Friendly Reminder that Sona is still absurd

I'm not going to give exact damage numbers for fear of nerfs to my favorite champion and main. Not that you'll have much of a chance in your usual games to reach this point of ridiculousness, but let's just say that there's a very good reason Riot absolutely gutted her survivability for URF this time around (-20 hp level 1, -27 hp per level, and -10% dmg on top of that).

Hop into practice tool some time and take Aery, Manaflow, Transcendence, and Scorch primary. Biscuits and CDR secondary with 2 AP runes and an armor one. Build , , , , , and . Obviously, go for the perfect storm and kill 3 infernals, blue buff, sorcery pot, elder (twice since the second one is doubly effective), and as many barons as you'd like, since they get stronger each time.

Add an enemy champion of your choice when you make this game for the satisfaction of actually killing someone. Try out your damage on everything and you'll see what I mean. Obviously, there are ways to increase the damage by selling the boots for AP items, so try those out as well. If you envision spending a great deal of time oneshotting everything (which feels really good, by the way; oddly satisfying, if you will), take Gathering Storm instead of Scorch.

In reality, the best way to get this kind of build would be to play her top, mid, or bot (not support, otherwise you'll be selling boots for one of those items above in order to avoid losing support item and tanking your vision abilities). Unfortunately, her absolutely piss-poor early waveclear and low base hp (480) lead to you being pushed out of lane easily, and with her W heal costing 80 mana, you may run into mana issues as well.

However, if you do try this out in an actual game, the build path that feels the best to me is -> rush (delay for if needed) -> finish Tear into (obviously becomes ) -> -> -> , then whenever you can. I usually take and , though in difficult lanes I sometimes take in addition to my ADC's, or if I think I'll need it for defending ganks or all-in attempts (Very helpful against junglers like and , I've found).

Even as support, spending 450 on , buying control wards very often, and usually delaying Lich Bane for boots, I'm still usually able to get it by 23 minutes and Archangel's soon after, with any sort of success in lane. I take Q first and W second, maxing Q first and W second. This is because W is already high in mana cost (80 base, as mentioned earlier), and increases by 5 each point (like her other spells), plus the heals and shields aren't very big until you start getting some AP in there. I've also found that full AP Sona has larger heals than builds more conventional healing support items like , , and/or . Her Q, meanwhile, is a much shorter cooldown, costs only 50 mana with the first point, and is her main source of poke.

A quick reminder that Sona R is not an ability that you can buffer with flash. The animation can, but not the actual stun. At least, that's been my experience. Also, it might just be my keyboard or poor timing from me, but flash-R is hit-or-miss for me, since half the time my R doesn't even go off for some reason, so be careful with those if you choose to play her.

(Source for all this is a few hundred games of experience playing this build since early Season 8 and close to, if not more than half a million mastery points over two live accounts [Both at mastery 7] and one PBE account.)

Good luck in normal games and ranked, and have fun in practice tool. I sometimes hop into practice tool after bad games to unwind by doing this.