Riot Reverses Sona’s Nerfs in League of Legends Patch 10.5
Riot quickly dealt with the dominance of top lane Sona in the latest League of Legends Patch 10.4, which significantly weakened her. However, these nerfs seemed to have gone too far.
In Patch 10.5, Riot is undoing Sona’s nerfs and introducing a restriction to her most powerful item, Spellthief’s Edge, as a compensation for the changes.
Sona currently has a win rate of 47.73% in platinum and above, making her the fourth lowest in the support position. Patch 10.2 initially buffed her Song of Celerity (E) ability, providing a substantial increase in bonus movement speed. The intention was to slightly enhance her presence in the bot lane, but instead of improving her performance as a support, she became a formidable top lane threat, reaching an unprecedented win rate of 57.34%.
According to Riot’s Mark Yetter, the plans for Patch 10.5 include reverting the Sona hotfix nerf and adding a “must be near an ally” restriction to Spellthief’s Edge to address her top lane power. This adjustment will allow Sona to regain her strength as a support champion.
In the upcoming patch, Sona’s E ability is set to be fully reverted, restoring the bonus movement speed to 20% at all ranks.
To prevent her from dominating the top lane again, Riot is also implementing a restriction that requires Sona to be near an ally in order to use Spellthief’s Edge. This means she will be forced to play in the bot lane or choose a different item altogether.
According to Riot, these changes should address her top lane power and allow her to return to her intended strength as a support champion.
Patch 10.5, releasing on March 3rd, is not only bringing changes to Sona but also buffs to Kai’Sa and nerfs to Ornn and Sett.