League of Legends Season 10 Sona Guide

The peaceful hymns are the illusion of the raging war that is to come very soon. Sona, Maven of the Strings stands in the midst of battle overseeing the success of her allies as an absolute support that dictates the flow of the game in every way she can. As the game continues to evolve, new support champions arrive with different kits. With this Sona Guide, we will be breaking down everything there is to know about arguably the most popularly represented support in League of Legends history.

The Muse’s Background

Sona was originally released back in 2010 being one of the very first champion in League of Legends to be released after the base pool of champions. She was and has continued to be on the support role being the face of the role itself and set as a golden standard of what enchanter supports are supposed to be like. For the longest time, she has remained to be a viable support pick for both pro and casual League of Legend games.

In the story, Sona Buvelle was born a mute and left in an Ionian adoption house left only with her signature instrument – the Etwahl. After being adopted by Lestara Buvelle, she developed a connection with the Etwahl and learned how to manipulate the emotions of her audiences through her chords. Eventually, Sona learned how to harness the true potential of her vibrations creating deadly chords that can cut objects from afar.

Sona in Popular Culture

Sona is arguably one of the most popular characters in league of Legends since she is represented so much in media, advertisements, and cosplay due to her creative design as a champion. Even her champion skins are considered to be treasures because of the designs. She isn’t so hard to cosplay especially since she has very minimal elements but just enough that cosplaying her becomes interesting. She also has distinct similarities with the popular vocaloid, Hatsune Miku which a lot of people like.

Sona’s General Playstyle

Sona is one of the more aggressive supports, trying to move around the lane to push back the opponents using her Hymn of Valor to provide a great source of poke damage combined with her Aria of Perseverance to keep her allies and herself as long as possible in lane. With the help of Song of Celerity, she will be able to quickly get into position to set her teammates up for success by using Crescendo at just the right angle and catch enemies off guard. Learning how this combos work is our goal in the Sona Guide.

Sona Guide: Skills and Rotation

Sona’s ability each have a role in different situations which she can fully utilize if the player has full knowledge of what each ability does. In this Skills & Rotation Sona Guide, we will learning how the active and passive abilities interact with each other as well as the best possible situation on when to use these abilities during the laning phase. The key to dominating the competition is to be in harmony with your allies.

Passive: Power Chord

Aura – Sona’s abilities have aura’s when activated which gives bonuses when she and her allies are within the skill’s radius. This adds a 0.5s cooldown to all of Sona’s abilities.

Innate – After using 3 abilities, Sona’s next basic attack deals bonus magic damage and giving an additional effect to the last ability used by Sona.

Staccato – Deals +40% bonus magic damage
Dimmuendo – Targeted unit deals -25% (+4% per 100) damage for 3 seconds.
Tempo – Target is slowed by 40% (+4%) for 2 seconds.

Sona’s passive ability provides her with a huge bonus effect which can turn the tide of the fight if used at the proper timing. Counting how many skills you’ve used can be a crucial element of executing your combo. Make sure to always have game plan when executing your combos so that your allies can follow through much easier as Sona guides them to victory.

Q: Hymn of Valor

Active – Sona sends out 2 sounds bolts which hit the two nearest visible enemy champions gaining 30 mana if an ally is within the radius of her aura. This also changes her Power Chord to Staccato.

Aura – For 3 seconds, Sona and her allies within the Aura gain bonus magic damage in their next basic attack within 5 seconds.

A common mistake for Sona beginners is that they randomly try to get close to the opponent and firing the Hymn of Valor to try and get in some damage. Place a sight ward inside the enemy bush so that they won’t be able to easily avoid your poke damage since it only hit VISIBLE enemy targets.

***When using auras, you should coordinate with your botlaner to get into the same positions together to fully utilize getting the 30 mana refund which is important to be able to use more skills in the lane. This will be heavily emphasized in all of her abilities in this Sona Guide.

W: Aria of Perseverance

Active – Restores the health of Sona and her nearest most wounded ally and gaining 30 mana if an ally is within the radius of her aura. This also changes her Power Chord to Dimmuendo.

Aura – Sona and her ally will receive a shield for 1.5 seconds.

Always make sure that your allies HP is at 70% or above but don’t spam using it too much whenever he takes even the slightest damage otherwise you’d find yourself out of mana really quickly. This aura is most efficient during trades as the shield will provide a significant advantage during 2v2 fights against the enemy botlane.

E: Song of Celerity

Active – Sona gains a +20% movement speed bonus for 3 seconds or 7 seconds if she has not taken any damage and gains 30 mana if an ally is within the radius of her aura. This also changes her Power Chord to Tempo.

Aura – Sona gives an ally within her aura a +20% movement speed bonus for 3 seconds.

Positioning is crucial for Sona, which is why you should use this ability to quickly dash to an ally in order to get the extra benefits of her Aura abilities given to that ally. You can also use this aggressively to chase down enemies or place yourself in a favorable position to use Hymn of Valor or Crescendo and setup your team for a winning teamfight.

R: Crescendo

Passive – Reduces the cooldown of all your basic abilities.

Active – Sona plays an irresistible chord in a direction which stuns all enemies in its path and forces them to dance for 1.5 seconds and take magic damage in the process.

This is a great engage skill which is capable of catching up to 5 enemies at once. make sure that you place yourself in a great position by Flashing in or using your Song of Celerity to get as close as possible. Make sure that when you use this, you have nearby allies to follow up and deal the much needed damage and secure the kills.

Sona Guide: Items and Builds

In this Sona guide, we have mostly focused on her role as a support. This means that the items here will be those that will benefit her mostly as a support champion. As an aggressive support champion, she’ll not only use pure support items but also some that provide a bit of an AP boost to increase her magic damage and upgrade the scaling of some of her abilities so that she’ll pack more of a punch later into the game.

Starting Items

Spellthief’s Edge – Spellthief’s Edge is great for aggressive spellcasting supports such as Sona which will give you the ability to generate gold without having to kill minions. The added Ability Power also gives your Hymn of Valor quite the power boost needed to push you opponents out of the lane.

Core Builds

Athene’s Unholy Grail – Another item perfect for aggressive supports who deal a lot of damage against enemy champions. Being able to damage your enemies converts the Blood Charges into healing/shielding value. This item also has a great amount of Ability Power to help you deal more damage.

Ardent’s Censer – This item greatly benefits you and your AD Carry as you’ll both get an increase in Attack Speed and on-hit magic damage. It also increases your movement speed which is important for positioning and roaming the map to help your other laners.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity – Increase in cooldown reduction earlier on in the game will help you spam more skills and be able to bully your opponents even harder.

Recommended Items

Mejai’s Soulstealer – Believe it or not, you should be building this item as your fourth item since it will help you stack up ability power earlier on in the game. It helps that Sona is extremely hard to catch with all the movement speed she has to escape unfavorable battles.

Redemption – A standard healing items which is almost recommended for all support champions who have any shield/heal in their kit. This greatly helps your team survive longer in extended teamfights and deal a little bit of damage to the enemy team.

Shurelya’s Reverie – More movement speed! This is a great item if your team has a lot of divers or frontliners which are able to charge right into battle. The increase in movement speed will help you escape dangerous teamfights or reposition you in an advantageous spot.

Rabaddon’s Deathcap – If your team is significantly far ahead, you can go for a Deathcap just to push the advantage even further instead of going for more heal power which at that point becomes completely unnecessary.

Mikael’s Crucible – Must have item if you and your team is always getting caught out with chain CCs. This helps you grants you +20% healing/shielding power which is definitely a worthwile upgrade.

Sona Guide: Runes

Runes

Primary: Sorcery

Keystone: Summon Aery – Summon Aery is great for champions that both harass the enemy laners and heal/shield an ally because of the extra damage it does when an enemy is hit and the shielding bonus when you use a helpful spell on an allied champion.

Manaflow Band – You can’t go wrong with a larger mana pool. Being able to increase you base mana pool means that you can stay longer in fights without being irrelevant since you can still spam your skills.

Transcendence – A lot of the items you will be building contains cooldown reduction which won’t be wasted when you get this rune as it’ll convert the excess CDR into AP to upgrade your abilities.

Gathering Storm – Another rune to increase your AP scaling as the game drags out further. Your abilities will definitely become much more of a threat as the game goes longer and longer.

Secondary: Inspiration

Magical Footwear – As a support, gold can be really hard to come by so you’d be wise to save up that 300 gold you’ll usually need to buy Boots of Speed to buy something else instead.

Cosmic Insight – This rune provides some really good cooldown reduction even increasing your maximum CDR to 45% which will be really helpful in keeping your allies alive when you’re in a middle of a fight spamming all those abilities in battle.

Sona Guide: Overview

In this Sona guide, we’ve discussed the overall utility and usefulness of Sona in a team setting. As an individual champion, Sona has been designed really well which allows her to unlock the full potential of her teammates. She’s an excellent support champion and won’t fall off from being a high-tier support anytime soon since she’s been relevant since the beginning of her release back in 2010.