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I'm a roughly 3 million mastery Sona player that's played the game since Season preseason 5. Thinking on it, there was a time where that made me a newbie, but in season 11 I guess I've been around for more seasons than I haven't, huh? So since I've been around so long, and keyed in to Sona discourse so long, lemme ask a question to get us started: When have we ever generally been happy with Sona's state in the game as a champion?

With the new rework being announced and everyone hating it (which I called MONTHS ago, btw), this whole debacle just reeks of the same sh*t we went through the last time they worked on this champion. There is simply not enough interest in working on Sona to truly fix her underlying issues, but Riot still feels pressured to throw something at the wall because Sona mains will not stop barking about it. The doom and gloom surrounding her is both comical and pitiable. It's the only champion community where your champ can have a solid 50% to 51.5% win rate and there's reddit threads like "Yo is this champ even GOOD?". There's also the issue that there's a ton of divide over what Sona mains even want for the champion in the long term, akin to Karma mains. Some like the AP builds, and others like actually playing support on the support champion. It's not a problem to like either, objectively, but here's where we get into the second problem:

  1. Sona, as a champ, is HORRENDOUSLY designed from the ground up. She pilots herself. You have people trying to convince everyone like "Man I miss AP Sona. I wanna build AP it was so fun!", and that's fine...if there was actual counter-play for your targets. It's literally a front loaded Q+AA (maybe a line stun in there) with a ton of numbers that could blow someone to kingdom come provided by Sheen and friends. You can't advocate for this play style in a world where we removed it from Wukong for similar reasons. Building AP is fine but if you want to do damage, there has to be SOME semblance of fairness about it or it's Riot's job to remove it. You can't blame Riot for not allowing a support to build a Sheen and blast someone's kneecaps off.
  2. Sona, as a champ, is HORRENDOUSLY designed from the ground up. OK so we don't want her one shotting everyone on the rift with damage builds, so how about support builds? Well, Sona feels like sh*t to play on support builds because her impact per person is generally low (and only gets lower) so it's harder to appreciate what she's doing. To boot, there's no mastery curve to a champ that plays itself. AP builds are more fun because it feels impactful, involved, and skillful (comparatively, anyway), but you don't see this same issue on other supports because the impact and skill expression is inherent in the game play like supports are supposed to do. Sona's whole kit is basically blind Tekken button mashing with hardly anything beyond that layer. Sure, people will deny it, but compare her to basically anyone else in the roster that isn't Teemo and it becomes clear. Why does that matter? Because players feel the effects of this and find her non-damage builds to be a drag, even if they're objectively better than using her continually nerfed damage builds. Deny it all you want, no amount of pointing out that the green power chord is a mini-exhaust (which has been done for basically half a decade now) makes Sona any more skill expressive.

So her damage builds are toxic, and her support builds aren't fun. At this point she's hardly a support and she's more of a shield mashing bot that thrives on gold for some reason. How do you fix this champion NOW, Chip? Well, normally I'd say "You just VGU her"...but Riot has done the DUMBEST MOVE in all 2020 - 2021. Follow me on this:

  1. They make Seraphine. Now, I LOVE SERAPHINE. I can't stress this enough. I've been playing her non-stop all season. I personally thank Riot for making Seraphine...but on the other side of the coin, this literally was a Sona VGU that you just denied Sona that would have fixed practically ALL of her fundamental design issues while keeping a similar music theme while supporting a mid/support flex play style and build path. Like...the reason why people bring up Seraphine to this day is because of this. You've now pigeon-holed your options if you ever decide to wise up and overhaul Sona because you have to avoid making her like Seraphine, but Seraphine eats up a ton of ideas you could have used for Sona if you just used those ideas/assets on her instead. 5head design + 3head decision.
  2. They put Sona in Wild Rift. Now if you want to overhaul Sona, it's double the work, not to mention all the skins she has, one being an Ultimate skin. You could say "Well just because they're on Wild Rift doesn't me-" let's be real, it's a MAJOR deterrent.

Summary/Conclusion: Sona has suffered HEAVILY since I've joined in season 5 by Riot's unwillingness to commit to fixing her core design issues and her player base's unwillingness to let go of her more problematic kit elements so Riot could feel comfortable in fixing those issues. When Riot isn't held back by these constraints, they've literally proven that they can make a competently designed modern take on the music champion theme, and Sona mains KNOW that they want everything Seraphine has on a fundamental level (mid/support flex champion that can thrive on support builds and ap carry builds, utilizing both supportive and damage oriented abilities with pre-ultimate cc for peel...so on and so forth), but they can't let go of the privilege of extreme consistency to be able to deserve it. I don't know what Riot plans to do to TRULY address this, but if they aren't willing to commit to a larger project, please stop entertaining it forever. No more "mini-reworks". No more "band-aids". This rework is laughable, just like the last one, and I don't want another one down the line. Either commit or don't. Stop half-assing.

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over 2 years ago - /u/GalaxySmash - Direct link

Just a piece of feedback from someone who writes, reads, and receives a lot of feedback in their career. We read reddit, we go through a lot of the fanbases feedback, and we often use it to inform our decisions. A great way to get your feedback read and considered is to work it in a respectful, non-hyperbolic way. Just present your information in a factual and informative manner. The more hyperboles and exaggerative (and frankly, rude) language you use the harder it is to actual parse your opinion and analysis on things.

over 2 years ago - /u/GalaxySmash - Direct link

Originally posted by chipndip1

Reading back on it, on one hand it could be "super formally written with no emotionally loaded language in it at all"...but this isn't even close to the type of regular "feedback" we see in this community. And some of the "harsh" language is how I actually feel, and how I actually interpret a lot of things when it comes to Riot's handling of Sona (let alone other enchanter champions besides her, but that's probably for other days), the Sona community's shifty stance(s) on her, and the time line of where we were and how we got here.

I didn't make this post just to rail on one side or the other. I made this post because this project just reeks of the last one: There's enough interest to try, but not enough to try enough. You don't have to rip the whole champ apart and put in something brand new, per say (Wouldn't keep me up at night, personally. Worked WONDERS for Poppy and I love her), but like...this approach is too reserved. Perhaps I don't have to necessarily say "The dumbest move of 2020", but like...it's close to how I unironically feel about it when you put it together like that.

If any Rioter feelings were hurt in the reading of this post, I apologize.

No hard feelings friend, appreciate the response. Agree that this post isnt nearly as bad as a lot of others and I understand since its coming from passion. Just wanted to offer some genuine advice to help your thoughts stand out more! I’ll make sure the post gets seen but I wouldn’t expect much in the way of changes since these are so far along