(Champion Rework Concept) Sona

Sona is probably one of the more iconic champions in the league of legends, and often times considered one of the better supports for new players to start out with due to the simplicity of her kit. However, there are two massive issues that prevent Sona from truly being a more viable support when she isn't practically abusive (Thunderlords damage is a strong example of this, because it makes her already strong poke in lane even more annoying). These are relatively simple issues really, being the lack of input required to do basically everything but use her ultimate (which leads to players feeling Sona is not a very rewarding champion to play since often times you don't get as much feedback in game to your actions) and her extremely low risk and reliable poke as a support (fairly long range, can't miss).

So how do you go about fixing this? Well, first you have to analyze Sona as a champion and look at her identity and thematics, how her kit works, and what design goals are in mind from Riot. Her identity and theme are both simple, a silent and fragile musician who supports her allies passively by playing music and actively by casting, a classic example of a Bard. Therefor, it is clear that Sona needs to have both passive aura type effects of moderate power, while simultaneously having active components of equally moderate power. How does Sona do this now? Each of Sona's skills has a passive portion while also having an active portion, and at the same time her passive ability lets her next auto attack after 3 casts do extra magic damage and gain an effect depending on the most recently used of her basic abilities.

1. Sona's passive, Power Chord, lets Sona's next auto attack after casting 3 BASIC ABILITIES (her ultimate does not count) deal magic damage that scales slightly with AP and with champion level. Power Chord gains an effect based on the last Basic Ability used.
2. Her Q gives allies and herself bonus magic damage on their next auto attack within 3 seconds, while damaging the 2 nearest enemies prioritizing champions, and making Power Chord deal 40% extra magic damage.
3. Her W heals herself and the most wounded ally within its range, and causes Power Chord to reduce the enemy targeted's damage output by 20% with slight scaling, making it a sort of mini-exhaust, and also gives a shield to all champions within the aura.
4. Her E boosts her a movement speed boost that decays down to the bonus movement speed it gives to all nearby allies as an aura. The Power Chord for this ability slows her targets movement speed by 40%.
5. Her R, or ultimate, passively increases the aura effects of each of her abilities aura's, and has an active that stuns all targets hit in a rather large cone for 1.5 seconds and deals moderate base damage with low scaling. However, this ability has a slow projectile speed meaning even if every enemy champion is hit, some may be able to move even if their allies are still stunned. Furthermore, this ability does NOT interrupt channels for whatever reason.

Now that each ability is outlined, we have to look at how this compares to her identity and theme. Each ability has a musical name for certain, but the only real tie to music that can be seen is the idea of "boosting morale" that lies in the very short (3-5 seconds) duration auras that her abilities have. The short duration alone ruin the thematic ties of the aura, as a musician would not play a song for only 5 seconds, that doesn't make any sense. As such, Sona had a much stronger theme as a musician when all of her auras lasted until she chose to cast another basic ability. At the same time, the radius of her Aura's implies that her music cannot be heard beyond that point, which makes as little if not less sense. While her passive ties in to the active and passive effects idea, it takes power away from her other abilities and has very little interaction, one of the reasons players often feel Sona is unrewarding. Her ult, while in game can be fairly silly watching people dance for 1.5 seconds, actually does make sense as it currently is.

So the issues? Lack of required input and interaction, low risk high reward play style when positioned effectively, a passive that while does fit into the passive/active idea, takes power away from her abilities and emphasizes her low input play style. Often times players say that Sona, even when played perfectly, feels extremely unrewarding. So why would that be? Simple, because it is. The low input required to play Sona effectively makes the difference between a Sona player with 100+ games and someone picking up Sona for the first time negligible. So how does this get fixed? Simple, increased risk and interaction required, but higher reward for making "The Plays". So. On to the actual rework.

Passive: Crescendo As Sona plays her songs, her music increases in volume and effect. After each cast of a basic ability, her next basic ability gains increased Chord and Melody effects. Each of Sona's abilities are played as a Chord which are active, and a Melody which is a sustained passive effect that lasts until she plays a new Chord. Sona's ultimate does benefit from Crescendo, gaining increased stun duration, but does not have a passive melody effect and will fully reset the crescendo counter. Each of Sona's basic abilities scale with a different percentage and on different individual effects. This works as such: Q has no bonus, W has lets say 50% bonus, E has 100% bonus. Sona's ultimate does not have a melody, and as such does not have a crescendo bonus to its Melody (wasting what could be a useful bonus). This passive gives Sona many more choices and requires much more input from the player for maximum effectiveness, and should make successful play of Sona far more rewarding. Because of the Identity and Theme that Sona has, each ability will seem inherently overloaded and are heavily subject to change. This is an issue with Sona as she currently is as well, but hopefully the changes here will alleviate how this issue is affected by the lack of input required to gain these effects.

Q: Chord of Dissonance/Melody of Discord This ability was by far the hardest to design, because of the way Sona's Q currently works and wanting to keep some of its reliability in place. So, first up the active Chord. Sona plays a strong destructive Chord, sending a wave of sound forward (similar shape to ultimate but with a thinner hitbox and longer range), damaging and slowing enemy champions (passes through minions similar to Ezreal W). Damage: 70/100/130/160/200 (+30% AP) (obviously subject to change), Slow: 20/25/30/35/40% that decays over the duration (also subject to change). Duration: 2s. Crescendo increases the damage dealt by 15/30%, and increases the slow duration by 50/100% (up to 3/4 seconds). Melody of Discord increases Auto Attack Damage of allies by 10%, and adds 10/20/30/40/50 (+30%) magic damage on hit to all allies (Sona does not benefit from this effect). The 10% Auto Damage does not increase the champions AD, and as such does not increase ability damage. Crescendo changes the Auto Attack Damage modifier to 15/20%. This ability is designed with offense in mind. When used without Crescendo, this ability can be strong for defensively supporting the ADC, poking and slowing enemies to prevent/slow enemy engages and passively making last hitting easier for your ADC. Range of Chord is not yet established, but somewhere between 700-900 is likely where it will start with. Cooldown: 15/13/11/9/7. Mana Cost: 60/70/80/90/100

W: Chord of Harmony/Melody of Protection Sona heals all nearby allies for 30/50/70/90/110 (+20% AP). Furthermore, Sona can choose one target who recieves an additional 5% healing per ally healed by Chord of Harmony. If no ally is targeted, this ability automatically selects the target with the lowest % of health remaining. Crescendo boosts the healing by 15/30%. Melody of Protection: Every 5 seconds while Melody of Protection is active, allies near Sona gain a shield equal to 30/50/70/90/110 (+20% AP) (+5/6/7/8/9% Max HP). This shield persists for 5 seconds after leaving the aura, and any target who enters the aura between the shielding times (between the 5 seconds) will instantly receive the shield. The shield does not stack with itself. The shield scales with Sona's AP and the target's Max HP. The active range of Chord of Harmony is rather small (a bit smaller than Crowstorm radius). Cooldown: 15/13/11/9/7. Mana Cost: 60/70/80/90/100. This spell retains both its shielding effect and its ability to heal allies. Without increased input, this will your teammates with the lowest % of remaining health, however that is not always the best target and as such you can choose who the increased healing (which is based off of the concept of Harmony by the way if you didn't get that) goes to.

E: Ritenuto Chord/Accelerando Melody The naming of this one was hard, because I wanted to keep the theme of using musical terminology in all of her abilities, but at the same time felt Ritardando would be taken badly by the rather immature community that League of Legends has. Therefor, I chose the term Ritenuto, which means a sudden and very temporary decrease in tempo. Ritenuto Chord interrupts and slows all nearby enemies by 20/30/40/50/60% for 3 seconds, decaying over the duration. Furthermore, all allies within the radius of Ritenuto Chord have slowing effects removed (does not grant any immunities, allies can still be slowed immediately afterwards). Accelerando Melody: Allies gain 10(flat)+5/10/15/20/30%(bonus) movement speed when running away from enemies, as well as a constant 10/15/20/25/30% attack speed bonus. Crescendo increases the slow duration to 4/5 seconds and increases the flat movement speed while running away from champions to 20/30. Cooldown: 15/13/11/9/7. Mana Cost: 60/70/80/90/100 This ability is a power disengage ability as well as a strong aura for your ADC, making it one of the toughest abilities to use correctly for each individual situation.

R: Jarring Cadence Completely unchanged except for a few small modifications. Crescendo increases the stun duration to 2/2.5 seconds, but this ability has no Melody portion. After casting Jarring Cadence, any Melody currently activated ends, and regardless of which Crescendo bonus this ability gives, Crescendo will be reset to 0 anyway (just as the cadence of a song is generally its end). Additionally, this ability stuns enemies without the whole "dancing" part involved.

So, thats the concept. Obviosly each ability looks extremely overloaded at first glance, but there are good reasons for this. As you can clearly see, at rank 1 each ability has a massive cooldown and a fairly hefty mana cost. Each ability also has several different uses and clear benefits for using Sona's crescendo on them. Jarring Cadence is especially emphasized, because it will use up crescendo but will not also give Crescendo. This allows proper playing and setup to make Sona extremely powerful, but without fast thinking and skilled decision making, a Sona can be easily caught off guard and rendered in effective. Sona's cooldowns and mana costs scale in such a way that no matter what she will be punished for making mistakes. Early on this is because if she uses the wrong ability at the wrong time, she has to wait a long time to get that melody back up or to play that chord. Late game, this means that a Sona who makes many bad decisions in a row will find herself running out of mana quite fast. So while the payoff for making good decisions and activating the correct abilities at the right time is very large, so is the punishment for screwing up.

Please comment! :D

*Edit: For the sake of clarity, using the same ability twice in a row will NOT give her a Crescendo bonus. However, you CAN do something along the lines of Q-W-Q to gain a full Crescendo effect.

*Edit 2: Also for clarity, the Crescendo bonuses will be referred to as Forte and Fortissimo, and an ability with no bonus will be Mezzo Forte. For the above, it would be Mezzo Forte Q, Forte W, Fortissimo Q. However, you could not go Mezzo Forte Q, Forte Q, Fortissimo Q. It would stay at the Mezzo Forte effect.