Sona Update

Riot·Jul 28, 2014·7 votes·74,460 views

Sona

Maven of the Strings

With three big visual updates now tinkering, poisoning, and death-defying their way through the Rift, it’s time to take a look at the next of our coming gameplay-oriented updates! We’re talking about Sona, a champion whose kit made her one of the most passive champs on the Rift... outside of her game-changing ultimate. We’ll fully get into the why of the update later, but first here’s a rundown of her new abilities and intended play patterns to give you a feeling of how we’re updating her.

Abilities

Passive: Power Chord

After casting three basic abilities, Sona’s next basic attack deals extra magic damage and applies an effect based on the song she last played.
Q: Hymn of Valor

Sona plays a melody that deals magic damage to the nearest two enemies. Additionally, Sona briefly creates an aura around herself that empowers her and her allies, charging their next basic attack with extra magic damage. Tagging an ally with the aura briefly increases its duration.

Power Chord – Hymn of Valor’s Power Chord deals even more magic damage.
W: Aria of Perseverance

Sona performs a tune that heals both her and the most wounded nearby allied champion. Additionally, Sona creates an aura around herself that briefly shields her and her allies. Tagging an ally with the aura briefly increases its duration.

Power Chord – Aria of Perseverance’s Power Chord briefly reduces the target’s damage output.
E: Song of Celerity

Sona plays a song that accelerates her movement speed. Additionally, Sona creates an aura around herself that briefly speeds up all allied units. Tagging an ally with the aura briefly increases her movement speed boost along with the aura’s duration.

Power Chord – Song of Celerity’s Power Chord briefly slows the target’s movement speed.
R: Crescendo

Passive: Crescendo passively empowers each of Sona’s auras, giving Hymn of Valor increased damage, Aria of Perseverance an increased shield, and Song of Celerity increased movement speed.

Active: Sona fires out an irresistible chord in a broad straight-line skillshot. Enemies caught by the chord take damage and are briefly forced to dance.

Laning

From the start of the game, Sona works best operating close to her allies. Here her auras help them trade effectively, with Hymn of Valor boosting her marksman’s attacks while empowering her own poke. Aria of Perseverance heals more on low health friends, so while topping off an ally’s health is relatively inefficient (particularly with its high mana cost and low base values), saving her heal for later in fights grants markedly more health and makes baiting all the more effective. Power Chord offers some tactical options, too: Aria of Perseverance’s Power Chord effectively reduces the enemy marksman’s attacks when timed correctly, while Sona can chase down fleeing enemies or escape from ganking junglers with the slow from Song of Celerity’s Power Chord.

Teamfights

In teamfights, the smaller auras encourage Sona to stay mobile enough to heal, shield and empower her allies as needed. Song of Celerity gives her plenty of movement speed, and tagging allies with the edge of her aura gives them the same buff while extending the duration of her own. And while she previously relied on flash to position for her ult, her new E’s sudden surge of mobility is significant enough to get Sona into position to use Crescendo, which is just as potent and game-changing as before. Once it’s been cast, Sona works best healing and shielding her squishier allies with Aria of Perseverance while using Hymn of Valor to amp up her allies’ damage.

Champion Insights

Sona, designed by Fearless

So, let’s get to the why part!

Essentially, we took Sona to the update board because we saw a unique opportunity to make her more rewarding and more fun. She wasn’t terribly strong or weak, but her kit clearly lacked high moments and overall satisfaction. We wanted to keep her theme as it was and retain her awesome Crescendo while giving her basic abilities a more visible and tangible impact. Oh, and if we could sneak in some fancy texture updates in the process (and we could!), then all the better.

So what’s changed? Well, Sona’s gameplay now revolves more around moments of power. Instead of hanging back and winning a war of attrition during laning, Sona’s now got the kit to power up her allies and save their lives when a fight turns against them. Auras are smaller and more visible now, so getting the most of them requires great positional awareness for Sona and coordination with her allies. This allows us to reward great play with much more impact for each of her songs. You’ll be able to make plays as Sona, earn your team kills and save lives with clutch ability casts and smart positioning. At the same time, the enemy team has larger windows to fight back in thanks to her longer cooldowns, adding in clarity and counterplay to Sona’s kit. We can't wait to see what players can do with her update.

That’s about it for this update! Give the new Sona a spin and let us know your thoughts below! We’ll be back with more news from the champion update team soon. It’ll be bananas.

1,588 Comments

Ramona VanceJul 29, 2014611 votes

Meanwhile, Sion silently waited, knowing his time was imminent.

TheGutlessJul 29, 2014336 votes

Meanwhile, Urgot sits in the shadows...waiting in his endless torment.

EVOLV3DJul 29, 2014109 votes

Yeah. Somebody URGOT to rework that one.

GírthquakeJul 29, 2014443 votes

2/10 an effort was made

SkullsageJul 29, 2014222 votes

I dont see a difference LeeSin

2 ez 4 meJul 29, 2014209 votes

Zilean "All in good time."

ZoragJul 29, 201471 votes

Zilean Time flies like an arrow, Fruit flies like a banana

Soraka They never expect the Banana

RunesaelJul 29, 2014315 votes

The texture updates are nice and much needed.

Did you guys buff her health/resistances to account for the fact that the Sona player is now going to have to stay VERY close to the action due to the reduced range of her auras. She was extremely squishy to begin with and hanging back during laning phase kept her safe, while allowing her to stand in the back and empower her allies. Now she has to pretty much piggyback on her team-mates to take advantage of the shield/buffs.

Now it seems she has to play like a Braum or a Leona in terms of positioning, but now it'll be extremely easy to burst her down unless her base HP / HP gains per level and resistances are buffed as well.

Sona isn't very mobile - never has been, even with Swifty/Mobis. Unless there's been a massive increase to her mobility (say on the level of pre-nerf Janna), she's just going to be relegated into a role of dying very, very quickly in team fights if she gets bogged down for even half a second.

The shield does make Ardent Censer a good item for her though, so I'm wondering if that was part of integrating the item into gameplay, along with Soraka/Karma/Janna shields and heals. I like the idea of AP healer/caster supports being more viable, but due to the influx of the current bruiser meta, I'm still thinking Sona's going to have a hard time staying viable.

tl;dr: Hope you buffed her health/resistances as well movement speed because the new positioning demands she be in the middle of everything at all times, giving the enemy an excuse to burst her down very quickly.

MooseChangerPatJul 29, 2014238 votes

This was one of my biggest concerns with Sona. Sona is the character I've been maining since almost the very beginning, so any changes to her make me very nervous. However, shortening her ranges is something that scares me quite a bit, because that was one of the few ways I know I've been able to stay alive well with Sona. Also it looks to me a lot like Sona's moves no longer have any form of passive whatsoever, which in my opinion looks a lot more like a nerf than a boost. They maybe made Sona more user friendly for certain types of players, but it looks to me like they've made her much less useful for people who have been using Sona.

I really hope I'm wrong.

EverisJul 29, 2014188 votes

I main Sona as well and agree 100 percent with your concerns. This seems like a huge nerf to me.

SALTA5000Jul 29, 2014125 votes

I agree, the CONSTANT passive aura seemed much better than the 1 or 2 second BRIEF aura now.

PsyfireJul 29, 201491 votes

Yup, I agree. In playing the champion, I noticed she gets hammered to death instantly before much is done now. The comment of "Essentially, we took Sona to the update board because we saw a unique opportunity to make her more rewarding and more fun" does not hold true.......

TigerclownJul 29, 2014250 votes

Sona Guys stay in my aura it will buff us! Amumu Thx for grouping!

Luffy D MonkeyJul 29, 2014111 votes

aoe team: "they are grouped up ! Go In NOW!!!!!"

HarmoniousChoirJul 29, 2014209 votes

Awesome. On the PBE forums, there are LOADS of requests to make her more viable, yet none of them got answered. 9/10 of the people (including myself) who played Sona on the PBE with her new update did not like it and voiced that opinion to Riot.

Of course they ignored us though.

Eiko CarolJul 29, 201488 votes

I hope once they release her on live and everyone sees that she's anti-fun to play as and with, that they will reconsider their choices with the rework. they chose to ignore us, we say we need lower cooldowns they give her higher cooldowns, we say her aura range is too small they buff it to 350 from 300.. I'm very disappointed with this rework... It felt like the community had no input on her rework.

Cloudy HeavensJul 29, 201476 votes

That's because the community DIDN'T have input on her rework. Fearless took a very conservative approach to her, completely ignoring any naysayers and pushing it through anyways.

Eiko CarolJul 29, 201491 votes

It was insanely frustrating because I was reading through the PBE threads and I saw a TON of great ideas coming from other testers to help her out with her tiny aura ranges. One of those was someone giving the idea that once an ally was "tagged" that they get a little aura range buff that they can pass to others kinda like they were "humming" the tune. I would help her aura ranges and allow her team more room to get into their own position rather than sitting on Sona.

Here's the post. http://boards.pbe.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/champions-gameplay-feedback/IKLBqEoH-idea-for-helping-sonas-aura-range

I was fairly disappointed in Riot's response to the thread.

Dead DinosaurJul 29, 2014185 votes

I personally feel this update is completely unnecessary. Riot says Sona will now be more focused around "moments of power", but there are plenty of champions who do this already, and much more effectively (Looking at you Thresh, Leona, Braum). The so called "war of attrition" was what made sona in my opinion, a niche support. Sure there are other champions with shields and heals, but comparatively, sona's heal is much lower than any of them, in addition to lower scaling. the constant, small heal was what made her so effective vs poke lanes, something we're seeing more of, even at higher elos. her kit now requires more positioning and coordination with your allies, but from what I've seen in the videos you have to be nearly hugging your lane partner to get any extra benefit out of her skills. any decent player will be able to land a some hard cc on either Sona or her carry while they're trying to get the extra buffs, and easily snowball the lane, since Sona and marksmen (happy riot?) in general are so squishy. from what I'm seeing now with the kit change and increased cooldowns, there is no reason to play Sona, since she's basically a very bad Nami. Hard cc ult? Nami has that with longer range. Healing for teammates? Nami has that, with the added bonus of damage or healing herself. Magic buff to auto attacks? Nami has that, and it slows. Speeding up teammates? Hey! That's Nami's Passive! Not to mention damage and cc with her Q. I know one voice won't make a difference, but this kit change won't help Sona, it will just put her into the pool of champs that only a few players will bother to pick.

Honeybadger2198Jul 29, 2014182 votes

RIP Sona players "opens up room for counterplay" meaning any support with any sort of AoE now can hit both the ADC and Sona! Alistar, Leona, Thresh, Nami, Braum, Gragas, Karma, Morgana, and Zyra all thank you Rito!

Simon DominicJul 29, 2014116 votes

Opens up room for counterplay is more like makes her completely useless against the majority of support champs.

InteractJul 29, 2014178 votes

Lol Sona "won't have to flash with her new movement speed passive to get a good crescendo off"

Riot:Shows sona flashing to get crescendo off in the teamfight video. never played sona but i thought that was funny

JeronimoJul 29, 201441 votes

Riot logic in a nutshell.

ZetaphremJul 29, 2014161 votes

Wow, so she's actually being pushed live...despite all the complaints...

Let's count all the patch rotations it takes to get her fixed 'cause you know the current suggestions "do not match our direction for the champion and our play tests suggest you are all wrong anyways."

Blind MinionJul 29, 201414 votes

Most of the time the community is wrong; the masses are generally uneducated on the majority of everything worth knowing (you can quote me on that). The attempt will define strengths and weaknesses and definitely make her weaker for the majority of players (probably this patch at least); but hopefully this will give her a better skill cap/curve meaning the good players will use her more effectively (while bad players can't just spam abilities in ARAM to win).

MartyrofsandJul 29, 2014155 votes

Except ARAM is irrelevant and on Summoners Rift right now she has one of the higher skillcaps for supports if only for that fact that if any of the standard supports, Braum/Thresh/Leona/Morgana/Zyra/Annie/Nami/etc etc land ANY of their CC on her with a semi-competent ADC she is dead 100% of the time. She has zero room for error on live and with this garbage rework she will not only continue to have zero room for error she will have to take significantly higher risks to see any real results.

This rework is pathetic and that riot has refused to listen to so many player complaints about it is even worse. They sure as hell didn't give a damn about all this "our vision" bullshit when Lee Sin mains bitched and moan about his reworks but here is Sona getting one hell of a double standard, and effectively being deleted.

What is the worst of all? Riot clearly doesn't have a damn clue how to play Sona if they really believe this "hanging back and winning a war of attrition during laning" bullshit they are currently trying to feed in this post. Any Sona worth a grain a salt establishes lane dominance very early with her poke and harass constantly walking on eggshells to do so knowing full well one mistake and she just lost her team bot lane. This one statement alone is proof riot doesn't have a clue about how Sona is play now, and this rework is further proof they don't understand what make Sona, Sona.

Baka S0rakaJul 29, 2014127 votes

RIP Sona . I'll miss you. She's getting olaf'd.

The Corn KingJul 29, 2014126 votes

i've never felt strongly enough to post until now. Apparently my constant poking in lane phase was passive so they decided to decrease the range of nearly everything so that poking is now more or less a suicide mission. not to mention the increased cooldowns will make poking less rewarding as you can't keep their health down as effectively. Riot specifically says "She wasn’t terribly strong or weak, but her kit clearly lacked high moments and overall satisfaction." theres an old saying that goes something like "DONT FIX WHAT AIN'T BROKE"

As a sona player who enjoyed the moments of saving team members thru walls with heals and speed boosts or chunking a soft champion to half health with q-power-chord-lichbane combo.... I disagree with the assertion that her kit lacked high moments.

why can't you fix what is broke, like the commonly accepted underpowered or overpowered champions of which there are many?

TadidamJul 29, 201475 votes

I completely agree. They pretty much ruined a perfectly nice and balanced character. As someone who mained her for a while I feel extremely disappointed by those changes.

DreamingOf PeaceJul 29, 2014114 votes

RIP Sona

DarkestPhoenixJul 29, 2014113 votes

This. Is. Awful. What the heck, guys? Who did you give this to? He mauled it, whoever it was. Thanks for nothing. My favorite champ is now just a paperweight that I own all of the skins for.

GRIZLEDORFJul 29, 2014106 votes

wtf why...

SkernanJul 29, 2014102 votes

Why are you making one of the squishiest champions in the game move up to the front lines? Sona is VERY rewarding to play as is. Her ult locks down entire team fights, she can single out high priority targets, and she can be played as an AP Carry if worse comes to worse.

Her win and pick rates WILL plummet and never recover.

thunderingechoJul 29, 201494 votes

as one the sona players whose developed her over the years this feels like a major debuff to a champ that was more tactical of a play style. Smaller auras put her closer to fight when up against someone like blitz thresh leona morg lux naut nunu amu trist and ali is not a good thing

FeralTantoJul 29, 201490 votes

Yeah... I feel this is gonna be terrible... RIP Sona :\

KaledainJul 29, 201488 votes

"a champion whose kit made her one of the most passive champs on the Rift... outside of her game-changing ultimate"

.... So.... I was playing Sona wrong when I went full AP before.... huh.. :S

MalzawhoreJul 29, 201461 votes

Sona item 3100

Tactical WeebJul 29, 2014106 votes

The patented "Lich Bane Bitch Lane" XD

Ace McYordlesnapJul 29, 201474 votes

Rito wants agressive supports, but they don't want them to actually do any damage without their teammates having excellent follow up. So they nerfed AP sona. They then wanted supports to be able to buy AP items, but not do damage either. So they nerfed AP sona. They then complain that sona is too passive. (The second most agressive support [that's actually tagged as a support] in the game imho). What else can they do? I just don't think rito likes us playing champions in ways they didn't anticipate.

OxxMegadetHxxOJul 29, 201478 votes

Well this sucks.

TadidamJul 29, 201478 votes

I think this rework is very bad. So now Sona has no longer auras, just short aoe buffs and she just feels like a different champion, much weaker overall. What pisses me off the most is that she was a perfectly fine and well balanced champion before riot had to ruin her. Very disappointing.

bad vibes forevrJul 29, 201456 votes

i dont play sona nor have i tried her yet but she already is squishy i dont know if a smaller aura would be that great on her

LyraphixJul 30, 201450 votes

Overall the gameplay videos are showing an unreal and idealistic view of what Sona's new update is going to do to her. In the video of the teamfight, Sona isn't hit once, which she obviously would be if the Gragas they were playing against wasn't staging the teamfight to highlight Sona. They won't show us Sona being melted in a second because she now has to stay on top of her team. They won't show us the times in which Sona's new q bonus is completely wasted on minions and wards (Yes, it procs on wards.) They don't even show us the pathetically small amount of damage she does for an even higher risk now that she has to stick to her adc and get a combo off.

In general, this rework is terrible. The reason Sona had no high moments of gameplay was because she was too squishy to make plays, and the amount of risk outweighed the reward. Now the risk is even higher, and the reward feels lower. She needs higher ratios, especially on her q, and diminishing her power chords value in exchange for an additional 20-30 damage with her q feels pathetic. I'm not going to go into what they did to her cooldowns either, but it's suffice to say I disagree.

After the rework, I expect there to be a high rise in Sona popularity for a few days, until people realize she's less fun and less rewarding than before, after which we will wait months for her to be brought back out of the deadpool zone. If the changes in their current form make it to live, I'd be very disapointed, as this is making an already fairly weak champion completely unviable. I wish Riot would read these comments and see the general dissent towards these new changes, and realize she needed stronger ratios (Nami anyone?) and a better e (similar to Karma's, which is infinitely better, offering both a targetable shield and a movement boost.)

In the end, I hope Riot is able to react to our disapproval and either rework the rework, or just leave a fairly fun champion alone .

LeagueOfNoobsxJul 29, 201417 votes

First Gnar... Now revamped Sona?! HELL YA, WHATS NEXT?!? :DDD

ThogdoreJul 29, 201491 votes

Next they will add a new champion called Yorick. They already have his splash art done! Yorick Really excited for him! Heard he'll be hard to counter.

DualTwinJul 29, 201415 votes

Hmm havent heard of a Yorick.....

SilberbaerJul 29, 201469 votes

I knew him, Horatio. A man of infinite jest.

WezzJul 29, 201437 votes

"You will remember yorick mori"

He lied

FerezillaJul 29, 20146 votes

Cool, Sona is even more OP now. Good job riot balance team.

Baka S0rakaJul 29, 2014170 votes

Quite the opposite. This is a nerf pretty much. Longer cooldowns, reduced damage, more mana costs, no more perma auras, and reduced range on these mini auras.