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The problems with Sona's current state

Chris Chiaki··31 votes·2,656 views

She's been my go-to support for 2 seasons and I have a fair amount of insight into her current state of power. Only mid-Plat so this is just my opinion on her current state.

Quite simply she's not weak but she's just outclassed. Her identity is a semi-lane bully against non-tank supports, weak utility and average damage which honestly means she has no place in the meta. Her major problems are:

-> Extremely low utility

She has two forms of CC, one which isn't available until 6 and the other which is her passive. If you get behind or even go even, she's generally weaker then most supports. A Sona that is behind is useless, offering no damage, 50HP heals, 12% speed boosts and a easily dodgeable CC ultimate unless she has Flash. A behind Janna Blitzcrank Leona Nautilus still offers a whole lot of CC and peel.

Sona can't peel like these supports, she doesn't offer any engage like these supports, she lacks their superior base stats (except Janna). So what does she offer? Well, a little more damage then them but it's very dependant on her building glass cannon and Riot has repeatedly gutted her damage (Q rework, AP scaling nerf, passive nerf).

-> No diversity in build path

Sona has no options in her build path. You have to go full AP or you simply don't do the only thing she's good at; dealing damage. If you're building items like item 3190 item 3110 then you might as well go with a tank support and offer

  • better engage
  • better tankiness
  • more CC
  • more peel

Like you can build those items on her but it doesn't play to her strengths. Tanky Sona is fucking garbage, you have an ult and that's it. QWE are useless with no AP because their base values are atrocious. So her low utility is made worse by the fact she isn't rewarded as much by buying support items.

-> Extremely reliant on ultimate

In a meta that involves fighting for dragon, Sona does not excel here. Why? Her ultimate in on a ridiculously long CD early (140 seconds) and she can't rush CDR really. The items you can probably have at level 6 assuming a decent lane phase are item 2049 item 3098 item 1001 so you have to hold onto it for teamfights.

This makes getting vision extremely difficult. You want to ward dragon or tribush? If you find the enemy jungler there then you have to burn either ultimate or summoner 4 to escape. Other supports have either the tankiness or CC to escape it most of the time. Wasting either means your prescense in team fights is well....nothing.

Not to mention for good players...the ult is easily dodgeable. It has a cast time (so not Annie Tibbers AOE) and it's not that wide so anyone with good reactions and a dash can easily escape a 140CD ult.

Tl;dr

Strengths of Sona

  • Good lane bully against non-tank supports (so just not the meta supports LOL)
  • Decent damage for a support

Weaknesses of Sona

  • Easiest support to gank in the game. (yes even Taric is harder to gank)
  • Extremely squishy
  • Lack of item build paths
  • Weak engage and weak peel
  • Feast or famine support
  • Reliant on a 140CD ult to be useful early.

A few suggestions to help her,** obviously not all of them**.

  • Revert MS nerf (325 -> 330)
  • Revert Q passive powerchord nerf (40% -> 50%)
  • Make E more useful (aura slows enemies? could make passive E powerchord weaker if need be)
  • Make ultimate CD 120/100/90 instead of 140/120/100.
  • Expand aura range by 50 or so?

21 Comments

1000angrybees17 votes

These are exactly my sentiments with sona.

Her heal and shield are bad. Her speed boost is bad. Her overall cc/utility is bad. Her ult CD is bad. She's extremely slow for... what reason? when she's already easy to catch regardless of her shitty speed boost? Her poke damage may have been nerfed a little too hard. A small boost would be nice, but I can deal without it.

she just needs help.

Fadedpf8 votes

I can agree with all of those buffs except the Q buff. The E slow is pretty interesting because Sona usually doesn't want people that close in her aura range. And honestly you should start item 3303 and abuse its strength until you have a lot of gold generated by it, keep it at the early stage and go for item 3069

Champion Skin2 votes

Yeah frostfang is pretty bad

item 3303 - cost 365 gold --> max 7 GP10 minimum 2 GP10 item 3098 - costs 500 gold --> max 5 GP10 minimum 0 GP10

It costs more gold and give you less gold (and the stats are garbage... +5 AP and +25% base mana regen is not worth it)

Nameless Voice2 votes

Frostfang doesn't lose the 2gp/10 though?

It has a maximum of 12 GP/10 and a minimum of 2gp/10.

Champion Skin5 votes

You pay 500 gold and gain an ADDITIONAL max 5 GP10 and minimum 0 GP10 That's what you get for the 500 gold you pay for the upgrade to frostfang the 7 other GP10 is from the spellthief you already have

Nameless Voice3 votes

Okay, right. Very true.

Kitsuki056 votes

You know, I don't really see any reason for Sona's AP ratio's to be shitty. I mean, she's not Lulu who will suddenly begin dominating Top and Mid lane if she starts gaining lots of power from building full mage. I mean, you already have to build her full mage anyways, why not make it feel satisfying? Make Sona the support with strong AP ratios, she's never going to be blowing up people on her on unless she ults them, her only damaging ability is predictable and relies more an repeatedly harassing rather than "BOOM now you're dead!"

And if it's the self heal that has Riot worried, Alistar has a larger self heal than she does and he in no way completely shuts down enemies with his sustain.

1000angrybees3 votes

It's funny because even though I know for a fact how high her single target damage can be, I can't see myself disagreeing with this. She has extremely low viability building as a traditional support, since her abilities are completely AP dependent. She has a LOT of trade offs for her damage (if she even gets to build her necessary items)

-Generally a glass cannon build, not much room for defense on an extremely frail champ -Very little escape power until at least mid game, when her AP should be higher, and she has MS items -Extremely high ultimate CD. Her rank 1 CD is simply atrocious for any champ. -Mana hungry through spell rotation -Passive doesn't offer enough variation or usefulness -Staccato is obviously her most useful. Tempo is good at later ranks, and Diminuendo is... underperforming. -Relatively cost ineffective if she's healing herself or others, unless it's late game (with high AP and rank) -Defense stats simply too low to really get into many fights -Easily caught off guard, very little power to retaliate unless ahead -Pretty much the antithesis of a snowball champ.

The fact that Sona relies on the enemy to be squishy or be completely stupid- and her teammates to be the opposite of this- really indicates she has problems that were not addressed and were just plain exacerbated. All of her weaknesses outnumber her strengths. Despite her strengths, which i adore on a support (and an underdog mid laner), it's just not enough. I don't want her to be better than other supports at their job. I want her to be satisfying in what she can- and even can't- do.

Kieferr4 votes

#buffsona2015

Uiru3 votes

Riot crushed the life out of her W and E, making them two of the shittiest abilities in the game. Then, when Sona had to build damage because that was all she had left, they crushed the life out of that too.

A failed rework that achieved none of its goals (unless one of those goals was to stop playing Sona) and satisfied no one. They saw a problem with "hidden power" and instead of replacing it with something visible, they simply removed it altogether.

With so many jack of all trades, master of several supports running around, it's quite amazing that they feel justified in doing this to Sona. Riot either likes you or they don't, I suppose!

BuzzinTate2 votes

when i first started playing league i thought ryze and sona were somehow related...

spam QWE for lyfe

Krigjer2 votes

I'm not sure why I'm so against these threads when I consider myself a Sona main. Sona buffs are good! I tell myself.

I don't consider her weak right now, nor do I agree with your list of weaknesses.

TOMMYCORE2 votes

not sure what anyone in here is talking about. she does great damage along with a heal speed boost and cc and you guys probably suck

Audiomancy3 votes

{quoted}

not sure what anyone in here is talking about. she does great damage along with a heal speed boost and cc and you guys probably suck

12% speed boost for 1.5s. 30 HP Heal/Shield for 80 mana for 1.5s. 40 damage + 20 bonus damage on next auto attack. 1.5s stun at all ranks with 900 range on a 140s cooldown.

Yep. Totally great.

Raid Boss Morde2 votes

Where did you get the 12% speed boost for 1.5s? The active speed boost is 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17% (+ 7.5% per 100 AP) and then plus another 2% for each rank in her ult. The aura is 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14% (+ 3.5% per 100 AP) and then plus another 2% for each rank in her ult. What's up with people trying to make champs sound bad by giving lower or the lowest numbers possible?

30 HP heal/shield? Once again, you leave something out. Heals for 30 / 50 / 70 / 90 / 110 (+ 20% AP) and increased by 0.5% for every 1% of target's missing health. This gives it up to 50% more healing. The shield is also better than what you said: 35 / 55 / 75 / 95 / 115 (+ 20% AP) and plus 10/20/40 for each rank in her ult. The mana cost is kind of dumb though...

That Q... it doesn't just deal a base damage, it also has a scaling: 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 (+ 20% AP) and plus 10/20/40 for each rank in her ult.

Stop giving wrong numbers just to validate your point. The range on her ultimate is 1000, and the CD will scale down to 100, which is still high, but almost all ultimate AoE hard CC in the game has a high CD.

I'm not saying Sona is good, I actually find her very lacking right now, but when you try to prove points, use correct data. Use this next time you're going to talk about Sona: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Sona.

Good day to you, sir (or Ma'am)!

Kynami2 votes

Unfortunately the entire perception you have there is after she's somehow managed to get ahead and get items. Because at base kit level it is bad, really bad. She was considerably better pre-rework. And I'm saying this as someone who does play Sona on occasion. She is so stupidly reliant on having a Sheen, being ahead in gold for items with lots of AP, and having the opposing lane not hard engage on her right after she's dropped her combo and cannot do any additional burst for a good 5+ seconds.

ShowMeTheBooty1 votes

Ok, Buff Sona, but then don't come here on the boards crying when she becomes OP.

yukonl1 votes

Buff anything but her Q.

chipndip12 votes

{quoted}

Buff anything but her Q.

Except her Q can't out-trade nearly any other support's spell in the game right now, period + damage is her primary thing as a support atm. That makes NO sense...

Minrog1 votes

I don't like that she has to build a item 3057 . I feel like you could just build the item 3057 on Nami and be better in every way.

I'm sure everyone has a bunch of changes to her skills ect but I feel like the best thing would be giving her a Wall like what Yasuo has. You could call it "Wall of Sound" and have some badass speakers pop up and cause projectiles to reflect back based on their angle (and damage targets they hit).

nDoro1 votes

Back when I was an ultra-noob, Janna was my first support (because, well she's 1350 IP and for some reason I didn't like the idea of the moving HP and MP pot Soraka was before her rework). However, I simply hated playing her and regretted buying her because I sucked whenever I played with her. Monsoon more often did harm than good. But after painstakingly learning my mistakes and learning how to play her better, I came to main her to this day. My apparent narrow-mindedness in the "protect the carry" aspect of a support became instinct, to which Janna is one of the best at doing. Back then when I was hating on Janna, I was so excited to finally be able to gather enough money to buy Sona. Everyone was playing her and they deemed her the goddess of bot lane. All I was met with was disappointment. As you say, her cc simply is too weak to be safe. She offers some great early damage in the bottom lane, but her late game is quite weak. If she Qs the front liners during team fights (tanks and junglers or whatnot), all she is going to do is tickle them. Her snuggle zone is way too small to be useful to anyone but her carry whom she is supposed to protect. Her shield and heal are pretty weak to be that significant in a teamfight and her R is great, but that's pretty much the only reliable form of CC that she has. I wish they would buff her so that I don't feel unsafe playing her or with her. I haven't used her in a normal game since got enough IP to buy other supports. Whenever I'm stuck playing ADC and my support chooses Sona, I groan. Of all the ADCs, I'm most familiar with Sivir, whose escape is relatively weak and range is one of the shortest among the AD carries (her R is not going to help her when there are three people trying to kill her). It's half my fault as well, since I really should learn how to play other carries. But as someone who does not play normal games as much as the average person (I've played around 200-250 normal games, both win and loss over the course of over a year), I find myself not excelling as quickly in other roles since I most likely need to fill support anyway.

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