"We've nerf'd Sona to oblivion, other supports outclass her now and no one is playing her"

you know, in the past Riot was critiqued for releasing skins and then nerfing champions afterwards. so wouldn't this be the better way of doing it? relax.

the art team has always said they operate without any knowledge of future balance or design changes. these things dont go hand in hand.

51.6% Win rate "Unplayable" "Nerfed to oblivion"

Let's clear some things up, because this thread has kind of gotten out of hand with people throwing random thoughts with little basis in reality in regards to this champion.

I'm going to use two classes of supports to compare Sona to. AP casters (Annie, Karma, Zyra, Nami, Janna, Lulu, Vel'Koz, Morgana, Soraka, and even Zilean despite the fact nobody plays him anymore anyways), and the rest (Alistar, Blitzcrank, Leona, Thresh, Braum, and Taric). I've excluded niche supports for obvious reasons.

In comparison to ALL other supports: Only Zyra has lower base HP Sona is tied with 4 other supports with 325 (The lowest possible) base movement speed She also has THE weakest heal, base and scaling. The second weakest shield, base and scaling. Only Thresh's is lower base, but that is still an AoE shield, infinitely scaling, with the teammate saving component as well. The LOWEST amount of CC pre level 6. This might be debatable compared to Zilean, but he doesn't require using another part of his kit like Sona does to actually utilize the CC. I'm referring to her passive. Only Annie, Zyra, Vel'Koz, Morgana have lower mobility in terms of skills, and those flaws are supplemented in their insane amounts of CC and AP ratios. There's a reason why you don't see AP Sona mid anymore.

Compared to AP casters: The weakest AP ratios across the board. P 20%, Q 50%/20% for on hit Aura effect, W 20% Heal, 30% max heal, 20% Shield, R 50%. There are some more % per AP ratios on her W and E but those are still rather laughable, considering Sona shouldn't build AP anyways with her other trashy ratios.

Compared to the rest: Yeah try poking these f'ers out of lane. Getting caught by one ability from any of them is almost guaranteed death, and considering her HP and Move speed, getting caught is actually REALLY easy.

To those of you who say that her win rate is still high: Yeah I've actually got nothing. I don't know why her win rate is high. Maybe us Sona mains are just smarter than the rest of you. But that's not true, because we still play her.

Kidding on that last part, but I'm a Sona main. Or at least I was. I haven't played her since this last set of nerfs, which mark the ninth straight set of nerfs for the champion without meaningful buffs. I'm still a sucker for punishment and will be getting this skin, but I won't play her in ranked until she gets some serious changes.

Riot has decided to nerf her strengths in her AP ratios and AoE healing. Having a healing ability that only gets strong when a teammate is dangerously close to death, with a maximum cool down of 6 seconds (W CDR is 10 at all ranks, 6 seconds assumes 40% CDR) is a joke. You literally have to wait until the fight is almost over, compared to Soraka who can literally heal an ADC to 100% 3 times over in the span it takes Sona to to it once, if that.

Her ability CDs are too high for what little effect they have. The only redeeming quality in her kit is her passive. And by that I mean Power Chord W. At base, it is literally half an exhaust.

Tl;dr Read the above paragraph. Sona's in a really bad place right now. I used to consider myself a Sona main. I used to play her AP mid, AP support, Utility support, and even tried her as ADC a couple times. All to much success. With her trash AP ratios, punishing CDR, GARBAGE base stats, and overall mediocre state, I haven't been able to touch her in ranked play. I'm a sucker for punishment and will still get this skin, but I don't accept this 'shiny!' ultimate skin to change how I feel about her.

edit: actual very little basis WTF ENGLISH?

They would have been working on this ultimate for at least a year, so this decision wasn't instant.

Regardless of Sona's actual balance/game health...

As someone who has used Sona and Janna pretty exclusively for support since Season 2, I just don't feel like playing Sona much right now. I wasn't a big fan of switching from persistent auras to one-off buffs to begin with. The nerf train she's gotten since then?

I just can't bring myself to spend that much money on a Sona skin right now. Even with the sale it'll still be more than a legendary skin, and I just can't justify paying even that much money on Sona at the moment.

Sorry Riot, but it looks like I won't be buying this ultimate skin either. I'd rather not sink even more money in when I'm this unhappy with your balance and design decisions lately anyway...

High win rate does not mean good. Sona is pretty much nerfed into oblivion except in a few rare cases. So yes she has a good win rate still, but that's because she's only used in very good matchups for her.

lets pretend sona wasnt cancer to lane against when she had 55% win rate

-sona main

She's not totally nerfed into oblivion. She does have more HP than a caster minion now...

The only time I've ever seen Sona effectively be a good support is when the enemy laners are afraid of her.

There's never a good reason to be afraid of her unless you're at 100-200 hp or something.

Pick up the phone

Cause I fucking called it

Riot nerfed to oblivion because she had a 54-55% win-rate but they didn't nerf , , or when they had practically the same win-rate for all of season 4? While her poke was pretty strong in lane, you could just take any champ with hard engage ( , , , and ) and completely destroy her. She wasn't even a top pick/ban in the LCS.

The only reason why she holds her 51-52% win-rate at the moment is because of the type of champ she is. As LemonInYourEyes stated, she is a fairly low skill champion. All of her abilities bar Crescendo are auto targeted and Crescendo alone is such a strong ability that if you land it it makes up for her otherwise lacking skills and base stats. Additionally, she maintains an above average win-rate because of her ability to snowball. If a Sona gets ahead and manages to get Lich Bane she will do high amounts of damage to the opposing ADC with her Q->Power Chord, winning her ADC the trade most of the time. While this damage is less than what she had before, it's still significant and to prove that she has around a 64% win-rate when she builds Lich Bane. Despite all of this she still has a weak heal, very little CC pre-6, and is incredibly squishy. She also gets outclassed by , , , and as a support/mage.

BTW Riot nice job on the skin but too bad Sona's not in an optimal spot thanks to the balance team.

I am not going to deny that Sona's rework has put her into an awful spot, and that she needs huge changes to be healthy for the game.

HOWEVER.

Saying she is not picked is a flat out lie. She is picked ALOT. Specifcally in low elo.

Why? Because scrubs dont know how squishy she is. They take one power cord, and tink "Oh shit wtf that damage so op", and then run away and let her do whatever she wants.

In high elo, Sona is a worse version of Nami, with slightly better teamfights IF she doesnt get nuked from offhand aoe. This is also only true if Sona builds a stupid amount of AP for a supp. You cant build utility on Sona. You NEED AP.

Why does she need AP? She is worse than literally every other supp in the game if she does not build around 250+ AP. Specifcally nami can do literally everything she does better, aside from damage reduction. This means very limited choice in utility items.

The only utility items I would recommend are Banner, Ardent, and MAYBE Frostqueen. The only one I get regularly is Ardents, and that is because usually I have multiple targets who benefit from AS. Banner is only good if the enemy has aoe magic damage, or a fed katarina. You can pray banner stops her from penta'ing your team. It also gives you some good splitpush, so keep that in mind. Frostqueen is self explanatory. If a slow will actually be meaningful, buy it. If not, scrap frostfang as soon as you dont need it anymore.

You can only take 2 at the most to remain relevent/do anything that Nami couldnt do better. Ardent will usually be your best bet, and going full AP after words is kinda mandatory.

Your gonna NEED sightstone, Lich-bane, and mobi-boots. Everything else you buy NEEDS to have AP in some form. You also need cdr.

Riot apparently believes she's only obtained a small nerf.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/9bf6y21b-soraka-deserved-this-skin-sona?comment=0001000200000002

How can you call her op when she gets nerfed every few patches. I got almost every sona skin but will pass on this on. Slaybell and arcade are my favs

The fact that Sona is absolutely worthless in the face of every other support, now, is simply unacceptable.

She was my main. I loved this chick. But now I'm either CC'd to hell, or completely out poked. If I do manage to get some poke in, I go OOM.

Sona can no longer poke effectively, does not help her lane partner farm, is stupidly easy to gank, and cannot peel, outside of blowing her ult.

Riot, please bring this champ back to viable status.

She needed those nerfs, people who actually played against sona knew she had a lot of damage. Also the nerfs didn't do much to her at all. (I am a support/jungle main)

Why do people keep saying she's SO nerfed?

I still feel effective both in and out of lane as sona, and next patch she is getting what I would arguable call a buff.

And I know for a fact I'm not even that great of a Sona player. This is ridiculous. And her new skin is so rad