@Fearless, Can We Get Some Context on these Sona Nerfs?

The Yetii Rider·Dec 21, 2014·7 votes·808 views

I guess from what I've been hearing the last few days is that Sona has a pretty decent win rate, though since her heal nerf my personal win rate with her has plummeted. Still, I'm curious. What is the reason behind this consistent nerfing of her abilities? First her W cost, then her W scaling, and now her Power Chord scaling on Q? Is all of this meant to make up for you guys fixing that bug that reduced the range on her Q and made her unplayable?

I'm not asking for you to revert the nerfs or compensate or anything like that. I'd just like there to be some feedback and discussion for the players. I mean, Stashu is still making time to talk to Cassie players, so I'm sure we Sona players deserve the same open line of communication?

7 Comments

Origami KaijuDec 21, 20145 votes

Personally I would love some communication about this.

We've had many threads from Sona-mains and casual players alike stating their confusion (and yes, in some cases anger) over these incoming and proposed nerfs.

Sure, I probably wouldn't want to go into a thread where people are obviously unhappy about upcoming changes that I'm responsible for, but I feel like we deserve some dialogue here.

I'm sad to say that communication about Sona has been very poor, both during her rework and after it's release. It took several months and countless threads before anyone even acknowledged the Q range bug.

Pika310Dec 22, 20145 votes

It's not just that Riot was refusing to acknowledge the "bug," they were blatantly denying that it even existed. Then the 2nd range "bug" appeared and finally something happened. Although, it's common knowledge that neither of these were actually "bugs," but in fact secret nerfs that Fearless put on her personally.

My guess, Fearless' superior discovered he was making nerfs in secret from not only the players, but also other Riot staff and ordered him to undo them.

TehNACHODec 21, 20141 votes

This is just my opinion, so do mind me if I speak out of line.

Sona has very little mechanical depth. Now, somebody's going to make an #LCSBIGPLAYS joke here, but I'm serious. While some of her recent changes are meant specifically to counter this (Her heal is now based on percentage missing, instead of flat like before her rework), the fact remains that there's very little that Sona's kit is capable of without being just straight up overtuned in terms of power.

While I really don't agree that she would need nerfs entirely because of this, with this sort of context, the nerfs make perfect sense. Her win rates would, theoretically, be very closely tuned to her raw power. She's not mechanically deep so it's not like a case of Yasuo or Lee Sin where it may just be that bad players are bringing down the curve, so looking at her win rate as it is now would be a relatively accurate representation of her power. Currently, they are doing pretty well, which more or less is a sign that Sona may be overtuned, and maybe the balance team should pull her back a bit.

My perspective on the subject.

Sightless66Dec 21, 20141 votes

Her win rates would, theoretically, be very closely tuned to her raw power.

I don't think your argument supports that idea. If her kit is very easy to reach high potential on (I'm not saying I agree with that, but I'll accept it for the sake of argument), I'd expect inflated win ratios because she doesn't have as many players just jumping in and doing poorly. Because other champions would have win ratios deflated from inexperienced players, and win ratios are by definition relative to all other champions, I would expect Sona's win ratio to always be slightly higher than those of her similarly powered peers. So, just like we know that Yasuo and Lee have players failing often due to inexperience and bringing down the curve, for Sona we know that almost no one is failing due to inexperience, which brings up the curve. Slightly high win ratios would be expected.

My opinion is that Sona isn't overtuned. However, Riot has stated in the past and they are continuing to show that they don't like Sona's healing and poking gameplay style. They've leaned heavily on nerfing healing/damage and putting power into other elements such as the shield and the speed boost. It's unsatisfying to play with, even if nerfs are necessary. It's particularly annoying that she still has most of her old weaknesses (squishiness, low immediate mobility, high mana costs) even while her more interesting strengths get repeatedly nerfed. Even if she needs nerfs, I don't think that they are taking a good path on them.

The Yetii RiderDec 21, 20141 votes

An important point, and one that we need to emphasize here so that Riot will hopefully listen to us. The speed boost on Song of Celerity, while powerful, feels unsatisfying when compared to high speed long cooldown abilities like On the Hunt!, Acceleration Gate, or Talisman of Ascension.

The Yetii RiderDec 21, 20142 votes

But their heal nerf runs counterproductive to this. They increased the base (which encourages using it to top off health in lane) and halved the scaling (which makes it much weaker when you save it to try and save someone). I think your idea on the subject may explain some, but not all of Riot's motivation for their continuous Sona nerfing.

EffectFXDec 21, 20141 votes

I am curious to see the reasoning. I don't think she's as weak as certain individuals make her sound, but I'm not sure if she really needs any nerfs currently.