An attempt at a level headed Sona discussion

Going to try to do a response without getting worked up (really like certain characters)

I don't have all the data, so a lot of my comments are just from what i have personally seen. That said i don't really feel like she is in a good spot once players climb even a little bit into higher elo's. I think her win rate looks good, but her play rate drops off like a rock. It tends to be easy to have a high win rate in higher ELO if you only have 20-30 players out of 1000, all of whom are "really good", actually using the champion.

I would argue that her spells power ends up on par with other champions around the point of when you are constantly tagging 2 allies with each ability. This puts her in a very weird spot, since in lane your spells will always feel sub par compared to your opponents. HOWEVER given how the game works, you will often jump straight from being underwhelming to overwhelming since the numbers and ratios when you are tagging your whole team are some of the best (if not THE BEST) in the game. This puts her in a very weird place, since your power can range from pit (solo) to mountain top (full team boost), and that power spike is not based off items / levels / a high skill floor.

Is it possible to adjust or change Sona so that she has a steady power curve, instead of a feast or famine type of kit?

Her power cords are another issue. Except for her damage boost modifier, the other power cords tend to a combination of unimpressive and hard to maximize use of. A 20% damage output reduction sounds very impressive, but since you have to land it at 550 range with an auto attack, it often goes off after your opponent has already done most of their damage or puts you in to much danger to land without dying. This also speaks nothing to the lack of visual indicator that the power cord is active on the affected opponent. Then we move on to her slow, which again may only be activated off an auto attack from 550 range. With Sona's very low base movement speed, and a lack of mobility in her kit, this slow will often do little to help you or your allies against the opposing team.

It is said that her kit is very reliable. I don't know if that is really as impressive as it is made out to be. Her spells auto target, which i will admit has some a chunk of her power budget tied up in that. But most of her kit is no less reliable then a champion based around point and click skills.

As for her highs and lows:

• One low is a constant underwhelming level of power, with a lot of built in counter play, during the entire lane phase.
• Another is that so much of her power is locked behind things you as a player have little to no control over; bonus power on each level of your ultimate, grouped team fights, your opponents not contesting your poke.
• Her most obvious high is that on paper her skills, assuming full team buff, have very high numbers and ratios. 200% ratio on the damage boost, 100% ratio on the shield.
• The only other high i can think of is that she punishes people who don't know how to play against her. Her damage is just high enough and constant enough that if your opponents don't respect it, or know how to counter trade, you can apply some heavy pressure.

The comment about Sona having long uptime on her abilities is false. With the exception of her Q, now having a 5 second up time (still single use, still imprisons your ally with a choose of what to do with the buff), The shield and speed boost are both on painfully short duration for the amount of base cooldown on each spell. If we assume 40% cooldown reduction as the max, even with perfect timing, the shield is only active for 25% of the time. The speed boost takes an even harder hit with it only being active 20-21% of the time, again assuming perfect timing. Neither of these sounds like high uptimes. By comparison Janna's shield has a 50% uptime WITHOUT any cooldown reduction, with max CDR you are looking at a 83% uptime.

I believe that a lot of the complaints about Sona, at least from those who player her pre rework, is that SO MUCH was changed in one patch. If had to give problem areas of her before that patch, i would highlight 3 areas.

1. She was too safe with 1000 range on her utility.
2. She was a bit overly spam happy.
3. Always active invisible power.

Any one of these things could have been targeted for change and it would have had a huge impact on who Sona was and how she played. We can even look at the fixes that were put in for each of these issues.

1. Lower her range, so she isn't always safe. Put some of the poke power into an auto attack so she can't fight at max range without counter play.

Good, great, this would have dealt with her being nearly impossible to catch and providing so much power without ever needing to really get her hands dirty.

2. Increase her spell's cool downs. Make them not all have the same base, and remove spell weaving

Good, great, this prevents her from just cycling endlessly through her spells and giving a constant array of buffs to her allies. It also prevents her from charging her passive to easily.

3. Remove constant invisible power and replace it with dynamic abilities that have more clear power to them. Make the spell effects much more visible to everyone

Good, great, this makes it clear to everyone why you are taking extra damage. Why your opponents did less health bar damage with their last attack. Why you are moving faster. Each ability has a clear effect and a clear visual to tell you that the effect is active.

Anyone of these issues and fixes could have been put in and it would have shifted how Sona worked but not gone overboard. I would say that in some cases even two of these issues and fixes could have been tackled in a patch, without it going too far. Instead it was decided that all the problem areas needed to be addressed at once. And not just in small changes to each one, but in large some times over blown changes. But worst of all, there was almost no new power put into the kit to compensate for all the things taken out. We can argue that the dynamic boosts are equal replacement to the constant invisible power. So where are the boosts to compensate for the 65% reduced range on her utility? Where are the boosts to make up for the bonus cooldown on all her abilities?

I find it hard to believe that Sona was so amazingly overpowered, that she needed that level of power downgrades to be considered fair. Nor can i believe that in the almost year and a half since her rework, despite the changes in meta game, and general power creep, that Sona was never given any of her old power back. With the exception of a cost standardization on her ultimate, Sona has only seen buffs when the game has swept through game wide upgrades. Sadly even after the massive change to her kit and playstyle with the rework, Sona has actually seen further and further nerfs as time as gone on.