[Champion] Sona - Page 4

So the problem with W is that "not really". It is her strongest protection in a team fight but its actually kinda weak compared to

A) Single target on demand CC
B) Almost every shield in the game.
C) Every combination of the two in quick succession

The ADC with the highest base HP at level 18 in the game is Miss Fortune with 1965. In order for a 20% damage reduction to be better than a shield on Miss Fortune the raw amount of the shield has to be 491.25 no damage can be dealt by the power chorded champion before the power chord hits and no other champion can deal any damage to the carry. This number increases as the champion builds health and decreases down to 454 for carries with lower health such as Ashe [Ezreal has lower base but we can expect 250 from triforce putting him around MF's numbers]

And that is just the shield/healing combinations. Whereas we would have to discount the rest of the other champions kits effect on the peel. Which Sona will not have because she needs to wait for another powerchord. Even counting Sona being able to powerchord W two enemy divers before they get any damage off on the amount of raw peel from other supports far exceeds Sona's protection even if we up the base HP of the ADC to 2700 on account of Randuin's Omen [diminishing the relative effect of shields/heals but increasing the relative effect of damage reduction].

E.G. Janna, not counting her Q, W or the knockback on her ult or any AP scaling has at level 11/13 [depending on what you max] between 600 and 720 effective healing for your ADC[if we don't assume full channel we also have to assume someone is splitting DPS and/or CC on Janna rather than the ADC which is also effective HP for your ADC]. Assuming your ADC is level 18 and has Randuins this is as much effective protection than the entirety of Sona's kit provides under the absolute best of circumstances[about ~800 effective protection]. Assuming your ADC is 2 levels above you and doesn't have a 700 HP defensive item this far outstrips even the best case scenario for Sona[about 500 effective whereas the Janna/lulu/Fids/etc peel is more or less unchanged]. Every support[Caveat: that is actually played] protects better and more often.

I am not discounting the hidden power of her aura's, its just that they really aren't that strong and definitely get weaker as the game goes on. They're very powerful early when base champion stats are low and people do not have many items to make them stronger. But as the game goes on the gold value of those aura's while staying the same in raw terms, is relatively less important compared to the value of the kit of the support itself. This is because the value of CC is magnified by the power of the champion that is CC'd and the power of the champions attacking the CC'd champion. But the value of raw stats is less valuable when its 62k to 60k and champions have 12k value of base stats apiece than when its 14k to 12k and champions have 7k value of base stats. At 10/12k Sona's bonus AD/MR/MS may turn the tide in a fight. At 60k they're a drop in the bucket.

The problem with Sona's lategame is not that an AoE stun is weak. Its that every support[that is actually picked] has some kind of AoE CC with the exception of those who have absolutely stupid amounts of single target CC. Sona's AoE CC is not particularly strong compared to them. The reasons for this are twofold

1) Sona has to be very close to the enemy team to use it. Champions like J4, Renekton, and well any other tank can effectively force Sona to blow her ult on a single champion by staying between the bulk of their team and Sona. If Sona can flash ult wombo combo in a position where the rest of her team can follow up she can be effective[See Game 2 of the finals where a flash ult catches out Ezreal and turns the game though the game was eventually lost]. But so can Annie and Zyra and to a lesser extent Janna [because she has to get closer to split a team and because its not really a wombo/combo and because you're probably gonna die], Fiddlesticks [can't hit entire team with fear but can still pick a single person]. In addition because Sona is so squishy and because she has to stand in a position where she is vulnerable to CC in order to land her CC its very easy for her to get caught out and destroyed before she can ult effectively.

Good examples of this coming into play would be the most recent World Finals. Where even superb Sona play was unable to turn the games. In the entire series in general Sona has been wildly ineffective due to this reason; outside of Gambit's wins which did not hinge on support at all Sona[really their bottom lane in general was just there to be there, which is totally OK when their top/mid just kill everything] won one game by virtue of being Sona where a successful early push strategy was executed. The 6 games total games Sona won aside from the Gambit ones all had Sona as an ineffective presence in the lategame if it got there[These games were: Ozone v Gambit on the 19th, SKT vs TSM on the 20th, Ozone v Vulcan on the 21st, SKT vs OMG on the 21st, Royal v OMG in the quarters, Royal v Fanatic in the Semi's, Najin v SKT in the Semi's. Watch them and see if you think Sona was super effective.]. Another good example of this would be the NA finals between C9 and TSM where C9's team entirely zoned TSM out [the Karthus pick was terrible too] while still getting their full engage composition. Sona had no way to stop the engage and no way to start one on the enemy team. Because of this it was, effectively 4v5 at champion select largely because TSM did not pick a comp which would let Sona push and win early.


2) Sona's CC can be itemized against and is not particularly long. Whereas Annie gets a two 1.75 second instant cast AoE stuns in under 10 seconds[so if you cleanse the first one there is another one coming along] Sona gets one 1.5 second stun and then is done. Zyra's CC, Lulu's CC, Nami's CC, and Janna's CC is uncleansable and not effected by tenacity. Fiddlesticks fear lasts forever* and is on a short CD, Leona's AoE CC is on a 40% shorter cooldown and has a massive range which means fishing is much more effective[though I do agree she isn't a particularly strong support atm because she doesn't dominate lane as hard without a good snowball and can't push towers as hard without strong jungler coordination]


Note that I am not saying Sona is bad, i am saying that Sona falls off hard compared to other supports in the lategame and is best utilized to accelerate an early game victory. The comparative weakness of her ult lategame is one of the defining aspects of why. Just like any support Sona needs to be picked into a team which accentuates her advantages or against an enemy team where her kit counters it. Because there are so few champions which Sona hard counters [whereas there are entire compositions which other supports do] this means that Sona's primary advantage is accentuating her advantages.

And all her advantages come early game. She lanes like a beast, her early stats make taking towers and pushing easy, she pokes (and sustains) harder than any champion in the game. Her 2v2 is near unparallelled; being close enough to ult isn't as large of a deal if the only two people close enough to do anything are support and ADC. I.E. the two people you want to ult anyway.


*The effective peel on Fids' Q is up to about 4.5 seconds. If used after someone gap closes the amount of movement required to get back to the position of the carry [who is moving away from you] increases significantly due to potential movement in the opposite direction.

Janna and Nami are actually really different in lane and in team fights. In lane Janna is counter engage while Nami is poke/sustain/pick. In team fights they're both disengage champions, but Janna disengages against dive/assassin/dash's and Nami disengages against wombo combo's.


Janna is better against engage lanes because its much easier to disengage/counter engage with her Q than Nami's Q. Engages tend come in a line; stopping that with a bubble requires perfect timing; stopping that with a tornado requires standing slightly behind your ADC.

Nami is better against counter-engage and poke lanes because her W gives her some of the best sustain/poke in the game and her Q/E lets her fish for engagements without being in counter engage range. So long as the enemy lane isn't Leona/Thresh/Blitz(maybe) Nami has, unquestionably, the better lane phase[unless she doesn't know how to land Q's or zone with Q's].

In team fights Janna is better against divers/assassins because her shield is much stronger than Nami's Heal[in terms of amount, scaling, and due to itemization possibilities CD], her slow is much stronger as well[amount, duration, damage, and cooldown], her Q is easier to hit multiple targets with[especially if they're close], her ultimate has that super massive heal on it, and generally does a better job at disengaging if an enemy is very close to you or has a gap closer since it actively pushes champions away. An assassin that catches Nami's carry has a much easier time killing them than the assassin who catches Janna's [and they have a much easier time catching Nami's in general]. Only Lulu has comparable single target combined Healing/Shield/CC* but Lulu cannot interrupt dashes and Lulu cannot knock people away from the carry which are very important to keeping your carry alive. That is to say Janna is probably the strongest support in the game against assassins[exceptions being Syndra/Veigar and potentially Ahri where the knockback isn't as useful unless you're in the position to be assassinated... in which case you're probably already dead and they're disengaging]

Nami has better team wide disengage/engage because her ultimate can be used to stop the enemy front line from getting to your back line rather than waiting until they're on your carry. In addition because the slow increases in duration as you get to the end of the ultimate the enemy back line has an even harder time following up after their front goes in. A wombo combo team that catches Janna's team will wreck them because either Janna is in the wombo combo or she isn't close enough to ult the enemy team away and force the disengage. The best Janna can hope for against a wombo combo is that a full channel ult saves people from dying[and that she can continue to channel it as their team collapses]. A wombo combo team that catches Nami's team won't even be able to get their combo off because the tidal wave will at the very least zone the back line out from following up and nami can cast it from far enough in the back line that she isn't in danger of being wombo combo'd.

WRT: Thresh. Thresh's strength depends largely on whether or not the enemy team can be picked off. In a skirmish/pick game against a team that doesn't want to straight up fight you he is exceedingly strong late because he will be just tanky enough to not be blown up immediately while also able to force engages on isolated targets/bring reinforcements to the fight. If the enemy team doesn't want to do that and your team doesn't have the kind of all in wombo combo that can follow thresh into a fight, then he becomes much weaker.

*Janna, if she has AP actually has more single target healing/shield/cc against assassins because her abilities scale so hard. Lulu has the advantage that Wild Growth is instant[and not effected by ignite healing reduction], but a full channel of Janna's Monsoon has a full .9 AP scaling harder than Growth, making it a near 800 point AoE heal at full channel/rank and ~150 AP[roughly Morellonomicon and AP Runes]. And Janna's .3 better AP scaling on her shield is not inconsequential. Lulu's is also a much stronger lane bully and so the choice of Janna or lulu may come down to the lane you're playing against and the ability of your ADC to create distance between themselves and an assassin. [That is a dash or knockback can substitute for Janna's ultimate knockback, but if your ADC is Varus or Ashe or MF you probably want the knockback yourself.]

Last week, over all regions in Diamond. Janna had a 54.7% win rate(second highest win rate of any champion) and was present in 23.88% of all games(9th most popular). Almost as popular as Sona(8th overall 52.12% win rate) and Thresh(6th overall 47.29% win rate) and overall the third most picked support. Over the past month, Janna is the highest win rate champion in Diamond and the 7th most picked. [Monthly, Janna has the highest win rate of all champions until you hit bronze, weekly she has the highest win rate until you hit silver. Challenger is excepted because there are not enough games played in the division to get any kind of gauge until you get to Ashe/Fiddlesticks/Kassadin and even then its probably individual player preference over champion value. E.G veigar is currently at the top for weekly with a win rate of 75% (3 wins, 1 loss)]

I don't think she has fallen off at all; [in fact i think she is OP] if anything because peeling for your team has become much more important and because assassins prey on squishy targets and don't need an AoE CC from their support in order to make plays the prevalence of assassins should have hit Sona the hardest because laning well matters less if your ADC is dead and their ADC is alive.