not very good early game means that it's really hard for him to gank lanes since he has no gapcloser, only a speedboost, it's no use having good stats if he cant get in range to use them.
virtually, early game, you'll never get a gank off on someone like gnar or liss(popular toplaners atm) or LB or ahri(popular midlaners atm)

Anyone playing HoN (Heroes of Newerth)? same producer i think..

Even in theoretically terrible lane match ups for sona, she has so many tools with almost no downside that it's still entirely possible to win those lanes without really trying. Sure, hard engage risks blowing her up, but if she abuses early game before any real threats appear, she should make it near impossible for any aggression from the enemy lane until they b. An aoe heal shield and a damage dealing, aa resetting, aoe aa steroid with the added ability to deal even more damage after she uses a few low cd spammable spells makes any opposing lane with no inate sustain lose the lane if she abuses her tools.

And it's damn hard to blow up a sona at level 2, even with blitz graves or leona graves or annie graves because she's basically just going to hide behind her caster minions until your adc walks up to farm. Blitz aint gonna be able to grab that without hitting level 3 for overdrive and powerfist pressure, annie could do it, but if the sona gets out, then she basically had a favorable trade because she's gonna just top herself up, and the same issue with leona.

And if you channelled all your damage on to sona and failed, chances are the enemy adc put down a lot of damage on you, so now you should be in a really bad position against any healbot. Your lane is probably at half health, while enemy adc at close to full or 3/4 while sona at 1/4 to 1/3. It will very quickly become your lane at 3/4 while enemy adc at full and sona at 3/4.


tl;dr: sona has a weakness, sure, but it's damn hard to take advantage of it because it's almost exclusively at early game where you can take advantage of it, and support items like sightstone make that window much smaller. plus she has a ridiculous power spike at levels 1 and 2, which make abusing that weakness very risky.

while its true that if she doesn't die when caught early it can be very bad for you(unless you also have a supp with heal, then it's most likely okay) and that her laning phase is really strong, you're making it seem that she gradually gets stronger and stronger as the game goes on, imo its the opposite, the later it goes, the riskier it gets for her because it means that if she's caught later in the game she dies instantly,also its true that her ult is great in mid-lategame, but outside of that there really isn't much going on for her, her w is great for extended teamfights or fights that are being kited backwards, but if the teamfight ends fast(which most of times happens), her impact is pretty low overall unless she hits amazing ult

I dare you to try that against me. You would get punished so hard.
Also, the counterplay to sona is hard initiation early like leona or blitzcrank because she is so squishy and has no cc early. And udyr gets kited if the enemy team has any competence at all.

There's a reason udyr is sitting at lower than a 50% winrate, and sona is hovering just above it. They are decent champions but they definitely require skill to play and are in no ways "brainless".

Average winrate for any champ rarely goes > 10% difference from 50% winrate after stablizing. Winrates do not indicate anything about a champion's strength or viability or skill requirements. In fact, I could make a ton of stupid claims based on winrates that are in no way true. Examples, pre-rework viktor had 100% winrate in NA challenger, therefore pre-rework viktor was broken op. On release yasuo had less than 40% win rate, therefore on release yasuo was garbage and the subsequent nerfs only made him even more trash. Leblanc was the worst mid laner since forever since she frequently drops below 50% win rate. All of these statements are blatantly wrong.

And "counter pick" is different from "counter play". Picking hard engage against sona is a counter pick, having ways to play against somebody even when not counter picking them is counter play. Sona can be counter picked, albeit it's questionable because it risks backfiring heavily due to her advantages over no sustain, but counter play is severely lacking because the only way to not be effected by her is walking out of spell range, which is stupid as shit. That's not counterplay, that's accepting the fact that she will bend you over and smack you if you don't.

And optimal udyr is splitpusher. If he's getting kited, he's already doing something wrong because turrets can't move.

@Kat, I'm deliberately not talking about late game sona because the issues of champions and balance when it comes to teamfights is significantly different from balance in a laning perspective.

Well, I can tell you that she deals much morr damage than the adc in the early game. Hell, she can even duel some mid laners like Veigar if they only had 85%farm and 2 kills in lane. It's absurd.

And yes, I have done this plenty of times before.

Today was a good day.

Almost Diamond, the dream is alive.

The new kat skin looks pretty cool

heres a rare sight xD also i'm happy cause JINX SKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN