Sonya Talents

Level	Choices
1	✓ ? ?
4	? ? ✓
7	? ? ✓
10	? ✓
13	? ✘︎ ✓
16	✓ ? ?
20	? ? ? ✓

Furious Blow is a strong Talent that increases Sonya's damage by empowering Seismic Slam every 4 casts. When empowered, Seismic Slam deals 40% more damage and costs no Fury, saving 25 Fury each time. On average, Seismic Slam will deal 10% more damage and cost 6 less Fury.

If you look at the buff tracker in the bottom-left corner, you can prepare Furious Blow for the next fight. This trick is more important when having Leap as Heroic Ability because the additional burst damage provided can easily make the difference between securing a kill and missing it. For this reason, you should always pick Furious Blow and Leap together.

War Paint is a decent Talent that heals Sonya for a percentage of the damage done via Basic Attacks, allowing you to get better trades and providing you with another way to self-sustain while laning or capturing Mercenary Camps. By increasing Sonya's Attack Damage, you will also increase the healing provided by this Talent.

In case you are going for a Whirlwind Build, you should generally prefer Tough As Nails over War Paint, as time spent channeling Whirlwind is time not spent dealing damage with Basic Attacks.

Tough As Nails is a situational Talent that passively gives Physical Armor in the form of Block charges. These charges are generated faster while Sonya is affected by Fury's Movement Speed bonus.

Block charges are especially valuable when facing Heroes with slow but heavy-hitting Basic Attacks (such as Hanzo) and really bad when playing against Heroes with fast-hitting Basic Attacks (like Tracer) or who can summon Clones (for example Nova).

Shattered Ground is a good Talent that empowers Seismic Slam's splash. When directly targeting an enemy Hero with Seismic Slam, the splash damage is increased by 500%. When directly targeting an enemy non-Hero, the splash damage is increased by 250% and the splash length is extended by 66%. The damage done to the main target is not increased.

If you plan to pick Leap as Heroic Ability, even if Shot Of Fury increases your burst damage on the main target, you should heavily prefer Shattered Ground because it increases your waveclear, allowing you to clear Minions and rotate faster.

Hurricane is a good Talent that reduces Whirlwind's cooldown and turns it into a Slow and Root removal.

The cooldown reduction provided is great in conjunction with Life Funnel at Level 7 as it allows you to get even more healing from Whirlwind.

The ability to remove some types of crowd control effects from Sonya right before Whirlwind goes off helps her to reposition for dealing damage with it or to escape from danger.

Shot Of Fury is a strong Talent that increases Sonya's Attack Damage after casting Seismic Slam and can be activated to generate 50 Fury when needed.

We find this Talent quite useful as, by generating Fury on activation, it allows you to extend Wrath of the Berserker's duration when needed, in addition to Ancient Spear.

Poisoned Spear is a good Talent that adds a potent damage-over-time effect to Ancient Spear, effectively doubling its damage against all kinds of enemies.

Even if it takes a total of 6 seconds, Poisoned Spear is still the best burst damage option in this Tier, making it an interesting option when planning to pick Leap as Heroic Ability.

When playing against Heroes with Stealth, the damage-over-time effect is nice to have as it will either break Stealth or prevent them from entering Stealth in the first place as they know it will break.

Life Funnel is a good Talent that increases Whirlwind's healing from 25% to 35% of damage dealt. The effectiveness of this Talent goes up when Sonya is able to constantly hit multiple enemies during Whirlwind.

Thanks to the additional self-sustain provided, this effect helps Sonya stay healthy while laning, while capturing Mercenary Camps, and in team fights.

Avoid picking this Talent when playing against Heroes who can easily interrupt Whirlwind. If they pay attention to it, Whirlwind's effectiveness in team fights will be drastically reduced, so you will get little to no value from Life Funnel in these situations.

Battle Rage is a strong Talent which passively increases Sonya's damage to Mercenaries and can be activated to heal Sonya for 10% of her maximum Health. Stores up to 2 charges. When activated, it goes on a 5-second cooldown. You can activate it while channeling Whirlwind.

We generally recommend this Talent because it increases your self-sustain, can occasionally be helpful against burst damage, and empowers your damage against neutral and enemy Mercenaries.

In this section we discuss when and why to pick a given Heroic Ability. If you want to read how they work in detail and/or you are looking for some tips on how to use them, check them out on the Abilities and Strategy page.

Leap is a strong Heroic Ability that allows Sonya to become Unstoppable and jump towards a target location. Upon impact, all enemies take damage and are Stunned, interrupting any channel in progress (such as Mosh Pit by E.T.C.).

We recommend picking Leap when your team needs an additional engage tool or desperately needs interrupt for a powerful channeled Heroic Ability. You can use it to burst someone down, to dive, or to execute a wombo combo.

Wrath of the Berserker is a strong Heroic Ability which greatly empowers the damage that Sonya deals with Basic Attacks and Abilities and reduces the duration of most crowd control effects: Stuns (including Sleeps), Roots, and Slows. The effect lasts 15 seconds, extended by 1 second for every 10 Fury gained.

We recommend picking Wrath of the Berserker when your team needs more damage and/or when you feel like you can get value from split-pushing on bigger Maps. You can also use it to capture and/or defend Mercenary Camps faster, thus increasing your impact at macro level.

Mystical Spear is a situational Talent that turns Ancient Spear into an unconditional mobility tool. When you do not hit an enemy with Ancient Spear, Sonya will still dash forward and Ancient Spear's cooldown will be reduced by 5 seconds.

The extra mobility provided by this Talent can be useful to escape when in danger. You can even use it to escape or chase over impassable terrain, including player-created one (for example Force Wall by Tassadar).

Ruthless is a decent Talent that empowers Whirlwind's damage when hitting enemy Heroes below 50% maximum Health. Note that the extra damage dealt this way does NOT increase Whirlwind's healing.

We find this Talent not good enough to compete with No Escape because bonus Movement Speed provided by No Escape will help you stick on the target, indirectly increasing your damage, and because Whirlwind is primarily being used for self-sustain. If you want to deal more damage, it is better to just use Seismic Slam instead.

No Escape is a strong Talent that further increases Sonya's Movement Speed bonus from Fury when using a Basic or Heroic Ability, helping you to stick on the target.

We heavily recommend picking this Talent because the additional Movement Speed it provides can be useful in various ways: dodging, repositioning in team fights, chasing, and escaping.

Giant Slammer is a strong Talent that causes Basic Attacks and Seismic Slam to deal more damage in the form of percent-based damage and heal Sonya for a portion of the damage dealt this way.

If you have Leap as Heroic Ability, you must pick this Talent to increase your burst damage. If you have Wrath of the Berserker, you can be more flexible but this Talent is still the best option to increase your burst and sustain damage as well.

Since it gives way more value when you can constantly hit enemy Heroes with Basic Attacks and Seismic Slam, this Talent is not good for Whirlwind Build as you will spend most of your time channeling Whirlwind.

Rampage is a decent Talent that increases Sonya's Attack Damage and causes Basic Attacks to reduce Ancient Spear's cooldown.

The cooldown reduction provided by this Talent allows you to generate more Fury if you manage to hit enemies with Ancient Spear, makes missing Ancient Spear less punishing, and has synergy with Poisoned Spear at Level 7 as you will be able to cast Ancient Spear more often.

Since it gives way more value when you can constantly hit enemy Heroes with Basic Attacks, this Talent is not good for Whirlwind Build as you will spend most of your time channeling Whirlwind.

Nerves of Steel is a situational Talent that, once per fight, can be activated to gain a powerful Shield for a few seconds. You can activate it while channeling Whirlwind.

We find this Talent useful when playing against team composition who can deal a lot of burst damage. Just make sure to activate it before you take too much damage and before you get hit by enemy crowd control effects. That said, Ignore Pain at Level 20 is usually enough.

Arreat Crater is a situational Talent that reduces Leap's cooldown and causes it to leave a circle of impassable terrain around Sonya upon landing, blocking Sonya and nearby enemies inside it.

The impassable terrain it creates can be used to block enemy Heroes in a narrow area, to prevent enemy Heroes from moving from a side of the battlefield to another during a team fight, or to stop their retreat. Be careful not to block your teammates with it!

The cooldown reduction may occasionally help you cast Sundering twice in a single team fight or use it for two consecutive team fights with low downtime between them. For example, you could try to engage with it and then try again shortly after if it fails, or you could gank someone and then have it back for the next team fight.

Striding Giant is a decent Talent that, while Wrath of the Berserker is active, passively increases Sonya's maximum Health and gives access to an Active called Striding Giant. Once every 30 seconds, Striding Giant can be activated to make Sonya Unstoppable for 2 seconds.

The ability to become Unstoppable can be useful in preventing Whirlwind from being interrupted and at countering Heroes who rely on crowd-control for kills (notably Chromie with Temporal Loop). Since Striding Giant cannot be activated when Wrath of the Berserker is not active, you will also need Wrath of the Berserker's cooldown to be available.

Composite Spear is a good Talent that increases Ancient Spear's range by a considerable amount and, when hitting an enemy Hero, increases Sonya's survivability by granting her Armor for a few seconds.

The range increase provided by Composite Spear can be useful against range-heavy team compositions that tend to kite you to death before you can deal any significant damage.

The bonus Armor provided is also notable for prolonged team fights, especially if you combine this Talent with Rampage at Level 16 for a higher uptime, but cannot compete with Ignore Pain when you need more protection from burst damage.

Ignore Pain is a strong Talent that can be activated to gain a huge amount of Armor for a few seconds. You can activate it while channeling Whirlwind.

We recommend picking this Talent in most games because it drastically increases your survivability in late-game team fights, where it is extremely important to not die too quickly and without getting any kills.

We find this Talent useful when playing against team composition who can deal a lot of burst damage. Just make sure to activate it before you take too much damage and before you get hit by enemy crowd control effects. If you also have Nerves of Steel at Level 16, wait for one defensive effect to end before using the other one.