Can we admit that Sona is just an extremely poorly designed champion?

GG, Nidalee's heal costs more at level 13. By then she has what, 1 or 2 Morellos and blue buff? Only ranks 1 and 2 are viable comparative calculations, hence why they are properly used.

That aside, Nidalee's max heal is 205 (+50% AP), whereas Sona's is only 110 (+20% AP). Twenty extra mana is negligible for nearly double the base and 2.5x the scaling. Especially considering Nidalee isn't a support, so she can actually afford to buy massive amounts of AP.

no, but considering Sonas extreme low base mana, she can only heal about 4 times, and then she's oom.. and that's about the same amount of a raka heal, and she can cast it 9 times, even with spending her health to it, her Q passive allows her to heal up quite fast, and health regen is also a thing. Nami has much higher heal stats, a higher mana base, and it has about the same cooldown as Sonas heal. in my last game, I played as sona with the expanded mind masteries on, and the enemy nami still outscaled me with mana.

Well, according to that, Sona gets barley played above gold, and got replaced by janna, who's probably right now the best peeling support, and she doesn't even does anything that Sona can. she has a small aura that helps her allies, but that's it.

Sona get's replaced by other supports thanks to the continues nerfs, and I can even understand that, because she's not more that much worth to play just because of a small delayed aoe stun.

And according to the winrates between different leagues, Cass seems to wreck really well in silver, yet her mains are not satisified with her. That's how I feel with Sona too; she might have some power, but her playstyle is not Sona anymore, but a extreme weaker version of Nami.

Anyways, Janna has a high winratew in higher elos, does that mean according to your logic, that she deserves nerfs too? She is perfectly balanced right now in my opinion, but in the right hands she's fairly strong. So it was with Sona before all those nerfs, probably because her playerbase was so low, the people who disagreed the most with the rework were forced to find a playstyle for her that makes her efficient, and right now it's simply the poke playstyle, and many people dislike it.

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The issue with that assumption is I'm talking about Diamond and above where everyone is playing champs they're experienced with. In lower elos pick rate might matter, but in high elos it really doesn't.

Pick rate is still interesting to think about in diamond. For example, consider Ashe. Pretty high win rate, pretty low pick rate. That's an interesting contrast with someone like Lucian, with a low win rate and high pick rate.

I conjecture that it means something a bit different in diamond than in lower elo. I expect almost anyone in diamond to be playing champions they understand well. Instead, I think it speaks to the range of applicability of the champion. I believe Ashe isn't picked often because there are relatively few team comps she will work in, while Lucian is picked frequently because he goes with everything.

By the by, I think Sona is still quite strong in solo queue. Overreacting to Sona nerfs is something of a community pastime at this point, we've done it like a dozen times now.

Yeah, but what's her winrate up there, in the hands of those good players? She don't appears there on the highest winrate champions, so she's not op there.

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So much disinformation here, gonna take a while to shed the truth of light on each point. Whelp, here goes:

I'm underestimating nothing. When you have only 3 seconds to find the time to spare for an illogical action that nets next to no reward, that Katarina is gonna be more focused on looking for an opening to ult. That squishy Xerath isn't going to risk getting 1-shot by Zed. Fact of the matter: all ability-based champions have been nerfed by these Sona changes. Especially champions that dual-scale both AD and AP.

Again you focus on pointing out champions that don't have good synergy with Sona. She doesn't have to be the perfect choice with every champion. Team comp is an important part of the game. You're also focusing your argument based on poking. When a teamfight breaks out there's a good chance that Zed isn't targeting him, but instead the ADC. And that he's in AA range of something to proc that on hit damage. As well as the bonus form his passive, he's likely looking for a good chance to AA anyway.

Katarina probably wont get the most of that AA on hit. But it's not rare to see her AA between her resets. If you're able to be up next to her, that shield+heal is going to help her more as well.

You know what else helped taking towers? Old Sona. She doesn't anymore. Ardent Censer isn't one of Sona's abilities, it's an item. I may as well use it on Soraka or Janna and ult while taking a turret. Is that a good idea? Probably not, but fact is Ardent Censer is a non-sequitur that is forcing this off-topic.

Doesn't mean it's not a strong item on her. If that's the case though lets rebalance Fizz around him never getting a Lichbane. His Q's damage is actually quite small without it. Sure if you add in his AD it looks better, but he doesn't build pen for that. 25% AS is going to take a tower faster than 20AD/AP.

This logic is based on the assumption that League consists of 90 champions, 90 of which are supports and each team has 10 supports. THESE ARE ALL FALSE. In actuality there are around 12 supports give or take, meaning she should be in every 6th game. The fact that she's only 1 in 8 says her playrate is ~33% lower than theorized.

You're right. I did that backwards. But her % played isn't far behind the average either way you look at it. She's not underplayed. So saying her winrate is high because only those who have specialized in her play her would be incorrect.

No half-decent Sona ever did this. I'm not sure what bronze 5 Sona players you've seen, but fully utilizing her has ALWAYS required being in range of Power Chord. Sona has ALWAYS been an active support that stayed in the fray. Anybody who says otherwise is intentionally propagandizing untruths.

Before she never had a reason to get further than AA range. Unless she was on the winning side of a teamfight and wanted to be ready for a slow'd power chord or plant a ward in the bush they were heading to. She was a buff bot that sat in the back. Only moving up to Q+AA for some poke. Minus the occasional flash+R. But that's was as interactive as she got.

If you played old Sona up in the fight, you were putting yourself in danger that wasn't needed. Because most of what she did didn't require you to be that close up.

This is your biased opinion. Every Sona main that played her properly felt how truly interactive her playstyle TRULY was.

Once she got some mana regen she could spend the whole teamfight moving around spamming QWE off cooldown and be just as effective as a seasoned pro. Not saying this is always the case. But that's how uninteractive she was in her playstyle. It brings very little that is interesting to do, or watch.

Math proves that Sona requires ~700 AP for her current "shield" to even out. The AD/AP provided more on the majority of champions in the entire game including, but not limited to: Mages, AS champs, crit champs, burst champs, high-range champs, mid-range champs, mobile champs, ability-based champs, assassins and dual-scaling champs. Yes old Sona worked better with Void Staff, Last Whisper and Cleaver because it improved your allies' AD and AP, thus both their auto-attacks and all abilities got stronger.

Your Twitch ADC takes a 3k magic damage burst combo from a mage.

He has the base 30MR and a BV(on cooldown). Thus has 75MR. Void Staff, sorc boots and red runes reduces this to 25.92. This is reduced to 2400 damage. Assuming sona has FQC and Argent, she has 90AP. Her shield will reduce this to 2267.

With old Sona buff. The MR becomes 85. 32.42 after reductions. ADC takes 2272 damage.

With just 2, low AP items, the shield outshines the old buff by 5 damage. More AP will only make this gap larger. Targets with higher MR will get more out of the shield. If the target lives. Since the heal is increased on lower targets, that is will also be more effective than the older version.

And the first damage taken with the shield didn't include the extra bonus from her ult. Which would of been another 30 at max rank.

Only time the 10 MR would shine is if there is enough incoming damage to make it outscale getting the shield every cooldown. Which you'd probably be dead from that much damage anyway.

At 10k damage 32.42 MR deals 7575.76 damage 25.92 MR minus the full shield (plus the 30) deals 7837 damage.

But that target is dead either way.

So lets look at a tank.

We'll say 180 base MR. 100.67 MR minus shield for 4837 damage. 94.17 MR for 5154 damage.

A tank would take roughly 300 less damage less damage.

Don't know where you came up with 700AP.

It's difficult to understand how a champion that has been given around ~20 nerfs can have "overall the same power level." I can only chalk this up to intentionally blinding oneself to mathematical fact and basic common logic.

Because you cannot see a champions full power doesn't mean someone else cannot.

Ezreal used to be considered trash before his rise to power in S2.

Ahri was considered trash before she got played in the LCS with DFG. People thought she was trash because she was OP on release and got nerfed.

Leblanc was sleeper OP after her rework for a long time.

People still think Zyra is a shell of her former self. When very little changed on her. What hurt her place in bot lane was the favoring of tanky all in supports.

It took half a year for people to decide Lucian was even worth playing.

Someone had to start Jungle Panthion/Wukong in S4.

I do agree some of these changes they are doing are quickly becoming pointless. The current one on the PBE doesn't seem needed. Her E isn't very strong earlier in the game.

I'd also like to point out that Nocturne has gotten almost only nerfs since his release, yet somehow finds his way into the LCS every year. A champion getting nerfed doesn't mean the end of that champion. If it doesn't work out, they can always be buffed.