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A nobody's thoughts on how to improve Sona

Kubox·5/12/2015, 5:05:50 AM·2 votes·588 views

Feel free to skip to the end for tl:dr

Ever since her rework, Sona has been considered weak. However, I'm not gonna say the rework was a bad idea. At the core, Sona's kit wasn't necessarily healthy. Press a button, give whole team free stats, press another, give other free stats, and the only things that made you feel useful was using Q + Passive combos in lane and landing good ults. The rework wasn't a bad thing as much as it didn't make the right changes. Sona no longer gives free stats, but apart from using the same combo in lane and landing good ults, she pretty much feels just as useless. More importantly, she is required to stay with her team to get the most benefits out of her kit, but her kit doesn't give her much in the way of actually doing so. You'll get butchered if you so much as try to keep with the frontline unless your team is so fed that the frontline, frankly, doesn'T need you at all.

The not-so-recent Soraka rework is, imo, a good example of a rework. Soraka is annoying : The sustain she provides is insane. She doesn't have taunt. She doesn't have a shield that absorbs incoming damage. She doesn't have an insane amount of damage. But you still have to focus her, because if you don't, unless you've got mad burst, her adc will win the fight. It's interesting because it forces you to focus the support through a different kind of mechanic. The only way to fight it is to counter it with burst. Champs like Annie, that can just go "go ahead, heal your carry, he'll die anyway" and if you can't do that, well you just gotta focus her because hey, that's how you'll win this fight. Do I like laning vs Soraka? Hell no. But I can admire the way she works nonetheless.

Sona, with some changes, could easily become the same way. Not with healing mind you, but force you to focus her through a gameplay pattern that makes it so focusing Sona before the adc (unless he gets caught). I also believe that it would make her much closer to her original design, a musician. Her previous aura system was because she would play various melody, and holding onto that melody would provide bonuses. Since her rework though, she's no longer playing a melody as much as playing a couple notes and then sitting on her ass waiting for cooldowns. Not gonna lie, my friend's little brother can do the same thing a flute, and no one calls him a musician.

What if her spells were channeled spells?

What if she could hold-on to a spell, kinda like how she'd hold-on to a certain melody? It certainly would make her more musician-like, as well as make her a rather unique champ (again, like soraka). Make Sona channel spells rather than casting them, giving it an initial mana cast and an other small one to keep channeling it.

Q : Instead of giving every character bonus damage on one AA. make it so as long as she keeps channeling the spell, the effect refreshes every 1 second (or 1.5, or 2, there's some tweaks to be made, but you get the point). And every 4-5 second, the initial damaging part of the spell gets resent to the two nearest champs or minions if no champs in range.

W : The rework made Sona's W weird, but it had a goal to it : Riot just didn't want to keep the basic heal. And they were right, a regular heal would be too similar to Soraka's. So they made the heal weaker and add a shield. At first this seems okay, then as you think into it gets dumb, until you finally realize that her heal was not made for "welp we lost that trade, better heal up". Sona's W is only good during a trade/fight. If you heal after a fight, the shield is wasted, if you shield before a fight to soak up poke, the heal is wasted. However, during a fight, both parts are good, you get to soak up some damage and heal some of it. But because heals are, to riot, toxic, it is purposely kept weak.

My point? Remove the heal. I've played Sona for long, the heal is cool, but never once have I picked Sona to heal. It's always been about the Q, passive and ult. So remove it. Make something less toxic out of it and make it more fun to play around with.

As she channels her W, the shield keeps refreshing a part of it. Riot reworked her W to make it less post-fight recovery and more in-fight mitigation. Take that concept all the way. Remove the heal, making it easier to balance as a shield, and then make that shield an interesting part of her kit. Do I want to keep the Q channel up, giving my ADC bonus damage every x second, or do I want to stop incoming damage. Say the initial shield is 60, and every second 1/3 of it refreshes. Stop focusing someone and the shield is back to full after 3 second as long as Sona stays near him.

And then do the same channel thing to her E, and keep the ult. A lot of this is going to need some tweaks, but most of you can probably see where I'm coming at. Where Braum forces you to work around his shield, by either baiting it out or splitting him from his ADC/team, or where you need to focus Soraka or bring big burst if you don't want her to keep healing up the ADC/team, the core idea here is to make you focus Sona through a certain gameplay pattern or work out ways to to counter her.

Any target(s) close to her will either get a lot of bonus damage coming from her chaneling her Q, or she can mitigate a lot of damage in a fight by standing by her team channeling her W. When chasing or even running, she can cast her E and give a constant speed buff to her team. Split her from her team however, and suddenly, her team gets weaker. By taking out Sona before a fighting, or zoning her completely, her team starts dealing less damage, starts taking more damage, and has less change to chase or run away.

This also opens up new ways to build her. The rework already made her less good with supports items, focusing pure AP over other stats to simply keep up with other supports in utility (which I'm not a fan of, personally). However with channeled spells, more items and paths become interesting. A tear item would work wonders, but what then? Get more AP to get more out of her her spells, or instead go down a tankier route, so that she can survive for longer during fights and thus, channel her spells for longer but also weaker than if she took the pure AP path.

And this doesn't necessarily kill her solo lane power, but also make it interesting in a way. In extended fights, if she channels her Q for a long time, she can put on a lot of damage simply through AA-ing and the re-application of her Q damage. However, if you force damage on her to the point of her switching to her W, she can mitigate a lot of sustained damage, but is still vulnerable to burst and most importantly loses access to the damage she'd usually get through keeping her Q up (who is now on CD anyway so she can't bring it back instantly). Also, the fact that she no longer has a heal means she can't sit back and heal like old Sona would do (or still does in ARAM and the occasional URF mode).

TL:DR

Make Sona able to channel spells, therefore being able to apply their effects multiple times through a fight. Remove the healing part of her shield and replace it with a better shield. Make her scale better with tankier items so she can keep her auras onlger during teamfights if focused, all while keeping AP a good stat on her. Finally keep her solo-laning viable by not butchering her ratios as much as just keeping counterplay to her channeling.

Not sure how this post is gonna turn, I don't usually make such posts. I only had a "sudden shower revelation" moment and had to type it out. Feel free to call me and idiot or discuss your thoughts about all this.

6 Comments

Marthian5/12/2015, 6:13:10 AM5 votes

To be honest, she's in a good spot. If you need to apply more effects, max out CD (as most supports generally should.)

Occams Raiser5/12/2015, 8:34:19 AM2 votes

They nerfed her for being too strong.

Sonasaurous5/12/2015, 4:02:45 PM2 votes

Simply because this is a Sona post, and I jump on Sona posts like there's no tomorrow, I am here. Sona is my bae <3

First, as a general statement, it would seem that you prefer damage dealing supports rather than utility supports. Which is cool and fine, and Sona provides a lot of damage, but she's primarily a utility support. Always has, always will. Seriously, she's like the definition of a utility support considering she's a walking AOE active item, temporarily providing AOE additional damage, shields, and movements speed to allies, as well as a heal, while offering single target reduced healing effects, a slow, and an AOE stun (and burst damage of her own) to the enemy. Don't remind Rito how much BS she is or else they'll nerf her to hell again. If you don't want the utility, or you like the utility and want more damage, try Lulu .

Second, you say that Sona is only really good for her Q + passive combo in lane and ult...which leads me to question whether or not you know how her passive works. Let me refer you back to the BS I just typed how, in addition to burst damage, she also gives reduced healing affects and slows to enemies. Sona doesn't need the utility support items for a reason (with some exceptions depending on the situation). Oh, they have a Soraka support? Lemme just hit them with a W + Passive and lessen that heal. Lulu support speeding that adc up? Lemme slow 'em down with an E + Passive. Vi coming out the jungle to gank us? Lol, E + Passive on her, and E to gtfo the way. And so on. These are dumb examples, but still.

Third, from what I get that you're suggesting, you want the infinite auras to return with a mana cost over time, is that right? By all means, I would love if Sona's infinite auras returned (or even toggle auras), but Rito hates Sona more than any other champion, so I doubt that will happen. Instead we have like 1.5 second auras and 100000 mana cost per cast. Thanks, Rito. (I kid, I kid; with at least two mana regen items, I forget that "oom" is a thing).

Fourth, I must disagree wholeheartedly with the removal of the heal. I agree that the shield should be less useless (and the damn mana cost for W should be lowered since the heal at early ranks is basically nonexistent anyway). However, I find that during team fights, the heal is the most BS move Sona has. Especially when building pure AP and W is maxed (and 40% cdr), no one dies while I'm alive. That heal is BS redonkulous, seriously. Q + W all team fight long, its kay. The enemy team learns pretty quickly to focus me, but what do I care when my team is winning that fight.

Fifth, I'm curious as to what you usually build on her. I'm confused with what your position on her current build path is. Do you build support items on her, or pure AP? (For example, my typical Sona build looks something like: item 2049 item 3504 item 3117 item 3165 item 3285 item 3089 item 3364 --finished, of course, if the game permits me)...Side note on the W+ Passive reduced healing effects and the item 3165 reduced healing effects...come on. You're Sona. By mid game, the W + Passive reduced healing effect is the least of your concerns when Q + Passive and E + Passive are 1000% better in team fights in every case. item 3165 is better and affects two targets at once with Sona's Q.

Sixth, (wow, this is getting long, sorry) try Sona top. It's hilarious. Typically when I play Sona in a solo lane, my primary goal is just to bully my lane opponent so they fall behind. I think that's what most supports-going-top-or-mid aim for. You have to know what you're doing, though. But then when I'm solo lane, I substitute my support items (item 2049 item 3504 item 3364) for item 3135 item 3100 item 3361 and people will ragequit because Sona is ridiculous. (Note on the Lich Bane since it just occurred to me, I usually take that bot if I'm against Soraka, Janna, Lulu, Nami, etc. You know, them squishies supports. Makes Sona even more oppressive than she already is, trollololol...but leads to more kill steals. I regret nothing.)

Sorry, this is crazy long.

Rand0mH3r0X5/12/2015, 8:37:13 AM1 votes

She had a rework? I seriously remember her just pressing buttons for speed bonus, damage, damage reduction and damages bonus. Her ult is the same it's been for years. What rework are you talking about?

Discussion: Sona does not need a buff. She's fine the way she is. She is suppose to fit the support meta, not the mage meta. She has some damage, some harass, a strong ultimate and overall utility. That's the same as Soraka, Janna and Bard.