If you are first timing Sona and need a last second noobs guide, jump to the Sona Quick Guide.

This champ gets such a bad wrap, and when I was looking on youtube for guides, the only dedicated guides were by two players that had a decent understanding of her, but were lacking details that should be highlighted. One plat player, my main inspiration actually, understood the champ very well, but he runs presence of mind, which in my opinion is absolutely criminal. To be fair, I peaked masters, which is within the top 1% of the player base and on top of that I have a lot of years on refining Sona. I’m aware that for high elo players, that’s still considered low rank, but despite that I think that I have enough champ specific insight that some of those non-Sona players could still learn a thing or two. Lastly I don't mean to throw shade at those other guides mentioned prior. I genuinely appreciate them shedding light on this misunderstood champ and giving me motivation to work on a guide of my own.

That being said, lots of people say Sona is the champion that's the most noob friendly support, second only to Yuumi. She's an easy to play, braindead, boosted support. If you are someone who thinks this, I can't blame you, you can technically get decently high elo playing her without actually knowing what you’re doing because of her low skill floor. The thing is, there is no champion in the support role quite like her, and by the end of this video, most of you will be convinced at how mechanically unique this champion is.

Sona is the Nilah of support. She's the wierdest champion to play decently, requires high levels of situational awareness, and can only be played well with a decent understanding of what the champion does well. She's spacing reliant like an ADC, she's a gold and exp hyperscaler like an adc, and she can be the equivalent of a hard carry like an ADC. If you like spacing and having insanely high skillcaps, Sona is the champion for you.

Just for the sake of it, we’ll start with how you play Sona if you don't care about mastery and just want some short term, low elo results.

Sona ****ty Quickguide

For RUNES go Aery, Manaflow Band, Transcendance, and Gathering Storm. With Conditioning and Revitalize as secondaries. Then go double adaptive and scaling health
Max W into E into Q
Your build is going to be tear, moonstone, staff of flowing water, dawncore, and sell tear for wardstone last
Play safe in lane and survive
Poke with Q after they use cds for Manaflow
R to peel
Late Game, Spam abilities in fights, Spam e when you have mana
NEVER use Q Power Chord after level 1

I want to clarify, this is NOT at all how you master this champion. You get very little reward using this strategy multiple games in a row, but if you want a quick fix, this is the most succinct way to play it properly. Now that that's out of the way.

There are two parts. The first is that she gets stacks of Accelerando when she hits enemy champions with her Q or heals or block damage for an ally that's not herself with her w. It stacks up to 120 times and grants 0.5 basic ability haste. At max stacks when you would gain a stack, instead you reduce your ult's remaining cooldown by 1.5 seconds. This allows her to get 2 ulties in extended teamfights or chases at times. Her other passive, Power Chord, empowers her next auto attack after 3 basic ability spell casts, making it do magic damage, be more powerful than a normal auto, and based on the last spell used it will have a bonus effect. In a lot of ways, you can treat the bonus effect like Twisted Fate's "Pick a Card". Also, when you get your Power Chord stacked, you get an auto reset. I will go into details on optimizing this passive in the other section but basically, her passive Accelerando stacking tells you how you're meant to play her optimally, and the Power Chord is TF’s PickACard for support.

So before diving into abilities, I wanted to talk about skill order. More often than not, you will max W into E into Q. The only exception is when you want to dominate lane harder using up to 3 points in Q, but you lose out in midgame without maxing your e. Every point in e gives 2% movement speed (ms) on the aura, and points into Q cost more mana, which is why W maxing without those points is more consistent. I’m aware that there are people who put 2 or 3 points in Q, but after the E scaling buffs its going to be the better option most of the time.

This is an extremely difficult ability to master. It deals a small amount of magic damage to the nearest two visible enemies within 825 effective range, prioritizing champions. (Reminder, effective range affects the middle of the hitbox not the edge, so it's less effective on large targets.) It also creates an aura that gives allied champions a 1 time bonus magic damage to their next auto. There are very few abilities that instantly cast without targeting a champion with your mouse or by using a skillshot. Any Kaisa player can tell you, but you will sometimes miss your Q on enemies and accidentally hit minions. The difference is, you can't cast kaisa Q, or something similar like Katarina R without a target. Sona's Q can cast without a target, meaning there's a chance you accidentally hit minions instead of champions. There are a few ways to trade with her Q.

The standard usage is auto Q auto reset, back off. This is best when she can punish enemies with no cds, skillshot based champions behind minions, or just ego dodging after the trade. The other way is simply poking with Q and backing off. It's a lot safer and grants you your Manaflow and Accelerando in lane. The most greedy way is spacing both enemies, and if you can do the auto Q auto combo on one of them. The chance you get punished is higher, but with good situational awareness you can make it work. This is partially why I say she's like an ADC. Beyond being a greedy hyperscaler, a lot of her play patterns are guaranteed damage or cc. One more thing to note, the Power Chord bonus on her auto with Q is just a flat 30-360 + 30% ap, which deals less an extra auto attack. It's decent for short trades, but you'll be out of cooldowns for a while, so in late game teamfight scenarios, using Q Power Chord is extremely inefficient unless you badly need to finish off a target.

The last thing about Hymn of Valor is that it's the cheapest mana cost, lowest cooldown, and the only way to stack Manaflow besides ult. This means that if you want to use this in lane everytime Manaflow is up, and you want to use it to stack your Power Chord passive up to the desired amount in your downtime, and if it's not a detriment to your mana. I know that was a lot for just her Q, but I meant it when I said this is how you ACTUALLY play Sona. It's a Manifesto not a Get Quick Rich scheme. Oh, and don’t forget that your Q aura applies on towers.

It gives you and the lowest percentage health ally a small heel. The aura provides you and allies that touch the aura a small shield for 1.5 seconds. If you heal or shield any ally besides yourself from damage, you get your passive Accelerando stack. The main misconception with this ability is that it's a sustain tool, and that's only true after lane. If you've played any healing enchanter, you'll know that using your heal inefficiently costs a big chunk of resources in game. Soraka w-ing without Q costs health and doesn't give the regen. Milio's W is on a long cooldown and feels pretty bad without procing his passive multiple times, and Nami W can miss the damage proc whilst eating a lot of mana. Sona's W is more or less the same, except you're sacrificing a chunk of mana to heal a small amount early game. The best use is for blocking abilities with the aura AND getting the healing for both allies.

Because your heal tool is effectively AOE in a 2 v 2, you'll want to both trade in lane, ideally your HP is relatively similar after your short trades so you get max value from your W. When you have a lane where you just have to survive, you can use your W to top off while you have a lot of mana, but most of the time you want to use it to block skillshots or to enable an aggressive trade. The most consistent trade pattern in lane without E is having 2 stacks of passive, auto Q auto W then back off on an isolated target, which is best when you’re not in grave danger and below 100% hp. Getting the healing value is nice, and the shield prevents some of the trade back damage. If you have Shield Bash you also get the armor and the damage proc from it. If you're doing it with Nilah and do this trade correctly, Nilah repeat healing and shielding passive will actually make it so doing this trade correctly gives you 2 shield bash procs because Nilah’s shield repeat has a slight delay.
This is even better if you are next to an ally and both of you are trading, both of you get your Q damage, and your W shield + heal on top of that; into most matchups it's really hard to punish this short trade because it's so fast. Mid to late game, you will be trying to sustain your team when you have mana to spare, and tap all your targets with the shield to get max value before you swap to another basic ability aura. The Power Chord for Aura of perseverance is arguably the strongest of all the Power Chords as it's an exhaust on a champion for 25 + 4% ap for 3 seconds.

When an enemy commits to an all in, using this on the main damage threat can solo win the fight, and if you are able to fit 2 passives in the trade, you can turn an enemy's 1 shot combo into a combo where we live with 25% hp and they have no cooldowns. This passive is also why you take Revitalize every game, and summoner spell Heal almost every game. Revitalize consistently grants unreal value with this ability's AOE aura and double heal, and you already have exhaust in your kit, making your botlane extremely tanky and able to bait bad trades through Heal and Exhaust combined with the high value of getting a double heal + shield on your E. And just a quick note, if you know you’re guaranteed a recall timer or are in base and have allies with low health, you should just use this ability for the stack, since the mana isn’t an issue.

This is her most aggressive ability in the early game. "But it does no damage and the movement speed is so minor!" That's true, but it enables a lot of ******** gameplay. If you use it defensively, you can get out of a gank with a decent ward obviously, but the true power in it is baiting. When you run at an enemy, they'll likely throw a skillshot, and if you dodge it you're winning. Obviously you want to try and dodge it at the last second to have the highest chance of success, and punishing with Q or auto Q auto range. Although you should look to throw damage to maximize value, what you get at a minimum is the enemy wasting a cooldown that costs around the same mana. This trade of cooldowns gives you and your AD more time in lane to scale and survive whilst buying a timer for y'all to punish. With this baiting possibility in mind you can think of your E as a tool that costs 60 mana to stack passive once, make space, and force an enemy response. A micro advantage champion like Sona wants to squeeze out every bit of value, and attacking mana bars in this way is a nice tool in the toolbox.

Still, 60 mana and a long cd is a decent commitment in lane, so don't spam the ability for no reason. Instead, the best usage is the passive Power chord which allows you to slow the enemy for 50 + 4% ap for 2 seconds. For reference, Ryze W is 50% for 1.5 seconds. She has the best catch tools as an enchanter, and this Power Chord is why. In lane, if you run someone down with 2 of these slow Power Chords, a fight is guaranteed. A gank from your jungler combined with this on a pushed up lane is a guaranteed kill. The most consistent way to do this I've found is to prestack your E Power Chord, wait until it's almost back up, flash auto, then click Q W in whatever order, after the 2 second slow is about to be over, get your auto reset second E Power Chord. Even if they flash, as long as the first slow connects, if you can run them down the second slow will land. The other usage I like in less synergistic lanes is using it to short trade.

We talked about auto Q auto W, but there's a slightly different iteration that's also nice. If one player's position is misaligned with their ally and you have 1 stack of passive, you can Q auto E auto W. The slow will make them want to run away, that's when you turn back briefly to look like you're done with the trade, and then turn back to sneak an extra auto. This does more damage than a standard auto Q auto W, because the extra auto justifies losing out on Q Power Chord damage. It also makes it harder for the enemy to retaliate whilst allowing your AD the ability to find damage as well. In the late game, this Power chord and W Power Chord should be the only ones used because of their unique debuffing utility. Flashing on a caught out enemy with 2 E autos is a delayed death if your team is aware and in range. The last thing about E is that the movement speed is 20 + 2% for 7 seconds, ending early if you take damage. Your team gets 10-18 +2% from the aura. What all of this implies is that if you're using E, you should be dodging every skillshot to maintain the speed whilst tagging every ally with the aura. Late game, you can trade tempo for man, or catch a target with Power Chord. Lategame you basically have a MissFortune W passive combined with a budget Shurelyas on a pretty low cd. Before an ally finishes TP or recall, you should look to give them your e so they can rotate or chase better after the port finishes. This same idea can apply if you’re waiting for items in base too.

So before we talk about the ulty, let's talk about her passive and non-ulty play pattern and how they work together. Her kit is actually beautifully designed when you understand it. Sona passive is an all around tool that is utilized throughout the entire game. Sona's Q and Q Power Chord is strongest and utilized most in the early game. Sona's W is most useful in the midgame and the Power Chord deals with champions who are strongest in the midgame. Sona's E basically makes her ghosted at all times at a slight mana cost in the lategame and boosts your team a majority of the time then, but is rarely used early except in more specific situations (dodging important skillshots, hard engaging, or avoiding a gank). Similarly, the Power Chord cc is a strong consistent late game positioning tool, that although it can be used to catch people early on, especially in lower elos, it will be best in high elo later game when people don't misposition as often. All of the tools have their time to shine, but knowing when you can use each is the key to mastering Sona. Playing her early feels like a resource management game, especially early on. You play to get your Manaflow stacks, and your goal isn't to kill the opponent, but rather trade with them in order to prevent them from easily killing you.

It's like Zugzwang in chess. You try to put your opponent into bad positions so they're forced to make bad plays. The most common instance of this is them all inning after you poke them down, which a good Sona will be able to survive by using good Power Chord usage and focusing on dodging when they're focused, and trading back damage when they're not. You can do the same thing by baiting ganks you can easily escape from, giving your team a lot of play potential on the map, sometimes even trading kills if they get greedy and towerdive. Come midgame, you have the most agency if you did well in lane, because with your Echoes of Helia you will do insane damage whilst hitting them with a chunky >50% slow for 2 second with Power Chord, sometimes doing it twice if you flash and/or manage stacks properly. Even without Echoes, if you have Moonstone instead, you just prevent the enemies from ever killing your team with your exhausts, and slow push objectives and priority whilst still looking for the Slow Power Chord picks. Late game you focus a lot more on survival, as you are one of the most important targets. If they can't kill you, it's really hard to kill the rest of your team through the Moonstone shields, the constant move speed buffs, and your potential debuffing. Again, she plays a lot like an ADC. She plays to survive early, can make plays from ahead in the midgame, and always prioritizes her life unless it's for a lot of team reward. The difference is instead of gold, you're trying to get passive stacks and exp. Also, a lot of the time you are the best blue buff user on the team, so if you're playing decently and you ping it a couple times, your team will often be okay with you taking it, letting you infinite poke and sustain without thinking about mana.

And before we move on, I wanted to touch on Power Chord one more time. It's less a passive and more a 4th basic ability. When I said it was like Pick A Card earlier, I meant it. The problem is sequencing your abilities to get the card you want. If you think about it, Power Chord is a 200 mana ability with a minimum of a 7 second cooldown late game. Sure you get the other bonus effects while you're stacking it, but Power Chord by itself takes a majority of your powerbudget compared to your other basic abilities, so you have to use it wisely, or know you are allowed to stack it back up by the next fight or skirmish through paying mana and cooldowns. At the same time however, in slower lanes, sometimes you want to add extra damage to win the trade or to finish off a kill, so in these instances you can always just use your last ability to get the Power Chord proc just for dps. In the context of the trade, extra damage without getting full value from the correct Power Chord is always worth it.

The other thing we didn't touch on as much was the auras, as they are more or less the passive, and you can aim to maximize it too. For example if you are with 2 other allies, your goal should be to find a way to tag them with the aura before you swap to another aura since you can only have one up at a time. With all that we've talked about previously, its clear to see that a good Sonas has so many routes of maximizing value that it's almost impossible to play perfectly on this champ. Some champs just need to maximize damage through pre-sequenced combos or picking the right combo for the right situation. Sona is the situational combos combined with positioning to tag allies, knowing if it's even worth it to tag allies, picking the right Power Chord and stack amounts, and all the tiny nuances with the individual abilities mentioned prior. Alone any ability is not too impactful, but when you combine auras, abilities, and Power Chord, the micro advantages stack up extremely high until you become the support hypercarry.

It's a fast, mid ranged aoe skillshot that does some damage and stuns all targets within it by making them dance. It's simple, but surprisingly easy to miss. It's also pretty short range all things considered. The most consistent way to use it is to get a slow Power Chord, waiting 2 seconds for the slow, then ulting. After that you can look for another E Power Chord with some chasing. You can't R flash on this champ, neither can you Q flash, the best thing you can do is auto flash so it comes out immediately, so always flash r if anything. I like to flash sideways before R-ing to get better angles for the ulty, or if the win is guaranteed flash forward r on even a single priority target. Also, this R comes out slightly in front of Sona, so if a champ is directly on top of you, it will often miss. Last way it's used is as a pretty strong anti engage or peel tool, especially in comps that like to dive you with multiple champions. A good multiman R is always nice, but it's not always the best way to win a fight. If you can burst a priority target by paying a Sona R and Sona flash, that should be an instant win even if the r didn't get much stun and damage value.

This is the Rune Page that works in 95%+ of games.

We'll go going Keystone Aery with Manaflow Band, Transcendance, and Gathering Storm. Secondaries will be Conditioning and Revitalize. You can replace conditioning with shield bash with Nilah or in lanes where you think surviving the lane wins you the game outright.

Here's the basic logic on them. Summon Aery is a jack of all trades rune for a champ that can do a lot of things pretty well. In lane it procs on your autos, so it pokes more consistently than a comet, and it allows you to go into blue tree. Technically electrocute would be more pressure, but the aery shield is something you don't wanna lose out on. In all ins, you can give your ally a surprising amount of shielding by bouncing Aery using your auras and hugging them so it returns to you faster.

The only real keystone that can compete is Guardian in extremely volatile situations. I personally don't have too much experience with it, but I can see it useful in difficult lanes when you want to play it safe and don't want to ego the Aery Value. Manaflow band is obvious, This champ is limited by mana issues early and midgame. Transcendence is just the best in this row, as Absolute focus has antisynergy with revitalize, and you don't have very good ap scalings on your abilities. Celerity only gives movespeed to yourself, whilst transcendence provides 10 haste that you can use for your whole team and get extra Power Chords. Lastly, in blue tree it's always gathering storms over scorch. You do not need to win through poking with abilities, a lot of the time you get more damage from autos in lane. Gathering storm applies to all your abilities and your passive, and you try to spike mid to late anyway.

Over to secondaries, you ALWAYS need green tree. Green blue combo is mandatory because Revitalize exists. This rune synergizes with your w so well, that you provide more healing and shielding from Revitalize than shielding from your aery. On top of that, it scales with your aery and all of your items. An interesting thing you can do to maximize your w in lane is to use it when you and or your ally is below 40% hp. The heal shield power from Revitalize goes from 5% to 15% on targets below 40% hp, so in lanes where you're getting poked out, or when you're in all in, you can conserve mana by waiting for those trades to bring either of you down to the hp threshold. Conditioning is solid because you need to auto a lot, and it increases your effective hp with your w shields and heals. Bone Plating likely has some potential, but it's less consistent, and I genuinely don't know what situations it would be worth it in. Shield Bash is only nice because it's an earlier game aggressive option, and most people don't know, but it gives you a small amount of bonus armor and magic resist when you have a shield. Conditioning’s still better in most games, but it's an option you can take in Nilah duo games or if you really really really want an aggressive green tree rune.

You often need to take double adaptive, scaling health is usually better, but flat health is slightly safer in hard lanes. The extra haste rune is something I’ve seen top Sona’s run, either in hard matchups with Q poke only or when they are forced to play a higher tempo game. Regardless, these top 2 stat runes are usually for consistent early games, and some games you rather have your abilities impact the early game more than to be able to use them more. Other games you care to tempo out the bot lane with safe q spam. It’s just important to remember that early, you are mana gated, turning early game into a balance of getting value for the mana you pay in lane or finding safe recalls fast enough. Although double Adaptive Force is my preference for non challenger game consistency, Haste is just as good a stat in faster paced games, so I recommend trying both and learning which situations they apply in best.

Let's talk about items. There's two support item options, Bloodsong and Dreammaker.

From what I hear, Bloodsong is better and has a higher winrate, and I'm not surprised, since Sona should be autoing a lot in early and mid game anyway. I need to get a couple dozen more games before I come to a conclusion, but so far I’m liking it. Dreammaker is what I'm more used to, and honestly I do not pay that much attention to it, I just know it's used more or less on cooldown since the aura will proc it on your ally. The issue with Dreammaker is that it’s easy to waste it during slower parts of lane or midgame, so managing its value is something to keep in mind.

Boots are always going to be Ionian boots. It's the most efficient way to get ability haste, and you don't need any other stat from boots. When they add heal and shield boots we can reconsider.

The best legendaries I've seen used are:

Echoes of Helia
Moonstone
Dawncore
Tear / Staff of Flowing Water
Archangels Staff
Vigilant Wardstone
Oblivion Orb / Morellonomicon

PerSonally I have two main legendary Setups

Tear -> Echoes -> Moonstone -> Dawncore

Tear -> Moonstone -> Staff -> Dawncore

The Echoes build is for tempo games where you survive lane and want to play the midgame. It also is my favorite item for her because it encourages you to land your autos when it's safe like an ADC, then rewards you with extra damage and healing, which also synergizes with your auto Q auto W trade.

The moonstone build is a more defensive standard enchanter setup. It dives further into your w healing and becoming a deathball that the enemy has to somehow breakthrough.

I have not needed to use Oblivion Orb, but statistically its strong because you can just go the component and then your Q and the aura of your Q will apply the antiheal affect.

Vigilant wardstone is going to be a lategame item exclusively, as its the only way you can hold pinkwards while buying stats, but even then the stats aren't bad. The defensive stats lets you play in medium range without getting punished as much, and haste doesn't hurt. You can even sell your support item for a legendary like this one, but a majority of games should not go that late into the game.

I'm aware that there are builds that incorporate Archangels, as you do get focused if the enemy is smart and the shield scales with your heal & shield power. It's definitely more greedy, but I perSonally don't like it as much because if you're not getting hard focused the other items provide a lot more value to your team. I think the item might scale with elo, as the other items could just be win-more options, but I'll let a better player than me come to that conclusion.

In lane, there's a unique problem you and Kled both have to deal with. If you have your passive, you really can't hit the wave to push, just like with Kled's W. Because of this, you really want to use your passive so you're not wasting it, they are allowed to hit the wave as standard. A lot of times at this stage, it's better to have 2 stacks than full, as you're allowed to both hit the wave, and get your auto reset. In every trade your goal is to get away with your damage scott free, only taking support autos if you can. The best time to look is when the enemy wants to last hit, your ADC is parallel to you, or if you have bush advantage. Bush allows you to bait abilities, and then you can try and exit bush to Q auto or auto Q auto W trade. A lot of times bush advantage gives you free autos by leaving the bush, and going back in Quickly since your auto is pretty fast. The Aery helps with all of these trade patterns. When you're on the backfoot, try and spam your abilities when you're forced into a trade, tagging the aura to your ad every time. Make sure you exhaust the enemy damage dealer with your w Power Chord before they get their cooldowns off. If you're on the chase or know you can win the trade without the exhaust, try and get the mispositioned enemy with your slow E Power Chord, and just spam autos with your AD on them. If you're not focused, obviously spam autos, but especially try and sneak in your auto reset if the situation isn't dire. If you don't do the math and you are using a non-lethal Q Power Chord, you are inting. The value from a slow or an exhaust is so much higher than your single staccato auto that you only get 1 of in most trades. The only exception to this is you have 3 stacks and all 3 basic cooldowns up, starting with the Power Chord and then Quickly rotating to the other abilities. It's awkward because getting all 3 auras on your ally and rotating in time can be different due to cast times can cost your ally a lot of hp from the exhaust or miss your slow timing, but if you can do it it is technically the highest damage trade you have. The only other main situation that comes up is chasing an enemy when you have a gank or will win the fight guaranteed. In this case, you go for your delayed E Power Chord combo, and look for the auto on the target you want to kill. Ideally you get disrespected and can just walk up and apply the slow, but if you can't flash or allied cc is just as good to enable you to get in range. Then you get an extra 4 seconds of moving at 50% speed. Which will allow you to walk up auto during the entire duration without issue. In the end of the day, the reason you're fighting is you are capable of winning lane with good spacing and dodges, and if you end up going even, you have safely farmed Manaflow band, Accelerando stacks, and will transition into midgame stronger than almost every other support.

Midgame, you have the most agency. Any time you are in an even fight, as long as you continue effective Power Chord usage you will do massive damage. A good W into auto Q auto w combo does sizable damage, and your sustain at that point is not too bad considering your lower cds and mana abundance. Especially if you have a blue buff, you should look for trade where you don't outright die, then just sustain back up with the buff. Worst comes to worst if you're low, you just sit behind your team and wait for an enemy to engage so you can safely Power Chord, or for a teammate to find cc allowing you to Power Chord safely. Your ult is often going to be used before anyone else's cc, as it's extremely consistent. If you ever have a numbers advantage, stack your passive with e as your last ability, and before the ms runs out try and find an auto. The best catch play is slow Powerchord, waiting a little to R, then slow Power Chord again. This can often lead to a guaranteed kill if you have even numbers or a numbers advantage. There are times I've chased down a tank or bruiser with good spacing and perma slows, allowing my teammate to run them down lanes they get caught overextending in. Most people don't know Sona can do these types of chase plays, so they underestimate her and die a slow and painful death. This is easiest in the jungle or the sidelines, but is definitely possible with enough damage and/or space in midlane. Flash ulty for engage is also a decent play, but I prefer flash E power chord and then just chasing more often than not. A trick I saw Keria use for this was walking backward for a second, then flashing forward and ulting a priority target. If the enemy is attention but doesn't respect your flash, it's often teamfight winning. Speaking of teamfight, once it breaks out, your focus should mostly be on auras, a decent ulty, and getting Power Chord off. Landing Q and getting your auto reset barely matter at this point, so focus on survival and getting value from your kit. Summoner Heal to guarantee a teammate is alive is almost always worth it. The more teammates alive, the more people that can dps and benefit from your AOE auras. In a way the playstyle is purely greedy even if it looks like you're being a saint. If you are maximizing value, you just happen to be helping your team in the process.

Late game is quite different. You really have to focus on survival since damage on a lot of champions is at its highest, and you don't have defensive stats for the most part. The moment you get chunked at all, you should be scared for your life. Playing around auras is the safest thing to do, but getting out safe Power Chords is just as impactful. A lot of the time an assassin's one shot can lead to their death instead if you get exhaust Power Chord on them. Getting slow Power Chord is also extremely deadly for positioning advantages with your maxed out aoe e ms, but again it's going to be hard to find the time to auto. For the most part, play auras until you're forced to ult or find a high value or high priority ult, then go back to playing auras. Life first, value from abilities second. It's just like an ADC lategame, adc's cant dps until all the cc and damage is dodged, Sona's Power Chord is the same way, with the main difference being that she still provides something when she's not allowed to auto.

So all in all, Sona’s a champion with a seemingly simple kit, but oftentimes there are areas of your gameplay you can improve with her in a purely mechanical sense. Squeezing out value from every little aspect and knowing when to break those optimization rules for the sake of the big picture are the real game with playing this champ. Even if any random newbie can pick up the champion and pilot it, only the players that take time and dedication can master her. I myself am still on that journey of mastery, but that seeking of perfection brings me back to Sona every time I queue up ranked. No one brings a playstyle as satisfying as uniquely satisfying as her, so I hope that if you have gotten this far you’d be willing to give her a shot, or at the very least not immediately assume every Sona’s useless and bad. There’s more than meets the eye to her design to say the least.

I originally wanted to make this guide to wrap up all the misconceptions about Sona and show how to play her comprehensively, which reminded me of one of her voice lines. “Mastery is the first step. The rest is what you do with it.” To those who somehow got to the end of this guide, I wish you all luck in your future games and endeavors, and thank you for engaging with The Sona Manifesto.

-Domaki


Edited and Reviewed By: JW

Socials:
X: @Domaki_LoL
Youtube: DomakiLoL
Discord: Domaki