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Sion's Balance

arybloom·8/13/2019, 9:10:11 AM·2 votes·1,764 views

This post is not a rant or anything but rather a suggestion.

I know Sion is a really hard to balance to champion because he is more or less the only physical damage tank. That is apart from Vi, Gnar and Jarvan who are more offtanks than tanks and can all build offensive if they have a good game.

My problem here is that Sion's offensive builds are really limited and somewhat trollish: indeed, Sion has a great scaling with armor penetration and armor reduction, but a bullcrap scaling with AD. This leads some people to build a duskblade or ghostblade... And as funny as it is to "one shot" people, it's unreliable and linear. The main advantage of armor pen comes from his passive and the 10% total health damage per auto that you deal under with passive and the huge base damage of ult/q.

After his rework, I remember Riot saying they wanted to keep the possibility of building him AD. It does not work right now.

P: 10% of total health per hit is a lot. Why not implement a mini crit system (autoattacks deal 150% damage) and reduce the on hit to 5% total health rather than 10%. This would slightlly nerf full tank Sion vs tanks but would not be a big nerf against top lane carries, which he struggles hard against.

Q: Q's maximum AD scaling is 225% Total AD, which is good. There is just in my opinion one problem there: Total AD scaling is basically bonus AD scaling + level scaling (only way to increase your base AD is to level up). So your damage will increase regardless of your build. This favors tank Sion because the tankier you are, the more damage you can afford to take while charging q. This is however not a big problem.

W+E: nothing to say there, maybe E could use a little AD ratio but it's far from necessary

R: BIG PROBLEM: why is base damage increasing up to 166% on max damage and ratio damage only 100%??? The base ratio is 40% (total AD again of course). Were you really scared of a 106% AD potential ratio instead of 80%? 80% for a full loaded ult? and the base damage however is HUGE and this is not a problem?

Black cleaver is the only decent "offensive" item, but it's primarly because of the cdr and armor reduction, and not because of the AD. (Titanic Hydra is also decent if you die a lot, but that's just because of the passive and active, not the stats).

You also said you wanted Sion jungle to be playable after rework. This is barely the case with the recent w cd nerf. Support Sion is more decent, and it does not fit Sion's personality and theme. Since Sion jungle works better with offensive builds I think a buff to AD Sion would benefit it.

My suggestions in order of priority:

  • Fix this ult's AD ratio when charged, it's too low.
  • Change the way you deal damage with passive (by the way Sion doing more damage with his fists than his axe does not make a lot of sense)
  • (Change Q ratio to bonus AD, Sion already scales enough with levels. or add a bonus AD ratio on e)

Make Mundo the tankiest champion again.

3 Comments

Jbels8/13/2019, 1:53:49 PM1 votes

Being a tank that does physical damage and scales off of AD has nothing to do with making him hard to balance. What makes him hard to "balance" is being the only tank in the game with a kit that isn't hyper overloaded while still giving enough tools to be useful at multiple stages of the game, while being surrounded by kits that ARE overloaded to the point of needing to have their guts ripped out nerfed in order to be fair in any sense of the word.

Ornn before his nerfs was literally just better Sion. Better early game harass, better SAFER multi target CC engage, better scaling, better tankiness and so on. How does Sion compete with a champion that is essentially him on steroids?

arybloom8/14/2019, 6:52:53 AM1 votes

I'll have to disagree with the "Sion isn't overloaded" part.

Tanks like Malphite Amumu and Mundo Exist.

Sion has 1) an initiation tool 2) a shield 3) free bonus health 4) poke 5) a hard cc with a low cooldown 6) a post death "life" 7) an autoattack range of 175.

The problem is he is hard to play on toplane because the new carry picks are just too strong and if he can beat them as a full tank then it means he is not overloaded but rather overpowered.

Anyways, they removed the damage reduction of q vs monsters so I am definitely happy and will play him again.

Lovelle8/25/2019, 2:20:12 PM1 votes

I never feel like I'm struggling to deal damage with Sion unless I stack tank items, but there's literally no reason to do that to begin with. He scales with AD and health, he's not rewarded for stacking resistances. As long as he has at least Titanic Hydra, I never feel like Sion's damage is bad at any stage of the game. He also completely wrecks towers with Demolish and there's nothing the opponent can do to stop him.

The problems I have with him are defensive oriented, as he just explodes (or gets shredded) no matter what he seems to build past the early game. However, this is currently a problem with every tank in the game, not just Sion. I would say he's still has it better than most of them since he can practically ignore building resistances and still be relevant in fights. If Riot would just nerf damage + penetration I think he would be more than fine.

Regarding Black Cleaver, I would argue that's one of the few items that just isn't good on him at all. He doesn't stack it fast enough to make it worth IMO. Trinity Force is the much better Phage upgrade on Sion. Helps with chasing, initiation, everything.