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The State of Sona: V

Pika310·7/5/2016, 1:02:38 PM·6 votes·1,673 views
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v636/pika310/Sona%20Meme%2029_zpskuqfz9gu.jpg

TL;DR:

Patch 4.13 directly caused Sona to become unplayable, in the most literal sense.

Now for the long part:

Before patch 4.13, Sona was a sub-par champion that was marginally weaker than Nami, who was a strong pick at the time. A few players would still pick her, but Nami was the preferred choice. Then patch 4.13 was literally a collection of roughly 20+ documented nerfs and 5+ undocumented nerfs. I believe there was no more than 1 or 2 points that actually got buffed, but clearly receiving over 25 nerfs of varying sizes, some being severely kit-crushing major nerfs, far outweighs any minor positives. As a direct result of patch 4.13, Sona became completely unplayable in this game and this can be clearly evidenced in numerous ways, 1st and foremost being her complete disappearance from the professional scene. She is less likely to be played into a pro game than literally every other support and off-support in the entire game. Worse yet, despite already becoming the weakest support in the entire game, Rito then decided to nerf her even further, adding up to somewhere over 40+ direct and indirect nerfs stemming from Gutting 4.13 and onward.

Going into better detail, let's look at how severely Gutting 4.13 hurt her. Sona's damage output is the lowest out of any support character: she has only a single damage spell and it factually has lower base damage than any other support spell in the game. Additionally, with noteworthy exceptions to Thresh and Lulu, Sona is tied with Soraka for the lowest AD of the support class. Sona's full damage potential is altogether lower than any other support character in the game.

Then is her sustain: both the shittiest heal and shittiest shield in the entire game, their COMBINED value is barely on-par with normal heals and shields, yet it is also the ONLY spell of its kind(s) that lacks a bonus effect, yet sports the most expensive mana cost in spite of all these, while Sona herself has the 2nd-lowest mana of all mage supports. The shield is especially crap because its duration is less than half that of any other support shield, yet it's the larger HP value of the two halves. Aria of Perseverance is arguably the worst spell in all of League of Legends.

Next is the fact that Sona is literally the ONLY support in the game without reliable pre-6 CC. Hell, most off-supports at least have stronger+easily more-accessible slows than Sona, hence why she's even less likely to be picked into a pro game than an off-support. Even with her severe lack of CC, she doesn't have any real form of mobility and sits in the lowest tier of movement speed as well, whilst also being the squishiest character in this entire game. Killing a Sona is possibly easier than killing a caster minion, she's just as squishy as a caster if not more so, can't disengage nor retaliate. A Sona without Flash or ult is a dead Sona roughly 98% of the time. Speaking of her ult, despite being the least-nerfed part of her kit, it's one of the weakest ults of the support class, with its short range, small hitbox, slow channel and travel times, weak CC, short duration and long cooldown, Aphromoo himself stated all the way back at the end of season 3 that Sona should never be picked into a game that Annie is unbanned as Annie is just the superior ult-bot; that was long before Sona even became unplayable.

Let's not forget this next part: Sona's super-short shitty range. Nearly all of Sona's damage output requires her to be AT LEAST within 550 units of the enemy, where literally every single support and ADC in this game is capable of engaging or counter-harassing her. Considering the aforementioned fact that Sona has the lowest damage of the support class, she will ALWAYS lose a trade, or worse yet: since she's the squishiest character in the game with no mobility or reliable CC, in the case of an engage she is almost guaranteed to die without burning Flash. Hymn of Valor's primary-active targeting looks like this: Champions within 550 units > minions & monster within 700 units > champions within 700 units, so more often than not this spell requires her to be within AA range. Hymn's secondary active as well as Power Chord are both Basic Attack Modifiers, so both of these literally ALWAYS require her to be in AA range. As bad as that sounds, this isn't even the worst part: Sona is the ONLY mage support in the entire game with melee-range spells, of which she actually has not one, but THREE of which are her 3 secondary actives(which are NOT auras, that is just Rito's intentional mislabeling.) They are each 350-units, which is roughly the same as most melee spell and melee AA-modifiers, so yes they are in fact melee range. Since Sona has the THREE shortest-range spells of all mage supports, the 4th lowest is Soraka's W with a range of 550 units. Several other spells have 600 range and ALL other mage support spells are even higher than that.

Also take into mind the shitty design of the kit itself: both Sona herself as well as her passive especially are reliant on having spells of similar cooldown to each other, yet in spite of this necessity Fearless ruined that synergy by making those CDs very notably different from each other. This has directly fed the "spam Staccato" playstyle that fueled additional nerfs due to Sona's inability to actually use her other passives. Rather than fixing the problem, Fearless chose to punish Sona further for a situation that she's unable to do anything about. She literally received nerfs as a direct cause of receiving nerfs, typical Rito logic. Then is the problem of locking a LARGE amount of power into Ult ranks, in spite of being a support. Supports are supposed to be strong in the early game and will always be under-leveled; trapping power into Ult Ranks is inherently contradictory to the support class as a whole.

Lastly I need to discuss the current playstyle that was innovated by desperate players straining to be relevant on Sona. Of course there are her item choices, namely Spellblade and Echo: a pair of artificial damage sources. Sona herself is a character that lacks damage output, but to exponentiate this problem further, she has also the worst utility of all supports and off-supports in addition to the lowest damage output. Due to the strain of lacking a kit, players have innovated an artificial kit through item-purchases. Not to be mistake for buying AP, Sona actually has amongst the shittiest AP scalings of all supports, she has to build artificial bases that just happen to also give AP and AP scalings as an afterthought. Of course, these are expensive REAL mage items that are meant to be bought by a player farming minions and maybe obtaining kills, yet the support player will always have the lowest gold gain in the game. Due to the strain of being irrelevant without expensive items, players have innovated the method of pretending they are a carry champion: Sona's suggested playstyle is to never buy a Sightstone(it sets you behind in your item buys), farm and last-hit minions as if you are the ADC and intentionally last-hit all kills. That's not even an exaggeration, the suggested Sona playstyle is to intentionally troll your teammates, because your champion doesn't work otherwise; Sona herself doesn't work unless you're intentionally trolling. Picking Sona is literally synonymous to intentionally trolling.

35 Comments

Zero Shingetsu7/5/2016, 1:15:40 PM12 votes

Isn't the most literal sense of a champion being unplayable for the champion to not be available to select?

Anyway I admittedly skimmed, but most of what I saw is inaccurate. I do great with plain old Support Sona, but I don't really pay attention to scaling and numbers. It's just a matter of play style. Playing Sona is like a round of naginata. Keep the opponent at distance, whittle down their defenses, and then make a decisive strike at the right moment. It takes a lot of skill to do effectively, but that's why I play her.

So many NA players are looking for easy wins, or at least instant gratification on damage and CC, that they don't take well to this kind of character. But Sona is quite popular in Asia, apparently. We're more used to this kind of play, where you're tense all game, always putting in maximum effort. It's kind of boring if you're Leona and you can just walk in and stun whoever you want at any time, you know?

(Of course, I play on NA, so my Sona pick is sometimes questioned...)

ThePompf7/5/2016, 1:57:16 PM9 votes

Waitwaitwaitwaitwait.

Low damage output?

Do we play the same game? Her damage is actually among the highest of the supports.

The only champions that come close are things like Zyra Brand Karma Velkoz Annie or in other words, things that werent meant to go Support in the First place.

thekingofnido7/5/2016, 2:16:49 PM8 votes

http://champion.gg/champion/Sona/Support To be honest I don't think anyone who has a 52% win rate can be called under powered... but yes she does need some love, which is why riot is giving her a small revamp in the next patch yay!!! If you want to complain about a champ who is really weak, meet my friend mordekaiser or aatrox. those two have been extremely underwhelming for a long time now.

Blåbæret7/5/2016, 1:59:48 PM8 votes

Lmao, her damage is insane with lichbane lol. Unplayable? I guess we didn't just see her at LCS.

She's more than fine.

Sire Hippington7/5/2016, 2:00:11 PM7 votes

Riseing to 52.5% winrate while haveing a decent playrate seems as far from 'unpayable' as it gets to me....

I can agree that the patch didn't affect her playstyle to the better, but in terms of raw power, sona is perfectly fine if not one the strong side.

Narsicus7/5/2016, 2:44:06 PM6 votes

While I understand where you are coming from I can't say that I agree that Sona is as useless as you seem to think. Sona has traditionally felt far weaker than she actually is and this has been shown many times by people claiming she is the worst support despite decent play rates and above average win rates. There are two main reasons why I think this is the case.

First, Sona has always had the problem where her best case and worst case scenarios are vastly different in terms of power level. Despite this when talking about her abilities people inevitable compare using her worst case possible, being solo. Sona is a team based support who derives a lot of her usefulness by always being around teammates, the more people with her the more power she gets out of each ability cast.

Simply being near allies gives her Q an 80(+80% AP) damage boost at rank 1, and the gap only gets wider as she levels up going up to 360(+80% AP) if I recall her numbers correctly. This applies to all of her abilities whose power necessarily is at its weakest in lane phase where you are generally applying the effects to a single ally but later on hope to be enhancing your whole team.

Riot has quite notably had a problem with auras in the past where giving them enough power to be noticeable to the team is also immensely overpowered and to nerf them so that they are not overpowered made them feel useless. Riot's solution in this case is to turn the auras into temporary buffs that work once per ability cast as opposed to the permanent buffs she used to have. Is this the best solution? I don't think so, but it is certainly a solution that allowed Sona's team utility style to still work without feeling completely useless.

A second reason is that Sona is a true swiss army knife when it comes to supporting, she can do everything. She help her team burst, she has three different ways of keeping her teammates alive all stemming from a single ability, she has speed boosts, slows, and a nice aoe cc. The sheer number of ways she can help the team is staggering and she probably has about twice as many effects as most other champions.

Of course this necessarily leads to each individual effect being relatively weak as compared to others. But there is always a way you can help your team as Sona whether it be in damage, damage mitigation, or repositioning, surely ONE of those three is useful at every moment in the game. Looking at each individual piece and finding it lacking is overlooking that she can still do them all.

I feel that Sona is a good champion, she has her weaknesses surely (being squisy is a big one here) but for the amount of benefit she provides her team I don't think that it is unreasonable to expect that people position safely and be punished by being caught. It is more that the nature of how team-wide support works in League is that it tends to feel far less impactful than it is when balanced. And I do believe that the consistent 'Sona is so weak' sentiment that is seen stem largely from that feeling as opposed to the players actual impact or win rate when playing her.

DeathBurst7/5/2016, 4:15:10 PM5 votes

I have to admit, you made an effort to acknowledge the most recurring arguments against your rants. So I'll do the same and try to provide constructive feedback.

Damage

So, facts first, but 200 + the enhanced basic attacks (another 60) < 230 (Soraka's Q). So no, it's not "factually the lower base damage of any other support spell". Let's not talk about the fact that you max it first in most match-up and that it has a 70% total AP ratio versus Soraka 35% -- you explicitly mentioned base damage. Let's not mention that her R rank add another layer of damage to that, either. If you want to talk specifically about base damage, Zyra also has lower bases, on both her damaging spells. I wouldn't say Zyra has less damage overall than Sona, but I'm just saying your claim is factually false. And if you want to talk about damage overall, Sona has definitely more damage than Soraka or Janna.

But more on the big picture, Sona's damage fall incredibly hard as the game progress. Her damage contribution in late game team fights is negligible, I'll grant you that, and that's why her overall damage stat is so low, especially since the enhanced basic attack isn't credited to her but to her allies. But her damage is very strong in lane. She has one of the most potent and reliable poke in the game, and you can bully pretty much anyone out of lane, except maybe a Caitlin or a Varus. Later on, you need to transition from bullying opponents to empowering your team, because you fall off, but early, she has pretty good damage.

Sustain

Her combined values are on-par with Nami W at rank 1. Slightly stronger and slightly more expansive in mana. It's actually stronger in later rank and less expansive (but I believe that's the spell Nami max first? Not sure, I don't play Nami). Also, technically, Nami heal has no bonus effect either. The bonus comes from her passive, and Sona has her own power chord. Once again, your claim is factually false.

As a side note, I start Spellthief + Faery charm, and I never have any mana issue. You don't need potion, since you will use your heal. You can sustain quasi-infinitely in lane, the risk comes from being hard engaged. Then, with a 10s CD on the heal, you can't do a lot of thing. But your heal is enough to sustain in lane, and your AoE shield is quite strong in team-fights. Once again, the trick is that you do different things in lane and in team-fights. Not to mention that you can use Ardent Censer as well as Soraka with your AoE shield. Sona with Ardent Censer is a very good support in a double AS team comp.

About maximizing the heal+shield effectiveness, that's a bit tricky, since you heal two persons but one of them could be full health already, and you need to exploit the shield too. So yeah, I agree it's not totally straightforward, but on the other hand, it's still perfectly possible with a bit of habit. What I do is something like that: I use the heal only if one person in lane is below 50% health OR we both are below 80% health, and then I use it to counter incoming damage that is already committed. You need reliable ping to do that, but you can actually heal when a bullet/arrow is mid-flight, and this way you are sure to use the shield too, on at least one of the two person. Typically, wait until you are both at 80% health, close-in to poke, use your Q+your enhanced AA and immediately use W. You'll shield the (probable) incoming retaliation, heal a little, and heal your ADC at the same time, that's pretty efficient.*

CC and ult

I agree she lacks CC, that's her biggest weakness. As a consequence, she doesn't fit in all team comps. But that alone doesn't make her unplayable, that's quite a stretch. On the other hand, your description of the ult is quite an exaggeration. Slow channel time? Slow travel time? It's not instant, if that's what you mean, but it's definitely not slow. And weak CC? It's a stun, the only thing stronger than that is a knock-up.

But overall, I mostly agree with you on this part, just not on the conclusion you take from that.

Range

Ok, this is one of the recurring argument you did NOT acknowledge. We told you many times before, your assertion about Q targeting is false. Q prioritize champions, even between 550 and 850 (not 700) range. That's 2 factual errors, and at this point we could as well call them lies, because you were corrected many times on this point. Also, most AA-enhancers are 250 range, not 350.

But as previously, let's focus on the big picture. During laning phase, you have to get in AA range to deal your damage, that's true, but you also have your shield to protect you from retaliation. Sona heal/shield and damage are all average taken separately, but she has a unique ability to exploit all 3 of them, and their combined values make her win most trades, not lose them. As we both mentioned previously, the main problem is hard engages, but you can avoid/dodge them most of the time. One of the hardest match-up imho is Leona, because her Zenith blade go through minions, but even things such as Blitz and Thresh and Morgana are ok. Annie is dangerous only post-6, and as long as you are not both stunned, you should be able to still get out alive. During team fights, your damage is negligible anyway, so you shouldn't even try to get in range to apply it. Empower your team with blue aura, shield them, help them reposition, that's your job, and you can do it as safely as possible from the backline. If you have the perfect engage on their carries, maybe try and go for it, but most of the time you should keep your ult for peeling/disruption, not engage, because no, you are not an "ult bot" comparable to Annie. You don't have a quick combo that you can unload, and then it doesn't matter if you die. You MUST stay alive to get one more heal, one more AA-enhancer out. (And yeah, yeah, it's not "auras". I don't care about the label, that's close enough, everyone understand what we mean by that, and it's the shortest way to describe them.) The rest of the rambling about melee ranges and usual spell ranges for support is just non-relevant generalities with no practical consequences. Yeah, ok, if you want to call it that, Sona has the 3 shortest range spells, and then what? Nothing, especially since it's allied spells. (Also technically, with this same reasoning, she has 6 basic spells, and you don't mention that as an advantage compared to other supports, how come? To be frank, I wouldn't say she has 6 spells, but I wouldn't say she has the 3 shortest range either.)

Kit requires similar cooldowns.

I disagree, you don't need to have all your spells on CD to use the right one for the right aura at the right time. But I don't want to spend time arguing about that, because the changes next patch will probably make all her CDs pretty similar, so you should be happy.

Power locked down in ult ranks and contradiction with typical support play

I agree, mostly. Thing is, this power is mainly just to stay relevant in very long games, when everyone is full stuff and all. It's not power that you need in order to do your job in early/mid game. I still agree that it's contradictory with her being a support, but you're making a mountain out of a ant-hill. Also, with the modifications to XP in 6.13, Sona benefited more than most which is a relative buff compared to other supports. (Side note: same thing for Leona, btw.) (Also, even if it's not related to Sona directly, I disagree that "Supports should be strong in the early game". Supports are under-leveled, and should not be level-dependent, but a lot of Supports are better in team fights than in 2v2. Look at Braum or Nami.)

Play-style

That's utter non-sense. Of course you should build a sightstone as Sona. And some people will disagree, but I argue that you shouldn't go for Lich-bane on Sona. MAYYYBE if you are very far ahead in lane and want to snowball the game from there, but 95% of the time that's a bad idea. Even before 6.13, my typical build was Gold item + stone + Censer + an Aegis upgrade + boots, and something like Zhonya or Luden as a last item. With the new Athene from the mid-year update and the new Censer from 6.13, I see pretty much no reason to ever build a "real mage item" anymore on Sona.

Basically, you can try to go for a Thunder-lord Lichbane Luden's build, but that's just a big cheese, and not the optimal way to build Sona, just like taking a Pantheon or a Leblanc Support.

As a closing remark, last time I actually tried to discuss with you instead of just dismissing you as a troll, you denied me credibility on the basis that I had not played Sona (recently, even if you claimed I hadn't play her at all). So let me get this out of the way: I did play Sona recently, this time. I tested the new items I'm talking about, and I played her in the current meta. Also, we were both in Silver the last time, but I climbed to Gold since then. So I don't think you have any ammo left to refuse to take my views into account, especially since YOU haven't played Sona for who knows how long...

chipndip17/5/2016, 4:51:37 PM5 votes

Is Sona competitively viable? No

Will these changes change that? No

Are you overreacting by saying she's THIS bad? Yes

LankPants7/5/2016, 2:14:19 PM4 votes

I actually think the set of changes on the PBE are fairly good for Sona, they may not solve all of her issues but they at least serve to give her a niche.

trapping power into Ult Ranks is inherently contradictory to the support class as a whole.

The power isn't distributed evenly across ult ranks. An even distribution would be something like 14/27/40%. The power is somewhat skewed towards rank 1, you get more power at level 6 than 11 or 16, the power at rank 1 is almost as much as rank 2 and 3 combined. You can't reasonably expect a champ to get a full rank 3 ult at lv 6, that's absurd, I think Riot has handled the scaling on Sona's ult well.

Her old (current?) ult did have power trapped behind its ranks as you suggest because the lv 16 ult gave as much power to her abilities as lv 6 and 11 combined.

Then is her sustain: both the shittiest heal and shittiest shield in the entire game, their COMBINED value is barely on-par with normal heals and shields, yet it is also the ONLY spell of its kind(s) that lacks a bonus effect, yet sports the most expensive mana cost in spite of all these, while Sona herself has the 2nd-lowest mana of all mage supports. The shield is especially crap because its duration is less than half that of any other support shield, yet it's the larger HP value of the two halves. Aria of Perseverance is arguably the worst spell in all of League of Legends.

Aria is getting buffed heavily on the PBE. The base heal is up by ~30% (higher at low ranks), there's small buffs to the shield, the CD is down past 6 and the AP ratios on both the shield and the heal are up. For all that you lose the increased heal when your allies are dead, it's pretty good all things considered.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the Sona changes on the PBE, they have a lot of potential to help Sona out. Admittedly it's going to be an AP heavy build, her power with AP is way up on the PBE. She has AP scaling comparable to mages on the PBE at present, it's a large portion defensive and utility but so is Lulu's and she's been quite strong with AP heavy builds.

Calabok7/5/2016, 6:46:18 PM3 votes

She needs nerfs

Quepha7/5/2016, 6:39:41 PM3 votes

It's funny because she has seen pro play.

lightdragoon887/5/2016, 6:17:06 PM1 votes

Looks at 4.13, sees nothing on Sona.

I'm sorry exactly **WHAT **happen in 4.13 that killed Sona? Her mini-rework hasn't even gone live let

Hige7/5/2016, 6:53:26 PM1 votes

She's getting 40% base cdr on all her basic skill from her ult's new passive THAT STACKS with regular cdr, talk about mashing buttons and having the highest dps now.