Last updated: 12/9/2012

Patch notes: Sona Patch History

v1-0-0-150 - 2012-10-25
Base Health reduced to 410 from 450
Base Armor reduced to 9 from 11

Sona is the master of support, she's squishy but can be extremely hard to kill in the right hands. I'm going to be updating this guide a lot, but it's not because I feel like I should be giving advise, it's so that I have a place to go where I can review my game strategy. Please feel free to suggest anything and if you think there is better alternatives.

Nothing pisses people off like hitting a Sona and finding out the hard way that she's not as squishy as expected. Not only that, but she bursts harder than you think early game, it adds up. But this build is not a damage build, it's a support build to help your teammates throughout all stages of the game.

Thanks for reading!

Not trying to make this look as appealing as I can, this really is all I can think of. If you try this build and you can think of more pros or cons, let me know.

PROS

Survivability
Support Auras
Decent Damage
Great Heals
Cheap Core Build
Large Mana Pool
Fast Movement Speed
Excellent Defenses
No Mana Issues

CONS

Full CC teams can shutdown Sona
You can't heal "Stupid"
Dying can be a set back
Gold/XP Issues if no assists
Bad mana regen early game

Philosopher's Stone Sight Ward

Never face check bushes with Sona unless you have someone good to back you up.

It's extremely important that your lane partner is a decent player and makes sensible choices.

Always assist your lane partner, but stay at range and in a safe position.

If your lane partner is stupid, do what you can but DO NOT sacrifice yourself.

Conserve your mana up until you get the Tear of the Goddess.

If you're traveling anywhere, cast Celerity over and over again until you get there.

Cast spells on your way back to the lane if you have purchased Tear of the Goddess.

Save your ultimate for multiple people, or unless you can guarantee a kill with it.

Try to not kill steal if you can help it, but don't go out of your way.

Your most important stat is mana regen, without it you cannot spam spells.

I've been playing a lot of games now where I keep dying to silly things, such as getting out-run by champions with stupid movement speeds, or people that only pop ghost and catch up to me with just that.

So that's why I updated the guide and included Shurelya's Battlesong, quite an amazing item for Sona. It provides much needed HP, mana regen and cooldown reduction, but the most important thing is the activated use of it, it's almost like a ghost spell; it even gives you the particle effect of ghost.

So when they focus you and your team is dead or you're all alone and setup for a gank, and they pop their stuns and slows, what do you do?

Cleanse > Ghost > Song of Celerity > Shurelya's Battlesong > Mobility Boots

If they are even remotely close to you, after 5 seconds of chasing the boots of mobility will kick in and keep your speed up.

This is an incredible ultimate if you land it at the right time. "The right time" is what's hard to figure out, you can't just use it whenever you want to look cool, you have to think of who your opponents are, what situation you're in and when the absolute best time to use it is.

Good Situations:
To save a teammate from a possible kill from one or multiple enemies who are bunched up and chasing your low health friend.

To initiate a gank, or to continue a stun. If you have someone who can stun, tell them to initiate with their stun, then wait for their stun to fade and use your ultimate for maximum duration and an almost certain kill assist.

To save yourself from certain death.

To get a kill on someone who is tower diving to kill you. Let him hit you first, then stun him and continue to attack him until he dies, or heal yourself if you're low health, or run if you think he'll still kill you by the time the stun is over. At least he'll pay dearly for it one way or another.

To deny an enemy champion's ultimate, such as Nunu & Willump, Katarina, Fiddlesticks, Galio, etc. If any of these champions are against you, reserve your ultimate for when they pop theirs. If you can.

To deny Jarvan IV's Ultimate, if he traps you just turn around and stun his face in while you heal, it should fade away as soon as the stun is done. If he traps one of your teammates, do the same but try to set it up so you get more than one person in the stun.

Bad Situations:

Last hit champions - unless you need to secure the kill (do not kill steal), then don't do it.

Harassing - you just don't waste your ultimate like that.

To chase someone down - it's actually got a very short linear range, you want to save it unless you're in melee range of the guy that's running. If you try to use it at medium distance, they'll out-run it before it reaches them.

To initiate team fights out in the open - that's not your job, it will most likely be wasted, the damage will be negligible and your team will end up getting mauled. Usually.

Stunning someone at their tower - pointless unless you're tower diving and want him to stay in place for your teammate to kill him.

Killing creeps - It doesn't work on creeps.

In the end, it's not really what amazing build you found online that plays the game for you, it's always up to the player on how good they do. I created this Sona build after trying out all the different builds out there and finding what worked for me and my team. I like to play on the strengths of a champion and going with an inexpensive and efficient build.

The matches below are my most recent games, the one where I died 7 times was because they had a really good Blitzcrank on their team. But we still won, because they focused me and not my team.



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Thank you for reading, now I leave you with a possible inspiration for the character.
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