR will easily mitigate more. And the biggest issue? The fact that the rework reduced her aura range from 1000 to 350. She literally needs to position in such a way that she can tag all her allies with the buff (which is really hard to do), and even then, it's unlikely she'll be able to venture to the front lines again to re-apply the aura a second time due to her inherent squishiness. Old Sona had a lower CD on W as well, which means she can literally keep up her AR/MR bonus on all members due to the 1000 range. Current Sona can't even do that, let alone GIVE THE BUFF TO HER FRONT LINERS. This actually applies just as much to her Q. Aside from the fact that it's scaling is comparatively weaker, it's also now more difficult to use as an aura.

Now I want to talk about her need for AP. Numbers aside, it is more or less standard to pick up a Sightstone, and more often than not an Aegis. Items like Mikael's are situational, but if someone has to pick it up, it's the support. So in a typical game (This is even more true in the competititve scene), Sona has at least 3, if not 4 item slots filled with support items. This limits her ability to purchase AP, if the fact that supports earn less gold wasn't enough of an inhibitor (and the fact that big AP items like Rabadon's, Luden's, Lich Bane all cost MORE than standard support items for good reason). Why is she dependent on AP? For the same reason her auras are weaker late game. By removing the flat bonuses her auras gave (that naturally scale with damage itemization marksmen/ap casters buy, as well as the health that everyone gets when they level up/purchase defense), and replacing them with immediate effects that scale with AP, Sona is forced to buy AP to live up to the kind of scaling she brought. Even without an entire numerical analysis, it is IMMEDIATELY obvious that 20 AD/AP means more than 100 bonus magic damage on ONE AUTO. Unless of course, you have a ton of AP (Which even then, because of how ADCs scale so hard, this isn't 100% true), which SUPPORTS CANNOT AFFORD, ESPECIALLY IN COMPETITIVE PLAY. This is also true for her W, if not even more true due to the staggering difference in CD pre-rework (7s vs current 10s) and the fact that her aura ranges gimp her supposed "immediate power" even more.

Lastly, everything above feeds in to her... Extreme reliance on Ult and maybe even Flash. Not only is her ult clunky due to its cast/travel time, but her reliance on flash to land a good ultimate is particularly debilitating and can even get her killed. Compared to an Annie Flash + Tibbers, the difference is staggering. Her poor scaling due to her auras being both weaker and smaller essentially turn her into an Ult bot. Sona can still make flashy plays, but so much of her power and effectiveness has been loaded into her Ult. And it's not even that powerful. It has a staggering base CD of 140s (which makes early skirmishes and dragon's difficult to contest if Sona has used Ult), which does go down a fair bit + CDR, but nonetheless, her success literally hinges entirely on landing an Ult now.

I want to say that I do not consider her squishiness and immobility by itself a glaring weakness of her. It is justified considering the type of champion she is, but the risk/reward ratio is skewed. Sona SHOULD be punished for poor positioning, like any other champion. It's just that there are only a few matchups where she cannot be exploited and can function to maximum efficiency in lane, YET STILL FALL OFF due to her scaling being comparatively weaker. An example is Janna. Sona outranges Janna and has a lower CD and mana cost on her Q than Janna's shield. Thus Janna cannot respond to Sona's constant poke. This is literally one of the few and only matchups where Sona can actually still be effective, but poking Janna out of lane is still a hassle due to Sona's numbers having been hit so many times. At the same time, Sona is easy to gank. That in itself is also a weakness that I belive belongs in her kit. It's just the tradeoff she makes is not worth it. She does LESS DAMAGE, and she has to be CLOSER TO DO THAT DAMAGE. This only gets worse in matchups that can either punish Sona hard (like Blitz/Leona), or matchups like Soraka who can just sustain and even fight back. No, Sona's lack of strong peel is not by itself an issue either. She has always lacked strong peel, but she traded this off for a strong lane phase and her auras giving a team-wide buff + game changing Ult. Plenty of other supports lack direct peel like Soraka. Sona can at least slow bruisers down, or lower an assassin's damage dramatically with E and W powerchord respectively. She is currently a jack of all trades, master at none, yet even then, she's only moderately good at one thing -> poking, which in itself for her isn't strong enough anymore.

tl;dr, Sona's current state allows her to function very well in only a few matchups and situations. Her counterplay becomes easier and easier to execute the more skilled the players become, and far too easy to deal with in competitive play. This however, is counterbalanced by the fact that if her poke cannot be handled (by either a stray matchup, or less skilled players), she becomes impossible to handle. Her lack of a core identity is a big issue, and as a whole her kit lacks versatility (despite how her auras seem to say otherwise) DUE TO HOW THEY RELY SO MUCH ON AP AND BEING IN VERY CLOSE RANGE.

I love Sona, and I want to see her competitively viable again, or at least a versatile enough pick. Sona should have her weaknesses, as she should have her strengths. If her strengths rely on opponents being less skilled, that by itself presents an issue. Just because she can poke players who don't know how to trade out of lane DOES NOT MAKE HER STRONG. But if she can do this consistently in certain matchups at every level of skill, that's fine.

Perhaps shifting the damage back to her Q and reducing the overall damage would allow her to poke more safely, but also be less frustrating in lower levels of play where current Sona can consistently get away with AAing anyways? This would make her overall pattern simpler, but make her more effective in lane in higher rankings, while lowering it slightly in lower rankings, trying to find an even ground in skill disparity.

Or increase the range on her auras a little + reduce her reliance on AP so that her scaling is actually relevant? (This might mean she needs a few tweaks early on to warrant her scaling, but the fact remains her scaling is weaker than many supports)

In the end, I AM NOT CALLING FOR DIRECT BUFFS. I know that Sona can feel frustrating to lane against. But when she's in a situation where higher levels of play and competitive can shut her down so easily, doesn't that present an issue?