@ Riot, request for 3 more changes to Sion

I have 3 changes that i think will benefit Sion a lot

They consist of a way to make Q max more appealing A base stat adjustment which goes with the Q max change and the W passive And a change to W active to allow for a little better scaling when Sion farms well and plays well to make up for lost damage, at bare minimum vs low defense targets, and potentially gain a little bit more damage if he actually farms enough stacks

Riot, your goal was to have Sion players move away from maxing E first as it was too safe. But with the recent nerfs, which made him less safe to play, i think you accomplished the opposite effect.

I understand it is not so easy to make Q max favorable over E max. But at the same time it is not too hard to figure out either, the primary issue is that E offers a lot more reliability, Simply nerfing it's damage would not change that. And the reason is simple, because Q is still as unreliable as ever. Q had the added benefit of automatic scaling due to it's total AD ratio which you addressed which wasn't a bad start. But again it did nothing about it's unreliability but it at least brought both E and Q more in line with each other.

Q decimating smash maxing changes

To make Q max more appealing we are missing some reliability in that skill. Both in terms of farming as well as dealing damage/trading in lane

Right now it starts of with 33% damage up to 100% after 2 seconds charging up time. If we where to change that to starting off at 40% it would be more reliable damage wise vs maxing E as you simply cannot always charge it fully if you want to trade and are sometimes relegated to snap casting it So maximum damage stays unchanged but if forced into a quick trade Sion can at least retaliate a little better if he chooses to max Q Which will help a lot when you have to put yourself in more danger.

The second change to Q has to do with farming. Right now it deals 33% damage to minions and 67% to monsters ( last i checked at least) anyway my point here is that it deals too little damage to minions. It is still worse then E unless you build AD items. E has the added benefit of not having to root yourself in place for 2 seconds to get the full damage as well as having more range and therefore a lot more safety and reliability. The least we could do to make up that discrepancy is to have Q decimating smash gain more damage to minions per rank until it deals equal damage to minions as it does to monsters at rank 5 so up to 67% This would make it a more reliable farming tool.

Base stat changes

Now with the previously mentioned Q change Sion would gain a net buff in the early game which i want to offset with a small early game nerf. Hp regen from 1.8 to 1 So he would start at 5 regen per 5 seconds But in return he gets better hp regen growth Enough to reach the highest regeneration among all champions by level 18 This would offset the Q buff for the early game by making damage stick better to Sion until he reaches level 7 or 8 haven't done the math but it should be around that level range. After that it will be a get a bit faster to keep up with Sion's HP growth as he has no alternative way of sustaining himself unlike other high HP pool champions. This way we offset the Q buff in the early game by making damage stick better which forces Sion to play it smart rather then going for an even trade and healing up after. This promotes skill expression alongside more interaction because of the Q buff.

W soul furnace active change

So this one is to make up for lost damage and to have better scaling potential since Sion does poorly past 20 minutes into the game

The change is simple, active damage now deals damage based on a % of Sion's health instead of enemies health. And the damage cap vs minions/monsters is removed as it would no longer be required.

The main benefits for changing W in this way are

It keeps Sion's damage roughly the same vs all targets pre 20 minutes besides excesses like getting massively fed And post 20 minutes it will mostly gain power vs the more squishy targets who either have no business standing in front of Sion fighting him head on, assassins for example, or have the range to avoid it like marksmen and mages. and even then it mostly makes up for lost damage on E Vs other targets it will have nearly no impact as they would still be around Sion's health level or have plenty of resistances for it to be negligible The other benefits are that it evens Sion's damage distribution out to where it was prior to the changes. It doesn't mess with the Q or the E which would be in a good spot choice wise as what to max first Also it has multiple layers of counterplay Number one being get out of the way, it is telegraphed 3 seconds in advance at the least. Or you get to destroy the shield. And perhaps the strongest one, winning lane by outplaying Sion early allows you to keep him from farming too much health with zoning for example or gain an edge elsewhere by roaming. in which case the active wouldn't even gain more power and might end up being weaker instead depending on how hard you zone him. Sion is already a little bit feast famine that way with weak stats and W passive to make up for it, might as well reward him properly when he does well.

To sum things up These changes accomplish. More incentive to max Q over E. Laning phase with more emphasis on interaction and outperforming your opponent in order to reap the rewards later on. As unreliable, slow and telegraphed as ever. But now with proper reward if you play good by having more scaling. Needless to say but i am going to do it anyway. The numbers would always be easy enough to change if he would end up under or over tuned. I'm not trying to get Sion out of control broken or yasuo levels of annoying to play against. I just want him to be a viable pick as he is my favorite character and i think this would accomplish that. He is currently mediocre in the early game and very weak later into the game no matter how ell you did early. which doesn't sit well with me, i'm fine with him middle of the pack for early game but then he should at least have the ability to scale well if you play good unlike now where it makes no difference.