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Sona playstyle changes

neverwinterkni··1 votes·1,342 views

Ok quick disclaimer: I am making this post mostly because of Sona's new ultimate skin, I main support, and used to play quite a bit of Sona, got bored with her, and started playing other supports. however now I have decided to play her some more, and am a little annoyed at her new playstyle.

Sona's play-style, at least in my mind, is one where she buffs, heals and peels for her ADC. She is meant to be a champion that requires allies to be near her to be effective, rather than one that can roam by herself. Her (Q) Hymn of Valor is meant to be simply lane poke/a good damage buff for her ADC, (W) Aria of Perseverance is meant to be a heal/protective measure, and her (E) Song of Celerity and engage/peel measure. What she seems to have become is another version of an Ap burst mage. Her (Q) plus Power chord AA does a ton of damage, while her (W) and (E) just can't compete. The basic issue is that Her (W) is on too long of a cool down, does not do enough, and costs too much mana. What most players do is end up maxing her (Q) first for damage, and forgetting about her (W) until mid game, when she has enough mana regen for it to be a strong spell.

Ok now my suggestions: Take Sona's (Q) Hymn of valor, and make it do less damage(and when i say less damage I mean a LOT less damage), while strengthening the damage buff, perhaps changing it to a flat damage buff rather than the basic attack damage increase it is now. Her (W) Aria of Perseverance, simply needs to be less exhausting to use, lessen the cooldown and lower the mana costs. I would also increase the AP ratios a bit, but this is simply to offset her (Q)'s damage nerfs. Honestly I beleive her (E) Song of Celerity is where it needs to be, a solid, but not OP speed buff with multiple engage and peel uses. Ad again her (R) crescendo is a solid ability, allowing solid plays in teamfights, but not being a ridiculous amount of CC.

Tell me what you think, if there are any changes you think would benefit her, again this is just my opinion, as a Support main i like carrying my ADC, not the game, and playing Sona recently I have found myself doing the Latter of the two.

Anyway please have a great rest of your day, and thank you for any feedback you can provide!Sona

21 Comments

A Wild AP Sona6 votes

downvoted for being fucking noob enough to say sona damage need to be nerfed again stfu and take a seat in low elo PLZ

neverwinterkni1 votes

Ok I am going to say this again, I do not want Sona to be nerfed, I just want her scalings to be changed around. Currently the most she is usefull for is walking up to an enemy, pressing her (Q) and then basic attacking with her Power Chord passive, ticking off quite a bit of the enemies health, this is still strong despite her recent nerfs. All I want is that her (W) is to be buffed so that she can be of more use to her ADC, rather than her doing a ton of damage by herself, I was simply offering more (Q) nerfs as a tradeoff.

I do think that Sona is very weak in her current state, but I would like her to be stronger for reasons other than her burst damage.

Erockandroll1 votes

{quoted}

Ok I am going to say this again, I do not want Sona to be nerfed, I just want her scalings to be changed around. Currently the most she is usefull for is walking up to an enemy, pressing her (Q) and then basic attacking with her Power Chord passive, ticking off quite a bit of the enemies health, this is still strong despite her recent nerfs. All I want is that her (W) is to be buffed so that she can be of more use to her ADC, rather than her doing a ton of damage by herself, I was simply offering more (Q) nerfs as a tradeoff.

I do think that Sona is very weak in her current state, but I would like her to be stronger for reasons other than her burst damage.

I don't feel like theirs a right answer there. If you buff her heals in favor of her damage, she becomes less interactive.

You also need to be specific when you say nerf her Q. are we talking her cast, her aura, or her powerchord? Cause last patch it was her powerchord that got nerfed.

Also, Because of the LS nerfs on the 4.10 patch. Any amount of healing is useful. I can comfortably max her Q first knowing that she will still have more sustain that any non sustain support.

neverwinterkni2 votes

Good point on the interactivity area, something I would not argue with is making her (W) shield do more(be stronger maybe give some passive MR/Armor), therefore she is more protective of her ADC. A point I would also like to make is I feel like her Aura buffs are very underwhelming. Her (Q) for example simply gives her ally 0(+20% AP) extra magic damage on 1 basic attack for, 5 seconds, also her (W)'s shield gives her and her ally a 0(+20% AP) shield for 1.5 seconds, which just feels weak.

Erockandroll1 votes

{quoted}

Good point on the interactivity area, something I would not argue with is making her (W) shield do more(be stronger maybe give some passive MR/Armor), therefore she is more protective of her ADC. A point I would also like to make is I feel like her Aura buffs are very underwhelming. Her (Q) for example simply gives her ally 0(+20% AP) extra magic damage on 1 basic attack for, 5 seconds, also her (W)'s shield gives her and her ally a 0(+20% AP) shield for 1.5 seconds, which just feels weak.

I just looked on the lolwiki, Sona does have base values for her Aura abilities. Largely, I would feel like sona should be balanced more around base numbers rather than scaling. (that would generally be better for a support) Sona was pub stomping lower Elo while not seeing pro level play. And I believe the reason for that is that sona was building the Copious amounts of AP. (which you can't afford in pro level)

Though I would support buffing her auras a bit. help her retain her Aura Identity.

Pika3104 votes

This is the misconception I see the most. Sona's Q actually does less damage now than pre-4.13.

  • Staccato damage has been reduced by 60%
  • Bolt damage has been reduced by 20%
  • Assuming all 4 allies can miraculously acquire Hymn's on-hit AND apply it, the bubble does ~76.2% less sustained damage than her aura did

Since the bubble's on-hit damage is equivalent to 1.5 seconds of the aura's damage, I believe this is the reason players are mislead into believing Sona is doing a significant amount of damage, despite it being low, since it's applied all at once on one auto instead of 3 autos/spells. In reality, her total individual damage output is the lowest in the entire support class, 2nd to Braum. Hymn's bolt damage is tied for the lowest base damage of spells amongst the entire support class, with only 3 other spells amongst all support champs.

Then of course, the bubble doesn't affect structures. Hell, it doesn't even proc off spells...

Aria is complete trash, mana cost and CD are too high, the heal and shield are too low and the shield's duration is too short.

Celerity is bad and unrewarding for ranking up. It retains roughly the same MS from pre-4.13 for the initial 1.5 seconds, but then disappears completely, making it blatantly inferior. Worse yet, its CD was nearly doubled so you get that quick boost about half as often on top of no longer keeping the sustained MS.

It's worth noting, Sona's E aura used to affect minions.

Crescendo's mana cost is too high. Sona is one of 2 champs in the whole support class that doesn't have an ult costing 100 mana at all ranks. Riot stated they wanted to standardize this over 1.5 years ago and did it to champs like Leona, etcetera, but have blatantly ignored Sona this whole time. This shows that Riot's balance team is blatantly biased against Sona.

One of the worst parts of the nerfs is that her spell range has been reduced by 650 units. Riot Jag stated that Riot would NEVER drastically change a champion's range because it would be very disruptive. Yet they felt no quarrel with lowering the range on ALL 3 of Sona's spells by 65% simultaneously. In comparison, the 2nd lowest spell-range amongst mage-supports is 500 units, 43% longer than Sona. Most abilities are somewhere around ~850 units and you even have some breaking 1k like Thresh's and Morg's Qs.

neverwinterkni1 votes

Thank you for the comment dude, put a lot of work into it Ok for my response: -First off i have to say I do not want Sona to be weaker, in fact I think she's very weak now, I just want her playstyle to be that of a Supportey mage, rather than a bursty one. -Second I did know that after her rework she did less damage(http://i.imgur.com/xbL5X0I.png), (and the post I found that on: http://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/2c8k9b/new_and_old_sona_damage_comparison_and_opinion_on/) -Also i seem to remember them reducing her range TO 650 from 700, not by a whole 650, i could be wrong i'll look it up and get back to you on that however. -I do agree with what your main point is, that Sona does need to be stronger, but if you could back it up with some data, people would be more likely to listen to it(note this is just a bit of advice, not meant to be criticism) Anyway i would just like to state that i love the conversation that is going on here, and if we can keep from criticizing each other, and calling each other names, RITO may actually be inclined to look into our opinions! (Edit: Grammar Errors)

Pika3101 votes

Thank you for the comment dude, put a lot of work into it

I should hope so, I've been running comparisons, crunching numbers, collecting observations, etcetera for over 7 months now. I'm glad it's being appreciated.

-Also i seem to remember them reducing her range TO 650 from 700, not by a whole 650, i could be wrong i'll look it up and get back to you on that however.

You misunderstood what I meant. I was referring to the fact Sona's 1000-unit auras were removed and replaced with 350-unit bubbles.

What you're referring to did indeed occur: in patch 4.13 Riot secretly reduced the bolt range on Hymn of Valor by 50 units. Additionally, they lowered it by 100 MORE units in patch 4.16 making it only 550 for that patch. Both of these were reverted in 4.17 and Hymn now matches its old range again at 700 units, despite being mislabeled on the Wikia and League sites.

neverwinterkni1 votes

Oh the aura's, yeah now that you mention i do remember that happening, thanks for reminding me of that point. Anyway that range reduction was along with her slight "rework,"(which was actually the point when i stopped playing sona), that turned her into what she is now, where i feel like she's a bit more of a dunk comp chamion rather than a stall/poke champion(my opinion), despite RITO saying that it wouldn't change her playstyle much. Now i realize that we won't be able to get that Sona back, I would like some kind of compensation for her buff range and strength that she lost. Also this is a tad random, but can anyone remember what her previous buffs were before the rework? it was awhile ago and i can't seem to find any pages on it anymore(links would be highly appreciated) Thanks again for the effort you put into your previous post Pika310(and for keeping it positive too)

Pika3101 votes

{quoted}

The range on Q was not changed. I was in the scripting today, and verified that the number has not changed. In fact, nothing in how Q gets it's targets was touched for her release.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/NA0kHMhA-my-opinion-on-sona-and-a-few-questions-to-fearless-civil-discussion?comment=0000

According to Fearless, the -50 range was "unintended" and multiple times he said "he would look into it" or "everything appears to be the same." It wasn't until after 4.16 and the additional -100 that he finally admitted it had been changed. It's nearly unanimous amongst us players that these were in-truth done intentionally in secret.

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/2n8M8JVj-riot-fearless-what-was-sona-made-for?comment=0003000300000002

For her old abilities, you don't have to look any further than the wikia: http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Sona/Background Just scroll down to patch notes, right above it says "Previous Abilities" with Hide and Show buttons.

Also amongst the patch notes, you can find that they also reduced her base HP by 7.11% in exchange for a lackluster +7 per level. In the upcoming patch, they're reverting the scaling HP, but only increasing her base by 3.06%, **HALF **of what they removed.

neverwinterkni1 votes

Thanks for the post on the old abilities, didn't realize that stuff was on the Wiki i have nothing to say about the other details I haven't already stated, i don't like to start pointing fingers at RITO about screwing us over, for the most part I am happy with what they do to the game, some details I am not happy with, I either learn to embrace them, or make a post about it giving an attempt to fix it.

Fae Sorceress3 votes

They keep W that way to prevent Sona from becoming a "Heal Bot" and keeping it so that there is more interaction in lanes. If there is any re-balancing, I'd say perhaps a slight nerf to Q damage, and a slight cooldown reduction for W, paired with a slight nerf to heal amount, and slight buff to shield amount (to keep it a more reactive skill).

neverwinterkni1 votes

I agree with this to a certain extant Perhaps just increasing the Shield on her (W) a lot could work better as well, this would force more intuitive gameplay as you would want to heal your ally before you go in for a trade, or a team fight. Thoughts? Again, i don't like having Sona do so much damage, that I want to leave to the ADC, I want her to be more effective at making the ADC stronger, instead of doing crazy damage herself (Edit: Grammar hiccups)

Pika3105 votes

Why the fuck would they make her heal any weaker than it already is? It's the weakest heal in the entire game at only 30 HP per cast, the % scaling doesn't even manage to tie it with the 2nd worst: Nidalee's at 45 per cast.

The average amount of heal tends to be 60 HP per cast, as is seen by: Taric, Kayle, Alistar and Nami's comes close at 65 HP. Three of those champs can even heal 2 or more allies simultaneously and all of them can control who they choose to heal.

A Wild AP Sona3 votes

how about keeping/rebuffing her q damage and buffing her w back to where it was so she isnt a troll pick?

neverwinterkni1 votes

This I would definitely agree with, however she does need something to be taken away from her for having the lane sustain she needs. The other thing I would really like is if her (Q) aura buff was a little more substantial than just a little magic damage on your allies next AA

Khristophoros2 votes

The reason her W is so bad early is because in the past, the only viable support champions were those with heals. It took Riot years to fix this and ultimately they had to nerf heals a lot. There was a time when Leona and Blitz were just "for fun" picks for casual play and there was no chance you'd see them in a serious game. Mage supports like Annie, Zyra, Morgana, Fiddlesticks, etc... were completely unheard of. It wasn't even a thing, period.

So the point is, there's a reason heals are weak early game and it's a very good reason.

I personally think the shield on her W could use a buff because right now she's so bad against all-ins it's ridiculous.

Pika3103 votes

That doesn't justify Sona's heal being the worst in the entire game. It's literally half the value of all 4 comparable healing supports.

I'm not saying it needs to be doubled, just another 10 base; or 5 and reverting the 1:1 % will give it usable numbers again.

Khristophoros1 votes

Sona's harass is so strong that having a heal on her kit is kinda crazy. Taric and Alistar don't have poke and they are melee. Their heals being stronger than Sona's is totally justified. As for Soraka, I think that comparison could be a really long discussion so I'm not even going into it.

Anyway I think what holds Sona back is her weakness against all-ins. I don't think she needs additional sustain to be viable. I think she just needs to be able to deal with all-ins better.

It Is I Emoto2 votes

Take Sona's (Q) Hymn of valor, and make it do less damage(and when i say less damage I mean a LOT less damage)

Sloppy 40 magic damage do so much damage, Better Nerf Sona

Her (W) Aria of Perseverance, simply needs to be less exhausting to use, lessen the cooldown and lower the mana costs. I would also increase the AP ratios a bit, but this is simply to offset her (Q)'s damage nerfs.

You would just turn her into a stronger healer with that, and the balancce team do not want that, that's why they put it on a higher cooldown and nerfed the shit out of it. Though the mana cost is right now the issue because it costs 80 mana at rank one. It's pretty useless and dumb to max it as soon as possible, mostly when her Q and E cost less mana.

Honestly I beleive her (E) Song of Celerity is where it needs to be, a solid, but not OP speed buff with multiple engage and peel uses.

about this.... It only scales by 1% per rank wich is a horrible base stat. getting An ap item makes it way too strong while none is pretty useless.

Riot needs to rework the numbers again, she scales horrible on her base stats right now and you're promoting to nerf her base stats even more to make her less useful at early game. You really want to turn Sona to an first blood pinata?

neverwinterkni1 votes

Yep agreeing with everything you've said here, if you read the comments you'll notice that I've evolved my thoughts on what I think needs to happen to her quite a bit, I really am just not up to editing the original post right now, i'll get around to it though(maybe) Honestly all i just want her to do is be able to support the ADC more(more buffs, more heals etc.), rather than having a ton of damage output, with very little utility.

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