So I'm asking any and all of the high Elo league players on boards, why doesn't sion see much play?

kasfas·Sep 3, 2016·1 votes·585 views

I've been wondering what makes sion so weak in the upper echelons of play, and had a talk with someone over a stream. They said he doesn't have enough damage in the later stages of the game. Is that really true? And what do you think could be done to correct this?

The way I see it is if riot is willing to let the juggernauts be a class, and is willing to let certain champions like brand exist with the damage he does, why not buff sion's best case scenario since he never gets it anyway.

18 Comments

ThugWalrusSep 3, 20163 votes

Everything Sion does is super telegraphed, meaning that good players can easily outplay him to the point his kit has very little to offer.

Demon King MaouSep 3, 20162 votes

Im not high elo however this is pretty basic info turn on sound and you auto counter his ult Even without sound his ult is pretty easy to dodge aswell as literally any stun stops his Q from casting

If you'd prefer to wait for someone else to post go ahead but the above is mostly why people would avoid him as you climb people get better and better making it hard to play sion without being countered whenever you try to do damage

kasfasSep 3, 20161 votes

Well, if that's the case sion clearly needs buffs right? What would it be like if sion's q was uninterruptible? What if his ult sound didn't prock unless you are within half of its range? What then? Actual questions not sarcasm.

NahuiSep 3, 20161 votes

The problem would be he'd use it as a CC block. Ashe arrow coming? Toggle Q and walk along. Etc.

kasfasSep 3, 20161 votes

well we have windwall and banshees veil in the game, so why not? Also it's not like a nami ult isn't going to hit the rest of his team while he's channeling. And people will just learn to play around the fact that sion can't move during his q animation instead of interrupting it.

NahuiSep 3, 20161 votes

They have large cooldowns, Q Doesn't.

kasfasSep 3, 20161 votes

That's true, but at least he would become an effective meat shield for his team lategame! Yea i get it tho.

TTK DreadnoughtSep 3, 20162 votes

I feel that those suggestions would be the wrong direction.

I feel like my favorite three choices 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 bonus health whenever he kills an enemy, increased to 10 bonus health against large enemies and enemy champion takedowns.「Bonus Health: 2 / 2/ 3 / 3 / 3 」

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. It could be possible (but risky) to change his AD ratios to Health Ratios similar to volibear's Frenzy.

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)」

item 3068 (Lvl 9, Rank 5, 87 AD, 500 Bonus HP) Min 60 + 34 + 10 (104) Max 180 + 102 + 30 (312)

item 3071 (Lvl 9, Rank 5, 137 AD, 300 Bonus HP) Min 60 + 53 + 6 (119) Max 180 + 160 + 18 (358)

item 3748 (Lvl 9, Rank 5, 122 AD, 450 Bonus HP) Min 60 + 48 + 9 (117) Max 180 + 143 + 27 (350)

item 3083 item 3742 item 3068 item 3143 item 3102 (Lvl 18, rank 5, 128AD, 3050 Bonus HP) Min 60 + 50 + 61 (171) Max 180 + 100 + 183 (513)

item 3083 item 3748 item 3068 item 3143 item 3102 (Lvl 18, rank 5, 163AD, 2550 Bonus HP) Min 60 + 64 + 51 (175) Max 180 + 192 + 153 (525)

item 3071 item 3748 item 3068 item 3143 item 3102 (Lvl 18, rank 5, 213AD, 2050 Bonus HP) Min 60 + 83 + 41 (184) Max 180 + 249 + 123 (552)

item 3071 item 3748 item 3022 item 3053 item 3083 (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 item 3071 item 3748 item 3022 item 3053 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.

kasfasSep 3, 20161 votes

Some of those changes would legit just make him a monster.

All I think he needs is to maybe have the ratios flipped on w and buffed a bit and have his e apply the shred to everyone.

Having health ratios has proved a MASSIVE problem in this game if used offensively, take for example vlad and mundo both of whom had to be nerfed rediculously hard after receiving their changes to use hp. Though it would make him scale better into lategame.

And the health gain buff, no. It's easy to get 400 hp at 20 minutes if you farm right, and from then on you just profit. Heck, I once had a game where at 30 minutes I had 1300 bonus hp from farming and kills. Now normally at around 30 minutes I get 600 hp, but I'm still profiting a lot. The only thing he needs in this department is to have retroactive stacking on it. Maybe move it over to his actual passive so it would be useful early on too.

RalanrSep 3, 20161 votes

Personally I think uping his starting armor and scalings would be helpful.

Rock MDSep 3, 20162 votes

Too high counterplay. Sion has one of the strongest kits (numerically) in the game but it's gated behind a huge wall of counterplay in that he's a melee champion with tons of stand-stills, skillshots, no mobility outside of R, and his passive is really iffy.

TTK DreadnoughtSep 3, 20161 votes

Sion is a champion that likes passive lanes like Nautilus or Malphite when top lane. When against most top champions, he can have issues in laning and his base HP is low even though he has infinite health scaling with farming which causes him to be easy to poke/wittle down in lane.

There are a few Sion mains on the forums that i seen often and enjoy talking to as i also enjoy playing sion in top lane. hadnt jungled with him in a while though. Nautilus is better at that than him.

Ben SharpioSep 3, 20161 votes

I struggle to climb beyond plat because everything is very predictable. I think that out of all of my experimentation through builds, i seem to like builds that dont utilize /rely on his kit, but rather builds that emphasize damage from autoattacks. That's why i have been using full attack speed runes/red smite/fervor for as long as i can remember

LovelleSep 5, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=l Sion Bot l,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NEkVtB8X,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2016-09-03T02:44:24.872+0000)

I struggle to climb beyond plat because everything is very predictable. I think that out of all of my experimentation through builds, i seem to like builds that dont utilize /rely on his kit, but rather builds that emphasize damage from autoattacks. That's why i have been using full attack speed runes/red smite/fervor for as long as i can remember

I've come to this realization as well. Focusing on damage, health, and increasing his aa damage is the best way to make use of Soul Furnace. I used to build him full tank, but in the long run it's inefficient.

Zane ZephyrSep 3, 20161 votes

His kit is predictable, telegraphed, unavoidable, and unreliable, he can be kited to oblivion

I mean why would you really pick sion over someone like maokai who overall has a way more reliable kit

That's the same reason why you don't see things like Katarina or master yi played too often in higher elos, because people know how to play against them and make them useless

HoboGodSep 3, 20161 votes

Nah, don't listen to the Sion haters. He's a great champion that made huge waves last season as one of the best top lane picks in the game. His impact was so huge that his damage values got nerfed damn hard. So even though he's a fantastic initiator and creates brutal zone control with his Q, he can't reliably bully out other tanks like Gnar and Trundle who shred health and crush the late game.

jaymc1130Sep 3, 20161 votes

His kit. Everything is telegraphed for the most part. Which makes teamfighting with him (something thats supposed to be his strength) actually a weakness as it can be hard to be effective in team fights.

LovelleSep 5, 20161 votes

He's like Amumu. A god stomper against noobs, but hard to play against good opponents due to his clearly defined weaknesses.