Riot responds to negative feedback on Sona changes in patch 11.16

Jeevin Sidhu, lead gameplay designer at League of Legends, has tackled some negativity regarding the upcoming rework on Sona.

“We care about how players are responding to the changes, and we’ve seen a fair amount of sentiment that this is a nerf. From my perspective, I suspect that some people are undervaluing some of the specifics”, he said.

One of the changes includes a change in Sona’s passive. Each time Sona uses an ability in combat, she gains stacks of “Accelerando”. Every stack gives ability haste, and when she reaches 120 stacks, her ultimate cooldown starts to go down as well.

“We’ve seen a lot of playtests where Sona gets to two ultimates in the same lategame teamfight, which many players do not think will happen at all. So that’s a fair amount of misalignment.”

“The basic ability haste is also very front loaded compared to live, particularly if the Sona player plays the lane well. It’s worse at 16, but you would need 80 Ability Haste from other sources for the old level 11 R Passive to break even with the new one.”

Another change is going to be the ability power ratios. According to Sidhu, Riot “will proceed cautiously in case they need to pull back.”

The Sona rework is currently live on League’s PBE, and is scheduled to hit the live servers with Patch 11.16 which will drop on August 11.

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Image credit: Riot Games

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