Easy to learn, hard to master.

Pros

A good poke that hits two people and can't miss as long as you're in range, it prioritizes champions so the minions can't block your attack.

Good area of effect heal, potentially healing and shielding your entire team on a pretty short cooldown.

An are of effect speed boost that can help your whole team get a kill, get out of a bad situation alive, or just get around the map faster to get objectives.

An ultimate with decent range, area of effect damage and stun on a reasonably short cooldown. You could potentially stun the entire enemy team with it, unlikely to happen though.

Deeper mechanics that can give you a lot of power and adaptability. For instance, power chord can give your next auto a 25% or higher reduction of the enemy's damage for three seconds, similar to exhaust, potentially turning the tide of a fight if used on the right enemy at the right time.

Very helpful to any teammates near her in and out of combat.

Cons

Not a lot of damaging abilities, so not a lot of good burst damage, and not great at clearing minion waves alone if ever needed.

Somewhat easy to kill if caught out, especially without ultimate.

Abilities can use up a lot of mana early on, requiring good management and appropriate items.

Not a lot of dependable crowd control, especially stuns outside of her ultimate. Other crowd control and debuffs require good management and timing, and are unlikely to be ready if caught unaware.

Very reliant on her team.

Sorcery

Summon Aery

The best main rune to have on sona. It goes to your teammate to increase shielding, and it goes to your enemy to increase damage, and unlike meteor it can't miss. It also increases based on level, and scales on AP.

Manaflow Band

Every 15 seconds, if you hit an enemy with your q, it'll give you 25 mana permanently. This goes up to 250 mana, after which it gives you back 1% of your missing mana every 5 seconds. As your maximum mana increases and your mana goes down in lane as you use your abilities, this regeneration gets better and better. With this, an early tear of the goddess, and proper use of your abilities, you shouldn't have any problems with mana.

Transcendence

Amazing the entire game. You get 5 ability haste at level 5 and again at level 8, that's pretty early on. At level 11 it reduces the remaining cooldown of your basic abilities (everything other than your ultimate) every time you get a takedown, meaning kills or assists. Very good in team fights.

Gathering Storm

The ultimate scaling rune. It does nothing for the first ten minutes, so it's no help early game, and even at ten minutes it only gives 8 AP, but once it gets to 20 minutes goes up to 24 AP, which is pretty decent. There's limit on this, it keeps going up every ten minutes the entire game. Anyone who doesn't take this might have a slightly easier early game, but as time goes on and builds get complete, they'll become nearly useless compared to anyone who did take this.

Resolve

Revitalize

Amazing on any champion with healing and/or shielding. We have both on our w, and it's AoE, so this boost can potentially be applied to the entire team. 5% stronger outgoing heals, up to 10% stronger heals and shields if the target is below 40% health. It also increases incoming heals and shields, so lets say you have a lux on your team as mid, you'll get 5%-10% more from her shielding as well. The main reason to go with the resolve tree as your secondary.

Shield Bash

It gives you a little bit more armor and magic resist while shielded as you level up, a little bit more damage on an auto attack after you use w or e, which scales off off of health and shield power, so it will get slightly stronger as the game goes on. It also synergizes well with your passive power chord. This isn't quite as important as revitalize though, so if you want to try something else, this is the thing to replace.

Bone Plating

A potential replacement for shield bash if you're having trouble early game. After taking any damage from an enemy champion, it activates, and only lasts for 1.5 seconds. After that it has a cooldown of 45 seconds. So it's not foolproof, especially as support against one or two ranged characters. But if you stay back and avoid getting auto attacked and poked, it can help keep you alive if you get stunned or pulled and both of the enemies start throwing abilities out trying to kill you quickly. Doesn't scale very well.

Second Wind

A more foolproof alternative to bone plating. If you ever take damage from an enemy champion, even from an auto attack, this activates. You regenerate 6 health plus 4% of your missing health over the course of 10 seconds. Sona has low health, so I don't see this as being very worth it. On top of that it's based on missing health, so if you keep yourself reasonably healthy with your potions at the start and your heals (which you should be doing) then the amount of health you'll be missing will almost nothing.

Domination

Ultimate Hunter

The main reason to consider taking domination as a secondary instead of resolve. It's not very helpful early game but it has amazing scaling and can let you use your ultimate on a pretty low cooldown eventually. Especially good if your team lacks reliable hard cc like stuns.

Ghost Poro

Every time your wards expire, they leave behind a ghost poro for up to a minute, or until an enemy champion passes by, Very solid, especially on a support who should be warding a lot anyway. Also gives a bit of AP as more poros are spawned and more enemies are spotted by them, up to a stack of ten.

Precision

Cut Down

Turns a weakness into a strength. Sona has a somewhat low amount of health, if the enemy has 10% more health than you it makes all your damaging attacks and abilities deal 5% more damage to that champion, up to 15% at a 100% difference in maximum health. Great for damage on your q, ult, and auto attack, especially when you're hitting with a staccato. Especially good against tanky teams, and even better if one of those tanks is the enemy support.

Presence of Mind

The only other choice if you want cut down. It helps you keep your mana regeneration up early game if you keep poking the enemy, and during a fight it can help even more by giving you back 15% of your maximum mana on takedowns (kills and assists) with manaflow band, this, and tear of the goddess, along with proper use of your abilities, you should be good on mana even when constantly poking the enemy down and keeping yourself and your teammate healed.

Every time you use 3 abilities, your passive power chord will activate on the next auto attack. If you want to change which chord will activate after the fact, just use the corresponding ability before you use an auto attack.

Staccato (Q) Hymn of Valor

If Hymn of Valor was the last ability used and power chord is up, your next auto attack will deal an extra 40% damage. Use this to poke the enemy down more.

Diminuendo (W) Aria of Perseverance

If Aria of Perseverance was the last ability used and power chord is up, your next auto attack will reduce the damage you enemy can deal 25% (plus 4% per 100ability power) for 3 seconds. This is nearly the same damage reduction as exhaust early game, and even more later in the game, for the same duration. Use this in team fight, direct fights between you and your adc versus theirs, ganks where the enemy jungler is trying to kill you or your adc, etcetera.

Tempo (E) Song of Celerity

If Song of Celerity was the last ability used and power chord is up, your next auto attack will slow the target by 40% (plus 4% per 100 ability power) for 2 seconds. The duration isn't quite as long as the duration of the slow on exhaust, but the slow is just as strong and gets stronger as you gain more power. Use this to help chase down a running enemy, or to help run away from an enemy coming towards you.

Now you gain accelerando stacks every time you:

Hit an enemy with Q

Heal an ally or block some damage on an ally with W

Each stack gives you 0.5 haste for your normal abilities, everything other than your ultimate. After reaching 60 haste, the max, you'll start reducing your ultimate cooldown instead, allowing you to get it back much faster if you're healing, shielding, and doing damage actively with your Q and W.

With these changes Sona no longer gets mana back from using an ability on an ally, but her mana costs have been reduced to mostly make up for it. I would still recommend a tear of the goddess.

Similar champions if sona ever gets banned (unlikely) or taken

Soraka

She's a great healer, she has a good poke (though you need to land it) and she has a great aoe silence. However, she hurts herself when using her basic heals, which are single target, so you need to land her Q to heal it back. Her ult does heal the entire team no matter where they are though so that's pretty nice.

Yuumi

She's very mana hungry with her heal, but she is very easy to play. She can't take damage while she's on another champion and she makes whatever champion she's on stronger just by being there. There are times where you might have to jump between players to heal people during team fights, but most of the time mid to late game you'll wanna be on the strongest member of the team, the one with the best damage and survivability, whoever's carrying.

This means if no one on your team is doing very well, she can feel kind of useless, even more so than sona because you're single target focused. Also most people, especially ADC's (at least in my elo.) Don't seem to know what she does and aren't confident in their abilities alone with all the decision making as far as positioning, which can lead to them just kind of camping by the turret at full hp and falling behind for no reason.

Nami

Her heal is pretty good, even without enemies to bounce it off of, and doesn't have any downsides. She's got good CC, though you need to land it, and her ult is very similar to sona's.

Very Different Alternatives

Leona

Tanky CC. She's one of, if not the best at constant crowd control. If you're good and your team follows up on your stuns she's great. If you make bad choices or your teammates choose to run away or attack minions as soon as you go in for a stun, you'll probably just die and feel like you can't do anything.

Brand

Pure damage, aside from a stun requiring a combo. You do have to aim his attacks but they're not that hard to hit. He can deal a lot of damage and he deals percent health damage, so he's especially good against tanks. If you want a tank killer play brand and build Liandry's torment and demonic embrace. Though with a normal build he can also deal great damage to anyone.

A bronze 3 player from the NA server who just started playing again after a long break a while back on an alt account that is now my main account. I mostly made this guide for fun and to help out really new players with a thorough guide. I also think creating this guide and keeping it updated will help me improve as a player, like that one song from tarzan.

Why should I take advice from a bronze player?

I have no good response to that, probably read other guides too, and of course just try to play more. I will say though, in my guide's defense, knowledge and execution are two different things. Macro is also very important, especially for Sona.