I had fallen in love with Sona since the day she was released and she still proves that she is going to be one of my favorite Champions until the end of time. Just like with any other Champion, this is another option for you to try out. Sona is one of those Champions that can be extremely versatile and one way you can play her is as a Full Support Aura Tank Sona. This particular build makes it so that Sona will be extremely tanky and supportive of the team.

Ignoring the Ashe loss, as you can see, the build has proven itself in both Normal and Ranked (Solo / Team) games. I highlighted a 7/0/19 game I was in, and that match in itself also proved that Sona can still burst out a lot of damage whether she has AP or not. While it may not be as high as a normal AP build, it's still enough to chunk off enemy Champions. Notice this build's high Assist count, that's going to happen frequently in this build and a sign that it's a working build is if your Assist count is high. A lot of the damage you'll produce is through your teammates or the different Aura's you'll end up having.

Your runes are set up to make you much more tanky than the average Sona. The point of this build is that you're not ever really outputting any damage, but instead, maximizing Sona's purpose as a team Aura. In order for these Aura's to be effective, you have to be able to survive long enough for your team to utilize these Aura's.

I take Armor, Magic Resist and HP to give her more survivability in the laning phase, allowing you to lane for a long period of time without having to return to shop. You'll be spending a lot of time in lane and without shop for the majority of the early game so having these runes will give you a slight boost for quite some time.

I choose to do 0/9/21 to allow Sona to be able to take a couple of extra hits as well as making her much more supportive by focusing on getting your Summoner Spell cooldowns lower. The need for Clairvoyance is a must and the shorter cooldown on Flash is crucial as it's your main method of initialization as well as escape.

I gave Sona as much regen as I can through her Masteries as opposed to her Runes and attempted to maximize on each area where one is lacking in the other.

An example of this is I would take more defensive runes such as Armor and Magic Resist as well as flat stat increase Runes because you don't generally get a lot of this on the Mastery side.

I choose this particular skill sequence to prioritize sustainability first, then damage later. The point of this Sona build is to utilize Aura's and not so much the actual skills themselves. You won't output ridiculous amounts of damage, but you will enable your teammates to do so. I lowered Song of Celerity's priority because the movement speed, I feel, only makes you much more aggressive than you need to be and it's there so you can use Power Chord on an enemy champion to slow them.

You should also do as much as you can to maximize Power Chord. If you've been healing for a while, throw up a Hymn of Valor, then Power Chord an enemy Champion. Take pot shots at their HP bar here and there... Song of Celerity Power Chord for ganks, the little things. It may not seem much, and you'll hear me say this a lot, all the little things add up to bigger things, including your Power Chords. You'll naturally start holding on to them more frequently for team fights.

An example of correct Power Chord usage:
Tryndamere has been chasing you for a while, and you've been hitting Aria of Perseverance for a while as well as Song of Celerity. As you get your Power Chord up, you can hit him with Song of Celerity Power Chord, you can slow him and get a 2 second lead.

You get into a team fight, you've been slamming Song of Perseverance, Hymn of Valor and Song of Celerity for a while. Your Power Chord is up and you got squishies all around you. Hymn of Valor and Auto-Attack one of them to chunk their HP down. In most cases, you'll chunk off 10-20% of their HP bar with Hymn of Valor Power Chord alone.

Itemization for this particular build is extremely important and there is a method to the madness. As you can see, you basically have no AP on Sona through Runes, Masteries or even the majority of her items in my build.

The reason for this is you're playing Sona as a complete Support through three routes. You're meant to last long, heal harder much earlier and provide utility through the usage of Clairvoyance and using Crescendo at the opportune moment or through active items.

If you click through the different builds above, you can mix and match as well!

I basically pick up all of the GP/5 items because you won't be getting any Minion Kills on this build. You're going to be sitting back, dancing back and forth in lane to allow your laning partner to last hit all creep and feeding them as much gold as possible.

The only time you will ever get a Minion Kill is if they have returned, died, pushing back minions if they're up in your turret or you're in the lane by yourself for an extended period of time.

The GP/5 items in total, will round about 3200 gold, but you get this gold fairly quickly. Since you'll be in the back through out most of the game and in positions where it's hard to get killed, you should almost never need to return to base for any reason. By the time you're level 8, you should be getting your 3rd GP/5 item.

In most cases, you'll also be buying full items, outright. The only two items you'll build off of is Boots of Speed and Mana Manipulator.

Once you've acquired selling range for particular items, you would simply sell your least important GP/5 item for it. An example of this would be selling Avarice Blade when you have 1600 gold so you can purchase Aegis of the Legion completely.

Additionally, the item build listed on this page is not necessarily the order you need to follow. Because you rely on GP/5 items and assists for the majority of your gold, it gives you insight on what you need to build long before you need to build those items.

For example, if you're team is absolutely dominating, then yeah, you would want to get items like Abyssal Scepter, Starks Fervor, Will of the Ancients and Aegis of the Legion. It'll make it that much harder for the other team to destroy your team because you're lowering their Magic Resist, you're giving your team Attack Speed, Life Steal, Spell Vamp as well as increased Damage.

Even if you're slightly losing, these items will give your team a slight edge.

If you're getting focused hard, because a lot of these items make you much more tanky than the usual Sona build, having Soul Shroud, Aegis of the Legion, Sunfire Cape and Frozen Heart will give you the sustainability you need so that your team can fight without you and being focused means you've just pulled off a couple of Champions out of the fight by locking them down on you. Better yet, because you are basically a Tank, once the enemy team have exhausted all of their spells on you or otherwise, it gives you the chance to use Crescendo when they're running or grouped up. It just makes fighting you so much worst.

If, and only if, you need a little more defense and utility, you can go further down the route of said utility by grabbing Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Frozen Heart, Thornmail, Deathfire Grasp and Shurelya's Reverie. These items are meant to lower the cooldown of Crescendo and to make it a complete pain to hit you at all or give you that extra damage and pursuit you need.

Remember, this Sona build is not about you doing damage, but providing your team absolute utility through any means necessary whether it means you giving them Aura's, you being much more Tanky or giving the extra Utility your team needs.

The only flaw in this build is that it is heavily reliant on your team. If your team is made up of a bunch of complete randoms with mediocre to no skill what so ever, this build will not only fall flat on it's face, but you'll find yourself alive, by yourself watching your team die in misery around you.

The greatest asset to this build is also exposing the other team's inability to respond to your build. Most people in League of Legends have a problem with change. They are unable to deal with change ups.

Watch any high level play, and you'll see Champions like Orianna getting banned, while playing lower-ELO, you'll see Tanks such as Shen, Rammus and Amumu getting banned. Playing out-of-standard will always throw these kinds of players off and it gives you a clear advantage because they're naturally trained in their minds to kill the Support first and hilariously, you're not just Support, but tanky as well, which makes it extremely hard for them to deal with you, thus giving you the upper hand.

Because you're not farming as much and you'll be providing support with Clairvoyance, you should naturally analyze the enemy Champions as well.

Take a gander at how much HP they have, their MP, how much AP, Movement Speed, Armor... things like that. If you notice a Twisted Fate with five bars of health and 10 AP starting out, then you should make the call to your team, "Twisted Fate is AP". There's no guess work involved, and as a team, you should naturally notice that you can force Twisted Fate into AD if necessary... and if he doesn't, you can abuse that fact by getting more Magic Resistance.

Train yourself to be able to identify these little things. It helps the early game a lot and it's just another thing to sharpen your edge with.

Pros

• Many Options
• Higher Sustainability
• Team buffs, opponent debuffs
• Defensive, resulting in less deaths
• Feeds an extra champ on the team through minion kills
• Jungler support with Clairvoyance
• Great initialization through Flash and Crescendo because of survivability
• Much more observant

Cons

• Slow upstart
• Difficult to play
• No killing power
• High map awareness and prowess required
• Requires intelligent (read: decent) teammates
• Patience. Lots... and lots and lots of patience...

If you read the Pro's and Con's list, you'll notice fairly quickly where the strength of this build lies.

You're meant to support the team and ensure victory by just making it balls hard for the other team to make any kind of forward progress against your own team. Because you're giving that little extra edge and utility for your team (and I know I sound like a broken record at this point), you basically enable certain Champions that extra damage, that extra defense, that extra attack speed, that extra spell vamp, that extra life steal... just everything. Some times it's so much extra "mechanic", you some times end up watching Tryndamere two shot a Soraka, a Cho'Gath spell vamp 40% of his HP bar back... and even at times, watch a Karthas blow up the entire team because of Abyssal Scepter or even catch Nidalee because of your active items.

As mentioned above, the biggest downside to this build is literally what it is... if your team is ineffective, you will also be ineffective and literally watch as your team crumbles around you before you do.

In addition to the several other points I had made above, this build also allows you to get Oracles early as well as becoming a Scout. You can wipe out the other team's wards and put up your own at higher frequency. Having that Oracles also incentivizes the other team to target you first. While it may cost you 400 gold + death, 400+ gold + possible ace shared amongst your own team is not a bad trade off.

You gotta take those little steps forward. Always keep picking at the other team and keep making the better trade offs because that's what this build is all about, sacrifice for the greater good. Ranked play is all about the team work as well, so this build is a natural fit.

I hope this build is interesting to someone and that they find it effective. I try giving as much insight as possible to the different methods to play this particular build. I know that some of the itemizations are really weird and random, especially the four GP/5 items, but that extra boost to your AD/AP Carry in your shared lane is so crucial, that extra Aura from items including your own skills, it's just so much extra utility that it's hard to dismiss this build as anything but awesome.

If you have the patience to run this build, I guarantee you that you won't be disappointed. It'll be tough at first, but once you understand how it works, your role in the team is cemented, because your team's survival is dependent on you, as in most cases with Support.