Sona is a low cd aura based support champion. She is capable of turning a worst-case-scenario teamfight around. In early game laning phase she's a strong poker if played correctly. Landing her powerchords right, can be devistating for your oppenent. Playing sona you're able to either play offensive of defensive, lvling your dmging (Q) spell or healing spell(w) depending on your situation.

Playing Sona requires an overview of your lane's situation, being able to babysit your carry and taking risks. PLAY Sona, don't just fool around pressing diffrent keys! Her passive if truly underrated. She's able to slow, lowering dmg and dealing A LOT of damage if needed too by using her passive correctly.

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In this guide you will learn:

• Sona: Support Basics
• Pros / Cons
• Abilities!
• Runes
• Masteries
• Spells
• Skill Sequence
• Core Items
• Team Work - When Playing With: Synergies:
• When Playing Against: Counter:

So, where do i start? Before you start playing Sona, it's quite importent that you use the right runes, masteries and know the basics of playing a support. Using my 0/9/21 mastery page, you should be able to harass, earning money and still be quite tanky. Since having 9 points in defensive masteries grant you surviability you're able to take some dmg, when you are harrashing their ADC.

Taking mp5 masteries in The support three, makes you able to harrash a lot combined with your starter items! If you want to, you can pick flat mp5 runes in glyphs instead of magic recist, but magic recist runes grant you surviability endgame and prevents you from losing too much hp from their support's harassment. (or adc with ap dmg)

Magic pen. runes are definitly importent since you're able to deal a lot of dmg with them, even though you won't have a lot of ap early game. Wih my build you should have 120 ap WITHOUT your Q (Dmg spell which gives aura with bonus ad and ap).

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Placing wards:

Placing wards the right spot is importent, otherwise your lane will be ganked easily. Here's a slogan; ''Buy a ward, safe life''. Make sure to ward at dragon and in tri bush. NOT in beetwen which is often seen. Here's a picture to demonstrate (red circles show where you should ward):



These a optioanal places to ward: (Baron and drake aren't on the picture but they should be too!)

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You might wonder; ''what is a good support score?'', as support you have to avoid taking kills and instead focusing on getting assists and building for gold items.

Here's an example of 4 wins, even though every game was won, the support shouldn't take any kills if there's a chance of somebody else on your team getting it. Here's 3 good scores and 1 bad,(Green square=right, red=wrong).




It's importent to keep in mind; DON'T TAKE ANY CREEP KILLS FROM THE AD CARRY

Don't even last hit, it will cause trouble for your ad carry, simply press S (It stops your auto attacking (s=STOP COMMAND.

Team work beetween ADC and Support is importent. Playing support you have to keep a good spirit up withing the team and in your lane. Tell your adc what he could do better, not how bad he is! There's a 16% higher chance of winning you don't flame on your teammates.

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Baron and Drake

Remember spawn time for Baron and Drake so you can tell your team to get ready.

• Drake / Dragon - 6 min.
  
• Baron / Nashor - 7 min.

Keep in mind it's importent to have Drake warded all the time from when it spawns, and baron from at least 20 min in the game (Baron spawns 15 min into the game).

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When playing support, then don't try to get kills, it just won't work, since your ad carry won't be able to do dmg, and you won't be able to use the gold on anything useful. Instead buy Gold per 5 items such as Kage's lucky pick or Philosopher's stone. Having Gp5 runes helps a lot too: 3 runes = 3 gold/10 s * 6 * 30 = 540 gold over 30 min. Especially in S3, has the supports lack of gold been eased with items such as Sightstone.

Now we'll take a look at her abilities and how to use them.


Abilites:

Hymn of Valor:


Cooldown: 7s

Cost: 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 mana

Stance – Persistent Aura: Sona plays the Hymn of Valor, granting nearby allied champions bonus attack damage and ability power until she changes stances.

Activation: Sona sends out bolts of sound, dealing magic damage to the nearest two enemy champions or minions.

Aria of Perseverance:


Cooldown: 7s

Cost: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 mana

Stance – Persistent Aura: Sona plays the Aria of Perseverance, granting nearby allied champions bonus armor and magic resistance until she changes stances.

Activation: Sona sends out healing melodies, healing herself and the most-wounded nearby ally champion. Additionally, both Sona and the healed champion will receive additional armor and magic resist for 3 seconds.


Song of Celerity:


Cooldown: 7s

Cost: 65 mana

Stance – Persistent Aura: Sona plays the Song of Celerity, granting nearby allied champions bonus flat movement speed until she changes stances.

Activation: Sona energizes nearby allies with an additional burst of speed for 1.5 seconds.


Crescendo:


Range: 1000

Cooldown: 140 / 120 / 100

Cost: 100 / 150 / 200 mana

Active: Sona plays her ultimate chord in a broad line in front of her, forcing enemy champions caught to dance stunned for 1.5 seconds and take magic damage upon impact.


Passive:



After casting 3 spells, Sona's next attack deals extra 8 + (10 × level) magic damage. This enhanced attack has an additional effect depending on which spell was cast last.


Power Chord has three distinct effects based on what Sona's currently active aura. You will need to charge the passive by using three abilities before it's ready. It has a speciel effect based on the last ability you used. (it will be used as the first autoattack you cast, so don't autoattack minions when having powerchord charged!).




Power Chord (Hymn of Valor) - Staccato will deal double the damage of Power Chords base damage.

Tactics: Charging Power Chord three times with Hymn of Valor at the start of the game can lead to an advantage fighting in the brush at level 1. You can deal a good amount of dmg by popping ''Hymn of Valor'' and afterwards ''Power Chord (Hymn of Valor) - Staccato'' as harassment or initiating a teamfight.



Power Chord (Aria og Perseverance)- Diminuendo will apply a 20% damage reduction debuff upon a target.

Tactics: In a battle using Aria of Perseverance along with Power Chord to hit the enemy's
carry can help turn the tides of the fight. Aria of Perseverance's Power Chord also affects Dragon.



Power Chord (Song of Celerity)- Tempo will apply a 40% slow for 2 seconds.

Tactics: Do not underestimate the movement speed buff of Song of Celerity. The passive aura combined with its AoE active can give a very large speed boost to Sona's team. This combined with its slow from Song of Celerity's Power Chord can make it very difficult to catch/run away from her and her team.

Sona is a really squishy support champion compared to others as taric, leona or alistar, playing against long range adc's, makes it quite hard to harass, and therefore you need to pick runes that gives you that extra armor that you need. Using gold quints helps you a lot with gaining enough money to reach your endgame build. For glyphs either pick flat mr or flat mp5.

Here's 4 diffrent builds depending on your oppenent:


If you're pretty sure to have a long laning phase, agaisnt a strong carry, then this is an pretty good build. You won't take much dmg and you'll still be able to earn gold with your Quints. These adcs could for instance be Graves, ezreal or draven

You're going to play semi agressive then this is a pretty strong build, since it grants you both dmg, armor, mr and a hint og gp5. These champions could for instance be
sivir or tristana.

This build is something makes you able to spam your heal more and stay defensive.


Finally the even more agressive build which still gives you armor and and gp5, but having more mp5 gives you more harassment. Could be used agaisnt vayne because of her low range, just agaisnt carries which can't harass well or have low range.

Due to new items and masteries in season 3, heal and flash has become the most effective spells.

Heal: Pick Heal because of elise's (item) improved 20% less cd on heal.


flash: Pick flash because it's a must have since you can flash into a teamfight and pop your ulti, it's also the best escapist ability.

Leveling Your dmg spell (Q) makes you a strong poker in lane, and later on! + you get a great AD and AP aura which helps your adc lasthitting and dealing more damage. If you're in a situation where your adc can't last hit because he's lose hp, then max healing (W), but i stongly suggest leveling your Q and learn how to harass, i'll explain later how you should harass.

This how i think Sona's core build should look, since it gives her a little bit of everything.

Coming soon

Sona is an all around support and works well with almost every adc out there, if not all!

Here's s few tips on the adc's you'll probably team up with bot:

Caitlyn: Easy to harass, due to Caitlyns long range other carries can't do much, and you can freely harass. Get makes it a lot easier for Caitlyn to hit with her skillshot since Sona's ult stuns then. Caitlyn can easily pop her ulti in a fight because of Sona's ulti. Just harass as much as possible.

Vayne: Sona's does well with Vayne, but Sona wouldn't pick my first pick with Vayne bot lane since vayne mostly needs a tanky support, even though vayne and sona has a really good endgame together, i would pick something diffrent (In my opinion). Try to protect vayne as much as possible, she's very squishy. Spam movement bonus and slows and let vayne kite them.



MORE COMING SOON!

COMING SOON!