This concept post is going to be a lot more experimental with more trial and error than you are used to. Overall points:

• Sona is just kind of a bland, boring, and has no skill expression type of champion. Think about it, Sona presses button, ability does its thing. There is no room for the player to express their own personal play style to the champion so after 1 or 2 games with Sona, you mastered her, which makes most players bored of the champion pretty quickly.

• What about playing against Sona? Aside from very minour game health issues, Sona does not really have much issues that is super frustrating to go against. So this post will be mainly focused on making Sona more interesting to play as and for longer, also known as making her more fun to play as.

• What do I want to accomplish? The overall goal I want to create for Sona, and this will take some time to get right just on paper, is have the player playing songs. These songs, when played well, will bring your team to victory, but when played poorly, will hear the sour note of defeat.

• How to accomplish this? Need feedback and fresh ideas for aid. There are multiple ways to go about it and the issue is keeping in mind Sona's need to be easy to pick up and play still, while leaving room for skill expression for players can make playing Sona their own champion and be invested into the champion hundreds of games later.

• One tactic could be not having auras or an ultimate or normal abilities, instead each ability is a note which will modify and change the spell that will be cast, for example if you want more damage you use the damage notes, more healing then more healing notes, more crowd control duration then more crowd control notes, etc. and everything goes on the same cooldown once the spell is cast, with the spell always just being a simple area effect around Sona. This would allow simple to play and have skill expression at the same time since the player needs to choose the right notes for the right situation.

• Another tactic could be playing off the auras more and forgoing spells entirely and the auras of lingering songs can blend together, up to two songs, with the first or second song being massively amplified. This idea may just result in the same problems she currently has however.

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Attack Range: 600 units Movement: 340 units per second Attack Speed: 0.645 +2.5% per level Attack Damage: Low

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NOTE: No mana required. I feel like this concept has enough restricting elements in place that mana as an additional resource should not be needed.

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NOTE: Dance is a new crowd control being introduced here, think of it more like a charm or fear than a stun. They dance around in a circle in a small area, deciding between clockwise or counter-clockwise is based on what direction the enemy was facing and always moving toward Sona at first. The circle radius is tiny at roughly 150 units, maybe larger, with the targets walking along the outside.

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NOTE: Sona has a resource bar indicating the amount of notes to be played before she plays her song. Perfect notes will not increase this metre further, indicating that on the 3rd note readied, she is ready to play her song on the next imperfect note (perfect notes being there to make the song more potent with skillful play). This is a rhythm game champion concept!

NOTE: Each note is colour coordinated and will show up on the resource bar as well. Thinking Q will be blue, W will be green, E will be purple / pink, and R will be yellow and give clarity to the enemy of what the song contains. Also a secondary resource bar underneath the main one that indicates all of the Perfect Notes that are in the song as well.

NOTE: Static cooldowns are in play to help control their note usage, to play the notes they want to play, also helps stop potential abuse that could result without them.

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Perfect Metronome (Passive):

A pendulum is constantly swinging side to side below Sona, performing a note or basic attack while it is in the central one-third will perform a perfect note or perfect basic attack.

Perfect basic attacks deal 20 - 60 (+25%AP) bonus magic damage and reduce Song of War's cooldown by 1.5 seconds, 3 seconds against enemy champions and epic monsters. Sona's perfect basic attacks are instantaneous.

Perfect notes play on a separate track, adding to the song, but not counting toward the main song track, up to 2 perfect notes per song. Afterwards, perfect notes are treated the same as regular notes for the current composition.

Song of War: Sona does not have traditional abilities, instead she plays notes to change the song that will be played once the composition has been completed. Sona must play at minimum 4 notes to compose a song and then she plays it automatically around her, affecting applicable targets based on the notes that were played. Once a song is played, Sona cannot begin composing another song for 12 seconds [lowers with cooldown reduction].

Songs are played 600 range around Sona.

The last note played is held down for a weakened effect at 400 range around Sona, applying once every second. Only one note can be held down at a time. Perfect notes will double the current Held Note effect for 1 second.

Note of Valor (Q):

Static Cooldown: 0.1 second

Sona adds 20/30/40/50/60(+25%AP) magic damage to the Song of War and adds 5/7/9/11/13(+5%AP) bonus magic damage on hit for 5 seconds for allies.

Held Note: Deals 20/30/40/50/60(+25%AP) magic damage, cannot damage minions.

Note of Perseverance (W):

Static Cooldown: 0.1 second

Sona adds 15/20/25/30/35(+15%AP) healing to the Song of War and adds 18/26/34/42/50 increased range to it.

Held Note: Heals 5/10/15/20/25(+5%AP) health.

Note of Celerity (E):

Static Cooldown: 0.1 second

Sona adds 13/16/19/22/25%(+3% per 100AP) decaying movement speed over 2.5 seconds and 11/12/13/14/15%(+2% per 100AP) bonus attack speed for 5 seconds to the Song of War.

Held Note: Grants 4/5/6/7/8%(+1% per 100AP) bonus movement speed for 1 second.

Note of Crescendo (R):

Static Cooldown: 0.1 second

Sona adds an element of an irresistible tune that causes the Song of War to make enemies who hear it to harmlessly dance in a circle for 0.4/0.5/0.6 second (max 2.5/3/3.5 seconds).

Held Note: Slows by 20/30/40% for 1 second.

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UPDATE NOTES:

Perfect Metronome: Made rewording changes and tried to clean up the space slightly.

Removed double the current speed of the pendulum on successful perfect note / basic attack until failure resetting the speed. Removed failed perfect basic attacks at 4+ notes to perform the song. Perfect notes are now on a separate track that is capped at 2 per song. After this limit, the notes act like regular notes for adding to the song to perform it.

Performing a perfect note (both on cooldown and after the 2 perfect note limit, so at any time) will now double the effect of the current held note for 1 second. Held note radius lowered to 400 from 450 units.

Note of Crescendo: Held Note slow decreased to 20/30/40% from 20/35/50%

(To account for double the slow with Perfect Held Notes.)

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NOTES: This is to restrict well played Sona gameplay so that the player is rewarded for playing well, but is not over rewarded for playing extremely well and make a more consistent experience. I am fine with rewarding players for doing well, but there should be a cap to how much reward you can get out of it.

Perfect held notes makes the held notes have more interesting gameplay to them rather than the decision of deciding what effect you want out at the time, have some kind of real gameplay to them as well than just aura-effects.

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