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Can Riot do better with Sona?

Battlecast Sona·5/9/2016, 6:57:46 PM·4 votes·521 views

I feel like every once in awhile I make a post like this talking about Sona, my most played/favorite champion in the whole game. So here we go again.

We're at an interesting place right now where Season 6 has brought about some items that are really useful on her and give her options that aren't "stack full AP and go Lichbane" (Athene's heals + W are SO GUD, especially since damage is pre-mit), but she still experiences some problems. There are changes coming on the PBE that I kind of want to piggyback on a little and talk about why I think they're headed the right direction for Sona, and what I wish we could see in the coming season.

So next patch (if they changes go through, fingers crossed) Sona is having her aura's reduced by 50 width but gaining more spammable Q's post level 3 Q and almost doubling our personal MS bonus for E. These are both really good things for Sona, and I don't think the aura width is gonna hurt her considerably since the increased MS will make it much safer for Sona to tag allies with auras, while also helping her chase people down or kite back (two things she's already very good at.) This is a step, I think, in putting Sona's gameplay in the right place - we want all the auras to feel impactful, both for ourselves and our allies, and I think this is a proper step - more Q auras in general means more use out of the Q aura damage in general, more MS means easier tags with auras, and lower CD on a spell means more powerchord procs - all good things for Sona, as I think these are the incredibly healthy parts of Sona's kit (her powerchord and auras are all highly telegraphed, it's easy to see what she's trying to do with these spells).

I've said it before and now I'll say it again though - commit, Riot.

You see that people who love Sona enjoy her auras. I know I do, anyway - nothing feels as sick as using the E to tag your backline allies to increase the duration of your personal speed to boost you into the frontline to save a tank or a diving assassin with a heal/shield combo and a powerchord W. I wish that Riot would take these pre-existing points of power and use Sona's ultimate to enhance them, but I'll share an unpopular opinion - I HATE Sona's ultimate. It eats up a HUGE portion of her power budget while simultaneously ensuring that it's her only form of hard CC due to its reliability and AoE nature. The ultimate is what makes Sona's kit feel overbearing in lane - her ability to sustain and poke while simultaneously having a powerful engage/disengage tool in her ultimate is too much.

I've thought for a long time that Sona needed a new ultimate, and I feel like Riot is starting to realize that we like the spammy, aura focused nature of her builds. So why not give Sona a more interesting ultimate that rewards her for intelligent gameplay?

I'd love to see Sona with an ultimate that buffs her powerchords or auras in some way, either on activation or by utilizing the spells a certain way. Can we have a character with a passive like Karma's where instead of having a CD and an activation, your power chords and auras gain combination effects? Where gaining my power chord by using Q->E->W gives me a different effect than E->Q->W, even with the same final spell, or my auras are changed based on what order they're used in... (with the "special" buff probably falling off like Vlad's new crimson rush, to incentivize Sona building these stacks DURING battle, rather than before it?)

There are so many interesting ways Riot could use that slot to do a lot of really great things for Sona - they'd finally give a way for Sona mains and long-time players to show their mastery with the champion in a meaningful, mechanical way. There would be real outplay potential to Sona (getting to her before she manages to activate her ultimate, however that may be), and she would have real, meaningful, impactful decisions more often in the game based around her primary spell casts... Which, at least in my opinion, are at one of their least impactful feeling moments, with the obviously most impactful being directly following the rework before she was nerfed into the ground again. All those changes made me so mad as I watched them gut an aura/sustain support in order to keep a part of her kit that Morello has hated since Season 1 (he used to complain that if Sona were to be remade from the ground up the ultimate would be removed, but they were afraid of alienating her playerbase by removing it at the time, and may still be afraid of the backlash.)

I'm here to tell you that I'm more than game for a change of this caliber for Sona - give us skill expression with Sona, because aesthetically she's a really cool champion and I love the feel of playing her, but I hate feeling like I have very low impact unless my ultimate is up.

I think it's best stated (and kind of sad) in this cut from a discussion from 2014:

>Sona’s role as a buff/enabler support is solid and rewarding. Sona’s ult is impactful and allows Sona players to make big plays that they and their team can appreciate. > >Things that need to be more awesome: Sona’s auras are powerful, but not satisfying to use, and create very little interaction. Sona’s basic abilities don’t have as much skill expression as many other supports.

What I wish they could realize is that Sona's ult feeling powerful and impactful is exactly why her basic abilities have to feel like shit - she's a support with an instant cast stun. The only comparable ultimate in range and usage is Braum's, and he has a pretty obvious windup and animation, whereas Sona's is pretty much instantaneous. The only other comparable spell I can think of is Dazzle, and while Taric was pretty strong on release it's clear to anyone who's played against him that that spell has a lot of counterplay. There's no way to add meaningful counterplay to Sona's ultimate that doesn't feel like garbage for the Sona player, so why not just remove it? You've pinpointed that the problem is that while her auras seem useful, they're hard to access without a lot of guilt (especially early) because they're gated behind high mana costs and prohibitive cooldowns in an attempt to keep her from being overbearing, especially since at low levels the spells themselves are mostly useless. I believe if Sona were more like Karma in design she would be in a much healthier place, both balance wise and in regards to her skill expression.

If you've read this far, thanks. I don't expect many people to care, but I gotta keep typing about my favorite champ in the hopes one day she'll be more fun to play.

tl;dr: removing Sona's ultimate would give her more room for personal skill expression and expression of champion mastery, both of which would be healthy for a champion who is generally regarded to be the least mechanically challenging champion in the game.

16 Comments

Dominick Destine5/9/2016, 7:01:14 PM6 votes

They're gutting her next patch.

chipndip15/11/2016, 2:57:16 AM5 votes

They can do better with Sona, but doing that requires much more time and effort than they're willing to give to Sona as a character in this game. I was going to make a separate thread for this, but I doubt it'd gain much traction anyway, so I'm biding my time for later.

Well, to start off, look at how they handled Mordekaiser. They KNEW he needed major work, but all they did was give him weird gimmicks that didn't add up to anything and called it a day, causing a huge shit storm with the champ because he's still impossible to balance with his current kit.

How about the other 3 from the juggernaut patch? A good deal of them needed changes anyway, right? All their changes basically added a bunch of op numbers to them that needed nerfing later. Now it's almost like the jugs patch didn't even happen. All the jugs that were focused on in that patch aren't used very often, with Garen being the most used, but Darius being the most consistently used as you climb the ladder (Garen is pretty much top lane's Sona).

Now we can look at one of my most hated champs, Teemo. Teemo's been off the radar for positive changes for a while. What do they do to the guy finally? He can...throw mushrooms. That's it.

So, why reference THESE guys when we're talking about Sona? Cause their changes/reworks embody the same issue Sona's having right now: Riot sometimes goes into these things thinking that they don't have to make major changes to a champ's play pattern when they actually do. Teemo's a huge nuisance on his own allies. He hardly helps in team fights and he's not that great of a split pusher. His only saving grace is, if he manages to get fed, he has very little counter-play and he can just do whatever he wants unless you send 3+ people to deal with him. Still, outside of fringe cases where he's nigh unstoppable, what contributions of value does he give to a team that isn't easily done or compensated for by someone else? Nothing. Literally nothing.

What about the jugs? They bring damage and lack strong lock-down, but usually mid laners and adcs are used for high damage output, and even tanks can build a damage item like RoA, then grab items like Sunfire Cape and IBG, and then be totally fine on that front. Their primary contributions to a match are ultimately overridden by other things that revolve around dealing damage, and all they got left is that they're a few degrees tankier than divers like Lee, Vi, and Irelia, but you could just use them and not get kited to death. Riot's jug update was fine on paper, but they should have changed up their game play patterns so they could really contribute to a match in a meaningful way that isn't just covered up by standard tanks and damage dealers.

And now what about Sona? She has a bunch of stuff in her kit. You know...jack of all trades and all that, right? Yet, she doesn't really contribute to a team comp in a way that can't just be covered up by someone else. Want damage? Brand/Zyra. Disengage/Survival? Janna/Taric. Hard-engage/Play-making? Any tank support that isn't Taric. That's basically the three fields in which a support operates under, so what does Sona do? She has pathetic numbers across the board in her basic spells, her scalings, and her base stats. She has nothing to make a play with after wearing people down with Q, save summoner spells and her ult. She can't peel well either, save her summoner spells and ult, and this type of thing is a huge issue because supports are supposed to be natural play-makers and/or play-stoppers, especially early-game. It's like Riot's pretending Sona's in a fine spot without really stepping back and asking themselves "When would someone want Sona on their team over almost any other support?", cause the answer is LITERALLY NEVER. There's nothing in her kit that makes someone say "This is a time where I'd use Sona". Therein the initial problem lies.

So yea, they can do better with A LOT of champs, not just Sona (Xin Zhao is someone I forgot to rant about here). I think, if Riot really wants to please fans of Sona, they should start by really assessing where Sona should stand as a support. Basically, is she UTILITY or is she DAMAGE? From there, design a rework that gears her towards either utility or damage. Give her some range so she doesn't have to stand right next to people that can kill her in one rotation all lane long. Give her a new music-related passive that doesn't cut her power budget due to auras (which Riot just can not get the hang of, so might as well toss it). Do something to deal with this paradox between what Sona is as a champ and what she's been forced into being due to this crap kit.

long story short: Sona's got a huge identity crisis between damage dealing and utility, and that coupled with a bunch of other logistical issues when it comes to playing her in lane just puts Sona down overall. Riot, for some reason, doesn't think she needs more attention than just throwing some numbers around or adjusting her auras a bit. This is wrong. If they try a fix with this mentality, we're not going to see long-term satisfaction, and we're going to be back at square one all over again after a few months tops.

OH MAN NOT GOOD5/9/2016, 7:50:44 PM1 votes

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AttackOnTeemos5/9/2016, 8:11:35 PM1 votes

I would say Buff her (.Y.)