Boards›Gameplay

I don't like how Sion's "theoretical" power budget is largely wasted.

GhostStalker·10/27/2014, 11:03:45 PM·22 votes·23,431 views

His Ultimate and Q, and sometimes W. These are abilities where you will largely not be getting the full benefit of these abilities, because the implied threat of these abilities itself is what they're all about.

That's fine and dandy, but if im playing a champion whos only purpose is to be threatening without actually causing threat, then I think that champions a failure in design. ESPECIALLY when its super easy to avoid him.

Can we give sion SOME reliable power so he's not stuck not doing anything because its super easy to avoid and disarm either in lane or from the jungle? Thanks. In case you need some idea's from brain-storming:

1). Give Sion's Q the ability to rotate the cone while he's casting it so it's more threatening. 2). Give Sion's Ultimate a better steering wheel. You've seen the videos of hillarity. I think you guys at riot have had your fun. Now make it useable against opponents who are not oblivious. 3). Give Sion's W passive more HP for champion kills. 8 Seems very low. 4). Give Sions E Armor Debuff (not slow) a longer duration. A bit too low right now.

84 Comments

Jungle Lux God10/28/2014, 1:20:35 AM19 votes

I personally don't feel like Sion's Q should be able to rotate, as it's AoE is pretty large, and you can land it pretty easily, even if you have to let it go early to only get the slow and reduced damage off. In addition, you can land it pretty reliably if you have other forms of crowd control to set it up, whether it is from his own ult or comes from your allies' hard CC.

Consider how many Sion videos consist of him failing horribly with his ultimate, I definitely think his ultimate needs a better steering wheel. I also think it needs to ride along walls better, rather than smash his face into a wall that he hits, regardless of how parallel he is or not. For the most part, it should only crash if he hits the wall perpendicularly.

Giving Sion's passive more HP for champion kills really doesn't fix the problem with his health gain, as it is way too low for how much he should rely on the health scaling. More HP for normal minion/monster kills would be much more appropriate, as 2 is just way too low.

I can't really say too much about Sion's armor debuff on his E, but if it needs a buff it should go more towards the slowing portion and not the armor debuff, because armor debuffs have a lot of invisible power in them, while slows are power that you can appreciate.

RiotRiot Scruffy10/28/2014, 5:09:06 PM13 votes

There should be a few tweaks for him (some stat increases, bugfixes, usability and mana costs) up on the PBE in the next build (they will be released in the next patch).

To some of your points about Q and R reliability, those will most likely not change. Those abilities are meant to be very powerful but limited in meaningful ways.

Q has beyond most normal ability AOE base damage and CC, because it is a very committed decision (a good comparison here is fiddlesticks drain). If we wanted to increase the reliability of the spell we would probably make the "snap cast" (not full charge) more effective.
Similarly R enables unstoppable engage and map movement at the cost of great reliability. That said, the R turning is a number that we can tweak easily if we want to increase the reliability a bit more in the future.

Your feedback is really helpful and we definitely consider it in our decision making.

-Scruffy

PS - The W passive on champ kill change that you're suggesting is likely in the next patch, we have a prophet.

Steelflame10/28/2014, 4:01:29 AM6 votes

Sion's problem is he has too much either delayed, unreliable, or even worse, both, power.

Sion's base HP is 1700 or so at level 18.

Average bruiser would be sitting at 2200. Sion is trying to make up a 500 hp deficit on his scaling up hp before he is even MATCHING what he should be at if he was just a normal bruiser. Right out of the gate, he has a glaring weakness he has to make up for... on what should be his best aspects. I could understand if it was a 200, or even 300, hp deficit. This might mean in a game he is ahead, he could be 300-400 hp ahead of the curve. But no, he NEVER catches up from behind said curve until the game is ending almost.

Sion's Q. I can understand him having such an insane charge requirement... if it actually did damage. The damage for a skill that requires you to do nothing else for 2+ seconds though, which easily gets outscaled by AA damage in that same time, let alone ease to dodge... GL.

R... well, we all see just how often it is more used as a travel tool, and not an actual fighting tool. Few things which might help fix it...

Doesn't collide with tower rubble. Makes the lane less of a minefield when ulting down a lane. Perhaps have a very unique mechanic to Sion, the ability to shatter the tower rubble so it no longer exist, and faintly less unique, if his ult hits a (living) enemy tower, does moderate damage to it, but stopping him.
Wider hitbox. If not this, let him, upon a second activation, do a leap (Similar to what he currently does) but instead of just stopping, he slams the ground for a higher AoE radius around himself knockup, although at half the damage. You still want to land a direct hit, but no longer are you punished for being a hair off, so long as you react and recast your ult.

And finally... give him a real damn passive. Not the joke of his current one. Rewire the health drain to not be based on %hp (scale it with his level instead. I feel punished to have a high hp pool as Sion if I want to actually have a passive. At worse, do half and half, part flat damage based on level, part %hp). ADC Sion would be able to easily outlifesteal the damage, Tank Sion would easily be able to stick around for 10+ seconds even if "dead" putting a moderate threat field out. I would make it nul natural/buffed regen though (I wouldn't want tank Sion to literally be able to outlive the damage to self with Warmogs+Spirit Visage+Locket style setup). Also, give his AAs in this form a minor slow, and give him a little Tenacity. Not much, just something to help him stick to anyone who has even a single CC/escape.

Kuroi8610/28/2014, 2:43:10 PM4 votes

E into Q is a pretty good combo, though I wouldn't a Q buff, 100% AD to 200% would be nice. You can even take a bit of the base damage off, I wouldn't mind. I actually like his ult! I wouldn't mind them lifting the move speed cap on it, (Don't tell me you haven't considered a cross map ult.) but otherwise I genuinely like it! I make sure I know where any obstacles might be in my way, and by the time the enemy sees me, I'm going too fast for them to really do anything about it. I've also been making sure to practice Stopping my ult so I don't just fly by people and keep running halfway across the map. About the only thing I think needs fixing is the hit box, I've literally run over enemies and not hit them. I'm not kidding, this wasn't me seeing the wrong angle or something, I hit them dead on, and passed right over them... It would be nice if his health scaled a bit harder, though imo it's not needed, he scales decently, I just don't want to see him getting any nerfs.

The biggest change I'd throw in, remove the attack speed and move speed caps on his passive, that's friggen annoying when most champs can kite you without any CC or jumps or anything.

Evil Morty10/28/2014, 3:01:55 AM4 votes

I think his ult is pretty difficult to control, but the threat of his abilities makes him great at zoning and controlling the battle. A lot of Cho'Gath's power comes from just being fat and standing in the way...his CC and damage are okay, but it's really just about zoning people out so you can set up easier kills for your team. The new sion is the same way.

Letsgetcooking10/28/2014, 12:57:34 AM4 votes

I like the Q idea. He rotates at the speed of, say, Vel'Koz's ultimate. Does that sounds good?

I will not comment on the ult change because i am torn between either keeping it or changing it myself: it has A LOT of uses.

Giving more hp for champion kills might not be as good of an idea as you may think: if Sion always tries to get the kills to get a lot of hp, that might leave his teamates a bit underfed. Fed Sions are not as scary as fed carries. Of course, everything i just said can be thrown away if you also intented to give assists the same reward.

Yes please.

Alexander10/28/2014, 10:11:00 AM3 votes

riot's recently been saying how they dislike "melee ball of stats" champions

then they release Sion's rework - the ballest of all balls of stats who on top of that cant even utilize his ball of stats due to terrible kit

Archmage Icewind10/28/2014, 1:21:48 AM3 votes

I agree heavily with your ideas.

One other suggestion, make Sion's passive give him tenacity or something while active, because right now people can just kite you.

Taistelumuumio10/29/2014, 5:25:39 AM3 votes

His Q doesn't need to rotate, it needs to release when his channel gets interrupted. Nunu's R is released when his channeling gets interrupted, why not Sion's? Trying to channel a big Q during a 5v5 team fight is quite the nightmare now as there are so many sources of interruption. It's so easy to get just hair too greedy, get interrupted by a random CC and then you kind of do nothing until the fight is over.

BastionKross10/29/2014, 2:56:20 PM2 votes

I'd like to see a chart of Sion 's power budget for his abilities. Something like: P: A% Q: B% W: C% etc.

Because I feel like the chart that the Rioter would make would differ significantly from player charts. I get the feeling they put a lot of power budget into his Q and Passive, but the unreliability of both of those moves should lower their effective power budget. I mean, his fully charged Q could do 3000 base damage, but if you can't ever land it outside of extraordinary and rare circumstances, it shouldn't cost that much of his budget. My personal chart would looks like this:

P: 10% - Either very powerful or very useless. And given how commonly a slow or harder CC is built right into champion kits, or built with item 3153 item 3022 item 3025 item 3146 item 3143 item 3116 , there's no reason to believe Sion is going to get a lot done with his passive the majority of the time.

Q: 10% - Same as the passive, either devastating or nothing. The move also roots you in place for the duration, and can be cancelled. Half-charges can be useful since that's the best you should be hoping for, but half-charges aren't nearly as big of a threat as a full charge.

W: 30% - Lots of power here. Infinity scaling HP, a shield that scales off of max HP, AND an AoE %HP damage ability all in one. The downside of having the shield be popped before the ability can be reactivated is a setback, but there's so much power here without it.

E: 20% - This ability feels like it pulls it's own weight, and that's about it. It's reliable enough while still being a skillshot with a long and thin AoE, and having it's range be boosted by bowling the minions can be a great way to bring the pain to opponents hiding behind their minions. The attached slow and armor shred aren't really too noticeable unless the ability is maxed.

R: 15% - You can go far, just don't hit a wall. You can have the same impact as a Malphite ult, if the global warning sound didn't tip off your opponents. You can miss and still gank, if you don't mind Sion's momentum carrying him 4-5 Teemos beyond where you told him to stop. At least it's on a very short CD for an ult, and it's impossible to miss at point blank range, where I find I get the most use out of it because it's reliable there.

Total: 85% - Less power than your average champion. Sion has great damage and lockdown ability, but only if you actually connect with his moves. And in the League of Mobility, that is one big "if". It feels like I'm playing 85% of a champion, and the rework did almost nothing to alleviate Sion's longstanding ability to be easily kited. When I look at newer champions like Yasuo Thresh Braum Jinx and see their kits have all this neat (and more importantly, RELIABLE) power/utility packed into them, it makes me disappointed that Sion did not get the same treatment. You could make an argument for Gnar and Azir power/utility either way.

I am Razgriz10/29/2014, 1:48:55 AM2 votes

1). Give Sion's Q the ability to rotate the cone while he's casting it so it's more threatening.

Wow, that would be disgustingly OP even if it was as slow a rotate as his ult. I can land a 1 second Q most of the time. The whole thing about the ability is it is great in teamfights or in the jungle where they don't have a lot of options to move. If they spend too much time moving in a teamfight they're spending that time not doing something else and they'll still usually take some damage anyway because Sion will activate it again just before they get out of it.

He just needs to be able to Flash while ulting.