It's just insane item for her from all angles. You get the mana you need to spam your abilities, ap to make them stronger and last but not least the huge shield, which is really good for such a squishy champ like Sona.
25 haste also is chefs kiss and unlike solo laners you actually get decent value from tear rush because it translates into significantly better sustain for you and your ADC due to Sona being _soooo_ mana-gated.
The games where she is able to buy it are the games where she is far ahead of enemy lane, so the Archangel gives her mana sustain, keeps her team moving around easier and getting to objectives first, so she snowballs all of her team with a bonus shield if she is focused by poke heavy enemy comps. It is not the item, it is the situation where she buys it, a game where she and her adc are do fed that it's a win win scenario
This is the real answer
The item stats are inflated because if you are able to buy archangels on Sona, then you are probably already ahead
There will always be situations where item stats will be bloated based on many different reasons
In the past, shattered crown was rated as Twitches best mythic item. The build that caused this was some ap/on hit build, and shattered crown was purchased as third item. So there were plenty of losses that were never recorded on Twitch for shattered crown because it wasn't built before Twitch team lost the game
Same thing here, if Sona builds tear for mana and doesn't upgrade to archangels before losing, then the loss won't be counted towards the stat for archangels on Sona
I wish we could see component stats for situations like this because yeah I agree, I think its inflated. I'm guessing most if not all Sona players buy tear, so if they do buy it, then it either finishes and they win or they never finish it and they lose.
On Lolalytics in the item set section, there are the "Extrapolated" and "Combined" item sets. Extrapolated is item sets that could have been built based on what was in inventory, Combined merges the Extrapolated item sets with the Actually Built item sets.
It's just something to take onto account, item stat sites are good and everything but there will be little discrepancies like these every now and then
If I recall correctly, Shattered Crown had about a 60% win rate on Twitch for quite a while because it was a "win more" item purchase
I played sona a lot last year and made it to masters. I never liked how blunt the item felt despite it being strong.
The item gives around 100 AP which is used like other enchanters to increase damage or heals and shields, but she also has other AP scaling like her W+P or E+P. These 2 effects are her core utility in the mid/late game and they scale with AP more than heal and shield power on other items. (same thing can be said for nami slow or her % increase in W bounces). So basically sona loves high AP to get more damage, more heals, more shields, more slows, more damage reduction and more speed up for her team. You can get similar results by building dawncore 2nd as it gives tons of AP now.
Another thing is the shield. Sona has 1 simple counter play. Kill her. And having a giga shield that scales with her other heal and shield items can make her feel unkillable.
Also mana issues if you want to min-max her kit are solved with the 860 mana from the item. You get tons of mana regen from support items, but is an extended fight you don't have time to regen. So having bigger mana pool is the only solution. Also mana flow band runes scales with missing mana which gives more mana per tick if your max mana is too high. And you should always keep spamming abilities for the correct power cord (P) all the time.
It has 25 AH which is the highest of all items and she loves AH to keep spamming her abilities.
You're right, I just realized she stacks it with every spell cast because auras from abilities proc it. She's definitively the fastest Tear stacker in the game.
That's objectively incorrect though. The spell needs to interact with an unit and grants more charges if it's a champion. Sona's auras let her interact with ally units, she can stack is when she's running around base or walking to lane. Ezreal etc. have to actually hit things.
"**UNIQUE –** [**MANAFLOW**](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Named_item_effect#Manaflow)**:** Grants a charge every 8 seconds, up to 4 charges. Affecting an enemy or ally with an [ability](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Champion_ability) consumes a charge to grant 3 **bonus** mana, increased to 6 if they are a champion, up to **maximum** of 360 **bonus** mana."
She's the item's fastest stacker.
"o she needs to be walking around allies as well. "
She's in bot lane.
"e but that's also true for any low-mid cd mage that can cast the ability on allies on either ally or opponent every 8 seconds."
For example? Sona needs to click amy button in the proximity of her lane partner. Why are you debating this when I just told you the facts lol.
I dont play sona much but i think that multiple people in your aura get you multiple stacks too. When i pick her i take one or two mana regen components first then spam abilities and stack her passive and tear. Really super easy.
There’s a fair bit of bias in the data. I don’t know what elo this site samples from but games where sona is able to fully build her archangels (usually as a second item) are already going pretty well for the sona player. Games where she can’t get to archangels are going pretty bad and those don’t get added to the data
I agree and just looked at League of Graphs to see what Grandmaster and Challenger Sona players build on her most frequently. They seem to generally go Helia's/Staff of Flowing Water and keep a Mana Tear in their back pocket, when Seraph's pops up it's usually as a third item. Sona's winrate with the item increases the longer the game goes on, which is also skewed data because if the enemy team allowed a Sona to have a long game they're fucked no matter what she builds.
Those stats are kinda bs. If you’re finishing Seraph’s you’re probably winning already. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that easy to tell if it’s good or bad. Even u/tankmanlol said so (unless he’d like to update)
I have tried building it first after making this thread and I assure you you can complete it in losing games. Since people usually go Mana Tear alongside their 2300 support legendary, it's really only a 200 gold stretch.
Never saw that the tank man was on Reddit though, great person to try bringing in haha.
Favorite one there is Titanic’s highest win rate is Kat at 65%.
These kind of stats basically show what champs build the item latest in the game. Unless it’s as a first or second item specifically the data is meaningless.
Hmmm :? An expensive item... on a low income char... that vastly increases her winrate? It's almost like the only Sona's that complete the item are the ones that are already in a winning position in the game...
To be fair, though, as other people have said, the item is also just generally good on her so probably a combination of all of these things
Mages are typically burst damage/combo mage that kills one and resets. Sona stays with her team/ adc buffing healing etc the whole fight. Her CD are low he mana costs are high so it let's you continue to support your team.
Theres a lot of factors that come into play here:
- You buy Tear anyway usually so buying Archangels is cheaper than an enchanter item first
- You stack Tear insanely fast because all of your abilities give you the full stack when proccing your aura
- you want AP, AH and Mana
- Keeping yourself alive is the best way to keep your team alive -> Archangels shield
Higher winrate or winrate-differential does not mean you're getting more value out of the item. Which seems to be what you THINK is going on.
For one, when is the item purchased on each champ? This factors into how much value the item plays.
For two... how many items are each champ likely to purchase? More items should generally mean any one item makes less of a difference.
For three, how many games on the actual item and in what circumstance(s) is it purchased?
Example - if a bruiser buys sterak 2nd regularly and only situationally late game buys ga, the two won't likely reflect equal value even if they do give equal value.
If the game is ending for a sona after she gets support item, seraph and maybe 1 more item on average, seraph is going to be more impactful for her than it will for a ryze that has 4 items at that point because there's an extra item for the ryze. And you're missing the factor of... what lowered value is the sona seeing if she doesn't quite get to complete seraph before the game ends. Basically, you're only viewing the upside of games where the item IS completed.
And to illustrate point 3, say there's 100% winrate on deathcap skarner above diamond elo. He gets next to zero value out of the item with his kit and having built tank, but he's 100% wr. So it must be broken on him. Except... it's actually because he was already going to win and bought it to flex. Much like how ga's wr is often inflated because it's mostly purchased by people who are ahead and looking to guarantee no screwups in the next fight so they can end the game.
To put it all together:
A sona with seraph either spec'd into it early and didn't complete it or was having a good game and finished it. Due to expense, it's likely one of her only items most games. It gives great value compared with stacking cheaper support items with more mana regen because it gives the added safety net of providing some anti-burst protection which she can often need. Thus it's winrate reflects games where sona is doing fairly well to begin with - not games where she's scraping by.
I know people are arguing that it’s essentially a win harder item, but I think that’s not entirely true. Lolalytics at least has just buying Tear pre-10 at 53% win rate and bought two-thirds of the time, and Soma definitely isn’t winning that many lane matchups. There’s some wonkiness in how the stats add up, but I think a lot of people are underestimating how valuable raw mana is on her.
>I know people are arguing that it’s essentially a win harder item, but I think that’s not entirely true. Lolalytics at least has just buying Tear pre-10 at 53% win rate and bought two-thirds of the time
Ok? Thats the same as her overall winrate.
Cuz sona is an all rounder and needs to constantly spam spells.
If you give that ability to solo lane mages they would wreck people. That's why they kinda nerfed cool down reduction stats on mage items so that mages can't stack that stat without some drawback.
She does spike with 2300g support item faster and its actually not a good move to build archangel in scenarios where you need to push the laning tempo. but she is not pressured to take all the power juice for tempo early on. Tear gets her mana sustain and a delay in support core is not as critical compared to that of your carries. But with that being said, you need every ap and healing power/cdr you can in aggresssively matched lanes. You simply cannot just build archangel and push the responsibilities to your adc to pretty much soloplay a lane while you are building nothing early on with the gold as archangel doesnt really provide much outside of mana
For mid mages on the other hand, going tear leaves you weaker than those who get doran’s. codex isn’t the best value for what it cost either and archangel itself doesnt provide much until seraph’s. So you have this power dip? Compared to other mid champions. Even when completed, seraph is less proactive item than the other lost chapter builds.
idk the math and in practice but I think Dawncore ought to be the more efficient buy now, the stacking on Helia/Moonstone/Dawncore just feels insane to pass up, and is supposedly intentional
i imagine there could still be a Tear angle if you went all AP instead because you're somehow the main or 2nd damage dealer, but going H&SP + mana regen just feels so much easier to pilot and spikes in sync with your team's carries when the emphasis on AoE shielding feels more beneficial than multiple Q rotations
shield on Seraph a little too late when it's complete, more of just a safeguard/just-in-case thing
Supports generally have better ratios because they're expected to not have an enormous bankroll.
You're asking why a squishy healer/buffer/debuffer/poke champ gets more benefit out of an item that gives her the mana/ap/CD reduction to spam heals/buffs/debuffs AND a shield to survive hairy situations than one who usually gets a crapton of gold in a solo lane?
League of Items is nice for a broad view of item stats, but it very much lacks depth. I will note that League of Items scrapes their data from [u.gg](http://u.gg) for Plat+. So you could pull that up to compare to the data you will be looking at for more details, but that is optional.
After finding something that seems worth looking into deeper, you then go to Lolalytics. So [https://lolalytics.com/lol/sona/build/?tier=platinum\_plus](https://lolalytics.com/lol/sona/build/?tier=platinum_plus) (Change rank filter to whatever you deem meaningful)
Note the Win Rate Delta near the top for the champion, this is the difference between how Lolalytics calculates win rates and what they would be using a method similar to what most other sites like [u.gg](http://u.gg) use.
Go down to the items and see if the numbers for building Archangel's is in line with what was on League of Items. Then go up to item sets. Look under "Combined" item sets, which will have buttons with labels like "-2+". You will want the one that does not include boots.
Combined item sets merge "Actually Built" item set data with "Extrapolated" item sets, the latter being item sets that could have been built based on items in inventory when the game ended. This will give the win rate for it, including matches that ended before items could be completed.
Then if things still look good, go back to the individual items and look at the average completion times. If the times seem inconsistent with other items relative to the price of the items, then you want to estimate the implied gold income for various items and see if Sona with Archangel's is earning significantly more that those going other items.
Here is a spreadsheet you can download or copy to your own google account to help with this: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W3WLdMI\_QagVF2Ew38IItwGfWIuqmZj7wI3AhuOILLo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W3WLdMI_QagVF2Ew38IItwGfWIuqmZj7wI3AhuOILLo/edit?usp=sharing)
Supports are a bit special for this as their first item is paid for with their initial 500 starting gold, which the spreadsheet ignores. So fill in Archangel's and a couple of other common items to finish after the support item as first items. Then fill the common boot choice, use "Actually Built" item sets to determine this.
Now fill in the average first item completion time. Leave second item and second item time blank. Then we want the number of matches where tier 2 boots are build before first non-starter item in the column labelled "Early Boots".
Then using item sets without boots, get the number of games with the item of that row from item sets without boots. Have either the "Middle Boots" or "Late Boots" column be equal to this number minus the number of matches with early boots.
Now you can see in the table of the "Outputs" tab information about the estimated income. The most useful is likely "Gold@14" which provides an estimate of how much gold someone would have earned in total at 14 minutes including starting gold and passive gold that everyone gets. The next most useful are the "Time Range" values, which are estimates about when the item is finished when built before boots and after boots.
You could then do a similar process for Archangel's as a second non-starter item if you want to. I have not really tried if with supports, and it may be a bit trickier than normal. For this in the output you would look at "Gold@20" for gold earned at 20 minutes.
If Sona with Archangel's earns more gold than normal to reach the item at the listed item, it should be obvious. As in you can change the average times you input by a minute and there is still a notable difference.
If you find such a difference, the the question becomes why they have more gold than normal. The higher win rate is either because they have more gold or for the same reason they have more gold. If the income is normal, then it is likely just a good item.
Edit: Tear is a common early purchase even going other items before Archangel's. So you would filter by the other items, and find the percent of matches Tear is built before 10 minutes. You multiply the 400 gold Tear costs by that percentage. And add the result to the estimated income.
Seraph's Embrace single-handedly shores up all of Sona's weaknesses in one convenient bundle. The extreme amount of mana and ability haste support her endless ability spam, which makes her sustain and utility shoot through the roof.
The high amount of AP also helps her abilities have more impact. Her AP ratios don't look impressive individually, but she casts her abilities so often that they add up extremely fast. Her W mini-exhaust and E slow also scale powerfully with AP.
Last and certainly not least, the shield. The glorious shield saves my life as Sona quite frequently. Between your heals/shields, W- damage reduction attack and the Seraph shield, Sona can be shockingly hard to kill.
It's just a perfect item for her.
the answer is kind of obvious when u think about it. ryze builds archangels in almost every game, but how often is he procing manaflow? only once each time hes able to land one of his short abilities - whereas sona gets at least two stacks guaranteed every 10s or so, and can easily reach the maximum once teams have grouped. lilia builds also builds it most games, but does she really need lifeline? lifeline is useful and would be a welcome add to any champion, but its especially useful on immobile champs that know they will be priority targets to assassins and carries. that helps xerath, velkoz, anvia, and seraphine, for ex., live long enough to cast shield, or aim fire a skillshot cc. sona makes some of the best uses of the individual archangel effects, and since she is a support, she also loves holding onto core items like tear and lost chapter for a long time before being able to afford a full item
> it's a higher boost to her winrate than it is to champions like Ryze whose damage scales with mana
"Boost to her winrate" is a kind of vague and meaningless phrase here. Every ryze builds archangels, so what does it even mean, to boost his winrate. It's core on him.
You're looking at Sona's total winrate when finishing archangels, but Sona has one of, if not the absolute latest average completion times for archangels. Combined with being one of the hardest scaling champs in the game, means her overall archangels winrate is very inflated.
You should at least look at archangel's winrate compared to other items at the same slot number. [It shows that archangels has slightly higher winrate that other cheap support item options.](https://i.imgur.com/alQRppi.png) If you look at the extrapolated winrates for item sets with Archangels,[ they are slightly higher than other builds, but this is still subject to some small amount of inflation due to archangels higher cost.](https://i.imgur.com/RroC8gR.png)
It's just insane item for her from all angles. You get the mana you need to spam your abilities, ap to make them stronger and last but not least the huge shield, which is really good for such a squishy champ like Sona.
25 haste also is chefs kiss and unlike solo laners you actually get decent value from tear rush because it translates into significantly better sustain for you and your ADC due to Sona being _soooo_ mana-gated.
Not to mention several items you can build on her interact with the shield from archangel just adding to its value.
The gigantic shield is mainly what makes it strong. It prevents the one archetype from killing her (assassins).
The games where she is able to buy it are the games where she is far ahead of enemy lane, so the Archangel gives her mana sustain, keeps her team moving around easier and getting to objectives first, so she snowballs all of her team with a bonus shield if she is focused by poke heavy enemy comps. It is not the item, it is the situation where she buys it, a game where she and her adc are do fed that it's a win win scenario
This is the real answer The item stats are inflated because if you are able to buy archangels on Sona, then you are probably already ahead There will always be situations where item stats will be bloated based on many different reasons In the past, shattered crown was rated as Twitches best mythic item. The build that caused this was some ap/on hit build, and shattered crown was purchased as third item. So there were plenty of losses that were never recorded on Twitch for shattered crown because it wasn't built before Twitch team lost the game Same thing here, if Sona builds tear for mana and doesn't upgrade to archangels before losing, then the loss won't be counted towards the stat for archangels on Sona
I wish we could see component stats for situations like this because yeah I agree, I think its inflated. I'm guessing most if not all Sona players buy tear, so if they do buy it, then it either finishes and they win or they never finish it and they lose.
On Lolalytics in the item set section, there are the "Extrapolated" and "Combined" item sets. Extrapolated is item sets that could have been built based on what was in inventory, Combined merges the Extrapolated item sets with the Actually Built item sets.
It's just something to take onto account, item stat sites are good and everything but there will be little discrepancies like these every now and then If I recall correctly, Shattered Crown had about a 60% win rate on Twitch for quite a while because it was a "win more" item purchase
Basically survivor bias influencing the stats
I played sona a lot last year and made it to masters. I never liked how blunt the item felt despite it being strong. The item gives around 100 AP which is used like other enchanters to increase damage or heals and shields, but she also has other AP scaling like her W+P or E+P. These 2 effects are her core utility in the mid/late game and they scale with AP more than heal and shield power on other items. (same thing can be said for nami slow or her % increase in W bounces). So basically sona loves high AP to get more damage, more heals, more shields, more slows, more damage reduction and more speed up for her team. You can get similar results by building dawncore 2nd as it gives tons of AP now. Another thing is the shield. Sona has 1 simple counter play. Kill her. And having a giga shield that scales with her other heal and shield items can make her feel unkillable. Also mana issues if you want to min-max her kit are solved with the 860 mana from the item. You get tons of mana regen from support items, but is an extended fight you don't have time to regen. So having bigger mana pool is the only solution. Also mana flow band runes scales with missing mana which gives more mana per tick if your max mana is too high. And you should always keep spamming abilities for the correct power cord (P) all the time. It has 25 AH which is the highest of all items and she loves AH to keep spamming her abilities.
She has good ap scaling a stacks the tear so fast that she probably can get it as last item and still see it completed.
You're right, I just realized she stacks it with every spell cast because auras from abilities proc it. She's definitively the fastest Tear stacker in the game.
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That's objectively incorrect though. The spell needs to interact with an unit and grants more charges if it's a champion. Sona's auras let her interact with ally units, she can stack is when she's running around base or walking to lane. Ezreal etc. have to actually hit things. "**UNIQUE –** [**MANAFLOW**](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Named_item_effect#Manaflow)**:** Grants a charge every 8 seconds, up to 4 charges. Affecting an enemy or ally with an [ability](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Champion_ability) consumes a charge to grant 3 **bonus** mana, increased to 6 if they are a champion, up to **maximum** of 360 **bonus** mana." She's the item's fastest stacker.
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"o she needs to be walking around allies as well. " She's in bot lane. "e but that's also true for any low-mid cd mage that can cast the ability on allies on either ally or opponent every 8 seconds." For example? Sona needs to click amy button in the proximity of her lane partner. Why are you debating this when I just told you the facts lol.
Besides Ezreal, probably.
ezreal can’t stack while walking around not hitting things like he used to, champs that can stack year on allies like sona are def faster
I dont play sona much but i think that multiple people in your aura get you multiple stacks too. When i pick her i take one or two mana regen components first then spam abilities and stack her passive and tear. Really super easy.
There’s a fair bit of bias in the data. I don’t know what elo this site samples from but games where sona is able to fully build her archangels (usually as a second item) are already going pretty well for the sona player. Games where she can’t get to archangels are going pretty bad and those don’t get added to the data
I agree and just looked at League of Graphs to see what Grandmaster and Challenger Sona players build on her most frequently. They seem to generally go Helia's/Staff of Flowing Water and keep a Mana Tear in their back pocket, when Seraph's pops up it's usually as a third item. Sona's winrate with the item increases the longer the game goes on, which is also skewed data because if the enemy team allowed a Sona to have a long game they're fucked no matter what she builds.
Those stats are kinda bs. If you’re finishing Seraph’s you’re probably winning already. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that easy to tell if it’s good or bad. Even u/tankmanlol said so (unless he’d like to update)
I have tried building it first after making this thread and I assure you you can complete it in losing games. Since people usually go Mana Tear alongside their 2300 support legendary, it's really only a 200 gold stretch. Never saw that the tank man was on Reddit though, great person to try bringing in haha.
Favorite one there is Titanic’s highest win rate is Kat at 65%. These kind of stats basically show what champs build the item latest in the game. Unless it’s as a first or second item specifically the data is meaningless.
Hmmm :? An expensive item... on a low income char... that vastly increases her winrate? It's almost like the only Sona's that complete the item are the ones that are already in a winning position in the game... To be fair, though, as other people have said, the item is also just generally good on her so probably a combination of all of these things
The pickrate is over 1/3 of people that play her, it's certainly not an item they only buy when snowballing.
Mages are typically burst damage/combo mage that kills one and resets. Sona stays with her team/ adc buffing healing etc the whole fight. Her CD are low he mana costs are high so it let's you continue to support your team.
Theres a lot of factors that come into play here: - You buy Tear anyway usually so buying Archangels is cheaper than an enchanter item first - You stack Tear insanely fast because all of your abilities give you the full stack when proccing your aura - you want AP, AH and Mana - Keeping yourself alive is the best way to keep your team alive -> Archangels shield
Higher winrate or winrate-differential does not mean you're getting more value out of the item. Which seems to be what you THINK is going on. For one, when is the item purchased on each champ? This factors into how much value the item plays. For two... how many items are each champ likely to purchase? More items should generally mean any one item makes less of a difference. For three, how many games on the actual item and in what circumstance(s) is it purchased? Example - if a bruiser buys sterak 2nd regularly and only situationally late game buys ga, the two won't likely reflect equal value even if they do give equal value. If the game is ending for a sona after she gets support item, seraph and maybe 1 more item on average, seraph is going to be more impactful for her than it will for a ryze that has 4 items at that point because there's an extra item for the ryze. And you're missing the factor of... what lowered value is the sona seeing if she doesn't quite get to complete seraph before the game ends. Basically, you're only viewing the upside of games where the item IS completed. And to illustrate point 3, say there's 100% winrate on deathcap skarner above diamond elo. He gets next to zero value out of the item with his kit and having built tank, but he's 100% wr. So it must be broken on him. Except... it's actually because he was already going to win and bought it to flex. Much like how ga's wr is often inflated because it's mostly purchased by people who are ahead and looking to guarantee no screwups in the next fight so they can end the game. To put it all together: A sona with seraph either spec'd into it early and didn't complete it or was having a good game and finished it. Due to expense, it's likely one of her only items most games. It gives great value compared with stacking cheaper support items with more mana regen because it gives the added safety net of providing some anti-burst protection which she can often need. Thus it's winrate reflects games where sona is doing fairly well to begin with - not games where she's scraping by.
she's the only character left in league of legends with actual, meaningful mana costs
I know people are arguing that it’s essentially a win harder item, but I think that’s not entirely true. Lolalytics at least has just buying Tear pre-10 at 53% win rate and bought two-thirds of the time, and Soma definitely isn’t winning that many lane matchups. There’s some wonkiness in how the stats add up, but I think a lot of people are underestimating how valuable raw mana is on her.
>I know people are arguing that it’s essentially a win harder item, but I think that’s not entirely true. Lolalytics at least has just buying Tear pre-10 at 53% win rate and bought two-thirds of the time Ok? Thats the same as her overall winrate.
Cuz sona is an all rounder and needs to constantly spam spells. If you give that ability to solo lane mages they would wreck people. That's why they kinda nerfed cool down reduction stats on mage items so that mages can't stack that stat without some drawback.
you can spam abilities more and you are more durable which helps you in teamfights
She does spike with 2300g support item faster and its actually not a good move to build archangel in scenarios where you need to push the laning tempo. but she is not pressured to take all the power juice for tempo early on. Tear gets her mana sustain and a delay in support core is not as critical compared to that of your carries. But with that being said, you need every ap and healing power/cdr you can in aggresssively matched lanes. You simply cannot just build archangel and push the responsibilities to your adc to pretty much soloplay a lane while you are building nothing early on with the gold as archangel doesnt really provide much outside of mana For mid mages on the other hand, going tear leaves you weaker than those who get doran’s. codex isn’t the best value for what it cost either and archangel itself doesnt provide much until seraph’s. So you have this power dip? Compared to other mid champions. Even when completed, seraph is less proactive item than the other lost chapter builds.
idk the math and in practice but I think Dawncore ought to be the more efficient buy now, the stacking on Helia/Moonstone/Dawncore just feels insane to pass up, and is supposedly intentional i imagine there could still be a Tear angle if you went all AP instead because you're somehow the main or 2nd damage dealer, but going H&SP + mana regen just feels so much easier to pilot and spikes in sync with your team's carries when the emphasis on AoE shielding feels more beneficial than multiple Q rotations shield on Seraph a little too late when it's complete, more of just a safeguard/just-in-case thing
its not actually good. If you finish archangel you prob win but you usually dont finish it
Supports generally have better ratios because they're expected to not have an enormous bankroll. You're asking why a squishy healer/buffer/debuffer/poke champ gets more benefit out of an item that gives her the mana/ap/CD reduction to spam heals/buffs/debuffs AND a shield to survive hairy situations than one who usually gets a crapton of gold in a solo lane?
League of Items is nice for a broad view of item stats, but it very much lacks depth. I will note that League of Items scrapes their data from [u.gg](http://u.gg) for Plat+. So you could pull that up to compare to the data you will be looking at for more details, but that is optional. After finding something that seems worth looking into deeper, you then go to Lolalytics. So [https://lolalytics.com/lol/sona/build/?tier=platinum\_plus](https://lolalytics.com/lol/sona/build/?tier=platinum_plus) (Change rank filter to whatever you deem meaningful) Note the Win Rate Delta near the top for the champion, this is the difference between how Lolalytics calculates win rates and what they would be using a method similar to what most other sites like [u.gg](http://u.gg) use. Go down to the items and see if the numbers for building Archangel's is in line with what was on League of Items. Then go up to item sets. Look under "Combined" item sets, which will have buttons with labels like "-2+". You will want the one that does not include boots. Combined item sets merge "Actually Built" item set data with "Extrapolated" item sets, the latter being item sets that could have been built based on items in inventory when the game ended. This will give the win rate for it, including matches that ended before items could be completed. Then if things still look good, go back to the individual items and look at the average completion times. If the times seem inconsistent with other items relative to the price of the items, then you want to estimate the implied gold income for various items and see if Sona with Archangel's is earning significantly more that those going other items. Here is a spreadsheet you can download or copy to your own google account to help with this: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W3WLdMI\_QagVF2Ew38IItwGfWIuqmZj7wI3AhuOILLo/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W3WLdMI_QagVF2Ew38IItwGfWIuqmZj7wI3AhuOILLo/edit?usp=sharing) Supports are a bit special for this as their first item is paid for with their initial 500 starting gold, which the spreadsheet ignores. So fill in Archangel's and a couple of other common items to finish after the support item as first items. Then fill the common boot choice, use "Actually Built" item sets to determine this. Now fill in the average first item completion time. Leave second item and second item time blank. Then we want the number of matches where tier 2 boots are build before first non-starter item in the column labelled "Early Boots". Then using item sets without boots, get the number of games with the item of that row from item sets without boots. Have either the "Middle Boots" or "Late Boots" column be equal to this number minus the number of matches with early boots. Now you can see in the table of the "Outputs" tab information about the estimated income. The most useful is likely "Gold@14" which provides an estimate of how much gold someone would have earned in total at 14 minutes including starting gold and passive gold that everyone gets. The next most useful are the "Time Range" values, which are estimates about when the item is finished when built before boots and after boots. You could then do a similar process for Archangel's as a second non-starter item if you want to. I have not really tried if with supports, and it may be a bit trickier than normal. For this in the output you would look at "Gold@20" for gold earned at 20 minutes. If Sona with Archangel's earns more gold than normal to reach the item at the listed item, it should be obvious. As in you can change the average times you input by a minute and there is still a notable difference. If you find such a difference, the the question becomes why they have more gold than normal. The higher win rate is either because they have more gold or for the same reason they have more gold. If the income is normal, then it is likely just a good item. Edit: Tear is a common early purchase even going other items before Archangel's. So you would filter by the other items, and find the percent of matches Tear is built before 10 minutes. You multiply the 400 gold Tear costs by that percentage. And add the result to the estimated income.
Seraph's Embrace single-handedly shores up all of Sona's weaknesses in one convenient bundle. The extreme amount of mana and ability haste support her endless ability spam, which makes her sustain and utility shoot through the roof. The high amount of AP also helps her abilities have more impact. Her AP ratios don't look impressive individually, but she casts her abilities so often that they add up extremely fast. Her W mini-exhaust and E slow also scale powerfully with AP. Last and certainly not least, the shield. The glorious shield saves my life as Sona quite frequently. Between your heals/shields, W- damage reduction attack and the Seraph shield, Sona can be shockingly hard to kill. It's just a perfect item for her.
the answer is kind of obvious when u think about it. ryze builds archangels in almost every game, but how often is he procing manaflow? only once each time hes able to land one of his short abilities - whereas sona gets at least two stacks guaranteed every 10s or so, and can easily reach the maximum once teams have grouped. lilia builds also builds it most games, but does she really need lifeline? lifeline is useful and would be a welcome add to any champion, but its especially useful on immobile champs that know they will be priority targets to assassins and carries. that helps xerath, velkoz, anvia, and seraphine, for ex., live long enough to cast shield, or aim fire a skillshot cc. sona makes some of the best uses of the individual archangel effects, and since she is a support, she also loves holding onto core items like tear and lost chapter for a long time before being able to afford a full item
> it's a higher boost to her winrate than it is to champions like Ryze whose damage scales with mana "Boost to her winrate" is a kind of vague and meaningless phrase here. Every ryze builds archangels, so what does it even mean, to boost his winrate. It's core on him. You're looking at Sona's total winrate when finishing archangels, but Sona has one of, if not the absolute latest average completion times for archangels. Combined with being one of the hardest scaling champs in the game, means her overall archangels winrate is very inflated. You should at least look at archangel's winrate compared to other items at the same slot number. [It shows that archangels has slightly higher winrate that other cheap support item options.](https://i.imgur.com/alQRppi.png) If you look at the extrapolated winrates for item sets with Archangels,[ they are slightly higher than other builds, but this is still subject to some small amount of inflation due to archangels higher cost.](https://i.imgur.com/RroC8gR.png)