Hi everyone. Welcome to my first guide. It might not be perfect, and might not suit every one of you readers playstyles, but it's what works awesomely great for me, and i wanted to share it.

It might seem a little weird at first, but even if you read it completely, and don't agree, give it a try, you might be surprised by how well it works.


Introduction: Why do I treat Sona as more than a Support?

I don't think of sona a "just a support" and neither should you.
The "all mana regen" build do not convince me.

Why?

Because Sona is a great damage dealer if you know how to take care of ganks and know when to pull out.

At lvl 18, even with 0 Ap, you could be dealing 1075 damage in an Ulti + Q + Power chord auto attack combo. 954 Magical and 121 Physical. To that, add 1.5 of your AP. To a single target. And even when you don't have your Ult off CD, you can still deal a great amount of poking damage with your Q alone, and using your W/E to heal/escape.

I've had games in great teams (as in no feeder noobs) in which i had the 2nd or 3rd Kill score and the higher Assist score, so no, i wasn't just KSing. It's just a matter of knowing how to prepare for battle.

If you didn't die a lot in the laning phase, you can be a beastly killer mid game.

Tactics Section: What is the point of all of this?

The idea behind Battle Healer Sona is to retain the Support side of her, wile building her with a great dose of survivability, at least to make her able to pull out a teammate from a bad situation, and at most, to be able to get hit 3 or 4 times before finding a good place to use your Ultimate in a teamfight.

With this build you will be able to:
-Being a great support.
-Being a major asset for your team Mid game, and if you do well, also Late game.
-Solo laning top.

Yeah, I'm not joking, even if Sona would never be my first choice for a Solo Top Lane, I've had some very successful performances there. I've got first blood from a Pantheon 1 vs 1, held my ground against Urgot + Fiddle / Taric + Jarvan / Morgana + Jax (In this one I've had the only kill of my team on the laning phase) the only one that actually has beaten my lane was a Mordekaiser, and even then, he only killed me once.

Now to the good stuff: The build

The Masteries

I always go with a 9/0/21 standard caster setup, but i think that 0/9/21 might work great as well.


The Runes

The most important runes for Battle Healer Sona are Seals and Glyphs.

For the Seals (Yellows) I recommend Flat Armor. You will need them early game, and late game, armor is pretty easy to get, so you're better with the low level boost.

For the Glyphs, on the other hand, you have 3 great choices: Flat CDR, Flat Magic Resistance and Magic Resistance per Level.
This is more of a personal choice, i prefer %CDR, but any of them can give you stats that you will need all game long.

Marks: I'd go with Magic Penetration, as there are not much better choices there, and i don't really like Secondary and Tertiary runes.

Quintessences: Go crazy. Pick anything you feel like. My personal choices would be Movement Speed, Magic Penetration or Flat Health.


Summoner spells

I go with Teleport and Ghost, they help a lot during the whole game, and make you much more useful for your team, giving you a much stronger map presence.
You could also pick Flash, Heal or almost any other spell that you want, but i found this 2 to be the most useful in the average game.


Skill Order
As i pick Ghost, i tend to leave E until i have my other skills maxed, and i mainly focus on healing first, so the Skill progression looks something like this (I bolded Ulimate levels and lvl 5 Skills):

W > Q > W > Q > W > R > W > Q > W > Q > R > Q > E > E > E > R > E > E.

This will max your supporting/lane staying power and damage dealing much more early in the game, giving you space to pull some really awesome stunts early and mid game.

Pay attention to your surroundings and remember that you have some really powerful auras, a lvl 5 W aura can nullify Mercury Treads or Abyssal scepter, Q aura can help getting towers down (And your Power chord works on them too, so always remember to use Q before a power chord if attacking a turret) and your E is useful to go trough the map as a team quicker without having to use summoner spells.

Decide on a battle if your team can get more advantage from being able to chase, having extra resistance or dealing a little more damage. That can win teamfights for you.

Try to get closer to the team fight but not inside it to use your Ultimate, if you hit their entire team, the teamfight is 90% won. You can also save it on a team that has few hard CC skills to interrupt strong ultimates like Katarina's or Nunu's.


Itemization

My "Core" are 4 cheap Items, worth under 4k Gold:
-Tear of the Goddess
-Mercury's Treads
-Negatron Cloak
-Chain Vest

You should get this Items around lvl 10-12 and from that, it's pretty much just getting AP to further boost your strengths

I start with Mana Crystal and 2 Health potions. This solves all your early game needs, as you have a bigger mana pool, and you don't need to spam your W that much, saving you even more mana for when your lane partner needs your heals or you see a chance to burst an enemy down with your Q + Power Chord.

Go b when you have at least 945 gold, and buy the Tear and Boots.

After that, get your T2 Boots and wait until you have 1440 gold
Now you have to make a choice: To keep following this guide, or to end the game very quickly. If your team is snowballing, get a Mejai's and charge it with assists. If there's no clar advantage, get your Negatron Cloak and Chain Vest, and you're now much more resistant than almost any Squishy in the other team.

Now you have your core, and are free to break havoc mid game, with your unexpectedly high burst and your utility to your team .

To follow on with the game:

Make the Negatron Cloak into an Abyssal Scepter, your AP carries will thank you for it, and you'll get even more MR and a nice amount of AP.

For the Chain Vest you have 2 great options:
-Zhonya's Hourglass to get a high amount of AP
-Frozen heart to stop their auto attacking carries on their tracks, adding some nice CDR and Mana.

After you have your survivability core, you can make your Archangel Scepter from that Tear of the Goddess that should already be Maxed out, and get a great AP boost.

If you already have those 4 items, go straight for a Deathcap. that'll increase your performance by a huge amount.

The 6th item is more or less up to you.
-If you think that you already have enough Armor and feel like tanking, go with Warmog's, a 3.5 HP support with more than 150 Armor and MR is a view that won't please the eyes of your enemies. Troll them to death, being the undying super support.
-If you prefer more MR, a Vanshee's veil would be the best choice, getting you over the 200 MR mark and giving you some extra HP and MP, it's an overall great choice.
-If you've got Zhonya's, you might find that you could use some more Armor. Go straight for a Guardian Angel. You have no health items, so you'll have under 1700 HP. That might seem weak, but consider that GA revives you with a flat amount of health... 700 health in this build would mean that you get more than 1/3 of your health back, and you have over 190 armor and 15o Mr, so that + a heal it's enough to escape or finish the fight.

There are more choices for really late game items, but the game should usually be over around the time you get AAS or Rabadon's.


Please comment your thoughts about my guide, and thank you for reading it.

I'll try to get Fraps this week, so i might update it with some short videos from my LoL Recorder saved games to illustrate some of my points.

And i wanted to addt, that while this is a Battle Sona guide, it isn't a Carry Sona guide. Work with your team, you're great, you're tanky, but you're still a support.

I haven't played Sona in a long while & decided to pick her up again today...This guide is interesting & I already got most of the runes you suggest in stock so I'll def give it a go & get back to you on it. Thanks for the read

alright so far it's alright. I go for magic pen marks, armor seals, and cool down glyphs with a few ap thrown in since I'm still buying some runes. I go hp for my quint. I go defense & utility for my masteries.
The builds alright but I feel it leaves me really squishy. Mind you I know sona is supposed to be squishy..but late game she's really lacking. I start out with a pendent to build into a tear since I like regain better than flat mp. I follow the build of Tear of the Goddess mercury treads negatron cloak & chain vest. Now if the teams ap I get scepter if not & the other team is heavy magic I go banshee's, if neither I go spirit visage. I feel visage is nice with mr, hp, cd & 15%reg effects...it's also almost half the cost. the chain vest I go into zhonya's after I finish my archangels staff & then start my deathcap... so far the games ended before I've needed to pick anything else up but I'de prob go warmogs after that. I'm still testing things out but it's doesn't seem to bad. Thanks for the build

Finally someone that Shares some toughts as me regarding Sona! Nice guide!
I have some random posts about sona with similar info also. If you want, fell free to use them if you find interesting.

sona need magic regeneration runes and clarity other way your going to suck in you lane

Have to have regen runes. You don't have to have Clarity unless you want staying power in the lane early and to spam spells any amount of times. If you want to put pressure on your opponents then Clarity is a must early.

You should start with Q as your first ability. Adjust leveling Q vs. W by how well you are controlling the lane. You should really pick up one level of E at 5 or 7 depending on your movement advantage. Then level E last.

Sona should be in the rear with the gear looking for that clutch spot to ult. To do this you need mobility. If at all possible get swiftness boots mixed with E and you are one of the fastets champs on the field. Remember E also gets anyone your traveling to the fight faster as well.

You should get some extra HP somewhere by mid game as you are Sona people have a hard on for you. Get this through any number of ways ie. RoA, Aegis (if no tank is getting it), BV being main sources. Soul Shroud is also a viable option I am just not the biggest fan of it myself. Also look to build other aura items that could benefit your team like WotA.

Your core items are flexible in building which is good as I have built some or all that you have suggested at one time or another.

I agree with people suggesting regen runes. I almost always duo with a friend and we go bot together and 99 times out of 100 we manage first, second, and sometimes even 3rd and 4th kills on the team. I run mana regen quints and seals, with magic pen reds, and flat cdr blues. 9/0/21 masteries, taking exhaust and flash. exhaust works wonders early game, since my lane mate usually carries ignite. Sona/Ezreal is the best combo we've found so far, with both of their ungodly pokes, first blood is simple, and with my extreme mana regen I keep us in lane early game for a long time to get all the farm we need. I usually first item RoA too, if I'm doing really good. If not a bv or glacial shroud, depending on the other team's comp.

tl;dr, Sona is godly.

I play a lot of Sona, and I follow a build that starts similar to yours.
I never thought, however, of adding in all the super tank items that you do.
Great ideas considering that the only problem I ever have with Sona is her drastic squishiness - always afraid to run around solo! =(

I'll definitely try some aspects of your build - if I end up as a sort of support/ap carry, I'll build a lich bane over abyssal scepter - because the extra survivability would be awesome.