[2021] Riot Jag talks about Sona PBE feedback: Sona's AP ratio nerfs will be removed tomorrow

Originally posted by Scrench97

The ult cdr reduction changed to the stacking mechanic alone is a huge buff. It is only a nerf at lvl16 which you will reach about 25-30% of the time on average(this is an estimate based on my own games). Being rewarded for using your spells well will be a lot more satisfying then having to leach every bit of xp.

Originally posted by Definitively-Weirdo

I'm gonna respond to each one of his points

We care about how players are responding to the changes, and we've seen a fair amount of sentiment that this is a nerf.

Yeah, like at least 90% of Sona players and with good reasons, one of the many is that you're Riot JAG, and you have an atrocious historial with Kai'Sa (How many nerfs had she received the last 40 months?), Camille, "Aatrox", The preS11 tank items, and a Star guardian who enslaves sould and the story acts like she's a good girl.

From my perspective, I suspect that some people are undervaluing some of the specifics.

That's usually the case if you ask me. I don't think this is a nerf BUT it's definitively going in the wrong direction by keeping that haste and enforcing it while most Sona complain about the champion having their habilities feel not impactful enough.

We've seen a lot of playtests where Sona gets to two ultimates in the same lategame teamfight, which many players do not think will happen at all. So that's a fair amount of misalignment.

Yes, it can theoretically be used twice in a lategame TF, specially since you can detonate that passive up to 6 times with that W. But even then the hability has 2 minutes cooldown and 70 seconds with your standar build. It can be done but it's mostly on a gimmick territory who can easily go wrong if the TF goes like normal aka lasting almost nothing because those are generally very explosive (In part because of the changes you made to defensive items), and in case it becames reliable it'll be a broken part of the kit no reason.

The basic ability haste is also very front loaded compared to live, particularly if the Sona player plays the lane well. It's worse at 16, but you would need 80 Ability Haste from other sources for the old level 11 R Passive to break even with the new one.

You're right, you require 80 haste to be the same as before. The thing is that Sona can easily acheive that ammount of haste on her regular build. Oh, and there's an important bug with Aery, the rune Sona uses the most, not allowing to proc efficiently that aura.

That being said, we're open to the perspective that we're overvaluing it. To that end, we're removing the AP Ratio nerf for tomorrow's PBE build, and we will proceed cautiously in case we need to pull back.

I hope with "pull back" you mean do the same as August did with Wukong (The developer Riot respects when they're not supports) and pull back the proyect to discover which kind of rework Sona should have (I can kinda see it, and is mostly related to just remove the CDR and make the numbers to have bigger scaling outside the auras).