Ive played with a sona before and lemme tell you if you get even 1 good set in a team fight i guarantee you at least 3 people in the team will make sure you never die ever again My country's server is weird as hell
Legit Grievous Wounds meta is cucking Sona so bad. Not as hard as someone like Soraka but when like half your kit is your constant healing having that healing cut in half feels terrible.
@@TigerKirby215 riot giving every new champs self healing or life steal based gameplay than nerfing healing which only impacts enchanters and not the real issues
Speaking as a Sona main it made my heart so happy to hear you say Sona isn't just a button-mashy champion. She has a lot of nuances that people don't tend to recognize because when it comes down to it no one really notices the diminuendo passive attack to save a carry or the tempo passive attack to slow for a chase during the chaos of team fights. I can not tell you how many times I have used diminuendo and exhaust to diminish an assassin and had my friends in discord calls say, "Wow they suck why did they go in." or "Lol, they don't have any items." Personally, I feel Sona is one of those supports that are really easy to pick up at first and to get a basic understanding of how they work but difficult to use to their full potential. But hey, here's hoping her changes coming up will help make the rift a more musical place.
Honestly, all Enchanters are easy to pick up and hard to master. Like, no Enchanter only has skillshots. But the way their kits work make them really hard to master since you have to look after 10 champions, and not 5. Not to mention the decision of "Who do I grant my utility without dying for it?"
@@lovesmez2945 i mained soraka for some time (Gold) and i remember having most intense moment of my life with soraka. My team was winning hard due to my insane healing and they trusted me so much that they dived enemy entire team under nexus turrets all having 20% hp vs full hp team. It was intense 10s keeping track of 5 hp bars as well as enemy assassin who wants me dead. Good times XD
Man I understand that lack of acknowledgment when you correctly use your own passive to completely fuck over the enemy’s damage or slows. On the other hand I do love baiting the enemy into thinking they can one shot my squishies with it.
honestly before the arcade skin came I didn't get what any of the powercords did. I use it a lot when in solo que and randoms to show what debuff is put on an enemy champ.
I main Sona and what you said people underestimate her passive is so true. Sometimes my ADCs just refuse to stay inside my aura and don't pay attention to anything I do or which passive effect I'm using, then I become essentially useless and die easily. Doesn't matter if you play Sona really good if your team just thinks she's a minion but with a healing spell.
I know that Sona has potential... but whenever i have one as my support it's some eGirl getting carried by her BF on midlane... I asked the last one to leave the lane and go anywhere else since she was so useless... all she did was munching precious exp while afking under the tower... pressing heal like once every minute and building lich bane (which i questioned: "Sona. if you just heal and don't poke, you might want to build a redemption or ardent censor instead of lich bane" and got flamed by her buddy for being a shitty ADC. that's when i lost my patience with her). Of course she didn't upgrade her support item the entire game (since she didn't attack) which means our team had terrible vision too. :) I played her, i know she can do better... but this is what i get...
@@nihzit8185 yeah I see a lot of Sona players just not knowing how to play or build her, they just spam their QWE randomly the entire game. Sona relies so much in her items, but people waste their gold with useless ones for their game strategy. I usually only build AP on her if my adc or my teammates in general are really bad (actually been able to be top damage with her lol). If someone on my team is doing good or carrying there's no need for me to do a lot of damage so I just build support
Her green passive is hella strong in early game, you can win a trade vs any tank supp on botlane but if just adc doesn't follow you you lose, it's so frustrating at times, but overall she's giving me the best winrate among any other support bc of shurelya's insane powerspike, they just don't know how broken she is due to items in this season... no other support can keep your entire team with +3000g of extra stats
@@marcelo98hv sona is really good with the support items because she has aoe buffs with her aura so she can apply the item effects on everyone, opposed to other enchanters who usually only cast their shields and buffs on one person at a time
the thing is, no adc (or close to none) knows that attacking an enemie after u cast an aura refund u 30 mana, wich is a lot in early game considering all her spells rank 1 cost at least 75 mana, so early game become even more of a nighmare for sona player since they HAVE to buy tear early especially against poke champ, thats 400g, and again, for a support that doesn t have early pressure, thats a lot...
As a Sona main I feel like you’ve articulated her issues pretty well. It’s frustrating to go in a game with her, get S ranks, and still be on a losing streak because I can’t get my team to focus on macro in solo queue. Every game feels like a dice roll.
Yea my most hated part is when your adc just dashes into danger away from your aura and gets pissed at you when you die. You constantly try to chase your teammates, while also making sure you're positioned well that an enemy assassin won't just one shot you. Solo que players are selfish and most of them don't think about positioning.
Try playing and twice the screen keep getting frozen on the loading screen so now i need to wait 15min between plays. I did not even need to get toxic people for the hate to return.
Was waiting for this! Sona has been done so dirty. Her range is abysmal.. Though, her playstyle and abilities are quite fun, so I hope they don't change them too much.. (Small edit a few months later: upon playing her in both urf and normals, I can safely say she is incredibly fun and I have very little issue with her range now C: It's safe to say she's my new main.)
@@Dvshti Her range was not a problem before but now with the mobility creep it became abysmal for how squishy she is. No mather how much you can harrass when everyone can just catch up and murder you in less than a second.
@@phyrexian_dude4645 Ikr, Rod of Ages used to be a must buy for me for that extra health to avoid dying every 5 seconds then they removed it... and now she just feel so awkward to play now
I played against a seraphine in randoms and was trashed talked hardcore till I stomped her in the dirt. Cocky players are so salty when they think they're better than you.
@@marrinette_laroe3467 I am a seraphine main and I am so sorry for the toxicity people have especially when they are using a champ that already no one likes
I play Sona and the answer is: Abysmal mana costs early game Weird passive Needs items and levels to be useful She has bones made of glass (Squishy) Awful against team comps that have assassins. She is impossible to play if there is an asssasin jungler. (Zed, Katarina, Kha'zix etc.) Awful against hard engage. (Tristana, Leona, Nautilus, Pyke etc.)
Her squishiness is such a huge problem in the hard engage burst meta we're in atm. Especially with the removal of Archangel's shield it's hard to justify playing Sona when Talon can breathe on you to instantly delete you.
@@TigerKirby215 I don't think every champion has to be playable in every situation though. I like picking Sona when i'm last pick and know can scale safely. She is good with poke adcs, too. The extra damage your q gives is really nice. Her character model and animations can use an update, she needs a rework. I love her a lot, still.
Idea for "small" rework; Mana and passive "Power chord" are removed, exchanged by "Composer" (or whatever cool name) Sona has a secondary resource bar "Composer", her abilities have 0,5 CD (unaffected by ability haste) and a secondary "Composer" cooldown (affected by ability haste). When she casts Q/W/E after "Composer" cooldown has passed, her next basic attack is buffed (same buffs like old passive "power chord") and ability has 100% of its damage/ heal/ shield/ movement speed duration. When ability is casted prematurely, it has decreased effect based on how much time she skipped and constant penalty that gets smaller with each R rank. She also gets points into her "Composer" resource bar based on how many allies are around her (when she is alone, she doesnt get any). When the "Composer" resource bar is filled, her next basic attack is empowered (as if she casted a spell after waiting out its "Composer Cooldown"). Example numbers (those are more question of a playtest, than a mere suggestion): Q has cooldown of 8 seconds and deals 100 damage (for easier math). Sona casted it after 4 seconds with no rank in R [-50%/ -40%/ -30%/ -20% premature cast penalty] Damage dealt = 100 * (4/8) [time penalty] * 0,5 [premature cast penalty] = 30 damage dealt
I'd actually be really, really sad about a Sona rework, because, as you said. She has to use the right abilities in the right order, at the right time. It's easier to view it as: She needs to play the right *notes*, in the right order, at the right time. Much like Jhin, she is a very, very musical champion, and she spends most of her time, playing her tune, and changing it with new elements. Each beat, each song she writes, inspires the team, and hitting the right chord, for that triumphant symphony. She's beautifully designed. But unless the music makes enemy health bars disintegrate, no one wants to hear her song.
Well, she used to be able to until they gutted her Q. I used to play Hybrid support/ap Sona, 2 AP items on her and 3 support items was enough for her to cut squishy enemy HP in half while still doing her job as a support.
Before watching the video, as a Sona main: Fuck Seraphine. After watching: I agree with everything you said in this video. To add a bit myself, one of the problems is that I FEEL AWFUL playing Sona cause nobody on my team wants me around. Last season I was Diamond III and had a 78% WR on her. It didn't matter, when my Teammates saw me lock in Sona they just were like "Lulu open, pick that" or pinged my Summoner Spell choice (I run Barrier in some match-ups to abuse Shield Bash and Guardian, it's unconventional but really good imo). As Sona, your job is TO NOT DIE. Sona is a support that hyper scales. If you don't die, you're winning. People don't understand that, so they flame you a lot when they see you play passive. No, Vayne. I'm not gonna kill myself for a pointless kill versus the enemy Jhin and Leona at lvl 4 because you think you're Gosu. With Sona [LS]innaction is action. You're a ticking time bomb.[/LS] But nobody understands that with Sona, so they make you feel awful, cause they don't understand your playstyle and role. As Sona, my role is to SURVIVE. The longer I live, the greater our chances are of winning ANY teamfight, skirmish or objective. Micromanaging auras and resources is harder than most people give you credit for. So you're there, filling a role nobody wants you to fill while playing basically Darks Souls cause EVERYONE wants you dead (even your teammates). So yeah. Nobody wants to play around you, even if it's OBJECTIVELY the better choice. Everyone plays for themselves. Fuck that.
Totally hard agree and it makes me so sad because she was one of the champs I had a really high win rate on that I had to put on the shelf because the toxicity is too much. Now I only play her in ARAMs, but I do still love her a lot and feel sad when people downplay just how difficult the mere act of living in this game is when you die to everything lol.
dude i love seeing sona's there just fun to play with (tho i don't play adc i play top) in team fights they can do so much and i know several times i would of lost a team fights if it wasn't for a sona doing sona things
And then everyone played Sona and Soraka top. Insta nerfed 2 patches later. God i miss the times playing Soraka top. Made the bruiser monkeys real angry.
@@TactiSmolKoko I miss the version we had back in Season 3 (pre-3.14) where you basically could pick Sona mid, and do really well with her. The best runepage for Sona back then was a mix between mana regen and scaling AP, since her AP ratios were A LOT higher back then (Q = 70%, R = 80%), as well as the mana costs being lower. The old auras were a lot stronger too, giving flat raw stats instead of a minor buff. Q aura gave up to +20 AD / +20 AP (like having two long swords and a book, or roughly 1200 gold worth of stats at level 9), W aura gave you and nearby allies both armor and magic resist (up to +35 in both), and the E aura gave you up to a flat 30 extra movespeed. Not only that, but the aura radius used to be 1000 units instead of only 300. A crazy fact about Sona is that her healing on release had a 60% AP ratio. Just let that sink in.
@@zoomzoom103 but riot removed her items? mejai, archangel's, old spellthief and idol items with cdr.... presence of mind perma mana... sona just sucks nowadays :( miss the good times with baby girl
- squishy as hell (which is unfair, I can see why yuumi is so squishy but not her) - everything costs too much mana - barely any heal and shield in early (compared to how much mana it costs) - no damage either Riot nerfed her so much, I remember the good old days when she was useful :')
Some sona main are really nice people, i remember that one time i have a sona main on my team and they're really encouraging, we win and i was left with some really nice feeling afterwards (everyone in the team is really nice too, we occasionally throw some funny stickers here and there, the most fun match i ever had)
Oh yeah, Sona. An ancient relic from a time when Mid Mages weren't support and enchanters were easy to kill high priority targets in tf. Until Yuumi and the nail on the coffin was "Slap on the face of the mute girl" Seraphine. Man, sometimes riot is just... Btw, i love your content, please continue
as a sona main i really think u captured all the struggles and also nice points of the champion. if i had to say why no one plays sona is because: 1. she may appear boring to play cause shes old and doesnt have many cool features like new champs 2. people prefer to go with playmaker supps better than enchanters 3. her early game sucks cause shes meant to scale but games end quick 4. she got reeeally nerfed cause she was a bit strong, and thats something to account for so yeah, awesome vid, i was waiting on it. in my heart shes always gonna be number one but i get why no one bothers with her, ill play her till the end lololo
When Riot create a champion, they should think more about who play against that champion, not just only think about who play that champion. Sona is one of the victims from this thing.
@@timothymartin4759 They can also make more $$$ by reworking older champions to have same overloaded kits and by giving them more skins. But I guess all the kids who play LoL want "cool anime ninja" characters.
Same I mostly play poke champ, and actually see Sona as a in between Enchanter and Poke, her damage is kind of insane early on. I think that Riot will take that road for her mini rework.
@@_mitaka-bq2qq A well handled Swain is the worst thing you can encounter in the bot lane. He beats Pyke in the terms of sheer murder power, what keeps us safe is that not many people know how to play him.
As a sona main I'm glad to see this video. Sona reminds me of the old IT adage. "No one ever thinks you need IT until the network goes down and everyone points at you and says you're not doing your job" No one ever really notices a good Sona and when Sona is slowly influencing things and slowly shifting team fights into her teams favor with the auras but everyone notices if a sona makes one, single mistake.
Ap assassin Sona really was the best of both world IMO, grant your allies the stats/heals/shields/speed to let them carry and the damage to remove anyone who is a problem with that from the game.
@@winypacifist5034 I usually go with dark harvest with precision and I build Night harvester, lich bane, cosmic drive, rabbadon or some defensive items like zhonya or banshee
As a Sona main, i'm really dissapointed of her current state. It's sad she doesn't get much attention anymore. I mean yeah she isn't very powerful and her healing isn't the best either but i don't think she deserves to be forgotten.
As an support main. I can answer this question very well. Pros of sona. 1.) She scale the best out of any champ in the game. This is why sona taric was meta. She scale better than seraphine truthfully. This is the only positive of playing here. Negative 1.) 2nd worse lane phase for any support in game. Yuumi the worse. 2.) She fit in very few team comp. The 2 comp she fit in, if she played in adc with an tank support. Or she played with morgana, since morg can shove. Top, jg and mid need to be front line. With an warden class for protection. Like cho or mord. Mord can ult the assassin on the backline or cho can silence. 2.1) the reason why adc is weaker as you go down in rank, is the same reason why shes bad. No peel or playing around adc as you get lower in rank. Let say you have sion top and leona sup. Sion engage. What will an gold and below leona do? Help sion. Pro leona with try to protect the backline. You dont need double engage when you have kat, zed, ekko driving your backline. Which is why you dont see a lot of assassins in pro play. You see azir or cooki. Maybe control mages. Sona is in the azir and cooki boat. If she was buff, she will have an big presence in pro play. Because the pros know when to peel vs low level of play. This is why you dont see tahm k in solo q. If he was buff for solo q, he be over buff for pro play.
@@dawidlol1337 she was played last year till the nerfs. She was played the year before with the Taric. Now sadly Sona is garbage, but guess what? An egirl champ still get picked: Seraphine
@@ByulStar1298 That is because Seraphine is incredibly strong, and yet it still took so long for people to start abusing her in pro play. People are slowly starting to realise that it's better to drop the ego and play her which may not be the case for other enchanter (who usually are considered egirl) champs. I think it just proves my point of pros not liking egirl champs because of how long it took for her to be used. She and her items were nerfed multiple times and she is still a must pick/ban, why did no one play her before the nerfs? She was even more ridiculous then.
I have a small addendum. -blue aura was nerfed to the ground. Both the base dmg and dmg per level. It's pretty weak right now. -heal is weak as hell too -they recently nerfed her mana costs so if you don't manage to affect ally with aura in time you lose 25 more mana. That makes her weaker on her own when and lose mroe mana before you get to your allies or when you ward etc.
why no one plays sona 1.because her rework turned to a new champion 2. range too short and effect too small " she's anti engage " 3. her positions in fights are odd you have to cover / support every one from the middle
Her passive doesn't require you to play in a particular order though, it only cares what the last song you played was, not the one that put you to 3 stacks so you can save it and change it if needed.
You can save some mana by managing her passive stacks. It's not that important once you build mana regen items but can make a difference in laning phase.
Kid: "Mom can you buy me seraphine?" Mom: "ohh she's a little pricy, how about we get sona instead?" Kid: but moooooooom!! All the kids in the rift will make fun of me.
i play Sona, and if i were to rework her, it would be her r Crescendo. Crescendo Passive: records the last 3 chords she played. Active: plays a song that would stun enemies around her for 1.5 seconds. also activates the recorded chords and their effects. in this way, she will choose to get burst heal(triple green aura), burst damage(triple blue), burst movement spd(triple purple), or any kind of combo she wants, while stunning enemies
It's such a sad thing to witness. Around the time I started playing this game around s2, Sona was probably one of the most over-picked champions due to the sustain she would put on bot lane that made most damage to her ADC irrelevant. Then champs like Thresh and the likes were introduced and bot lane became HEAVILY focused on play-making and engage, and she quickly fell off. Seraphine is basically just Sona if she were designed for the current meta.
As an enchanter main I’ve been SUPER stoked for this video! I honestly didn’t expect the compliments for Sona near the end of the video. Even as Sona player myself I kinda just went along with my friends jokes saying I play a faceroll champion, I never really thought about it much. But after hearing you say that it takes a lot of skill to play her, that made me feel really good about myself and I think I’m gonna pick her up more again. Also, we support you if you decide to take a break! Mental health first c:
Why nobody plays Sona? Because Seraphine got released, and the only thing good about Sona compared to her is that Sona's voiceline is infinitely better
Her 6th ability is actually a giant neon sign to every mid and jungler that says "I'm free kills early game". And this I honestly think is actually her biggest down fall.
As a sona main I really enjoyed this video :D I had a hard time understanding why nobody plays sona but the way you broke it down makes a lot of sense! Gave me a very different perspective to go off of and I enjoyed it!
I think an important point you didn't touch on with Taric is that , like sona, a lot of his old power was in auras/being a aura item carrier. Taric was redesigned to move beyond this. Yet, Sona right now is literally a waking aura rushing moonstone and staff of flowing water. Sona is arguably the most op low elo support but she's extremely dry
@@The23rdGamer That is, if you ignore all of the auras that aren't Sona's. Such as Janna, Frozen Heart, Runic Bulwark (which was literally re-added this very season on Locket, after being removed years ago) & several others I don't remember off-hand.
@@michaelmoore8284 Yeah the point about Bulwark is fair. Though, being fair, we did lose the aura on Abyssal Mask in exchange for that one. We did gain one more Bami's Cinder aura too. There are certainly auras in the game still, I guess what I meant to convey was that they feel fairly weak compared to what they once were (which is somewhat a good thing as they were pretty OP in the past). I guess sometimes it just makes me wonder if Sona will eventually be moved away from her aura-based gameplay, as she's more or less the last champion whose kit is largely based around auras.
@@The23rdGamer Sona isn't really an "aura" champion anymore. Her spells create lingering actives, only Rito still calls them "auras." They have no passive effects & in fact they just outright do not even exist until she presses a button & even then only for a few short moments. As for Bami's Cinder, I would say it is quite powerful. More powerful than its past iteration. So powerful, it has garnered multiple nerfs since its rework. Abyssal Mask was a reworked version of Abyssal Staff, but if Runic Bulwark can find itself back in LoL after all these years, the Abyssal aura is definitely still on the table.
@@michaelmoore8284 This is quite accurate and besides the fact her passive is called "aura" I hate people claiming her whole thing is her auras. She creates AOE spells where she herself is the location of the skill shot. You might as well just call them mini Nasus/Renekton ults on basic spells. Seraphine's note passive is actually an aura, since her music plays when anyone is innately near her. If only there was a way to rework Sona to have more agency and be the carry most people like playing her as, but without the carry extremes.
i miss back when sona was a powerhouse in terms of harrass. like, a ap-ish sona support maxing q was the most terrifying thing if you were an adc. she felt good, cause you had the damage, but you were also super squishy. now you go to poke with q and the enemy breathes in your direction and you're chugging pots.
7:25 Being a stat-battery (love this term by the way) sounds like it could be utilized in pro-play to a great extent. Which is obviously not the case, I think she never had a great appearance there outside of cheese-strategies like combining her with Lux, Tahm Kench or Taric for example. The reason why she was never really seen there is a different one, not really mentioned here - Sona does not really excel in specific comps nor being useless in any. Being an allrounder doesn't bring enough to the table for a pro-level draft even if overall enchanters were strong like it was the case during the Ardent-meta. Like you said she needs an update - happy news! It was actually officially announced that she will get some little tweaks to her kit, much like Xin and Twitch had received recently. This honestly makes me so happy and hyped, because even if I'm a Sona main I had to drop her (hehe funny joke) off my champion pool for various reasons.
Sona was a popular pro-pick before Season 4 & the support-class update in in Patch 3.14. Even then, Sona still saw some pro play up until 4.13 deleted her from the game.
I was a Sona main a long time ago, and it really hurt me when she became an underdog by riot's decisions. I've tried to play her now, and there's almost nothing you can do against any other supports, because everyone shields way more than Sona, everyone heals way more than Sona, most of others supports kits bring more utility to team fights aside from the ultimate ability. It's so sad, Riot already said that there's no plan for a Sona rework, and the only thing they're doing is giving some touches around her passive, and maybe some stats and that's all. It's so frustrating and sad, because she's a really fun champion to play
"sona has exhaust built into her kit" is indeed a key insight to playing her well. Sona doesn't have 4 abilities - she has 7, and Power Chord Diminuendo is both the most powerful and the most timing-reliant one. Cutting an enemy's damage by ~a third for 3 seconds is just enough to ruin their 100-to-0 and keep a teammate alive who would have died. Cutting an enemy's damage by a third for *6* seconds (by flicking all three abilities to get Diminuendo back up, and shooting it again right before the first one wears off) is enough to make the enemy assassin or adc cry.
Pity missed the premiere, only joined 3mins before it ended :) But I can enjoy it now. Yeah poor Sona needs some love from Riot! Great tips on her passive, I must keep that in mind when I play her again. Awesome entertaining and interesting video once again Vars, I really enjoyed watching 💙 I left my big like 199 I think it was when I joined your premiere, so sorry can´t leave you another one xD!
Another thing that contributed to unpopularity is that Sona is a champion with a classic AD Carry scaling curve that wants the AD Carry to escort and cover her in lane when the opposite is expected. And whenever pro play does a strat to field her in the carry role, Riot squashes it immediately. It's awesome that as an enchanter she can become a team's win condition, but her old school play style of lose lane, win game is very unappealing in this game. Being a champion that requires such an enormous emphasis on fundamentals with no tools to cover for lacking them also is a turn off compared to popular, instant gratification champions.
I like Sona. whenever I'm autofilled support or when I'm too tired to play jungle, I go with Sona. once the early game is over, she feels pretty good and I win 2 of 3 games with her. usually.
They won't change my mind seraphine was the rework for sona but riot wanted more skins for money and because KDA sells they decided to make it a different champion >:u
Wao it's the first time I see someone saying the truth about sona, everyone just thinks she is underpowered and nothing more. You explain it really well here. This video is really well mad even when I disagree on others you did. Gj mate.
I think Sona has a lot of the same issues most older champions have, in that while their kit in itself may be good, the kit is designed for a game that has evolved over the past 10 years to the point that the kit just doesn't fit into the game anymore. I think one of the biggest problems with Sona vs Seraphine is that Seraphine feels like the more updated and modern Sona, while mechanically more difficult (3 skill shots to Sona's 1), she also has greater range and very good wave manipulation tools that provide a lot of early power and how you want to play the lane (poke, engage, sustain...). In a meta where hard engage supports are very favored and strong picks, Sona doesn't fit into it because her poke isn't safe because her range is too poor and requires extremely precise positioning/correct tethering which is one of the hardest micro skills in the game to master, and she has no tools for wave control. Sona and Yuumi share similar problems in this regard, but Yuumi's ability to empower her adc is much more obvious and direct (it's literally visually indicated by sitting on the empowered champion). Yuumi also funnels that power into one person only, which means that the overall strength is much greater than with Sona, because Sona is best played in 5v5 situations where she can empower her entire team. She doesn't empower one or a few players well, but when you add up the total power she adds to her team, it outscales Yuumi's singular empowerment of one champion. While in lower elo 5v5s still happen in mid to late game, the game pace just doesn't fit Sona's playstyle anymore. I think it's less that Sona can't do anything to speed up the tempo of the game herself (if that was the case then Pyke would be a priority pick), but that Sona is just too slow. It takes too much time for her to really scale and she provides no agency to the lane itself, which means that she must have an adc that can control the lane alone, and outside of Jhin and potentially Sivir, no other popular adcs can do that (Caitlyn can do it moderately well but only into certain matchups, and Xayah just doesn't count). Sona was designed for a game with a much slower game pace and a style that revolved around chilling in lane for 20 min and then win in a big 5v5 fight but that's not how the game works anymore. So it's less imo that Seraphine has playmaking agency but that she can have direct impact from the very beginning and be much safer when doing so. She even gets additional range on her auto attacks when she uses an ability, which is something Sona doesn't have but would be something Sona would greatly benefit from because it would make her much more impactful in the early game.
Seraphine completely lacks in Sona's required knowledge of proper spacing and ability sequencing though. You *can* actually faceroll seraphine without being aware of what ability aura and passive you actually want up as long as you double up on either w or e. Skillshots aren't the only form of skill expression in this game, yannow. Not to mention, Sona has some animation cancels too with her auto-q-passive auto combo.
@@Oznerock yup, having no skillshots actually makes Sona much harder to play when you take in consideration the fact that she has to walk up in the enemy range to actually do any damage, while Seraphine can sit at fountain and hit people at t2 with her ult and 1.5 screens away with her Q
Biggest factor: items. There's about no tanky support items for enchanters anymore + galeforce & prowlers claw exists + almost every new champion in recent history has a gap closer = dead Sona. Burst meta = dead Sona
I really really miss buying Iceborn Gauntlet on Sona with Seraphs Embrace, it was a really good counter against heavy AD comps, now both items do nothing for her
My first main and the best waifu. Sadly, Riot messed up when Seraphine was released. I totally wish Sona gets her mini-rework soon because she feels quite outperformed by other enchanters now.
When i used to be a supp main i loved the feeling of helping my team, i didnt care about my personal play making potential and i think there should be champions for people like that who seriously just want to make their team happy. I feel like if they give her more solo potential she wont fill that playstyle that makes her enjoyable for people like me.
As a Sona main (since season 4 and up till now), I would like to say that whenever I go my aggressive (not ap, still supp) build the enemy botlane gets scared of me. I know this video is 2 years old, but I would like to say despite the issues with her in the past, I never gave up on her and right now, balancing in between A-S tier supp, I am proud to be a Sona main (and lucky, bcs I never have to worry that my champ will be taken before me)
Can you share your build? I used to main her 6 years ago and just got back to leauge, I can't get used to the changes on top of barely remembering how to play lmao
Sona died the day they did a mini rework on her. They made her range smaller, auras lasting only few seconds and lowered all the numbers. Before that I was able to solo champs like Tryndamere or Rengar. After rework - everything has changed. The range of her Q is now better but it's still sad when your blue aura instead of buffing your ADC stats it just makes his one next attack stronger.
I haven't played LoL for about 7-8 years or so, but I remember Sona easily being my favorite character. Other characters I remember loving are Volibear, Caitlyn, Morgana, and Nami. I can only imagine how much the game has changed since I last played.
Yea this is happening a lot these days. I remember back in the day when Sivir's spell shield was considered very strong but also quite difficult to use. Now basically every new champ releases with s of some sort or full on invulnerability.
What a slap in the face for Sona lol, playing Seraphines passive music in the background of Sona's "Why no one plays" video :P
Intentional ;)
I still don't know why anyone mains Sona when Seraphine exists, but I also won't yuck someone's yum.
That was cruel lmao
@@justahugenerd1278 sona heals way more she’s more enchanter ish and let’s not lie the support build for seraphine sucks
@@justahugenerd1278 Because Seraphine does nothing that Sona does. And I really wish people would stop saying she does.
As a Sona main I've always said that Teamfighting with Sona is like being a single mom with 4 toddlers.
YES
ACCURATE
THIS IS SO ACCURATE AND RELATABLE 💅🏽✨
OH SHIT
THE ACCURACY
Ive played with a sona before and lemme tell you if you get even 1 good set in a team fight i guarantee you at least 3 people in the team will make sure you never die ever again
My country's server is weird as hell
"It just doesn't matter how good she is at her job, if there's no demand for that job." I like that line
I mean thats how it is in the real world as well
Looks back at my jazz piano degree...
As someone who onetricked Sona for 5 years, that line hurt my soul.
*Every college graduate with a super niche/useless degree felt that*
Because in a game where everyone one shots each other a 5% heal does nothing.
Legit Grievous Wounds meta is cucking Sona so bad. Not as hard as someone like Soraka but when like half your kit is your constant healing having that healing cut in half feels terrible.
@@TigerKirby215 riot giving every new champs self healing or life steal based gameplay than nerfing healing which only impacts enchanters and not the real issues
Yeah, especially when enemy ,,Support" has more life steal than his ADC.
@@wasabilover1293 true, these new champs heal more than enchanter's whole kit
@@Archangel-sx2wl yone can self heal more against a rammus that constantly ccs him than a soraka can heal with her whole mana and health bar
Speaking as a Sona main it made my heart so happy to hear you say Sona isn't just a button-mashy champion. She has a lot of nuances that people don't tend to recognize because when it comes down to it no one really notices the diminuendo passive attack to save a carry or the tempo passive attack to slow for a chase during the chaos of team fights. I can not tell you how many times I have used diminuendo and exhaust to diminish an assassin and had my friends in discord calls say, "Wow they suck why did they go in." or "Lol, they don't have any items." Personally, I feel Sona is one of those supports that are really easy to pick up at first and to get a basic understanding of how they work but difficult to use to their full potential. But hey, here's hoping her changes coming up will help make the rift a more musical place.
Agree! as a D4 Sona player with 3.5 Mil on her 💗
Honestly, all Enchanters are easy to pick up and hard to master. Like, no Enchanter only has skillshots.
But the way their kits work make them really hard to master since you have to look after 10 champions, and not 5. Not to mention the decision of "Who do I grant my utility without dying for it?"
@@lovesmez2945 i mained soraka for some time (Gold) and i remember having most intense moment of my life with soraka.
My team was winning hard due to my insane healing and they trusted me so much that they dived enemy entire team under nexus turrets all having 20% hp vs full hp team. It was intense 10s keeping track of 5 hp bars as well as enemy assassin who wants me dead. Good times XD
Man I understand that lack of acknowledgment when you correctly use your own passive to completely fuck over the enemy’s damage or slows. On the other hand I do love baiting the enemy into thinking they can one shot my squishies with it.
honestly before the arcade skin came I didn't get what any of the powercords did. I use it a lot when in solo que and randoms to show what debuff is put on an enemy champ.
Every champion i play: exists
Vars: peace was never an option
//cocks gun
@@VarsVerum *Doom music kicks in*
Csi miami scream in loop
@@VarsVerum dede deluxe song plays....
@@VarsVerum all the other kids with the pumped up kicks...
"Gambling your success or failure on people you have never met"
That's kinda how being a support in League is
This, I've been stuck in bronze for years because I'm a support main.
@@TebbleTV mate, if you're stuck in bronze it's not your team mates fault, there are plenty of support mains at higher ranks.
@@hweheheh Agreed. I literally have better winrate with some supports (like morg) than any of my midlane picks.
Thats also how finding a husband/wife is
I main Sona and what you said people underestimate her passive is so true. Sometimes my ADCs just refuse to stay inside my aura and don't pay attention to anything I do or which passive effect I'm using, then I become essentially useless and die easily. Doesn't matter if you play Sona really good if your team just thinks she's a minion but with a healing spell.
I know that Sona has potential... but whenever i have one as my support it's some eGirl getting carried by her BF on midlane... I asked the last one to leave the lane and go anywhere else since she was so useless... all she did was munching precious exp while afking under the tower... pressing heal like once every minute and building lich bane (which i questioned: "Sona. if you just heal and don't poke, you might want to build a redemption or ardent censor instead of lich bane" and got flamed by her buddy for being a shitty ADC. that's when i lost my patience with her). Of course she didn't upgrade her support item the entire game (since she didn't attack) which means our team had terrible vision too. :)
I played her, i know she can do better... but this is what i get...
@@nihzit8185 yeah I see a lot of Sona players just not knowing how to play or build her, they just spam their QWE randomly the entire game. Sona relies so much in her items, but people waste their gold with useless ones for their game strategy. I usually only build AP on her if my adc or my teammates in general are really bad (actually been able to be top damage with her lol). If someone on my team is doing good or carrying there's no need for me to do a lot of damage so I just build support
Her green passive is hella strong in early game, you can win a trade vs any tank supp on botlane but if just adc doesn't follow you you lose, it's so frustrating at times, but overall she's giving me the best winrate among any other support bc of shurelya's insane powerspike, they just don't know how broken she is due to items in this season... no other support can keep your entire team with +3000g of extra stats
@@marcelo98hv sona is really good with the support items because she has aoe buffs with her aura so she can apply the item effects on everyone, opposed to other enchanters who usually only cast their shields and buffs on one person at a time
the thing is, no adc (or close to none) knows that attacking an enemie after u cast an aura refund u 30 mana, wich is a lot in early game considering all her spells rank 1 cost at least 75 mana, so early game become even more of a nighmare for sona player since they HAVE to buy tear early especially against poke champ, thats 400g, and again, for a support that doesn t have early pressure, thats a lot...
As a Sona main I feel like you’ve articulated her issues pretty well. It’s frustrating to go in a game with her, get S ranks, and still be on a losing streak because I can’t get my team to focus on macro in solo queue. Every game feels like a dice roll.
Yea my most hated part is when your adc just dashes into danger away from your aura and gets pissed at you when you die. You constantly try to chase your teammates, while also making sure you're positioned well that an enemy assassin won't just one shot you.
Solo que players are selfish and most of them don't think about positioning.
@@boxtupos7718 Exactly my problem
Easy to get S as her since no one plays her. XD
I already am M7 and I don't even use her.
yeah thank you for this comment as a person that was a sona main that has not play for years and was considering going back it help me alot.
Try playing and twice the screen keep getting frozen on the loading screen so now i need to wait 15min between plays. I did not even need to get toxic people for the hate to return.
This man added insult to injury by using Seraphine music as the background for this video
Bro I remember when you couldn't play a game without seeing a sona. Now you can't play a game and see a sona. Kinda sad
I too miss the days of pre-Season 4.
Every time I try to play Sona, the ADC will either ban her at champ select, go afk or run it down. So I don't think everyone agrees.
@@westenev Yes. Everything changed when 4.13 happened.....
Cause Seraphine
yeah, Yuumi just feels easier
Title: “Why no one plays Sona”
*plays Seraphine’s passive music*
They're the same champ so it's fine
Lmao this cracked me up
@Yil.M you are entitled u have ur opinion
My opinion is just that u r wrong
@@Ultrakill_tryharder Sona don't sing when ult wtf xdd
@@mula7616 Totally different champions
Was waiting for this!
Sona has been done so dirty.
Her range is abysmal..
Though, her playstyle and abilities are quite fun, so I hope they don't change them too much..
(Small edit a few months later: upon playing her in both urf and normals, I can safely say she is incredibly fun and I have very little issue with her range now C: It's safe to say she's my new main.)
considering she has 1 skillshot (ult) and the rest are spammable abilities, I don't think her range is that bad. Her ult could get a fix maybe
Very true!
Let's pray they don't mess it up 🎶
@@Dvshti Her range was not a problem before but now with the mobility creep it became abysmal for how squishy she is. No mather how much you can harrass when everyone can just catch up and murder you in less than a second.
@@phyrexian_dude4645 Ikr, Rod of Ages used to be a must buy for me for that extra health to avoid dying every 5 seconds
then they removed it... and now she just feel so awkward to play now
Her range is actually the highest amongst all enchanters
not enough against poke mages though
Sona main here, only pick her now when I see an enemy Seraphine. JUSTICE feels sooooooo good 🤣
T H I S .
@@wukaschin I s E p i c
Does sona counter seraphine?
I played against a seraphine in randoms and was trashed talked hardcore till I stomped her in the dirt. Cocky players are so salty when they think they're better than you.
@@marrinette_laroe3467 I am a seraphine main and I am so sorry for the toxicity people have especially when they are using a champ that already no one likes
Only you can hear me summoner ❤️
There's no more of that :')
What masterpiece shall we play today
Brioso, brioso!
:'(
And Riot can't hear Sona.
I play Sona and the answer is:
Abysmal mana costs early game
Weird passive
Needs items and levels to be useful
She has bones made of glass (Squishy)
Awful against team comps that have assassins. She is impossible to play if there is an asssasin jungler. (Zed, Katarina, Kha'zix etc.)
Awful against hard engage. (Tristana, Leona, Nautilus, Pyke etc.)
Her squishiness is such a huge problem in the hard engage burst meta we're in atm. Especially with the removal of Archangel's shield it's hard to justify playing Sona when Talon can breathe on you to instantly delete you.
@@TigerKirby215 I don't think every champion has to be playable in every situation though. I like picking Sona when i'm last pick and know can scale safely. She is good with poke adcs, too. The extra damage your q gives is really nice. Her character model and animations can use an update, she needs a rework.
I love her a lot, still.
That's just an adc description
Idea for "small" rework; Mana and passive "Power chord" are removed, exchanged by "Composer" (or whatever cool name)
Sona has a secondary resource bar "Composer", her abilities have 0,5 CD (unaffected by ability haste) and a secondary "Composer" cooldown (affected by ability haste).
When she casts Q/W/E after "Composer" cooldown has passed, her next basic attack is buffed (same buffs like old passive "power chord") and ability has 100% of its damage/ heal/ shield/ movement speed duration.
When ability is casted prematurely, it has decreased effect based on how much time she skipped and constant penalty that gets smaller with each R rank. She also gets points into her "Composer" resource bar based on how many allies are around her (when she is alone, she doesnt get any). When the "Composer" resource bar is filled, her next basic attack is empowered (as if she casted a spell after waiting out its "Composer Cooldown").
Example numbers (those are more question of a playtest, than a mere suggestion):
Q has cooldown of 8 seconds and deals 100 damage (for easier math).
Sona casted it after 4 seconds with no rank in R [-50%/ -40%/ -30%/ -20% premature cast penalty]
Damage dealt = 100 * (4/8) [time penalty] * 0,5 [premature cast penalty] = 30 damage dealt
my god kha has with way with sona every game...
Sona main here, my favorite champion
Himeko fans rise up
Oh I see your have good taste indeed
+1
Seraphine's passive music is playing throughout this video is some serious shade.
Pretty petty IMO. Just why? Fuck seraph
"Generally speaking, 90% of supports are enchanters & tanks with the rest being mages."
*And then there is that 1 assassin support*
We don't talk about pyke...
also pantheon isn't really a tank
@@aries9601 he's an assasin support with temp invulterability as far as I'm aware (when he's not a toplaner)
There is also a Marksman support (Senna).
Also, Pantheon support shouldn't hace existed in the first place
@@LoreGoshi let us blame after shock
Bard is it's own thing too
0:45 The third category is mages
Me: What about the fourth category?
Vars: we dont talk about the 4th category
Pyke: :)
Pyke and Pantheon, in one category only for them
Senna :D
I'd actually be really, really sad about a Sona rework, because, as you said. She has to use the right abilities in the right order, at the right time. It's easier to view it as: She needs to play the right *notes*, in the right order, at the right time. Much like Jhin, she is a very, very musical champion, and she spends most of her time, playing her tune, and changing it with new elements. Each beat, each song she writes, inspires the team, and hitting the right chord, for that triumphant symphony. She's beautifully designed.
But unless the music makes enemy health bars disintegrate, no one wants to hear her song.
Well, she used to be able to until they gutted her Q. I used to play Hybrid support/ap Sona, 2 AP items on her and 3 support items was enough for her to cut squishy enemy HP in half while still doing her job as a support.
This poem speaks sona so well, Good job 👏
Thank God her rework won't gut her playstyle, just her scaling. She'll become the veigar or nasus of the supports :D
I play both of these champs and I love both of their playstyles so I agree
Well she can make her teammates health bars become permanently full in a enemy team nexus team fight
Sona mains wya?
They didn’t reply cause they’re all mute
here, sobbing
Estoy aquí
@@The23rdGamer Borracho y loco
I mained sona for like 3 months after she was overtuned and them stopped playing hsr cause its simply not fun
Before watching the video, as a Sona main: Fuck Seraphine.
After watching: I agree with everything you said in this video. To add a bit myself, one of the problems is that I FEEL AWFUL playing Sona cause nobody on my team wants me around.
Last season I was Diamond III and had a 78% WR on her. It didn't matter, when my Teammates saw me lock in Sona they just were like "Lulu open, pick that" or pinged my Summoner Spell choice (I run Barrier in some match-ups to abuse Shield Bash and Guardian, it's unconventional but really good imo). As Sona, your job is TO NOT DIE. Sona is a support that hyper scales. If you don't die, you're winning. People don't understand that, so they flame you a lot when they see you play passive.
No, Vayne. I'm not gonna kill myself for a pointless kill versus the enemy Jhin and Leona at lvl 4 because you think you're Gosu.
With Sona [LS]innaction is action. You're a ticking time bomb.[/LS] But nobody understands that with Sona, so they make you feel awful, cause they don't understand your playstyle and role. As Sona, my role is to SURVIVE. The longer I live, the greater our chances are of winning ANY teamfight, skirmish or objective. Micromanaging auras and resources is harder than most people give you credit for. So you're there, filling a role nobody wants you to fill while playing basically Darks Souls cause EVERYONE wants you dead (even your teammates).
So yeah. Nobody wants to play around you, even if it's OBJECTIVELY the better choice. Everyone plays for themselves.
Fuck that.
Totally hard agree and it makes me so sad because she was one of the champs I had a really high win rate on that I had to put on the shelf because the toxicity is too much. Now I only play her in ARAMs, but I do still love her a lot and feel sad when people downplay just how difficult the mere act of living in this game is when you die to everything lol.
dude i love seeing sona's there just fun to play with (tho i don't play adc i play top) in team fights they can do so much and i know several times i would of lost a team fights if it wasn't for a sona doing sona things
I used to main Sona. One thing I miss is her damage, powerchord Q used to chunk ADCs and allowed her to have some pressure in lane.
And then everyone played Sona and Soraka top. Insta nerfed 2 patches later. God i miss the times playing Soraka top. Made the bruiser monkeys real angry.
@@amilo5 I don't remember those patches. I was referring back to season 5 and 6
@@obotchaman3160 It was Season 9 into 10.
i miss building lich bane on her 3rd or 4th and basically one shotting the enemy ad carry
@@TactiSmolKoko I miss the version we had back in Season 3 (pre-3.14) where you basically could pick Sona mid, and do really well with her.
The best runepage for Sona back then was a mix between mana regen and scaling AP, since her AP ratios were A LOT higher back then (Q = 70%, R = 80%), as well as the mana costs being lower.
The old auras were a lot stronger too, giving flat raw stats instead of a minor buff. Q aura gave up to +20 AD / +20 AP (like having two long swords and a book, or roughly 1200 gold worth of stats at level 9), W aura gave you and nearby allies both armor and magic resist (up to +35 in both), and the E aura gave you up to a flat 30 extra movespeed. Not only that, but the aura radius used to be 1000 units instead of only 300.
A crazy fact about Sona is that her healing on release had a 60% AP ratio. Just let that sink in.
Sona really shines when you reach lvl 16 which means 1 game out of 10...
And IF you don't get harassed like a pop-star by creepy stalkers during the early/mid game.
@@KhriZippy khazix is a real fan of sona
I'd argue she becomes really helpful at level 12-14 if you got the right items :)
@@KhriZippy now let wish riot would release kda skin for her that would be perfect
@@zoomzoom103 but riot removed her items? mejai, archangel's, old spellthief and idol items with cdr.... presence of mind perma mana... sona just sucks nowadays :(
miss the good times with baby girl
- squishy as hell (which is unfair, I can see why yuumi is so squishy but not her)
- everything costs too much mana
- barely any heal and shield in early (compared to how much mana it costs)
- no damage either
Riot nerfed her so much, I remember the good old days when she was useful :')
SONA MAINS UNITE
indeed, unite back in your kennels
that was joke, don't bother getting mad Sona mains. It's not like you'll be heard.
@@taipolar333 you're not wrong but it still hurts.
As a sona main I won't abandon her she is forever' my main support. Sona forever'
@@indianplaying6022 same
Some sona main are really nice people, i remember that one time i have a sona main on my team and they're really encouraging, we win and i was left with some really nice feeling afterwards (everyone in the team is really nice too, we occasionally throw some funny stickers here and there, the most fun match i ever had)
Ohh its you 😍
I've seen every video in this series for months now but it hits different when it's your own main...
The Kindred video was kind of an ego trip for me ngl.
Oh yeah, Sona.
An ancient relic from a time when Mid Mages weren't support and enchanters were easy to kill high priority targets in tf.
Until Yuumi and the nail on the coffin was "Slap on the face of the mute girl" Seraphine.
Man, sometimes riot is just...
Btw, i love your content, please continue
Good old times
as a sona main i really think u captured all the struggles and also nice points of the champion. if i had to say why no one plays sona is because:
1. she may appear boring to play cause shes old and doesnt have many cool features like new champs
2. people prefer to go with playmaker supps better than enchanters
3. her early game sucks cause shes meant to scale but games end quick
4. she got reeeally nerfed cause she was a bit strong, and thats something to account for
so yeah, awesome vid, i was waiting on it. in my heart shes always gonna be number one but i get why no one bothers with her, ill play her till the end lololo
When Riot create a champion, they should think more about who play against that champion, not just only think about who play that champion.
Sona is one of the victims from this thing.
but they get $$$$ by having overloaded new champs with lots of skins
@@timothymartin4759 They can also make more $$$ by reworking older champions to have same overloaded kits and by giving them more skins. But I guess all the kids who play LoL want "cool anime ninja" characters.
"Usually you don't see too many mages in the support role"
Me playing against Brand, Zyra, Xerath and Vel'Koz in almost every second game: "Yeaaaa..."
I think that’s poking rather than “engaging” 😅
Maybe Brand or Zyra, but...
Don't forget Swain too
Same I mostly play poke champ, and actually see Sona as a in between Enchanter and Poke, her damage is kind of insane early on. I think that Riot will take that road for her mini rework.
@@_mitaka-bq2qq A well handled Swain is the worst thing you can encounter in the bot lane. He beats Pyke in the terms of sheer murder power, what keeps us safe is that not many people know how to play him.
I find it incredibly funny that u decided to use Sera's passive music in the video instead of DJ Sona's
Pretty fitting for what happened to Sona
Everybody gangsta, til Sona decided to one-shot your carry.
I love AP sona top
Miss those days. I have so many recorded videos of me absolutely deleting enemy carries.
As a sona main I'm glad to see this video. Sona reminds me of the old IT adage. "No one ever thinks you need IT until the network goes down and everyone points at you and says you're not doing your job"
No one ever really notices a good Sona and when Sona is slowly influencing things and slowly shifting team fights into her teams favor with the auras but everyone notices if a sona makes one, single mistake.
Sona: sacrifices personal agency
All ADCS: we know your sacrifice, we too make it.
I play her as mage/ap assasin. I don't feel useless. It's fun when they see Sona with 2 items and their hp says goodbye.
Ap assassin Sona really was the best of both world IMO, grant your allies the stats/heals/shields/speed to let them carry and the damage to remove anyone who is a problem with that from the game.
Can you tell me the build pls? And runes.
@@winypacifist5034 I usually go with dark harvest with precision and I build Night harvester, lich bane, cosmic drive, rabbadon or some defensive items like zhonya or banshee
As a Sona main, i'm really dissapointed of her current state. It's sad she doesn't get much attention anymore. I mean yeah she isn't very powerful and her healing isn't the best either but i don't think she deserves to be forgotten.
I heard she being nerfed a lot nowadays
And most people doesn't play her that much cuz her early game impact doesn't do that much
It's actually sad😞😞
@@handsome_shrek i play her all the time she got me into the game
Next one: why everyone plays Seraphine
As an support main. I can answer this question very well.
Pros of sona.
1.) She scale the best out of any champ in the game. This is why sona taric was meta. She scale better than seraphine truthfully.
This is the only positive of playing here.
Negative
1.) 2nd worse lane phase for any support in game. Yuumi the worse.
2.) She fit in very few team comp. The 2 comp she fit in, if she played in adc with an tank support. Or she played with morgana, since morg can shove. Top, jg and mid need to be front line. With an warden class for protection. Like cho or mord. Mord can ult the assassin on the backline or cho can silence.
2.1) the reason why adc is weaker as you go down in rank, is the same reason why shes bad. No peel or playing around adc as you get lower in rank. Let say you have sion top and leona sup. Sion engage. What will an gold and below leona do? Help sion. Pro leona with try to protect the backline. You dont need double engage when you have kat, zed, ekko driving your backline. Which is why you dont see a lot of assassins in pro play. You see azir or cooki. Maybe control mages. Sona is in the azir and cooki boat. If she was buff, she will have an big presence in pro play. Because the pros know when to peel vs low level of play. This is why you dont see tahm k in solo q. If he was buff for solo q, he be over buff for pro play.
Pros won't play her as she is an egirl champ, same with Lulu Janna and the likes
@@dawidlol1337 she was played last year till the nerfs. She was played the year before with the Taric. Now sadly Sona is garbage, but guess what? An egirl champ still get picked: Seraphine
@@ByulStar1298 That is because Seraphine is incredibly strong, and yet it still took so long for people to start abusing her in pro play. People are slowly starting to realise that it's better to drop the ego and play her which may not be the case for other enchanter (who usually are considered egirl) champs. I think it just proves my point of pros not liking egirl champs because of how long it took for her to be used. She and her items were nerfed multiple times and she is still a must pick/ban, why did no one play her before the nerfs? She was even more ridiculous then.
I have a small addendum.
-blue aura was nerfed to the ground. Both the base dmg and dmg per level. It's pretty weak right now.
-heal is weak as hell too
-they recently nerfed her mana costs so if you don't manage to affect ally with aura in time you lose 25 more mana. That makes her weaker on her own when and lose mroe mana before you get to your allies or when you ward etc.
why no one plays sona
1.because her rework turned to a new champion
2. range too short and effect too small " she's anti engage "
3. her positions in fights are odd you have to cover / support every one from the middle
Her Rework was detrimental to her Game play, Because before it was effetely how well you used your passive.
Absolutely 100% this. Nailed it in 3 lines.
Being a Sona main since S3 is both a blessing and a curse.
Her passive doesn't require you to play in a particular order though, it only cares what the last song you played was, not the one that put you to 3 stacks so you can save it and change it if needed.
You can save some mana by managing her passive stacks. It's not that important once you build mana regen items but can make a difference in laning phase.
Kid: "Mom can you buy me seraphine?"
Mom: "ohh she's a little pricy, how about we get sona instead?"
Kid: but moooooooom!! All the kids in the rift will make fun of me.
Maybe the Sona was the friends we made along the way
Yuumi accomplishing something in early lane = 9, 10 minute Moonstone. Lack of agency gets rewarded when you don't need to buy boots ha.
Video: Sona
Music in the background: Seraphine
Me: Ok :)
Shhhh ;)
Sona is love. Sona is life.
i play Sona, and if i were to rework her, it would be her r Crescendo.
Crescendo
Passive: records the last 3 chords she played.
Active: plays a song that would stun enemies around her for 1.5 seconds. also activates the recorded chords and their effects.
in this way, she will choose to get burst heal(triple green aura), burst damage(triple blue), burst movement spd(triple purple), or any kind of combo she wants, while stunning enemies
Yeap, all she needs to be meta again is more CC. I also think that you can just change the slow from her passive to a stun.
Sona main here as well.. sad for her current state..
But i will always love my first ever champion that i try when i join league
@@toni5654 she Will get a mini rework, and do more damage
It's such a sad thing to witness. Around the time I started playing this game around s2, Sona was probably one of the most over-picked champions due to the sustain she would put on bot lane that made most damage to her ADC irrelevant. Then champs like Thresh and the likes were introduced and bot lane became HEAVILY focused on play-making and engage, and she quickly fell off.
Seraphine is basically just Sona if she were designed for the current meta.
i like that seraphines passive music is being played while talking about sona
As an enchanter main I’ve been SUPER stoked for this video! I honestly didn’t expect the compliments for Sona near the end of the video. Even as Sona player myself I kinda just went along with my friends jokes saying I play a faceroll champion, I never really thought about it much. But after hearing you say that it takes a lot of skill to play her, that made me feel really good about myself and I think I’m gonna pick her up more again.
Also, we support you if you decide to take a break! Mental health first c:
I played this character once n it was the most fun i've ever had in this game. She's so monke brain, I love it.
last three minutes of this video is entirely dedicated to saying that shes not monke brain bruh
I have never played League, I never will play League and I know nothing about this game and yet here I am, binging all of your videos
Power Chord needs some buffs. so that players who know how to utilize it gets rewarded.
This comment aged well
As a Sona main for 6 years, I am honored by this video T_T
because sona's rework was given to seraphine
Why nobody plays Sona?
Because Seraphine got released, and the only thing good about Sona compared to her is that Sona's voiceline is infinitely better
OMG I LAUGHED SO HARD XDDD, good one bro!!
God damn you were earlier than me.
@@haven4304 She is bad from like 3 years, not just since Sera
@@haven4304 sona has better skins too than the walking pink broomstick
Her 6th ability is actually a giant neon sign to every mid and jungler that says "I'm free kills early game". And this I honestly think is actually her biggest down fall.
The nicest part about playing sona is to have your enemies underestimate you and then erasing them in the mid game
as someone who has one tricked sona for years now, i legit cried when i saw this pop in my recommended, thank you for making this.
got my first S as sona so she has a special place in my heart
Vars, your voice is EXTREMELY soothing, I love it, let alone how elegantly these videos are written
Really had to seal the deal by putting Seraphine's soundtrack on the video.
I remember Klepto Sona Ezreal botlane. Those were the days...
BTW Sona is getting a mini rework where she is gonna gain AP / Ability Haste when she uses her abilities, like the support version of Nasus or Veigar.
When and where?
@@leahcoruscate look up Sona mini rework on UA-cam, was announced a few months ago, should be comin sometime this summer
Correction: we got the ability haste, no AP scaling. Just a few more ultimates.
As a sona main I really enjoyed this video :D I had a hard time understanding why nobody plays sona but the way you broke it down makes a lot of sense! Gave me a very different perspective to go off of and I enjoyed it!
I'm so happy at the time of this video, Riot has a Sona project planned. I hope this will make her relevant again.
I play talon and I believe sona should be played more it’s like having a second adc but that does no damage to me
as a sona and talon main i feel awfully conflicted
I love the fact that your background music is Sera’s music 😂
I think an important point you didn't touch on with Taric is that , like sona, a lot of his old power was in auras/being a aura item carrier.
Taric was redesigned to move beyond this.
Yet, Sona right now is literally a waking aura rushing moonstone and staff of flowing water.
Sona is arguably the most op low elo support but she's extremely dry
Yeah, auras have been more or less systematically cut from the game :/
@@The23rdGamer That is, if you ignore all of the auras that aren't Sona's. Such as Janna, Frozen Heart, Runic Bulwark (which was literally re-added this very season on Locket, after being removed years ago) & several others I don't remember off-hand.
@@michaelmoore8284 Yeah the point about Bulwark is fair. Though, being fair, we did lose the aura on Abyssal Mask in exchange for that one. We did gain one more Bami's Cinder aura too.
There are certainly auras in the game still, I guess what I meant to convey was that they feel fairly weak compared to what they once were (which is somewhat a good thing as they were pretty OP in the past). I guess sometimes it just makes me wonder if Sona will eventually be moved away from her aura-based gameplay, as she's more or less the last champion whose kit is largely based around auras.
@@The23rdGamer Sona isn't really an "aura" champion anymore. Her spells create lingering actives, only Rito still calls them "auras." They have no passive effects & in fact they just outright do not even exist until she presses a button & even then only for a few short moments.
As for Bami's Cinder, I would say it is quite powerful. More powerful than its past iteration. So powerful, it has garnered multiple nerfs since its rework. Abyssal Mask was a reworked version of Abyssal Staff, but if Runic Bulwark can find itself back in LoL after all these years, the Abyssal aura is definitely still on the table.
@@michaelmoore8284 This is quite accurate and besides the fact her passive is called "aura" I hate people claiming her whole thing is her auras. She creates AOE spells where she herself is the location of the skill shot. You might as well just call them mini Nasus/Renekton ults on basic spells. Seraphine's note passive is actually an aura, since her music plays when anyone is innately near her. If only there was a way to rework Sona to have more agency and be the carry most people like playing her as, but without the carry extremes.
i miss back when sona was a powerhouse in terms of harrass. like, a ap-ish sona support maxing q was the most terrifying thing if you were an adc. she felt good, cause you had the damage, but you were also super squishy. now you go to poke with q and the enemy breathes in your direction and you're chugging pots.
Meanwhile, she is a popular support in Wild Rift
7:25
Being a stat-battery (love this term by the way) sounds like it could be utilized in pro-play to a great extent. Which is obviously not the case, I think she never had a great appearance there outside of cheese-strategies like combining her with Lux, Tahm Kench or Taric for example. The reason why she was never really seen there is a different one, not really mentioned here - Sona does not really excel in specific comps nor being useless in any. Being an allrounder doesn't bring enough to the table for a pro-level draft even if overall enchanters were strong like it was the case during the Ardent-meta.
Like you said she needs an update - happy news! It was actually officially announced that she will get some little tweaks to her kit, much like Xin and Twitch had received recently. This honestly makes me so happy and hyped, because even if I'm a Sona main I had to drop her (hehe funny joke) off my champion pool for various reasons.
Sona was a popular pro-pick before Season 4 & the support-class update in in Patch 3.14. Even then, Sona still saw some pro play up until 4.13 deleted her from the game.
I was a Sona main a long time ago, and it really hurt me when she became an underdog by riot's decisions. I've tried to play her now, and there's almost nothing you can do against any other supports, because everyone shields way more than Sona, everyone heals way more than Sona, most of others supports kits bring more utility to team fights aside from the ultimate ability. It's so sad, Riot already said that there's no plan for a Sona rework, and the only thing they're doing is giving some touches around her passive, and maybe some stats and that's all. It's so frustrating and sad, because she's a really fun champion to play
"sona has exhaust built into her kit" is indeed a key insight to playing her well. Sona doesn't have 4 abilities - she has 7, and Power Chord Diminuendo is both the most powerful and the most timing-reliant one. Cutting an enemy's damage by ~a third for 3 seconds is just enough to ruin their 100-to-0 and keep a teammate alive who would have died. Cutting an enemy's damage by a third for *6* seconds (by flicking all three abilities to get Diminuendo back up, and shooting it again right before the first one wears off) is enough to make the enemy assassin or adc cry.
*Riot when Sona has 0.0001% pick rate:* hmmm... yes, it's neft time
The reason is that I don't make videos in english, cuz if I did ppl will play her.
Sona is the best champion
Pity missed the premiere, only joined 3mins before it ended :) But I can enjoy it now. Yeah poor Sona needs some love from Riot! Great tips on her passive, I must keep that in mind when I play her again. Awesome entertaining and interesting video once again Vars, I really enjoyed watching 💙 I left my big like 199 I think it was when I joined your premiere, so sorry can´t leave you another one xD!
Zyra too 😢
Another thing that contributed to unpopularity is that Sona is a champion with a classic AD Carry scaling curve that wants the AD Carry to escort and cover her in lane when the opposite is expected. And whenever pro play does a strat to field her in the carry role, Riot squashes it immediately.
It's awesome that as an enchanter she can become a team's win condition, but her old school play style of lose lane, win game is very unappealing in this game. Being a champion that requires such an enormous emphasis on fundamentals with no tools to cover for lacking them also is a turn off compared to popular, instant gratification champions.
Makes a video about Sona.
*plays Seraphine passive music*
I like Sona. whenever I'm autofilled support or when I'm too tired to play jungle, I go with Sona.
once the early game is over, she feels pretty good and I win 2 of 3 games with her. usually.
They won't change my mind seraphine was the rework for sona but riot wanted more skins for money and because KDA sells they decided to make it a different champion >:u
Nice video, glad to have helped!
Should have just made this video come out on April 1st and have the entire video roasting Sona while praising Seraphine.
Next we need: "Why everyone plays: league"
and "Why no one enjoys league"
This mad man played the Seraphine music in the background.
Wao it's the first time I see someone saying the truth about sona, everyone just thinks she is underpowered and nothing more. You explain it really well here. This video is really well mad even when I disagree on others you did. Gj mate.
Because she has like 25 hp ? Idk
I think Sona has a lot of the same issues most older champions have, in that while their kit in itself may be good, the kit is designed for a game that has evolved over the past 10 years to the point that the kit just doesn't fit into the game anymore.
I think one of the biggest problems with Sona vs Seraphine is that Seraphine feels like the more updated and modern Sona, while mechanically more difficult (3 skill shots to Sona's 1), she also has greater range and very good wave manipulation tools that provide a lot of early power and how you want to play the lane (poke, engage, sustain...). In a meta where hard engage supports are very favored and strong picks, Sona doesn't fit into it because her poke isn't safe because her range is too poor and requires extremely precise positioning/correct tethering which is one of the hardest micro skills in the game to master, and she has no tools for wave control.
Sona and Yuumi share similar problems in this regard, but Yuumi's ability to empower her adc is much more obvious and direct (it's literally visually indicated by sitting on the empowered champion). Yuumi also funnels that power into one person only, which means that the overall strength is much greater than with Sona, because Sona is best played in 5v5 situations where she can empower her entire team. She doesn't empower one or a few players well, but when you add up the total power she adds to her team, it outscales Yuumi's singular empowerment of one champion.
While in lower elo 5v5s still happen in mid to late game, the game pace just doesn't fit Sona's playstyle anymore. I think it's less that Sona can't do anything to speed up the tempo of the game herself (if that was the case then Pyke would be a priority pick), but that Sona is just too slow. It takes too much time for her to really scale and she provides no agency to the lane itself, which means that she must have an adc that can control the lane alone, and outside of Jhin and potentially Sivir, no other popular adcs can do that (Caitlyn can do it moderately well but only into certain matchups, and Xayah just doesn't count). Sona was designed for a game with a much slower game pace and a style that revolved around chilling in lane for 20 min and then win in a big 5v5 fight but that's not how the game works anymore.
So it's less imo that Seraphine has playmaking agency but that she can have direct impact from the very beginning and be much safer when doing so. She even gets additional range on her auto attacks when she uses an ability, which is something Sona doesn't have but would be something Sona would greatly benefit from because it would make her much more impactful in the early game.
Seraphine completely lacks in Sona's required knowledge of proper spacing and ability sequencing though. You *can* actually faceroll seraphine without being aware of what ability aura and passive you actually want up as long as you double up on either w or e. Skillshots aren't the only form of skill expression in this game, yannow.
Not to mention, Sona has some animation cancels too with her auto-q-passive auto combo.
@@Oznerock yup, having no skillshots actually makes Sona much harder to play when you take in consideration the fact that she has to walk up in the enemy range to actually do any damage, while Seraphine can sit at fountain and hit people at t2 with her ult and 1.5 screens away with her Q
Biggest factor: items. There's about no tanky support items for enchanters anymore + galeforce & prowlers claw exists + almost every new champion in recent history has a gap closer = dead Sona.
Burst meta = dead Sona
I really really miss buying Iceborn Gauntlet on Sona with Seraphs Embrace, it was a really good counter against heavy AD comps, now both items do nothing for her
My first main and the best waifu. Sadly, Riot messed up when Seraphine was released.
I totally wish Sona gets her mini-rework soon because she feels quite outperformed by other enchanters now.
When i used to be a supp main i loved the feeling of helping my team, i didnt care about my personal play making potential and i think there should be champions for people like that who seriously just want to make their team happy. I feel like if they give her more solo potential she wont fill that playstyle that makes her enjoyable for people like me.
As a Sona main (since season 4 and up till now), I would like to say that whenever I go my aggressive (not ap, still supp) build the enemy botlane gets scared of me. I know this video is 2 years old, but I would like to say despite the issues with her in the past, I never gave up on her and right now, balancing in between A-S tier supp, I am proud to be a Sona main (and lucky, bcs I never have to worry that my champ will be taken before me)
Can you share your build? I used to main her 6 years ago and just got back to leauge, I can't get used to the changes on top of barely remembering how to play lmao
Sona died the day they did a mini rework on her. They made her range smaller, auras lasting only few seconds and lowered all the numbers. Before that I was able to solo champs like Tryndamere or Rengar. After rework - everything has changed. The range of her Q is now better but it's still sad when your blue aura instead of buffing your ADC stats it just makes his one next attack stronger.
This "Why no one plays Seraphine" vid was so good. Wait wdym wrong champ?
I haven't played LoL for about 7-8 years or so, but I remember Sona easily being my favorite character. Other characters I remember loving are Volibear, Caitlyn, Morgana, and Nami. I can only imagine how much the game has changed since I last played.
I prefer Sona to Seraphine because I've got this weird little thing called taste.
Old sona is the best, remember her old lines? Addressing the player and being much cooler.
"Adagio, summoner!"@@deadspace4755
Yea this is happening a lot these days. I remember back in the day when Sivir's spell shield was considered very strong but also quite difficult to use. Now basically every new champ releases with s of some sort or full on invulnerability.