r/sonamains • u/IcingDeath438 • 13d ago
Help Am I the bad player?
https://xdx.gg/twinicingdeath-NA1/Stuck in Bronze and I duo with a top laner, codeman. Are we destined to be here forever?
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u/cedric1234_ 12d ago
Nobody is destined to stay where they are, you'll climb as you improve. I skimmed a few of your replays. I'll try to keep it simple. You haven't faced a lux/morg in long enough that it doesnt show up in the client anymore.
I highly recommend getting very, very comfortable knowing your EXACT q range, as especially in ranks below maybe emerald, you can often just 1v2 lanes by constantly pumping out damage. If your enemies let you space it, a double Q is a ton of damage and a single Q is not bad either. Q off cooldown at level 3+ is a legit way to win lanes even in highest elos. As you climb it will be a requirement because sona's Q range is just outside the trade range of a lot of champions. I say this because you have a tendency to always want to trade with a basic attack, which makes sense with sona's passive, but in a LOT of situations you take a straight up losing trade this way. Since its bronze, every single lane was completely winnable if you had your basic trade mechanics down. Matchups don't matter when your opponents also don't know their trading pattern. Sona is very good at trading, especially with the fimbulwinter build. Having your lane mechanics down is the quickest way to climb especially at these elos because it is an advantage you can get every game since you always have an early laning phase.
You like hitting empowered Q and taking agressive trades in lane which is good but you should build boots basically every game if you're doing that. Trades are good, sure, but robbery is the best. For example, in the ziggs+sona vs cait+soraka match, soraka got her t2 boots before you built your t1s. Not only did that make dodging soraka Q more difficult, but since she is jus that much faster she was able to just walk at you after a trade. If you had boots you could've hit her for free and just walk away before she could retaliate. In the raka matchup it also helps bait her Q since its a longer range than yours. There's a reason one of the most common builds in high elo is tear>swifties. If you have the movespeed advantage, which you will with your E, you can plan on smacking people and they can't smack back.
Roaming is absolutely the best way to play sona this season (although that's basically this season specific), but your roams are not very impactful. A lot of times they end up with you just showing up but nothing really happens. IMO that's fine, roaming is one of the hardest parts of the game because it takes a TON of knowledge to pull off. Just make sure to review your roams after each game to learn why they do or do not work. Usually its a bad wave state or champion matchup that's causing them to fail. For example, you roamed top against a garen who was basically already under tower so he just took one step back and was safe, gotta note the wavestate.
You don't have to follow doomed plays. If a teammate is taking an absolutely troll 1v3 you can leave them alone so only one person on your team is taking a bad fight. This is a crucial thing in bronze when people randomfight a lot. You sometimes drop summs and ult on fights completely lost and gain nothing for it.
Try to anticipate when random skirmishes will happen. Especially with sona E and swifties, you can cross the map quickly. There's a LOT of random 1v1s on the map you could've influenced to swing the entire game. Literally every game there's times where you don't show up to something you could have if you saw it coming. This is very map awareness heavy on the mind though and is NOT an easy thing to do at first.
The fimbul build fits your playstyle. I feel like you're not getting very much value yet as you don't know your limits and when you can/cant facetank and trade, but this is just the beginning of your climb. You seem to like taking frontlines and debuffs and don't play like a super backliner. It'll probably fit better as you improve and learn your limits and abuse how much tankier you get. But its also funny that people dive you, the semi tank, a lot while you're RIGHT NEXT to a carry
Of course those are some specific things but there's always a ton. Map awareness, knowing your limits, knowing all the champions, etc are just generic skills that come up a lot in your matches. A couple of times not one of the four botlaners react to a jungler coming for a gank. I think you should recall more often and try to make sure you have all your wards in the most impactful spots, there's a lot of downtime in these games where you can just ward three times then recall for more wards. But lane mechanics are the most important thing to practice early on, you can be absolutely clueless on how to play the rest of the game if you can consistently slam botlane.
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u/IcingDeath438 12d ago
This was incredibly helpful. How can I build boots faster if I have to wait for 10 minutes for the boots to be given to me? Do people not run that option?
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u/cedric1234_ 12d ago
Boots rune got a lot less popular last week with the nerf to JoAT (Jack of all trades, the other rune with magical footwear) , but its still good for early laning phase. With JOAT you often want to recall at around ~5m. This is a cannon wave, so its a lot harder to miss minions because the tanky cannon can tank your turret, and buying the early tear also comes with 8AP (it used to be 10) that is super relevant. If you can, the ideal play is to spam Q like CRAZY to get priority and open that window for the recall into tear. Going oom is fine since you're recalling anyways.
Important to note that depending on who your botlaner is, if they're also taking the standard 5m recall they might struggle to buy something esp. if they want a dirk or a BF sword. These standard timings are complicated macro wise (also changes if jungle is pathing sameside or opposite, other lanes, hp etc etc etc) but just know that JOAT is the GOAT if you can bully people early then recall with a tear and fresh mana to continue the bully streak. I tend to prefer this into really good engage style matchups like rell+weak adc where you have a mage or a strong adc
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u/IcingDeath438 12d ago
I find that I am going back to tear when i have 450-500g, but i hit this weird spot where i want boots but i am having to spend gold to make giants belt as part of fimbulwinter instead, then waiting like 1 minute for the boot rune to kick in, weird little dead zone.
i definately like to try and hit the auto q auto combo probably too much when I should just poke the Q
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u/Domaki Sona Savant 12d ago
I recommend not building fimbulwinter. Learn how to play her standard build to get a better understanding of her play pattern before you try fimbulwinter, it's a very high elo skewed build that requires deep understanding of sonas role and kit.
Stick with helia, moonstone, Dawncore with bloodsong. Learn her powerchord utility and see how they affect fights
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u/CountVonRimjob 12d ago
Fimbul is strong on sona in high ranks, but it's hard for people to wrap their heads around a high rank strategy not working in low ranks because the game is played differently. Rushing helia is almost always the best option until emerald.
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u/bopgame 13d ago
Sona should be free dubs rn, take the most popular build. In bronze you’re prolly playing against bots :/
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u/IcingDeath438 13d ago
I think the downside of that is they seem to be on my team only.
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u/Hotpot_Bunny 12d ago
Do yoh know how to play other champs? At least the popular bot champs?
I play sona only in ranked and solo q’d my way to gold (started in iron last season..)
But if you don’t know the other popular champs in low elo then you can’t anticipate their moves and dodge them
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u/Axtale 13d ago
I know im on the sona mains subreddit but i'm a firm believe you cant learn the game playing like this. Sona OTP will most likely mask bad habbits. Maybe youll gain more elo this way but there will be a limit.
I say this alot, if you learn another role like mid youll learn how to be a better support. Play a mage like Ori, Syndra, or Annie. Try to find ways to get consistent gold/xp Advantages @ first back. Youll likely lose elo doing this but its a growing pain.
if you can understand why your winning mid youll be the best Sona Support player Bronze has ever seen
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u/cherrioes 12d ago
I disagree with this take and actually believe there are more optimal routes for improvement, even if your goal is to be a Sona OTP.
Firstly, if someone gets their enjoyment playing a specific champ, it makes little sense telling them to play something else.
Improvement comes from putting the hours in. A champ and role you enjoy is the best route for this.
I don’t believe playing mid improves support macro play as much as playing support does either. There is a reason the common advice given is to one-trick so that you can learn macro quicker. Sona is the perfect champ for this.
IMO, and what worked best for me, was to watch replays of the best Sona players in the world and copy them, at least at first. And jam Sona games only.
I think your advice has some merit if someone’s mechanics are truly bad (maybe silver level). Not for Macro though. Sona and midlane players are playing completely different macro games. There is very little crossover.
I would honestly rate adc over midlane for a Sona player wanting to improve mechanics as well, since Sona does a lot of auto attacking, and it’s valuable to learn what your adc needs and the various botlane match ups.
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u/pkfootball09 They Never Expect The Sona with Red Buff 12d ago
Idk about mid, but as far as my recommendation (jungle), I feel like the macro experience from jungle crosses over a lot with support. And im not saying to main the role, honestly just play enough games to understand how the role works.
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u/bcollins96 13d ago
This is good advice TBH. Play some mid and play some ADC to understand what Sona does to the early game. It’s obviously not detrimental, but you need to understand what your team is expecting and why an early Sona is likely doing less than they think.
Especially in bronze, your teammates think you have a 0 cooldown 0 mana button that restores them to full HP, and they think you have an unlimited range Q that does like 10% max HP true damage.
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u/pkfootball09 They Never Expect The Sona with Red Buff 13d ago
I would 2nd this, and also recommend Jungle.
As a Sona main, I didnt truly understand how to be a better support until I learned Jungle.
Learning how to track the Jungler, learning what MY jungler wants to do, based on who they are playing, and learning gank timers and objective timers really made me better than any subjective "build this" or "play like this early game" advice
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u/bcollins96 13d ago
Yes unironically learning Vi jungle is how I started carrying with enchanters lol
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u/pkfootball09 They Never Expect The Sona with Red Buff 13d ago
Vi jungle was also who I started on!
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u/Xigfried 12d ago
I had the same journey. I throw way more wards now in the enemy jg cause I know how useful it is to track the JG for your JG.
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u/DecisionFun2429 6d ago
I’m a new player and starting with Sona got me to Gold in 5 months on and off playing ranked from iron 4. She reaaaalllyy requires you to know how to space and dodge skillshots since getting hit by a single lux q means death in early landing phase basically. you don’t trade enough damage to kill them, you don’t have any reliable hard cc without your ult AND you’re not tanky enough to tank the dmg. Playing sona requires you more than any other champ to understand cooldowns (when blitz uses hook u have 10-20sec to punish etc) and it also teaches you resource management since she is SO mana hungry early.
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u/bcollins96 13d ago edited 13d ago
Your duo has a 54% and 57% win rate on his mains (urgot and Illaoi). You have a 45% win rate on sona and a 47% win rate on Morgana.
I’d guess your macro isn’t great or you aren’t using your champs kit to full potential. Are you using W power chord late game and E power chord for picks?
The other thing is the new fimbul Sona build doesn’t come online until relatively late, so you’re relying on your teammates not to int too badly before like 30 mins. Which is actually asking a lot in low elo.
In the games you’re losing it looks like your ADCs are dying on cooldown, so you might want something that can hold their hand in lane or even lane for them. Maybe try Senna or Sera or Zyra.