Sona Rework Pitch
Rework https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3NMdiRNmUaPdThoazBIdld3QnM
Number Tests https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3NMdiRNmUaPd1JWRjMyMjhoZ28
Incoming Wall of Text
Problems With the PBE Rework
I admire that ricklessabandon is taking a stab at reworking her but I feel his approach doesn't really address her problems. One of the biggest problems is that while letting her ultimate affect the scaling of a champion's abilities isn't a bad concept, it only creates scaling problems for a champion who will often be the lowest level in a game.
Giving Sona massive CDR will only serve to make her more of a mindless spam champion mid-late game rather than making her abilities have more potent tactical uses. The novelty of spamming abilities constantly will be fun but it's very prone to becoming repetitive very quickly especially when Sona's individual abilities aren't very powerful. The rework also doesn't address the issue of Sona's low utility floor that forces her to snowball lane or feel useless when behind.
Being an animation major myself I can tell ricklessabandon is most likely working with limited resources and I admire when people try to do that. It's obvious that he probably isn't working with a VFX artist or particle animator to give new visually interesting effects to Sona's spells. For this reason I can't be too critical of ricklessabandon's approach.
Why This Direction
Sona is a champion who is very problematic to balance since the power of her abilities is spread between 3 different things: the ability, power chord, and the aura. This puts her in a state where her abilities feel very weak and give her an extremely low utility floor. Combined with her item dependency this leaves Sona in a terrible position as a support.
Admittedly this direction is somewhat drastic as it removes the current incarnation of Sona's auras to put more power back into other parts of her abilities. Instead of trying to make Sona an aura support, which by design has issues with invisible power that Riot greatly dislikes I instead focused on making her a "sound mage". You will also notice that with this rework I did make it so Sona could viably go mid lane since I believe that compared to someone like Lulu she doesn't have the traits that would make her oppressive. People will try it anyway and it's boring to have a champion so rigidly confined to one role.
This is most prevalent with her Hymn of Valor and some Sona players will accuse me of blasphemy for making it a skillshot but it really is the only way for the ability to actually receive higher numbers since the only counterplay is Sona mis-positioning. But now her Q has a small BB gun effect (pew-pew!) that also lets Sona actually check brushes safely before warding since she can bounce it off walls and use it like sonar to see if anyone is hiding there. As 3 shots it also shifts Sona's damage output to be more sustained and rewards mechanics instead of beating her opponent over the head with numbers.
Aria of Perseverance lost some range but the healing is now worth it compared to the high mana cost. It also retains an aura effect but in a unique way that gives a nod to Sona's current incarnation while also giving good utility to the ability. The ability now focuses on rewarding timing over just spamming it when need be. The aura won't scale so Sona doesn't have to have spread her power thinner but still gives her a solid utility floor on the ability.
Song of Celerity was tricky but the way if functions helps Sona keep up with the massive amount of mobility present in the game and gives her a way to peel for teammates outside of her ultimate. The bonus movespeed is another nod to the auras and also increases the utility of the ability without stretching the power to make is scale with AP. The intent with the ability is to force a choice on the opponent but still keep it in Sona's favor and give her a soft play-making tool. Allowing it to damage minions also lets mid Sona waveclear better.
Crescendo was a case of don't fix what isn't broken. The AP ratio went up a little bit but I personally didn't see that as harmful to the game. Since Sona no longer has constant auras the passive was removed and only served to hurt her in the first place. In the worst case scenario with this kit it maybe would need to travel a little slower but not by a huge amount.
Conclusion
So that is just what I came up with for reworking Sona to put her in a state where she feels good to play. Feel free to give feedback on this. Don't worry if you don't have any feedback you can think of, a simple upvote is enough if you approve. If a Rioter comments that would be great but I don't expect it.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that this isn't intended to be a visual asset intensive rework.
