Forgotten, outdated, no one will pick me! This was the sad song Sona was humming, to the tune of a well-known Disney song (hint: there’s a queen and snow). Yet the Harp Virtuoso makes a triumphant return into Summoner’s Rift, to the point of being ascended into the top 8 champions with the best winrate at all ranks, and in the top 3 at Platinum ranks and above. And what’s good is that nothing has changed since 2015. Well, almost nothing.
Small change, big consequences?
The current best build on Sona is still the same, one item ready. You have to start with the AP support object to poke, then rush the tear of the goddess, the boots of lucidity, before doing the Shurelya. Here a former player is on familiar ground, except for the tear, which was not a core object before (-> at the time when Sona was very popular, it has been a while since the tear became core on Sona, especially since the Archangel redesign), to turn it into Archangel Staff. The goal is to take advantage of both the mana gain and the sustain provided passively by the item, to be able to spam spells during teamfights. As for the tear, it allows Sona to go the distance on the lane without getting oom after two trades.
The rest of the build is the same as for other AP/heal supports with the Ardent Censer, the Staff of the Waves or even the Crucible of Mikaël depending on the composition of the opposing team. If there is no need, the Chemtech or Redemption complement the build perfectly. In terms of spells, there is not much to report either. We stay on classic Sona support, where we have to max the W then the A (unlike the Sona poke where it’s the other way around, but this build sucks ATM).
Counter Sona?
What is interesting with Sona is that he is very difficult to counter it with a traditional support. Whether Senna and Soraka is doing honorably against her, with balanced match ups (although slightly to Sona’s advantage by a few tenths of a percent), you have to look for more exotic picks to beat her in lane. The principle is also the same as before: burst Sona quickly enough to kill her within seconds of initiating the fight, or take advantage of her low mobility to corner her somewhere. The champions who fare best against her are Malphite and Taliyah.
At the ADC level, it’s the same for most Classic ADCs can’t get in the way. It takes more unusual champions like Veigar and Swain to put Sona in trouble. It is curiously similar with another champion very popular on the botlane currently: Nilah. The two champions combine very well, because Nilah benefits from both the spamming of Sona’s heals, and her mobility boost. As for Sona, she takes advantage of Nilah’s low range to have an ADC playing near her, and avoid being the main target of the opposing duolane.