Heroes of the Storm Sonya

[Damien 1,514]

This thread is for comments about our Sonya build guide for Heroes of the Storm.

[Guest Nightcore777]

This build/guide on sonya is useless and bad just go for slam spam or u will be useless like every other sonya that you see.Take every talent that can improve your seismic slam take block at lvl 1 and wrath of the beserker as heroic at lvl 20 go either for ignore pain or anger management but only if you are totally dominating the enemy team. stoneskin is viable as well but i prefer the dmg of furious blow or no escape over stone skin.and dont take mystical spear its just bad if u miss your spear and u jump in 5 enemys without any fury u deal no dmg and cant spam your slam, which will lead to no dmg and your death.Just follow this lil talent guide i gave you and you will start wrecking your enemys instead of being a uselss shit that everyone hates.

 

Good Luck and have fun

[KendricSwissh 66]

This build/guide on sonya is useless and bad just go for slam spam or u will be useless like every other sonya that you see.Take every talent that can improve your seismic slam take block at lvl 1 and wrath of the beserker as heroic at lvl 20 go either for ignore pain or anger management but only if you are totally dominating the enemy team. stoneskin is viable as well but i prefer the dmg of furious blow or no escape over stone skin.and dont take mystical spear its just bad if u miss your spear and u jump in 5 enemys without any fury u deal no dmg and cant spam your slam, which will lead to no dmg and your death.Just follow this lil talent guide i gave you and you will start wrecking your enemys instead of being a uselss shit that everyone hates.

 

Good Luck and have fun

 

I don't know if we should take your comment seriously. Mystical Spear is an amazing talent that also decreases your cooldown on Ancient Spear by 4 seconds regardless. Besides, Block is vastly inferior to Warpaint and Shot of Fury (not only according to Icy Veins but also according to the general opinion, represented by hotslogs.com https://www.hotslogs.com/Sitewide/HeroDetails?Hero=Sonya  )

 

Don't get me wrong, you're allowed to share your own opinion about the guide, but by calling it "bad" or "useless" you're just straight up embarassing yourself. 

[Guest Kroshak]

Good guide, reminds me of the popular one used by zuna with some tweaks and changes, good work here

 

Really strong hero right now, came from the bottom to being really strong and getting picked in tournaments even

[Guest Keijo Pesonen]

After playing sonya for about 30-40 games, i think at lvl 7 ferocious healing is often the best choice. Sooo many deaths avoided with it. (mmr ~~2200 yea nab)

[Oxygen 446]

After playing sonya for about 30-40 games, i think at lvl 7 ferocious healing is often the best choice. Sooo many deaths avoided with it. (mmr ~~2200 yea nab)

 

It's definitely good, and generally preferred by most players. I have it as situational simply because in a perfect scenario, you'd want to maximise your Fury usage and just deal more damage when you can (i.e. through Poison-tipped).

[Guest int]

Am I correct: follow through talent will be triggered every time I'll use "W"?
It seems like ridiculously OP damage buff due to very low CD of "W"..

[Guest Entopy]

A good Sonya player with a Lt. Morales is almost invincible if not focused down immediately

 

[Oxygen 446]

On 7/14/2016 at 9:48 AM, Guest int said:

Am I correct: follow through talent will be triggered every time I'll use "W"?
It seems like ridiculously OP damage buff due to very low CD of "W"..

That is how it functions, yes. It is strong but not particularly overpowered because Sonya's basic attack uptime is generally pretty low.

[Guest J-dog]

Great guide, I don't feel going for an camp build due to the fact I'll usually two man so I'm able to keep the back line build to get rid of any high dmg dealers (keal'thas) 

[Oxygen 446]

On 8/3/2016 at 4:28 PM, Guest J-dog said:

Great guide, I don't feel going for an camp build due to the fact I'll usually two man so I'm able to keep the back line build to get rid of any high dmg dealers (keal'thas) 

Just make sure you don't sacrifice experience soaking or lane pressure to overdedicate to camps.

[Valhalen 1,485]

Is that true? I can see her being like that before the likes of the Butcher and Alarak, but now...

• "Highest single-target damage output potential in the game"

Edited December 13, 2016 by Valhalen

[Voltorocks 40]

I mean, in theory the butcher has unlimited damage *potential,* but the reality is somewhat (a lot) more grounded.

It's a pretty broad statement to be able to verify 100% (burst? sustain? sustained over how long a period of time? heroic or non heroic target? etc.) but I don't think it's that far off base. If an ulting sonya is given 100% uptime on targets (that's why it's "potential," see? because we're discussing imaginary best-case scenarios that almost never happen) her sustained single target dps is *astronomical.* It definitely can exceed many _burst_ heroes dps, and certainly outpaces any other sustain assassin (barring the aforementioned infinity stacked butcher). Alarak could probably outpace her over a short period as could a few other very high burst assassins, but that's about it.

 

All that said, the word "potential" is really, really important here. she does not have the sustain, durability, or sticking power of varian (for example) so against most comps this potential is wasted as she spends the majority of teamfights being dead or kited. Here's hoping that she gets updated a bit soon, in particular to differentiate her from dual wield varian and other AAing brawlers.

[Plergoth 277]

I'm not a fan of the War Paint talent, or the Merc Lord build, as 1) I've played around with Shot of Fury for ages and it's by far the superior pick on the tier, especially after they rolled the extra fury collection into it, and 2) besides having to give up Focused Attacks, one of the core talents essential to Sonya imo, you can safely take most merc camps solo. With enough experience, you can do a team fight or a map objective with Berserker still up or about to expire, use Shot of Fury to extend the Rage by five seconds or Ancient Spear to initiate the camp and keep Rage active and efficiently do it without any talent fluff that subtracts from Sonya's number one goal and aim; to be a huge backline or frontline threat and presence, chasing relentlessly and dealing huge damage to anyone that stays near her. 

Amongst other Sonya players, there is some debate with the Poisoned Spear talent. I lean towards Follow Through; with Shot of Fury and the damage buff that Berserker provides, I find that it provides a lot more damage overall than damage from Poisoned Spear, which should always be a strategic cd due to the stun it gives, and the relatively long cd it has compared to her other abilities. Furthermore, with Follow Through, Shot of Fury and the increased Fury pool to draw from, it should feel like the superior talent, especially on maps such as Battlefield of Eternity where you need to damage pve targets, as well as being extremely efficient at deleting forts from the map while never being in any true danger of not having any Fury left to switch to an enemy hero.

Additionally, you can use Shot of Fury without dismounting, which provides you with an extra avenue to be a strong initiator without having your Ancient Spear on cooldown for a critical gap closer or interrupt. 

tl;dr: If you ever become confident with this hero, I would recommend looking at Shot of Fury builds for most of your games. 

Edited December 20, 2016 by Plergoth

[Voltorocks 40]

10 hours ago, Plergoth said:

 

I'm not a fan of the War Paint talent, or the Merc Lord build, as 1) I've played around with Shot of Fury for ages and it's by far the superior pick on the tier, especially after they rolled the extra fury collection into it

 

100% agree when you're in team or even usually in hero league. The major exception is if you don't think you can trust your team to cover your sustain, which is 100% of the time in quick match and (at my shitty level) like 50% or more of the time in hero. if you have a solid malf or brightwing who's always popping in to top you off after camps, then yeah, this talent kicks ass. 

[Oxygen 446]

I'm inclined to like Shot more as well, but I've become rather... questioning, say, of my typical teammate's competency. The self-sustain and self-reliance are nice.

[Guest sonya build?]

https://www.icy-veins.com/heroes/talent-calculator/sonya#23.0!1132323

[Valks 2,387]

On 2/8/2017 at 6:58 AM, Guest sonya build? said:

https://www.icy-veins.com/heroes/talent-calculator/sonya#23.0!1132323

The issue with this is that you rely entirely on your spear to hit. You forgo all of your damage reduction talents to focus on more basic attack damage, but if you miss your spear you're just going to be kited all fight until it's back up. This might pay off if your opponents are slightly worse, but you will most likely get punished extremely hard with this build.

[Valhalen 1,485]

I've posted this before in another thread, but I think it makes morr sense to post here. Here are the changes they could make to improve Sonya, in my opinion:

- Make Shot of Fury's activable effect as baseline (generate 50 Fury); but keep Shot of Fury as a talent that increases her rage cap but now makes D generate 100 Rage (or instead reduce the CD).

- Adding more talents to improve her Trait, such as granting her Armor whenever she is at full Fury; or something similar to Chen's Brewmaster's Balance: a buff when she has over half Fury and another buff when she has less than half.

- Increase the Rage generation from Basic Attacks. It takes forever to build rage by hitting things. Which makes squirmishes and Team Battles very annoying. 

- Make the Mystical Spear effect of pulling Sonya forward even of she doesn't hit anything as baseline; then Mystical Spear could instead have another additional function aside from just cooldown reduction (or just further increase the CD reduction).

- Improve her talents for Seismic Slam and Whirlwind with quest talents, so they slowly build over time and get a big buff when completed.

- Adding a Talent which lets her dump all her Rage in a single Slam, with additional damage per point of Rage, would be very interesting to make her more threatening in Team Fights. Maybe add the talent in the number keys so it can activated and deactivated at will.

- Make her overall more mobile than Varian. Increase the movement speed from her Trait to 15% rather than 10%, for example. Also, Whirlwind could have a talent that slows enemies hit by it (like 5% per hit, stacking up to 4 times or so), making Sonya a better chaser.

- Sonya's self sustain is also awful when compared to Fury Varian. They already tweaked the healing from Whirlwind, but in my opinion it should heal even more, to make Whirlwind a threatening attack that shouldn't be ignored (because let's face it: using Whrilwind on team fights is terrible unless you have stuns). Sony used to be one of the best mercenary clearers in the game, but Fury Varian stole the spotlight.

- Drastically reduce the CD and damage of Leap (and maybr reduce its damage to compensate), so it becomes a more interesting Heroic to compete with Wrath of the Berserker. This could essentially turn Sonya into a Leapquake Barbarian (or a Muradin). Maybe it could have a mechanic where Basic Attacks reduce its cooldown.

These are my thoughts so far. I really like the idea of Sonya being somewhat an Assassin disguised as a Warrior, being a more bruiser-type that can deal and mitigate insanes amount of damage if well talented. But currently there are a lot of Heroes that can easily outperform her in many occasions (she currently has one of the lowest win ratios in the game alongside Stitches). She is one of my favorite Warriors to play as, and for that reason I'd love to see her getting a full revamp.

[Valks 2,387]

29 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

She is one of my favorite Warriors to play as, and for that reason I'd love to see her getting a full revamp.

I'd second that. I used to play her a huge amount. If I had to pick from your ideas, I'd go with the survivability ideas. I understand that they want her to be this hidden damage dealer that surprises people with that huge pack of power, but she still needs to be able to take the hits. Buffing WWs healing and the armour trait idea is definitely a nice way to go with it.

[Valhalen 1,485]

1 hour ago, Blainie said:

I'd second that. I used to play her a huge amount. If I had to pick from your ideas, I'd go with the survivability ideas. I understand that they want her to be this hidden damage dealer that surprises people with that huge pack of power, but she still needs to be able to take the hits. Buffing WWs healing and the armour trait idea is definitely a nice way to go with it.

Thanks, man! My biggest concerns with Sonya's survivability are that Whrilwind healing is way too low to make a difference, unless you find yourself in a very favorable situation (Wrath of the Berserker on and in a pack of stunned enemies). Plus, her best defensive skills (Ignore Pain and Nerves of Steel) only come much later in the game, where the match is usually near ending. That is why I think that adding defensive properties to her Skills would be great.

Heck, the Dev team could even implement some talents based off set bonuses from D3 (like Leapquake). This would spice her up really nicely. Considering that the Barbarian has always been the favorite and the second most iconic Diablo class next to the Necromancer, she should be a notable character in HotS.

I think that Blizzard should either rework Sonya as a fully beefy Assassin like The Butcher (yes, changing her role) or make her a more sturdier Bruiser that can still deal notable damage (like Artanis).

Edited February 12, 2017 by Valhalen

[Valks 2,387]

13 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

I think that Blizzard should either rework Sonya as a fully beefy Assassin like The Butcher (yes, changing her role) or make her a more sturdier Bruiser that can still deal notable damage (like Artanis).

Definitely the best way to head with it. She's too much in the middle right now. She's not quite an assassin, but not quite a brawler. She can be great, sure, but she needs some love.

[Valhalen 1,485]

2 minutes ago, Blainie said:

Definitely the best way to head with it. She's too much in the middle right now. She's not quite an assassin, but not quite a brawler. She can be great, sure, but she needs some love.

I was thinking that they could even make her a multiclass like Varian, because why the hell not. That would solve at least 70% of her problems:

- Wrath of the Berserker would also passively increase her other favorable attributes (damage dealt and movement speed).

- Leap could have a much shorter cooldown, like I said, and also reduce damage taken upon landing, and finally passively increase her health.

[Valks 2,387]

9 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

I was thinking that they could even make her a multiclass like Varian, because why the hell not. 

It's possible, yeah. The only issue is that I doubt they'd make two "Warrior" style heroes multiclass without including another. Given how angry people get about different plans with hero introduction and diversity, I doubt they'd be a fan of another Assassin/Warrior hybrid before a Warrior/Support or Assassin/Support got introduced.

10 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

- Leap could have a much shorter cooldown, like I said, and also reduce damage taken upon landing, and finally passively increase her health.

This could be a quest-style ability. Each time you leap, gain X HP and X damage on leap, or X damage and X cooldown reduction. After damaging a certain number of enemies with leap, it completes the quest and gives a big boost to it.

[MurkyFelix 51]

On 2/12/2017 at 5:16 PM, Blainie said:

This could be a quest-style ability. Each time you leap, gain X HP and X damage on leap, or X damage and X cooldown reduction. After damaging a certain number of enemies with leap, it completes the quest and gives a big boost to it.

A heroic quest would be very interesting. As in, they make it a quest with 2 rewards (like Murky's slime quest) and the first reward is health based and the second damage based (talking about Leap). But forgo the level 20 upgrade. It would make it really high risk high reward but a cooldown reduction is very much needed in order for this to be viable. But a quest heroic would be cool