@Riot Thoughts on Sion?

Lao Fu the Tiger·Jan 27, 2016·1 votes·499 views

Hey all!

I'm not too much of a Sion player, but I wanted to get a feel from everyone about your thoughts on Sion's laning ability. I've seen posts on him being "trash tier" and "way too weak," but not many specifics as to WHY he's not in a good place.

What does he do right? What doesn't he do right? What expectations do you have that fall short? What would you change? Should he remain a jungler at the expense of his laning ability, or vice versa?

Let's just open up a discussion about this dude and see what happens.

5 Comments

qetzelJan 27, 20162 votes

From a purely numbers perspective, he doesn't look weak.

http://champion.gg/champion/Sion/Top

Using statistics from Plat+, his issues are four fold.

New players get very little success from him - people who have just picked him up have an average of a 40% win rate. I don't know how much of this comes from Sion's difficulty and how much of this is just building him badly (check the frequent items).
The best Sion's get a lot out of him - the top win rate gives some players over a 60% win rate! Granted, the sample size is small (A little under 1000) but still big enough to know that buffing Sion for the newer players would be a bad idea
He falls off late game. Hard. - This leads to satisfaction issues for those playing him. If the game goes too late, it can go completely out of your control.
Sion's early game is Godly. - If his early game weren't so damned impressive then his late game could be buffed, but unfortunately that can't happen.

So. While I don't play Sion and am not working with enough numbers to make a detailed analysis, my thoughts would be:

Smooth out his power curve. Early game nerfs, late game buffs. We don't want every champion to have the same power curve, but Sion's is possibly too far from the average.
Find a power neutral change that leaves him easier to play.

As I don't play him (and am not very good at the game, but lets gloss over that), I can't suggest meaningful changes. That would be up to Sion players and Riot's live balance team and playtesters.

What do you think of my analysis?

Lao Fu the TigerJan 28, 20161 votes

I agree.

I'm actually confused as to why a champion heralded as the late game health god has such an incredible drop in power at later levels.. Looking at that chart really confuses me.

Nagoh ShanJan 28, 20161 votes

He has both a low playrate and a High number of average games played.

Basically he's used by mains more than as a champion that is a part of player's champion pool. When champions have a large number of average games played they tend to have a much higher winrate than other champs. Heimerdinger is a good example. The effect on the number of games played shows very well in the 50-125 and 125+ winrates as you don't expect the winrate to drop as people get more experience with him.

It's just that there's not enough of a sample size to get a stable number from Champion.gg or Lolking. 6000 games is just such a small sample size, that it's likely to see heavy swings, which is what has happened in the last few patches if you've been paying attention. His 15-50 games winrate has been fluxing +/- 4% and his 50-125 and 125+ winrates have been swapping back and forth.

And his early game isn't actually much stronger than anyone else in his role, it's just that he's just a tank, and tanks have base numbers but low scaling. Tahm and Shen both have almost identical curves on their winrate over the duration of a game, except they don't fall off as hard.

CMD Ruby RoseJan 28, 20161 votes

They need to undo the E bonus damage nerf so AP Sion is good again

IncognonymousJan 28, 20161 votes

His base health is a joke. With the average game length having been dramatically reduced, his passive health gain can no longer bridge the gap (if it ever did). That by itself wouldn't be a big deal if he weren't also mediocre defensively in other areas. His base armor is nothing to write home about, and his shield is expensive and awkward to use since the time recast nerf all but guarantees it will be broken before the damage portion.

His late game damage is also pathetic. This is patently unfair, as he does practically all of his damage short range and is one of the few champs in the game capable of missing 100% of his kit's damage. This actually becomes a huge problem if you do well early and gold-sink your team, because your success won't last if you don't leverage it into an early win. This problem is only exacerbated by the disparity between defensive items and offensive items.

His passive health gain does have interesting implications for certain items though: Cinderhulk, Sterak's, Warmog's, and Titanic Hydra all scale infinitely with health, and of course Spirit Visage will scale infinitely with Warmog's. Too bad you don't hit late game anymore.

His passive is basically nonexistant as an offensive measure, short of rushing structures. One slow, and you're done without touching anyone. The wind up is ridiculous too-- so it's not like anyone's actually going to be close enough for you to hit regardless.

Winrates for CC heavy tanks are misleading. It's not a reflection of their individual strength, but their ability to support and round out a team almost regardless of comp. Not exactly a great indicator for balance in a vacuum.