Okay so I've been holding my tongue (fingers?) for awhile, but: New Sion is a complete failure.

This is going to be MASSIVELY long, and it's going to go over what I would call: "A metric fuckload of topics all pertaining to the overall assertion that Sion's rework is a complete failure."Like when Xypherous tried to rework Jayce I feel the issue isn't Sion but rather the entire game itself, so I'm going to channel my inner-Xypherous here to say why the entire game is at fault from the ground up for Sion being a failure.

As an aside when I say the entire rework is a failure I mean the gameplay. The aesthetics, sounds, and general feel of the champion are all spot on.

**Part 1: The two types of players. ** Okay so lets start here. I should be able to wrap this up pretty easily and quickly. When I was searching Sion's win rate it has been doing reasonable since the rework. A solid 48%. That's not GOOD per say, but that's not unplayably bad. For a few days I looked at it and I thought yeah that seems alright maybe I'm wrong. UP UNTIL I noticed that when you went up the ELO that his winrate plummeted in to 44%. 44% means he is currently one of the worst champions in the game, bottom 5. What does this mean? Well lets start with the two types of people that play LoL.

Player A just wants to play. He just wants to win, doesn't really care how, he's just there to play the game. He's not gonna get better nor worse and he's going to take the path of least resistance. Maybe he plays a lot of co-op vs. AI or maybe he just plays normals and doesn't care. For perspective Sion's win rate at even bronze ranked goes down several points. This normal playing dude is just gonna click buttons and hope the opponent dies. If he plays Jax he will sit there and auto attack. If he is playing Ashe he will sit there and auto attack. It doesn't matter, he just wants to play. This player makes Sion look relatively balanced because he's never going to escape Sion's Q, he's never gonna dodge his E or R, and he has no idea what Sion'S W even does. He just doesn't care, and if you tell him what Sion does he'll just say "man it's just a game." It's not that he's BAD, he just simply plays for fun and doesn't care.

Player B wants to win. The far minority in NA LoL. I remember that before they made Bronze the lowest ranked in LoL that only something like 43% of players even MADE it to bronze. Over 50% of players were unranked. What does that mean? The majority of LoL is bad. Really bad. But Player B can be bronze, or silver, or even challenger. It doesn't matter where he's at it matters what he wants to do. This guy is gonna look at Sion's abilities and learn them. He's going to dodged out of the way of his Q and flash his ult. This player is going to SEVERELY reduce Sion's power to the point where Sion becomes a bad champion.

What's the problem? The majority of LoL is player A and Riot is creating Sion as if the majority is player B. That might be fine but then they BALANCED Sion for player A. Rather than horribly punish people for sitting in front of Sion the same way they would sit in front of Jax they made Sion's damages pretty low all things considered. 2 seconds of charging with no auto attacks nor movement nets Sion a 1.6 total AD ratio. Garen gets 2.0 total over 2 seconds on judgement for perspective and that is considered way low, AND he can move for the duration. While Sion's damages appear to be high on paper the application is that even if you sit there and take it like a champ there's a good chance you can still beat Sion, so player A can still win the game. Sion is likely never going to beat Mundo nor Maokai nor Irelia (the three popular melee champions right now) in a fight even if they just sit in front of him and don't care.

That's a problem. This is an issue I like to call hope versus reality. Riot HOPES that people will get better and maybe they can buff Sion up in the future. The reality is they won't, and making Sion any more powerful will shoot his win rate to the 52-55% area for player A that becomes a balance issue. Look at Rammus, Amumu, Warwick, Fiora. All champions with good overall win rates who are just TRASH in competitive play. Sion will join them with any buffs, and the amount of buffs he'd need to be competitive would take him over the acceptable line. Sion could maybe be pushed to a 48% win rate in diamond but the problem is he'd then be at a 52%+ win rate at the other ELOs.

I'll get back to this in a second. For now we're going to take a look at the history of LoL and WHY Riot made such a ridiculous blunder.

**Part 2: The history of melee until now. ** I originally made this much longer but I'll keep this much shorter. The historically of melee counterplay.

In season 0 melee champions could stack sunfires and sit next to you. There was no counterplay to it and they won... HOWEVER...

In season 1 ranged champions started to get better. Oh hey, we can take this red buff and Ashe slow and never get hit by a melee champion, imagine that. Suddenly LW/IE (LW used to give attack speed) with a green elixer and red buff and you were already beating melee champions with only 6000 gold. That means by 20 minutes in melee was already out scaled and useless. And that's been the trend ever since.

In season 2 Riot did something new. "Hey," they said, "Ranged champions have no counter play, lets just give melee champions even less counterplay." Then Irelia and Xin Zhao and Jarvan were released. Gap closers with hard CC and massive base damage so they could build tanky. "Hey," Riot said again, "Melee is beating range, we should stop that now." And then they did stop it. Forever. Also they nerfed Atma's and took away late game from melee forever.

Season 3 was the beginning of the end of the laning phase for melee champions. Darius getting nerfed, Yorick getting nerfed, Jarvan and etc getting nerfed. Ranged champions were already dominating them so Riot saw fit to nerf all the ranged champions to give melee moree time... until...

Season 4 comes around and melee continues to eat nerf after nerf to the face. Jax, Renekton, Darius, etc. Champions never touched since season 2 are now OP? And now the entire lane is ranged other than Maokai (Mundo has 0% win rate at worlds, and every team is realizing it's easier to be Ryze than Irelia.) The lesson of this history? The only melee that get used are melee with no counterplay, and even now that's true with Maokai. Range has no counterplay and the only time melee could fight them is when they too also didn't have counterplay. Take away one thing from this history lesson: When it comes down to it and Riot has to choose between melee and range they choose range 90% of the time.

Season 4 also started with the "too tanky to fail" movement where melee champions would get too tanky to fail. However that's pretty much stopped. Shyvana picked 0% at worlds. Mundo 0% win rate at worlds. Renekton 0% pick rate at worlds. Trundle 0% pick rate at worlds. Etc. The too tanky to fail movement is dead, and range is our new overlords. And with all melee items directly nerfed and range lording over the top lane it will not return without direct Riot intervention.

**Part 3: Range is always in control, melee is never in control. ** The biggest problem has always been that Melee is basically a punching bag for ranged champions to beat down and melee champions have to prolong the fight long enough for the ranged champion to make a mistake so they can pounce on it. However with fights getting shorter and shorter since season 2, and ranged champions gaining more ways to make up for mistakes that chance of pouncing on a mistake is nearly gone. It used to be that all you had to do was land a Darius E and the ranged champions was guaranteed to die if they didn't flash. Now you land an E... and they jump away, slow you, perma slow with red, and are still A-Okay. And that's WITH Darius's E only being landed when they make a mistake to begin with. So now they have to make a mistake just for you to land a hit AND they can still make up for it.

Basically it's just as the part says: Range gets to make all the choices, and melee just gets to try and punish them for it. But wait, you're probably saying, isn't that all Sion does? Yes, and that's entirely the point. All Sion does is give the ranged character more control over the fight as he gains less control over the fight. Can Sion flash to ensure his ult hits? No. Can his opponent flash to make sure his ult misses? Yes. Same for his Q, and his E. But it's not just flash is it? It's hourglass, it's CC, it's escape moves, it's everything. Sion can't control the fight at all and his opponents entirely dictate whether or not he's going to hit.

So how did Riot fix the problem of range having full control of fights? They gave them MORE control. ... wait that's not fixing, that's doing the opposite of fixing! Which is why this thread exists. Ask yourself, does Mundo have more or less control over a fight than Sion? More, much more. And how is that possible? How is it possible that a champion that is LITERALLY as old as the game and has never had a kit revamp is STILL better designed than Sion? Isn't that the problem of the entire game?

Back in Season 2 Riot was releasing melee champions with no counterplay to make up for the fact that ranged champions didn't have counter play. You're gonna perma slow from range with red buff? Okay, Xin is gonna gap close with a slow in to a knock up and kill you. Evening the odds however was deemed unfun again. Why? Because this goes way back to part 1: The players who don't want to put in any effort AREN'T going to put in any effort. In their games Xin is gonna kill the ADC 100% of the time. They won't wait for team fights, they won't try to kite, they'll take the path of least resistance and just right click and hope to win.

But isn't Sion just the same issue? People havn't gotten better, they're just as dumb as they ever were. They're gonna sit there in Sion Q and die. They're gonna let Sion blow his shield up on them. They're not gonna dodge his E, they're gonna flash directly backwards and still get hit by his ult. They're gonna chase Sion in to a brush and take a 400 damage Q out of it.

So the question becomes then how do you give control back to melee champions, how do you take control away from range? Well the shitty answer is... you won't. Riot doesn't WANT to take control away from ranged champions because it's satisfying to have complete control. Ever play Irelia? It feels good that there's nothing your opponent can do to counterplay you. That's how ADCs and Ryze and etc. feel. If you took away their control it would make them feel worse to play. Ever play Mundo and miss two cleavers in a row? Feels really shitty doesn't it. But ADCs can't miss ranged red buff perma slows!

**Part 4: More counterplay = less competitive. ** Maokai has shown us one thing: It's season 2 again, apparently. We've gone full circle and once again we've got a melee champion with an overloaded kit from hell building full tank spamming CC using a gap closer with hard CC to lock down whoever he wants to lock down who also has enough base tankiness to juggernaut around the match.

... and then you have Sion, the complete opposite. Which champion do you think will be used competitively? The one that a good player can dodge everything he does, or the one that can't be dodged by anything? That's the issue isn't it? Riot can't find the answer. The melee champions with the least counter play (Maokai, Irelia, etc.) will be the ones used competitively, and the melee who can have their entire kits dodged (Aatrox, Sion, etc.) are the ones that will not be picked.

The problem is and always will be that there is no counterplay to auto attacks, that most mages can just press their buttons and get kills. And yet then melee champions are expected to have the counterplay. WAYYYYYYYYY back nearly 6 months ago I said that at the current rate things were going that Riot was going to create a Rhino charge (Sion's ultimate.) They did it. And here we are. How do I counterplay Syndra? How do I counterplay Tristana or Lucian? And yet Riot creates a melee champion who can be counterplayed by just pressing your escape move in to any random direction then typing in to chat "omg LCS outplays!"

Plus it would be pretty damn hard to notice that the more Riot tries to give melee counterplay the less competitive they are becoming.

The lesson?

Okay so range has no counterplay. I say again you can't miss auto attacks and you can't dodge Syndra ult. Melee has too much counterplay and fails against anyone who knows that they're doing. So why are we now turning around and giving Sion even MORE counterplay than ever before? That is why I call his rework a complete failure: It literally went BACKWARDS! After Yasuo I expected melee to have more ability to counterplay range. Short term shields, or more ways to block ranged attacks, or etc. Except the OPPOSITE happened with Sion. The hell happened?

So take everything in to perspective. Bad players won't dodge abilities, good players will dodge abilities. Melee has all the dodgeable abilities, range has very few. The more counterplay a melee champion has (even if their power level increases) the less competitive they will be. This is what needs to happen: Walking forwards while using all your abilities should NOT reward you with maximum power on a melee champion. Timing, positioning, and skill should be involved. More mundo cleavers, less Jarvan EQ and Sion Q. More Jax counterstrike, less ... entire Sion kit.