Boards›Gameplay

What Sona can teach us about Teamplay as a Design Value

Tahalden··3 votes·1,162 views

I've written an article over at Cloth5.com about Teamplay and applied the design value to Sona and her rework. I can't post the whole thing here because it's too long, but I included the link at the end of this post. Hope you like it! Feedback and remarks are most welcome!

Here ye have the TL;DR: In a PvP multiplayer game, satisfaction can be achieved through promoting Teamplay. Achieving victory together rather than on your own is generally more satisfying. Hence Riot wants to encourage teamplay through abilities as well as making sure team-oriented strategies have more success overall.

Three aspects concerning teamplay are essential for abilities. Is a response from your team…

  1. … possible?
  2. … clearly communicated?
  3. … interesting?

Given this set of rules, we’ve seen a clear trend from Riot to move away from global abilities and passive stats auras. In fact, recent champion releases see an increasingly interactive approach to what a team-oriented ability should be, and not only on support champions!

Sona has always been one of the most iconic support champions through her aura gameplay. But passive auras providing free offensive or defensive stats to an entire team in a wide radius does not promote teamplay. Such auras typically contain a lot of underappreciated power leading to a rather dull gameplay pattern.

Hence the Sona rework. Her aura gameplay stuck, but with an interesting twist. Short-range, one-time interactive effects make her the aura juggler in the thick of battle that she was originally meant to be. Sona’s new gameplay encourages highly mobile and team-oriented patterns. She’s a great example of what Teamplay as a design value can bring to the table.

Do you think Sona’s rework was successful? Will it take a while for players to get the hang of her new kit? Which champions do you think offer amazing potential for teamplay? Drop a comment below!

Read more at http://cloth5.com/6-design-values-part-4-teamplay-sona/ !

10 Comments

67chrome4 votes

But passive auras providing free offensive or defensive stats to an entire team in a wide radius does not promote teamplay.

It doesn't obviously communicate to a team or randoms that Sona is ideally suited for team play, but Sona could fallow her team around anyways and force them to use those auras.

With her rework? I'm less inclined to actually help my team with Sona now - her damage and speed auras are almost unusable by her teammates now. A duration, radius, or specialized buff would be one thing - but with all 3 on Valor and the first 2 on Celerity - Valor and Celerity largely feel like Sona only buffs.

Which is cool if you like zooming around and Lich Baneing things to death, because Sona's considerably better at that now.

Pretty bad if you wanted to help push turrets down faster, boost allie's potential to push turrets, aid in last-hitting potential with that AD, aid in sieging potential with that AP, aiding in every burst and auto-attack skill with that AD/AP aura. Darius and Cho'Gath could even unload better true damage prior to Sona's rework.

Now - Nami is largely better in every way than Sona for actually supporting. Her on-hit buff can reach allies further away, her speed buff can hit the right targets from a little further as well. Main (tactical) reason to go Sona over Nami was auras and lower cooldowns, both of which have essentially been removed when you consider Nami's buffs are arguably easier to apply than Sona's auras. Only reason to play Sona now is basically not being up to snuff with landing Nami's stuff, which is a little harder to use properly - but she automatically gets Celerity on her Valor/Perseverance stuff, and gets an AoE stun bubble instead of a sheen proc.

I actually likes supporting with Sona and grabbing stuff like Bulwark, Locket, Omen, and Talisman on her depending on the situation. Now - you can't really pull off supportive utility or supportive tank auras with her anymore, she just doesn't bring enough benefit to her team that way. With the auras - 20 AD and 20 AP was pretty solid, pair that with CDR bolstered heals and that ultimate and Sona was pretty effective as a 100% supportive unit. Now - unless you build a lot of AP on her, there's not much supporting you can really do, and she feels more like mage played as a support deal.

Tahalden4 votes

Great feedback, cheers!

I definitely agree that with her rework, you can't force your team mates to benefit from her auras anymore, just because the range is so much smaller. However that doesn't mean the rework failed or made Sona significantly worse. Sona does require a different play style now: a lot more in the middle of the team fights to make sure allies get the chance to use the auras.

You're also correct Sona can't force her auras on allies anymore. However, that's the goal of the rework: auras are not very interactive, and feel somewhat underwhelming. With the new auras, they are much more interactive and require a response from allies to work. It's definitely a lot harder to play Sona right, but that's because your allies now have to know how to make use of it. You could argue that this is not necessarily the right direction to go with Sona, but I personally like the added depth to her gameplay.

The 20 AD/AP buff to her team was overpowered though, as I discuss in the actual article (didn't mention that in the TL;DR). A potential value of 5750 gold just from Sona providing her Valor aura to all 4 other team members was insane. And not very interactive at all. There was no way for the enemy to respond to it either other than killing Sona.

Pika3101 votes

The 20 AD/AP buff to her team was overpowered though

Clearly not overpowered enough though, seeing as she was a B-class support at best. Nami already outshone her in every regard, with better on-hits, heals, CC and MS. I see this rework more as a buff for Nami by eliminating one of her potential rivals.

I appreciate the concept Riot was attempting to go for with this rework, but they allowed paranoia to grasp on and leave Sona's numbers far too under-tuned to make any use of her new kit. This rework was not successful, but it could have been if they had chosen to give Sona usable numbers.

  • Staccato was blatantly nerfed without trade-off, they don't necessary need to bring it back to double as this could be used as a window of opportunity to give Sona more team-interaction as described in this thread I created a few weeks back: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay/BcnfY3hp-proposed-staccato-buff
  • The short range on Sona's (non)auras is stifling and the largest offense to her new kit, it's not required that she have the massive 1000-units of previous, but 500 would probably be sufficient for keeping her close to the ADC without having to put herself in danger of the enemy front-line, just to assist her own.
  • Hymn of Valor lost its sustained damage and the burst it provides is only equivalent if not lower than previously, not to mention the fact it's now completely worthless to any skill-based champions it's applied to and then it no longer procs on structures. It needs to once again benefit spells with around 1/3 damage on AoE and it needs to affect structures for perhaps around 1/2. The lowered damage of Hymn is a result of weak base increases per rank and a loss of its previous indirect scaling with her allies' AS/Crit and champion level. I've suggested to compensate for these that it be given exponential increases looking something similar to this: 20/35/55/80/110
  • Aria and Celerity's CD increases were unjustified and became indirect nerfs not only to Diminuendo and Tempo, but also to Power Chord as whole. Additionally, the increased mana cost of Aria has put further stress on Sona's already restrictively high mana drain.
  • Aria's heal was blatantly nerfed at ranks 1 and 2 to strengthen it at 4 and 5. This is completely counter-intuitive to Sona specifically and as well to the mage support role as a whole which needs to rely on a strong laning phase to assist the ADC in transitioning into the later phases of the game. Rather than dampening her reliant early game, it would be better to use more consistent numbers on her heal, for example: 35/50/65/80/95

I've reached the word limit, so I'll continue in a reply to this one.

Pika3101 votes
  • Aria's shield is to replace the flat Armor/MR it used to provide, but players seem to misconceive this transition. That Armor/MR had an indirect scaling with her allies' HP stats, which especially benefited players at higher levels and that made some investment towards it. Even whilst cycling through spells, it was applied to her whole team for a minimum of 1.5 thanks to a .5 second CD between rotations as well as an additional 1 second persistence. Even further, herself and her healed target gained an equivalent amount for 3 seconds, equating to double for the 1.5 and keeping a singular amount for yet another 1.5 after. In contrast, Aria's new shield suffers from the same low bases and loss of indirect scaling that affects Hymn's new on-hit, making it more useful for her squishier allies, but nearly unnoticeable for tanks and bruisers. Then its short duration which only lasts the bare minimum of Aria's old boost often makes most if not the entire shield go to waste, especially when herself and the target she healed would have gotten said boost for at least twice as long minimum with a double amount for the first half. The person she heals will mostly likely be a player who is being focused at that moment in time and would have benefited from the empowered effect. To compensate for both of these at a middle-ground of sorts, the shield duration needs an increase to at least 2.5 seconds and its base values require exponential scaling like Hymn's, ex: 35/60/90/125/165
  • Celerity's increased values do not compensate for the loss of its passive effect or the fact of its duration remaining identical. Currently her worst skill, perhaps this will be sufficient to make it viable once again: I've personally thought long and hard about the way to go about fixing Celerity, often coming back to just returning its passive. So far, the only other alternative solution I've thought of is to increase Celerity's MS duration to probably about 4 seconds, with a rapid decay after the initial 1.5.
  • Although unaffected by the rework entirely, Crescendo is overdue to have its mana cost standardized to 100 at every rank.
Eapenator2 votes

I think everything regarding her game play was improved, as well as there being more options to tweak her in the future without creating toxic gameplay patterns.

The only thing I wish for is that they kept the persistent effect sounds on each skin because that is what separates a lot of the skins from each other. Now, the songs stop abruptly when her aura ends, and as a multiple skin owner of Sona, this is detrimental.

Tahalden3 votes

Aye, that's a fair critique. It's super important to keep the champion-specific quirks that really define the feel of the champion. Since the absence of the visual aura already communicates the aura has worn off, perhaps turning off the sound of it is not entirely necessary. Could be a piece of feedback to Riot to change that...

Eapenator2 votes

Yea I have tried to bring it up a couple times, but with no response.

I do however, really like the Sona rework, because it is very much the same champion, but with alot more active engagement involved other than her q harass, which would fall off late game.

Tahalden2 votes

Keep raising the point! Just gotta get the attention needed for it to be picked up on.

Her scaling into the late-game is not amazing, you have a good point there. But she provides a lot of utility as well as an amazing ultimate with Crescendo to continue being useful. It's not straightforward to pull of the utility though, because you have to make a lot of trade-offs. If you want a slow, you won't be dealing additional damage or mini-exhausting the enemy carry for some 6-7 seconds at least (depending on CDR).

But that's a good thing: this allows great differentiation between the good Sona players and the great Sona players.

Eapenator2 votes

I think you mis understood me,

I mean in either iteration of sona, her q late game harass would fall pretty hard.

Now though, her bonus to single allies is much better, as you are 100% sure that you can control the amount of effectiveness of the spell (by tagging x amount of people), whereas before you didn't know if you reached full effective or whether you had to leave it on longer without using some general rule of thumb.

You are also not punished for switching stances early, like before.

Pika3101 votes

Sona was not punished for switching stances, her auras had a 1-second lingering effect.

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by Tahalden

The 3 skill dimensions in League
Live Gameplay Balance8 comments
10
votes
Post of the Day - The 6 design values: I. Mastery
Live Gameplay Balance9 comments
9
votes
Could we get a link to the Boards from other regions as well?
Boards Feedback4 comments
4
votes
The 6 design values: Jungle timers vs. the world
Maps & Modes0 comments
2
votes
My updates -- e-mail option?
Boards Feedback3 comments
2
votes
A few remarks about Boards
Boards Feedback2 comments
1
votes