I usually don't have mana issues on Sona, but if I end up spamming my stuff I'll buy a mana pot or two when I base. I don't think you need tanky stats to effectively use pickpocket, but it's also personal preference. Tanky stats aren't bad on Sona just because of the recent stat nerfs, but it's moreso what you're trying going for.

I'm usually not afraid of just outright tanking Leona and Taric. I like running Health Quints and MR Glyphs on Sona (or alternatively, the new rune page I'm having fun with involves Armor Quints and HP per level Seals), and if I survive with even a single hit point when they try to stun me, for me it usually means I've won the lane simply because they have expended a lot of resources and don't have as much sustain to recover from exchanges. This strategy doesn't work nearly as well against Blitzcrank of course because his pull will actually put you in position to be autoattacked for several seconds.

I play Sona to abuse Pickpocket mastery. In my personal playstyle, I simply believe running enough durability to be impossible to kill in a 2v2 situation is extremely abuseable on Sona, given her healing is very mana efficient. Sona also has the strongest autoattack trades of all supports, being both ranged, and getting a lot of inherent base stats from either her Q or W aura on top of Power Chords. Furthermore, Sona only really needs three items to be useful to a team, which are Philo, Sightstone, and Chalice, which is about a 2.3k total investment.

Also, you should consider using more mana potions over health potions on Sona. Once your heal is at rank 2, a mana potion is more cost efficient for sustain than a health potion (well, with the assumption you are using your heal to heal two people). In fact, at max rank, Sona's heal is overall the most mana efficient heal in the game really. I will max heal first in some games if I'm against snowball oriented kill lanes, and leave Q at rank 1 for occasional extra poke damage.

I find Leona is a harder match up over Taric, just because her ultimate range is longer than yours, and you don't know when she'll go in to zenith blade you. Whereas with Taric you can see him run up, and it gives you time to get away. I've had harder times with Leona over Taric, but Blitz is definitely the biggest pain in the nuts.

A good Leona is quite hard to win really hard against as Sona, but it can be done. Just my personal experience I guess. As the elo gets higher, people aren't as dumb when it comes to trading.

Yeah, overall there's more than one way to play against Leona. If you play it wrong and get outplayed really hard, you can lose, just I don't normally consider Leona a counterpick for Sona when people argue about hard matchups for Sona. More often than not, what will cost me that lane is if I get too aggressive and don't pay attention to jungle ganks. In normal 2v2 situations, I consider her actually pretty easy to shut down.

Pretty much the only lane that I feel gives me serious trouble is Blitzcrank, simply because getting grabbed is just so painful generally speaking because it's a positional disadvantage on top of the fact he has strong burst, whereas Leona and Taric lanes more easily give you the option of laming them out simply because they have to extend much farther onto your side in order to make plays.

You don't have to max heal against Leona, you just have to play the lane properly. You can harass her out of lane because she has no sustain, but if you tend to get caught a lot then yeah sure, go for it. Beating her isn't too hard, but the lane could go either way depending on how the lane was played out.

Beating Leona is easy. Run a huge defensive setup, max W, and autoattack her constantly. She is nowhere nearly as difficult as Blitzcrank, who actually PULLS you out of position. Leona has to basically instakill you when she engages, and she actually can't do this if you run a high defensive setup, at which point you can basically just abuse her and restore any damage she does to you.

I'll usually take flask over faerie when they have a lane with a lot of harass (Lulu, Cait, etc). It gives me mana for heals/damage and health, and you never have to pay for it again, so it's a win all around. It's also more of a personal preference too I suppose.

Great guide, I agree with just about every point you make. One request, though: can you explain when it's better to start faerie or flask? I buy flask on most supports now, but I don't necessarily start with it. Are there better times to buy it?

This was a cool story and I do believe I will read it again.

Good job Solv~