Moved on to Nami, but I decided to try one last time: Sona's whole design just sucks
Whenever Sona comes up around here, it's not...pretty. Some users are HORRENDOUSLY biased either for or against her and say the most ridiculous shit, and threads either end up ignored or become massive, overly toxic shouting matches. Honestly, I moved on at this point, and now I'm a Nami main. Still, Sona's a champ I have 2.5 million mastery on. I'm a bigger one trick of this champ than any one trick anyone knows on these forums. Doesn't mean I'm Challenger level on her...hell, I can hardly climb on her, but I liked the champ and used to want to hit my ranked milestones with her. I don't now, and I'd like to at least make one good, final attempt at getting not just my grievances on the champ, but what I have a good feeling are a lot of people's grievances with the champ, really are. People that play her, people that play against, and people that play with her. Summary at the bottom if you need it.
Playing as Sona issue 1: The problem here is something that Meddler already touched on two years ago. Sona's kit is a shit ton of numbers that spread all over a ton of targets. I see people constantly talking about how weak Sona's damage is. I used to be one of those people, too. In reality, her Q, which you don't even aim, has some of the highest damage potential on some of the lowest cds for a basic spell out of nearly any support in the game as a singular spell. Why? Because it hits two targets, so you double the value of the bolts. It's not just 40 + .5 ap at level one. It's (potentially) 80 + 1.0 ap at level 1, scaling up to 320 + 1.0 ap at rank 5. You can also pass the aura to 5 targets, so you can potentially quintuple the value of the aura. Sona's W has a similar issue. People say Sona's healing sucks, and her shield's small. In reality, Sona always heals 2 people, herself and the lowest health target within 1k range, and can shield herself and up to 4 more. Now, the issue we face is that her application of these numbers is crap. You can't really choose who you want to put the brunt of your efforts on. Someone like Lulu or Janna picks one person or a few people and really peels the shit out of that person. Zyra or Brand picks one person or a few people and really kills the shit out of that person. Sona's overall power on paper is ridiculous...broken, even, but the allocation of that power is scatterbrained, and thus doesn't accomplish what her users want to accomplish. It feels weak and bad to use.
Playing as Sona issue 2: Idk why Riot designed this mini-rework for Sona, but it's horrible. It basically makes "being useful as a support" take way too long for what the role demands. In solo queue, it slides, but for League of Legends as a team game? No, it's absolutely garbage. She's already lacking role essentials like early hard-cc, and we make her early game significantly worse? Mind you, scaling supports are fine. Rakan is cool. Taric is awesome. Janna's tooled to be stronger later, now, too. Sona was the first one to be put in this new niche for supports as far as I know and Riot butchered it. I'm just being honest. Just because you scale doesn't mean your early game, as a support, should be weaker than the laner you're supporting.
Playing against Sona: So that mini-rework not only made Sona's early game bad, but it also made her game play more face-roll and her late game straight obnoxious. For those playing against her, unless you're banking on straight dropping her whenever she walks into lane, you probably hate it. She doesn't even aim her harass. She doesn't even have to click you. Just being within range of Q makes you gradually take damage over time in lane. It's just obnoxious and makes things harder to balance between elos. Also, this lack of counter-play steadily increases by powers as the game continues, where she's encouraged by this mini-rework to spam mindlessly to repeatedly pump her numbers out. This is when that on paper fantasy becomes reality, and all that power in her kit just up and makes itself apparent in the worst way. Sona's W, for example, can shield like 625 hp at max rank, iirc, and with 40% cdr, within 2 Ws, Sona can shield up to 1k damage and then some, team wide, in 3.6 seconds. And she doesn't even aim. She just "positions herself". This doesn't even count the healing or any ap items she gets. Add items and healing to these numbers and it's ridiculous what you have to put up with against this champ, and outside of killing her, you really can't do shit about it. It's simply obnoxious...plain and simple.
Playing with Sona issue 1: This mainly boils down to one real issue, and that's invisible power. If anything, it's the word invisible. Sona's kit doesn't communicate what it's doing...at all. The main thing that's allowed me to climb as Nami without spending forever in each division I've jumped into is that if I put E on someone, they get it. If I land Q, they get it. If I use R, people get it. Meanwhile, if I try to slow someone with Sona's AA passive, no one's gonna have a clue that I even have the intention of slowing someone until it's too late. If I W passive someone, no one's really noticing the damage drop in the heat of the moment. And really, does anyone ever notice Sona's Q on-hit? I think this issue stems from Riot not being ambitious enough with their original Sona VGU. They did that work because Sona had a ton of invisible power and was highly non-interactive. However, in trying to preserve aura-style game play (which they shouldn't have because they removed almost all the auras in the game by now), Sona still has those issues in her kit. It's hard to support someone when they don't know what you're doing to support them outside of a line stun and a "shitty" heal.
Playing with Sona issue 2: That lack of hard-cc pre 6 is actually damning. Like, there's no support left in the game that's viable that's similar. Even Soraka can silence and root people with her E. So Sona's an "enchanter", right? Defensive mage and all that. If you get dove, Sona's doing nada for you unless she has Exhaust. If you get hit by hard cc, Sona's retaliation against that is poor, too. If Sona's getting attacked, she's screwed unless she blows sums, and your partner might have to blow heal, too. Her laning is just so victim-status it's really bad to work with. I don't mind her being squishy or all that, but the implementation here is clumsy and has people laning with her often feeling like she's a detriment.
Honestly, I wanted to make this thread shorter, but for those that need a summary: Sona's abilities are hard for allies to notice, her laning feels horrible for a support, the mini-rework was a lousy band-aid that made things worse in the long run for everyone, she lacks appreciable counter-play and that causes Riot to hold back her game play further, and her power application doesn't feel good, either.
