Possible Sion Adjustments that could improve his mid/late game
I feel like my favorite three choices to put him in a better spot would be to increase his base HP and health growth to match other tanks. While his passive can infinitely scale, it requires farming/solo pushing. Which requires either time or AD to do it quickly enough. He has 348 less max HP than the average of the other tanks below. That's 174 CS before he "profits" from his passive compared to them.
Currently: Sion 543 – 1784 Nautilus 576 – 2038 Malphite 574 – 2104 Reksai 570 – 2100 gragas 584 – 2097 Zac 615 – 2230 Tahm 610 – 2225
My second choice is to change his HP passive from 2HP from minions to 3. This one is the most dangerous option. The most bonus HP i've gotten is around 750. This would of made it to around 1100 bonus HP. While those sion mains probably can already get around 1k bonus in longer games. I feel he should get that slight increase to 3 stacks to match Nasus and Veigar's ability to profit earlier from their scaling.
PASSIVE: Sion permanently gains 3 bonus health whenever he kills an enemy, increased to 10 bonus health against large enemies and enemy champion takedowns.
The third option is to adjust his ratios some to allow him to actually build tank and still efficiently farm as the game progresses. I often have to build a damage item or two in order to clear waves quickly enough before having to return to the team for a potential fight.
Q 「 MIN DAMAGE: 12 / 24 / 36 / 48 / 60 (+ 39% AD) 」 TO 「 MIN DAMAGE: 12 / 24 / 36 / 48 / 60 (+ 39% AD) (+2% Bonus health)」 「 MAX DAMAGE: 36 / 72 / 108 / 144 / 180 (+ 117% AD) 」 TO 「 MAX DAMAGE: 36 / 72 / 108 / 144 / 180 (+ 117% AD) (+6% Bonus health)」
(Lvl 9, Rank 5, 87 AD, 500 Bonus HP)
Min 60 + 34 + 10 (104)
Max 180 + 102 + 30 (312)
(Lvl 9, Rank 5, 137 AD, 300 Bonus HP)
Min 60 + 53 + 6 (119)
Max 180 + 160 + 18 (358)
(Lvl 9, Rank 5, 122 AD, 450 Bonus HP)
Min 60 + 48 + 9 (117)
Max 180 + 143 + 27 (350)
(Lvl 18, rank 5, 128AD, 3050 Bonus HP)
Min 60 + 50 + 61 (171)
Max 180 + 100 + 183 (513)
(Lvl 18, rank 5, 163AD, 2550 Bonus HP)
Min 60 + 64 + 51 (175)
Max 180 + 192 + 153 (525)
(Lvl 18, rank 5, 213AD, 2050 Bonus HP)
Min 60 + 83 + 41 (184)
Max 180 + 249 + 123 (552)
(Lvl 18, rank 5, 285AD, 2650 Bonus HP)
Min 60 + 111 + 53 (224)
Max 180 + 333 + 159 (672)
I also believe his Shield ratio is odd. It starts at such a low base value (30 with 6% Max HP) then goes to high base value (130 with 10% Max hp) but his max HP ratio on it is rather low compared to Nautilus, another champion with a shield and Max Hp ratio on that goes from 65-85 Base and 9-17% Max health. Nautilus with 5.5k HP will have a shield with 1020. Sion with 5.5k HP will have a shield worth 680. He would need 9k HP to even equate the shield strength. He would required 6 Warmogs, Elixir of Iron, and 1058 CS JUST to have a shield that compares with a better scaling. Thats around 176 minion waves, each takes 30secs to spawn i think. So thats around 88minutes (1hour 28mins) of farming perfectly.
I would suggest just giving him the similar shield ratios as nautilus.
W SHIELD STRENGTH: 30 / 55 / 80 / 105 / 130 (+ 40% AP) (+ 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10% of maximum health) MAGIC DAMAGE: 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 / 140 (+ 40% AP) (+ 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14% of target's maximum health) TO SHIELD STRENGTH: 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 / 85 (+ 10 / 11 / 12 / 14 / 15% maximum health) MAGIC DAMAGE: 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 / 140 (+ 40% AP) (+ 7 / 9 / 11 / 13 / 15% of target's maximum health)
I believe a combination of the 3 options are needed, if they were all done, would put him in the perfect spot without making it too hard and could always be adjusted if something was a problem.
Sion's HP passive should get him value as early as possible, but his base health keeps him behind during the laning phase. He is suppose to be the HP Tank version of Veigar and Nasus. However, neither of them are as handicapped as sion is when it comes to profiting from it. Nasus and Veigar actually get to farm even better/faster as they get stacks. While sion gets left behind every other tank until the game extends an hour long or until you play a 4v5 and solo farm constantly. Kled's passive with Skaarl and the first 5 tank items i used above give him 6085 HP. Sion would only have 4834 and would need to get 1251hp from his passive (625 CS) just to match him. And Kled's not even a true tank. Being 200+ HP lower than other tanks is too much of a handicap when you sit to think that that is 100+CS just to be equal to or behind other tanks for the mid game.
Increasing his HP per stack on minions would let him scale earlier than an hour and profit from it better when the game extends past that threshold. Especially when giving a base HP increase. We want him to be profiting from his passive in the earlier parts of the mid-game, not profiting after the mid game or after the late game.
Adding an bonus HP ratio to his Q would allow him to build tank items more efficiently without sacrificing his farming capabilities while also giving him additional scaling. Building AD on sion will give more damage like it always have, but giving him a bonus HP ratio on the Q will let him keep his ability to farm and scale as needed towards the mid game, but will also make items like slightly more desirable than before.
Giving him a buff on his Shield strength would help improve his early game by having increased values while letting it scale better into the mid game (like our friend nautilus mentioned) and letting it scale a little harder as the late game begins. The shield damage can be reduced early and midgame to compensate for the greater chance of the shield surviving damage, while giving the last rank an extra 1% damage towards the late game.
The goal here is to help him to start scaling earlier in the game by removing/reducing the health handicaps he has, increase the speed of which he scales some, adjust his consistency in farming by letting it scale with his bonus health (one hand washes the other) which also makes it more desirable to build less armor/MR in favor of damage/HP items meaning he will deal more damage and have more HP but wont be as tanky as normal, and by giving him a better/small cushion through some shield ratio adjustments.
