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Recommended Items
Runes: Maximum Possible Lategame Value
1
2
Sorcery
Resolve
+8 Ability Haste
+2% Movement Speed
+10-180 Bonus Health
Spells:
Just don't go anything else tbh
Flash
Heal
Items
Ability Order Standard
Power Chord (PASSIVE)
Sona Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Extreme
Major
Even
Minor
Tiny
None
Low
Ok
Strong
Ideal
Blitzcrank
Nilah
Ideal
Strong
Ok
Low
None
Nilah
Champion Build Guide
An Introduction
UNDEDRGOING REWRITE FROM SEASON 13
Sona is a deceptively hard champion to play. You may look at her auto-targeting abilities, comapre it to
Akali, and laugh at that statement. I would counter by asking this: What does Sona do when things go wrong?
Akali has her
Twilight Shroud invisiility to escape nearly any scenario where she positions correctly in neutral, the 2 dashes from
Shuriken Flip allow her to displace her champion across the entire screen to escape enemies and doge abilities, and her ultimate
Perfect Execution are 2 screen-wide dashes, with the caveat that the first must pass through an enemy champion (aka forced cross-up, oh no). What does
Sona do? She ****ing eats it all, or she has the hands to dodge everything with movespeed alone. Her optimal play is to hit the enemy with
Aria of Perseverance
Power Chord if they have gapclosers,
Song of Celerity
Power Chord if they don't, and eat however much damage they deal.
If it's a Fizz, ggs. If it's a katarina, ggs. If it's a talon, ggs. If it's almost any skirmish type champion with a decent gap closer and enough damage to burst you before your W passive AA can land, ggs. It's not that you are helpless into these champions - far from it - it's that once you ENTER into a bad scenario, there is almost no way to LEAVE it. This is the essence of why people say positioning is important on Sona as the punishment is not your E or your W, it is your flash or your life.
Accepting this and working around it, and eventually working to overcome it, is what separates a bad Sona player from a good one. A better Akali quite literally deals more damage than a bad one, same for ashe, darius, ekko, most of the champions in this game have ways that you can use and abuse their abilities to their very limits. Even Soraka can land every Q, constantly poisition and reposition to use W on perfect CD, save ultimate for the *perfect* moment to pump out as much healing as possible.
The best Sona in the world only ever heals 90 + 30% AP and shields 105 + 25% AP. Good Sona's deal more damage, but you don't pick her for the damage (unless only choosing between enchanters). Good Sona's die less, but that only means the enemies have less gold. The output of this champion is capped at (90 + 30% AP) + (105 + 25% AP) every 10 seconds minus ability haste. This seems limiting, seems like you'll never climb, feels like you can't carry every game. And you can't.
But if they let her go even one step further, she would be ****ing insane.
Sona is a deceptively hard champion to play. You may look at her auto-targeting abilities, comapre it to










If it's a Fizz, ggs. If it's a katarina, ggs. If it's a talon, ggs. If it's almost any skirmish type champion with a decent gap closer and enough damage to burst you before your W passive AA can land, ggs. It's not that you are helpless into these champions - far from it - it's that once you ENTER into a bad scenario, there is almost no way to LEAVE it. This is the essence of why people say positioning is important on Sona as the punishment is not your E or your W, it is your flash or your life.
Accepting this and working around it, and eventually working to overcome it, is what separates a bad Sona player from a good one. A better Akali quite literally deals more damage than a bad one, same for ashe, darius, ekko, most of the champions in this game have ways that you can use and abuse their abilities to their very limits. Even Soraka can land every Q, constantly poisition and reposition to use W on perfect CD, save ultimate for the *perfect* moment to pump out as much healing as possible.
The best Sona in the world only ever heals 90 + 30% AP and shields 105 + 25% AP. Good Sona's deal more damage, but you don't pick her for the damage (unless only choosing between enchanters). Good Sona's die less, but that only means the enemies have less gold. The output of this champion is capped at (90 + 30% AP) + (105 + 25% AP) every 10 seconds minus ability haste. This seems limiting, seems like you'll never climb, feels like you can't carry every game. And you can't.
But if they let her go even one step further, she would be ****ing insane.
Why play Sona?
In short, Sona is the complete package. There will never be a game in which Sona is lacking tools that others may have. Soraka heals more, but has ZERO forward potential and pressure. Janna has that forward pressure with her reworked/reverted damage capability and ms, but her defensive tools are high-commitment and unreliable, not to mention lacking in magnitude and sustain, and are single-target for the vast majority. She has to use her abilities in that one, defining moment to have a true impact. Karma is better in lane, but falls off in usefulness to her team beyond a high-cd AOE shield lategame. Lulu is basically extra item slots for Kog'maw and Twitch aside from polymorph. Milio is a nice enchanter pick into engage supports, but suffers from Nami syndrome in that he's been relegated to working with specific teammates. Seraphine is overtuned as of 14.16 but has no guaranteed pressure against enemies with movement abilities. Renata is useful into engage and pairs well with champions like Kalista, but is giga-useless in many drafts and her power is so conditional as to ruin the champion's reliability. Nami has great skirmish potential if the enemy lets her hit bubbles and of course has been game-breaking with Lucian, but is sadly being relegated to Lulu 2.0 because of this fact. Yuumi is... anyway.
Taric is perhaps the only champion that comes close to matching Sona when it comes to generally applicable utility. However, he is also teammate reliant and only truly thrives in more organized play, where communication around the use of his abilities, especially his ult, is paramount to success. Not to mention, a forced 2.5 + reaction time delay to his most powerful ability ensures there is always room for the enemy to counter him. There will always be hype clips where the enemy nautilus allows Taric to autoattack him for an entire teamfight, winning the game, but those moment's don't get you any more LP than autoing their nexus any other way.
Taric is perhaps the only champion that comes close to matching Sona when it comes to generally applicable utility. However, he is also teammate reliant and only truly thrives in more organized play, where communication around the use of his abilities, especially his ult, is paramount to success. Not to mention, a forced 2.5 + reaction time delay to his most powerful ability ensures there is always room for the enemy to counter him. There will always be hype clips where the enemy nautilus allows Taric to autoattack him for an entire teamfight, winning the game, but those moment's don't get you any more LP than autoing their nexus any other way.
Runes
TL;DR
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Aery - The only option. Aery is required on ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Transcendence - Bait, but taken when building no ability haste (![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Gathering Storm - The better option. Take in at least 80% of games, and there's really no reason to not take it in 100% of games. Unlocks an entire win condition for your team. Every winnable game will go to twenty minutes, at least any game ![]() |
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Scorch - The worse option. Take ONLY if the extra piddly little damage MIGHT actually affect something, instead of just making you feel better. Take when you have very volatile bot matchups where the first kill decides everything. Note: This is hardly ever true, and if you think it is then you shouldn't play ![]() |
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Presence of Mind - This rune fills a gap in ![]() ![]() |
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Legend: Tenacity - Helpful into the right enemy team compositions, and the best vaccuum option for a second rune in the precision tree. Paired with ![]() ![]() |1-(1-0.2)(1-0.1)| = 0.28 or 28% tenacity. |
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Cut Down - Luxury, but still relevant into the right enemy team compositions. Indirectly buffed with the removal of health from ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Bone Plating - DO NOT TAKE. This rune is BAIT to the maximum degree. The enemy controls when you have it up, it WILL NOT change ANY outcome of fights in situations you would want to take it in. The ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Revitalize - Obviously good, but worse than you may realize. The shielding done tracker on this rune is completely fake, it tracks all of the times you spam your W shield and nothing hits it. Go off of the healing done tracker and substitute the same number for the shielding to get a more accurate read on how impactful the rune was. Five percent more healing and shielding is pretty luxurious in the long run and probably won't change the outcome of most situations until lategame, and is completely pointless if you are out of mana at any point so you should be building at least a ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
Early Shards - These shards are best taken into even or winning lanes where you have some semblance of angency in how the lane will go. They give you the best shot at coming out of the laning phase even or ahead, which is more valuable than taking scaling shards and coming out of lane behind. Taken in most games, the ability power is far more valuable than ability haste early due to the combination of ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
![]() ![]() ![]() |
Scaling Shards - If you aren't gonna win the ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Items
Core - Always Build 2/3 99.9% of Games
Boots
Other Items
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Seraph's Embrace - Gives 105 AP (80 base + 25 mana-based from on-item mana and ![]() |
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Staff of Flowing Water - This item was made for Sona. It has everything you could ever want on it. Good at basically all points, there should be a staff in your 3 item build in the vast majority of games. Exception is if your team makes zero use of the AP (usually meaning they REALLY want ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Ardent Censer - Another amazing item, this will blow the game open if you have an autoattack based jungler and ADC. More situational than ![]() ![]() ![]() |

Building all 3 IS an option and SHOULD be done if applicable to your game state.
Boots
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Boots of Speed - Best boots in the game. But actually, if you see the builds of the top ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Boots of Swiftness - The best boots choice in the vast majority of games. Only don't get if the enemy truly has NO slows to speak of, the slow resist is a bonus you get on top of the increased movement speed. The ability to gapclose and outrun is paramount on this champion. An EXTREMELY common scenario is you chasing an enemy running away with ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Ionian Boots of Lucidity - 15 ability haste really isn't that important at the end of the day, especially on ![]() ![]() |
Other Items
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Redemption - An alternative to ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Mikael's Blessing - You know if you need to build this one. For if the whole game is decided by one ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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