A Dose of Honesty about Sona
A bit ago, after Sona got her Q nerf, I made a pretty lengthy thread being critical of...well...everyone, about Sona's current state and perception of it. The mains, the haters, and Riot themselves. Since then, I personally started to play a ton of Nami, and I hopefully plan to main her instead (with a few pocket picks) for when Clash comes out, since Sona in organized play is way worse than solo queue.
However, this isn't about that. This is more about "Why Sona players rage so much when she gets nerfed or has a middling or less win rate." It's already kind of a "known thing" that Sona mains are really aggressive when it comes to the champ. They also carry a pretty pessimistic attitude towards her. Why? Well, it's simple: The Sona that exists on paper doesn't match up with the Sona we get in reality.
Sona has the worst shit in the game. Q sucks. W sucks: Sona's W isn't just a heal. It's also not just a shield. It's a 2-man heal and a 5-man shield in the same spell. So when someone says "Sona has a lousy 30 hp heal at level 2", they actually mean she has a lousy 60 hp heal with a 50% ap ratio, since she always heals herself. Her shield? Fucking 25...but it's potentially 25 for 5 different people, adding up to 125 + 125% ap ratio shield...for a single point in the skill. Whereas Janna gets up to 210 base shielding with a .7 ap ratio by her E's max, Sona nabs a potential 220 healing + .5 ap ratio along with a potential 625 base shielding + a potential 1.5 ap ratio. So assuming we use 100 ap as a base (more like 150 if we go by Athene's + Ardent, but 100 is easier to mental math with), Janna could block 280 damage off of one E. Meanwhile, Sona's potentially blocking 775 damage and recovering 270 damage...on a 6 second cd before cdr.
Meanwhile, Sona's Q hits up to 2 targets. Sona's level 1 Q is actually, potentially, a automatically targeted 80 + 100% ap ratio move. Janna's W? Like 60 + 50% ap. Karma? 80 + 60% ap. And this isn't even considering the extra AA damage, which brings us a bonus 10 + 30% ap per effected ally. At rank 5, she's sitting on a spell that can potentially apply 470+ 250% ap's worth of damage to the enemy team...every 4.8 seconds before cdr (after cdr, at like level 11...it's like 2 - 3 seconds of this potential output?). Note: I'm not even factoring powerchord procs into this. This is just Sona's standard spell cast, assuming she effects all 5 allies.
Sona is super slow and shit: Eventually, she just perma E's all over the map and she's super difficult to chase. Not much to say here.
So what the fuck is the problem? She sounds op from all this shit. The answer is "logistics". Sona can potentially be this massive influence by the numbers, but the application of those numbers and the logistics to make them work in a match is what makes Sona's design so shitty if you ask me.
When a Sona player uses Q or W, it's to shield or attack a specific someone. So all these op potential numbers fly out the window because a ton of it isn't being applied to that someone, at least in the mind of the player, which results in them feeling worse than they actually are or can be. Sure, on paper, we're getting like 320 base + 100% ap scaling just for pressing Q at rank 5, even before auto attacking, but for the point of using the move, we're looking at a wimpy 160 + 50% ap scaling. Sure, Sona's W is fucking broken, but for the person we're trying to save by pressing W, we aren't looking at a massive 625 base shield. It's just 125 + 30% ap scaling, with a 110 + 25% ap scaling heal...and it may even go to the wrong guy. Sona's efforts aren't concentrated where they need to be, but because her numbers are so ridiculous on paper, you can't do anything about it regardless. To boot, Sona doesn't aim any of these things, which hurts her case even more. You can't give Sona better tools to work with or bigger moments to shine in if it's so easy to pump out so much value, even if it's in places you wish it wasn't. Looking at Rakan, his 150 base + 80% ap shield can be applied to the same guy twice, for a total of 300 + 160% ap worth of shielding. With an Ardent + Athene's setup, you can shield nearly 600 damage on your carries, either all for one carry or between two of them. Sure, Sona still EASILY out-shields Rakan, but Rakan can apply way more of his to specific targets he wants it on, rather than throwing it out all over the joint or having some allies not take their share of it.
Then logistics gets even worse: So part of the issue is that Sona's application is fucking scatterbrained. The OTHER issue is that it's designed in a way that's reminiscent of Kayle: You hardly have the tools to assert yourself in lane. You have some damage. You have very little cc. You got some sustain. If you make it to 30+ minutes, you're a monster. If you DON'T, you're a wet noodle. That's it. No real strengths or weaknesses to work your character around outside of "Pray the enemy doesn't eat you alive before you can do your job and you do your job so well they might just consider rage quitting computers in general". You can't make a play on Sona outside of Flash + R or Flash + Q in most cases since you have no aggressive gap closer or ranged cc to close distances without people seeing you bumbling on by while they walk away at full MS. You can't make defensive plays in most instances besides a W or a reactive R since you have no cc to stop engages with. You pretty much just float around and passively apply yourself to those around you, steadily. As the game progresses, these effects increase, but it's hardly a balancing point that feels good to work with. It's not a real strategic niche that's valuable to the game when so many other champions exist. It feels weak until it isn't, and it isn't for such a small amount of time per game that it doesn't garner much appreciation unless she's fucking broken as a champ, and then everyone loathes her.
I could go on about all the issues I see in Sona for quite some time. Riot's complacent, her mains are complacent (still get pissy over nerfs, but they're complacent about making a lasting effort to solve the issue), but I've been advocating for a major rework on the champ. Even in October, when Sona was in the Censer meta, I was asking for changes. Even before then, I was asking for changes. I honestly do not think that Sona's VGU from years ago holds well at all. Based on what I understand about League's champion designs and the goals of them, Sona fails horribly in most regards. Outside of thematics, Sona's kit is a fucking dud if you ask me, even if people aren't real enough to admit it or come to terms with it.
