@DesignTeam Sona and the state of her kit

TL;DR down below if you don't have time to read. Sorry in advance because I'm not very good at writing and thus there can be broken argumemts somewhere, or just explained incorrectly

Hello everyone, I'm a support player for about 3 years now and Sona happens to my first and favorite support. I have been sticking with her through ups and down of balance but ever since Sona got changed in S3 I just can't play her anymore. I do realize that she's still strong if used correctly. But right now she just feels so useless in comparison to other supports, like Leona, Thresh, Morgana etc.,...

The problem with Sona is that she has a very outdated kit. And through the years of being hammered by the nerfbat, the fantasy of the original playstyle that made her feel so impactful is gone.

It's her ability to deal massive poke damage early to her lane opponent while keeping your carry intact, but mana management was still a big part of the lane so you couldn't wildly spam your abilities to win lanes with no efforts. Sometimes you misplay and gets hit by a cc and thus getting exploded, and that set your carry behind. Because you would either die and your carry gets zoned, OR you end up using all your mana on heals to survive the lane (and your carry still gets zoned). If you were doing well you get to use your Ult aggressively once you reach lvl 6, but if you fell behind you have to save it so you can peel for your carry or co-ordinate with your jungler when he ganks.

But now Sona's damage is terrible in comparison to other damage supports, and it is shorter ranged than most skillshots so it does make her somewhat vulnerable when she goes out of her way to do so. All the nerfs to her damage took away her fantasy as an early game bully poke mage-support.

Other supports were also nerfed but their identity either stay intact, or they have alternative play patern that still make them feel useful:

• Soraka, despite being heavily nerfed out of viability, she still retains her identity as a sustain healer/life saver and does decently in the department.

• Janna, her nerfs affected her offensive power, but her power to disengage and reseting a teamfight still relies intact and very useful.

• Taric, he may not be hitting as hard as your Leona but he still does his job of an early game kill lane support... somewhat. I think Taric is also problematic because his alternate play patern is sitting there spamming heal, which doesn't cut it.

• Alistar no longer works very well as an aggressive support early, but instead a peeling support with a seiging heal. He has more reliable option to assist in ganks than Janna but doesn't peel as well. But then Thresh exists.

• Lulu, her poke potential got gimped due to people taking her mid. But she's still good at peeling with her powerful polymorph and ultimate. Her poke is not so strong but it also serves as a powerful slow.

But Sona, her poke is really weak now that you have to rely on constant poking (which is actually trading) and healing to make the HP differences relevant. And Sona has to build AP in order to trade meaningfully, which means she has to give up defense in doing so.

In this meta there are a lot of champions that can just kill Sona outright whenever she gets near them and it forces Sona to be on the defense all the time. But then she turns into walking ultimate with a heal because of a lot of her powers are either invisible or just not very rewarding/noticable.

Sona just feels (emphasis on the word feels) SO useless because of this and you guys aren't allowing us to be a powerful damage dealer early on. And it doesn't leave us with much left to enjoy about her.

• Spamming W is not fun, unless it's very powerful which makes the game very stale.
• Using Power Chord W is not fun because you can barely notice the different, and if you are in range to auto, sometimes they would just focus you. Then there's not much difference between 5k damage or 4k damage because you'd be dead either way, you're just delaying it.
• E is only fun when you have tons of AP then it feels like a rollercoaster. But it's pretty useless until it has several points in it, which is like lvl 15..
• The Power chord E is fun if you can deal tons of damage to your opponent afterward, but you have to be snowballing hard to do that. Unless your opponents are Janna and Ezreal. You can't use it if you're running away yourself, leaving it usable in only so many situations.
• Auras are horrible, you'll never get any credit for having the right aura at the right time because they're unnoticable.

So please Riot, can you please cosider making changes to Sona so that playing her would feel more powerful? I would ask for mana cost increase and base damage of Q and Power Chord so that the pokes Sona make at the right moment would be more meanimgful, but not to the level that she doesn't have to manage her resource. I don't even mind if she becomes really squishy as long as she does her job.

An alternate solution is reworking her kit because honestly it's starting to get very outdated. It doesn't have to be as major as Karma's rework, but I'd still want her kit to have more sarisfying gameplay if she can't deal damage for whatever reason.

TL;DR: Nerfs to Sona made her pokes obsolete in comparison to the damage her opponent returns every time she goes in to poke (high risk - low reward). Due to Sona's kit, her gameplay patern is boring when she can't deal damage, because the only things left that make Sona feel meaningful is her ult and her spammable heal.

Solution: Either buff her damage and increase mana cost. Or rework her kit to still retain her feel as a powerful mage-support while having other parts of her kits feel more meaningful to use.