@Fearless - My thoughts on the Sona Rework, Gold Efficiency, and why it was Necessary.

Hey Fearless,

Despite what most people on the forums have been sayings (mostly the same passionate people over and over again), as a Sona player, I have found a rework to preserve most of the aspects that make a unique support pick that I play from time to time. While I played her quite often in Season 3 ranked as well as early season 4, she lost a lot of her appeal as a support pick due to the support gold income change making other champions outclass in her scaling, damage and utility.

From my experience, early supports like Taric, Alistar and Sona and Soraka were designed to be extremely gold efficient due to not having much income from supporting their marksman. Riot designed these champs in mind to be extremely effective without items (Alistar's ultimate, Sona's stat boosts, Taric's armor aura) These aspects of these champions were fine in a world where supports could not get many items, as it gave them the tools necessary to scale and still be useful.

With the support income changes however, the value of a support being gold efficient became diminished as supports were now getting enough gold to get items, and thus, being efficient with gold became close to irrelevant. Thus many of the older champions became outclassed in the support role because the strengths that they had in being gold efficient were not strengths any more, rather now a liability because other parts of their kit were toned down because it. This was a failure in Riots part because they failed to provide adequate compensation for many of these supports, which is why bot lane is in the state it is today, dominated by the supports that are able to make great use of the gold.

In Sona's case, her persistent stat boosts on her Q aura, W aura, and E were designed to keep Sona strong without gold. However, with the new income changes, these aspects of her kit that did not scale resulted in Sona having power spikes based on her level, not based on how she spent her gold or itemized. However, to be fair, Riot understood that adding scaling on Sona's persistent stat boosts was not the right way to go, because it resulted in an unhealthy mechanic. Imagine if the enemy Sona got ahead, and built enough ap that her q started to provide stats that mirror a baron buff. In reality, with the way Sona's auras were designed, it would result in Sona being extremely oppressive if she got ahead, or being very useless if she got behind (after all the nerfs to the aura's to accommodate the scaling).

Essentially, if riot wanted to add a healthy scaling mechanic into Sona's Kit, a rework would have to be done, and essentially, the aura passives had to be removed in order to provide Sona with the tools she needed to be a healthier champion in the league. Then came the rework. What is so great about this rework is that they were able to preserve so many aspects of Sona's kit, while being able to add meaning full scaling on all her abilities. Before, Sona could really only be played with a really tanky cdr build in order to survive fights and stay alive as long as possible to grant her effects to her allies (after pulling a clutch ultimate of course). Now, Sona can feel good about building ap items in order to provide stronger effects to her allies, such as a stronger q auto attack damage, a stronger shield and heal etc. The obvious trade-off for her, (and quite smart I have to say) is that a more AP oriented Sona will only be able to apply her stronger effects on a few allies without putting herself in bad position, while a Sona that has been itemized to be tanky can dart around the fight and provide her effects to as many people as possible, but the effects are much weaker.

Its trade-offs like this that make a champion well designed as well has promote active decision making and reactive building depending on team comps, which is more of what league of legends needs to have. So my final verdict on the rework is that Sona is in a much better place where her power can be tuned according to how she performs in the coming weeks. I absolutely love her new e speed boost, as well as her ultimate VU. I personally find the Q much better than before and find that my damage output is the same when poking, and even more when my marksman joins in. While high cc bot lanes can still pose a large threat to Sona herself, this has always, and will always be a weakness of Sona. Good Sona players always have played around this, and now they have even more tools to help them, and scale late. The only thing that I find may be problematic is Sona's W late game can be rather oppressive in sieges, as it heals a rather large amount when the enemy puts down some well-earned poke, even when the Sona is not building AP.

My only question to Fearless is that one of the main proprietors of the rework was clarity, as well as making Sona less of a passive champion and have her be more proactive with both her team and the enemy. However, I felt that what I mentioned regarding gold efficiency scaling was extremely important aspect in the design of Sona's update, yet I see it mentioned very rarely. Do you have any thoughts on this? I find that more Sona enthusiasts would be more appreciative of the changes if they understood this.

Thanks for Reading and I appreciate any constructive comments and criticism below - Eapenator

Edit. Darn was hoping for some feedback from Fearless or any red, it was my first post on the forums, but he hasn't been spotted on forums for 2 days T.T