The Sion Nerf, erm... "Rework" - An Extensive Overview of New Sion - What Can be Changed?

This is all my own personal opinion, take it how you wish, if you don't agree, please explain why and I will look at your argument and counter or agree accordingly. Note that I have been playing this game since beta, and have substantial knowledge about all the champions and how the game has changed and evolved over the years it's been out. :)

There is lots of reading, but I feel it's well put together and if you put in the time to read you might get something out of it. :)

Alright, so I've had time to get a good few dozen Sion games in the (soul) furnace, cook em' up nice for thanksgiving dinner (yes it's thanksgiving, welcome to Canada, better than America), and here are my thoughts. I figure I'll do a general overview of what I think and then tackle each ability individually.

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So, looking at Sion from an AD bruiser/tank/carry perspective, old Sion was MUCH better at all of those things, he didn't need to build damage because he got such high base damage off of his E active, you almost didn't even need to build damage items. You could simply rush attack speed items (for carrying and crit) or tanky beef items, and still be a major threat in lane and throughout the game, pair this with the passive health he was getting from his E as well as his pretty decent base stats, Sion was looking good to take on the world. His old passive seemed like it did nothing, but it actually tanked a lot of damage, albeit in an RNG fashion, it was outdated and needed to be changed, but I feel like turning a semi useful passive into a completely useless passive was the wrong approach and I'll get to that when i talk about his passive alone later. Old Sion was able to tank even more with his old ultimate ability (which was probably my favorite ult in the game) it allowed you to up your attack speed substantially and increased your lifesteal to hilarious levels, fighting 1v2-3 was no issue unless they managed to kite you around, and it was incredibly fun to pop Sion ult and tank carry team fights. His old shield functioned about the same as it does now, except now his health stacking passive is tied to W instead of E (though it doesn't matter because of the bait and switch Rito did, but I will also explain that in a bit) It's actually been buffed slightly (the shield that is) because of the %HP bonus applied, it allows the shield to be effective without building any ability power, or at least a minute amount (sheen?). And of course there is the god tier click stun of old sion, that had pretty major AP scaling, but had a rather lengthy cooldown and I feel it worked better on AD sion to secure duels and chase down fleeing prey. They also sort of force you to build tanky bruiser now, since his attack speed has been lowered a bunch morer as well, and since he lacks the bonus damage buff from his E, trying to build Sion as an ADC or damage based bruiser isn't as reliable as full tank. So, I've mentioned a lot about what made old sion so great, let's explain why new Sion is... Well, not... At least is significantly worse than old Sion, and I'll tackle this per ability, and also list his old ability (generally) so you get a feel for what's changed, and I'll explain what I feel is wrong and what could be changed

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Base Stats - Sion's base stats were nerfed into the ground they decreased his base health at 18 by SEVEN HUNDRED I'm not going to go through all of his base stats, but know that they are significantly lower than before and EXTREMELY low in comparison to other bruiser/tank champions.... I mean Ahri has more base health and armor than new Sion!

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Old Passive - Sion occasionally blocked a percentage of damage from basic attacks.

New Passive - After Sion dies, he reanimates with a full bar of health that rapidly decays, but he gains lifesteal, attack speed, and %health damage on hit, all his abilities are replaced by a brief movement speed buff, he cannot use summoner spells, but he can use activated items.

The Problems - You're thinking "that doesn't sound too bad", sure in theory it sounds like a good idea, it takes the place of his old ultimate, and is thematic and seems like an okay deal, it doesn't have a cooldown and you can use it whenever you die. BUT, the health decays so rapidly that you need a substantial amount of lifesteal to stay alive for any longer than 3-4 seconds, and that's just accounting for the base decay, and not any additional external damage from enemies or towers, which will cause new Sion to drop even faster. Now, Sion's range seems to be reduced (he drops his weapon) and he seems to stop moving every time he makes an auto attack, which makes chasing nigh impossible, especially when you consider the fact that Sion is still susceptible to crowd control in this mode so any sort of slow or stun will almost always last the entire duration of his passive's life, causing Sion to run around like the village idiot unable to catch anyone or do anything, delaying his respawn timer until he dies and the enemy team laughs. Couple this with the rather large delay between Sion dying and his passive kicking in, if an enemy was near you when you died, they will be a fair bit out of range by the time you revive, you WILL have to use your speed boost to catch up to them, and then MAYBE you get 1 or 2 auto attacks off before dying, BEST case scenario, you kill someone for a trade (if you're REALLY lucky). But usually you just walk around for a few seconds while everyone slowly walks away from you spamming ctrl 4. On top of all these negatives, the inability to use summoner spells to attempt to catch up to someone or pop an ignite to maybe secure a kill makes zero sense, why can't Sion use his SS? The ability to use active items is sort of nifty, if you're okay with popping both a bork AND randuins for the possibility of getting 2 more (MAYBE 3) auto attacks off before dying as usual. Coupled with the fact that attack speed items don't seem to affect your passive Sion's attack speed, it has a set speed that is unaffected by the items you have, got a phantom dancer and a bork? Well too bad, it doesn't matter. Oh, and did I mention his brief movement speed buff ability (that takes place of his other abilities not allowing him to use his regular abilities or summoner spells) has a cooldown so high you can only ever use it once per passive instance? Yeah.

How to FIX it - There are a few angles of approach for solving the main issues with his passive, first off he should be able to use summoner spells, that's a given. There is no reason why he can't use flash/ign/etc. Now, the next 2 options are interchangeable, or could somehow be incorporated together in one way or another. But the main way to make his passive more effective is to make him immune to disables, then at least he can catch up and get a couple hits off before dying like an idiot, instead of just running around and dying. That, or of course significantly reduce his health decay (or remove it entirely) this would allow Sion to be a strong dueler, but keeps him at a disadvantage because of his inability to use his spells or weapon, so he can stay alive indefinitely as long as he plays well, but wouldn't benefit the team as much. Or somehow incorporate both of those elements, significantly reducing his health decay AND giving him cc immunity, but of course his health would still decay, just at a level that you can stay even with constant attacks if you're not being damaged by other champions. (instead of decaying more than you heal regardless of the damage you're taking or the attacks you're doing). And finally maybe make his movement speed boost a spammable ability, it replaces everything else to only be used once? No, allow Sion to pop that baby whenever, I do feel that a spammable ms boost would be too strong coupled with CC immunity though.

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Old Q - Sion could stun a target enemy with the click of the button.

New Q - Sion charges his axe in a long channel, the AoE and damage are increased by the amount of time channeled, and the channel can be canceled at any time. If the channel exceeds half the duration any enemies within the AoE indicator will receive increased damage to them and will be knocked up, if the channel is less than half charged, any enemies hit will receive less damage and will be slowed instead.

The Problems - As a replacement for a click to stun ability, it is of course a substantial nerf, but this was needed, as click to stun's are pretty over powered and need to be phased out of the game in one way or another. First off, the channel takes way too long to hit max charge (I believe it's 2 seconds) during which times you are unable to attack or use other abilities (except W - Shield). The range is laughable at the beginning of the charge, and since the enemies can see the hit box, and it takes so long to charge it's REALLY easy to simply walk out of the area of effect. Of course there are ways to couple slows with the ability and land combos that allow you to hit the ability at close to max charge, but I feel the charge up time coupled with the amount of damage it does at max charge just isn't good enough to justify the wait, it's generally better to just get the slow off and auto attack them then blow your shield, or get the halfway point knockup if you're able, but again., it's easy to avoid, especially if there's a dash involved. Of course since the ability is a channel it can be canceled at any time by different forms of disabling crowd control, like moving Sion, silencing Sion, stunning Sion, etc, so a lot of the time you are about to hit a max charge and then you just lose the time you spent charging because a trundle pillar moves you slightly to the left, or veigar throws a W on you. Plus if you are dueling an enemy, you trade off significant damage trying to land a charged Q, than if you were to just try and engage them in melee combat. Overall, the lengthy charge time, lackluster benefit of a full charge, ease of avoidance and "dodgability" lead to this ability suffering in usefullness and power.

How to FIX it - Lower the channel duration significantly, up the damage of a longer channel charge, and increase the overall base damage of the ability for a minimum charge so at least hitting it wouldn't be a game of whack a singular mole who can leap or walk slowly away.

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Old W - Sion gained a shield that would last a set duration, if the shield didn't break before the duration ended, the shield would explode doing damage in an AoE around Sion. Sion was able to detonate the shield early by reactivating the ability a little bit after the shield is first used. If the Shield was broken before the duration, or before it was detonated manually, the shield does not explode and dealt no damage.

New Q - Passive: Every minion Sion kills adds a permanent extra 2 life to his HP bar, and this is increased to 8 for champions or large monsters.

• Sion gains a shield that lasts a set duration, if the shield doesn't break before the duration ends, the shield will explode doing damage in an AoE around Sion. Sion is able to detonate the shield early by reactivating the ability a little bit after the shield is first used. If the Shield is broken before the duration, or before it is detonated manually, the shield does not explode and deals no damage.

The PROBLEMS - All of the issues I'm going to list aren't going to be with the shield itself, more to do with the change of his old HP stacking passive and it's application to the shield slot. The shield is relatively unchanged, it's been tailored to be more of a bruiser friendly ability now though, and I think that is a slight buff, plus it looks really effin' cool. So, what's the problem with his new and (un)improved health stacking passive? On the surface it would seem that they upped the HP stacking quite a bit from his old E's passive, offering more HP per minion kill than before... But this is actually just a not so clever ruse from Riot to make you THINK you're getting more HP. In actuality they reduced Sion's base health by a whopping total of around 700... that's SEVEN HUNDRED less HP than he had before. Now, new Sion is able to get a relatively large stack of HP from his new passive, in a longer 45 minute-ish game, the HP bonus will be somewhere around 750-ish maybe more if you're doing really well cs'ing. But if you look at the stats, that is ACTUALLY only 50 HP more than old Sion would've had BASE and that's not even including the couple hundred extra HP old Sion could stack by the end game! The amount of cs needed to be on a comparable level of bonus HP to the old Sion is in the 4-500 range give or take, which most of you know isn't an average per game amount of creeps farmed, the game ends way before this happens, the most someone could hope to get in a 40 minute game is around 400 cs, that's 10 cs per minute, and in all meanings of the word perfect CS for the entire game, it's just not a feasible goal. So, by end game you're lucky to have about 50-100 bonus HP if we're comparing him to the older, better version of himself, and it makes the ability a moot point.

How to FIX it - The fix for this issue is of course incredibly simple. Up his base health stats back to what they were before, maybe a LITTLE less, this will allow the passive HP stacking to be impactful to the game and beneficial to Sion's kit, instead of an illusion that Riot put in place to make people think Sion is similar to how he used to be, so they feel like it's the same champion instead of something entirely different, familiar but not familiar. As it stands the ability exists as a reference to old Sion, without actually doing anything to contribute to his new embodiment, which, again is significantly worse than he used to be.

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Old E - A toggle ability, Sion gained a flat attack damage bonus while this ability was active, it cost 2 HP per attack at base, and I believe scaled slightly per level of the ability, but every cs would slightly increase Sions overall HP pool. With lifesteal, the tradeoff was not noticeable.

New E - Sion roars a battlecry in a target direction, firing a shockwave blast in a lined skillshot that damages and slows the first target hit, applying an armor debuff that lasts a short duration. Any non champion enemy (excluding towers, Baron, and Dragon) hit by this shout is shot backward in a line damaging and slowing all enemies hit along it's path.

The Problems - There isn't much inherently wrong with this ability as it stands, it's range could be a smidge larger, but overall as a slowing armor debuff it does it's job, and it has deceptively long slow range if the enemy is behind an enemy minion. Of course in comparison to the flat damage buff of his old E the ability is rather laughable, but it does it's job well, not really anything in need of a fix here, in my opinion.

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Old Ultimate (R) - Sion gained substantial lifesteal and attack speed for a medium duration. It was super awesome.

New Ultimate (R) - Sion charges a huge distance in a target direction gaining speed as the charge continues knocking up all minions along his path and becomes immune to all forms of cc, he is sort of steered by the mouse cursor, but the response is clunky, and the camera locks to Sion at the beginning of the ability. At the end of his charge Sion smashes the ground slowing all enemies hit, if Sion hits terrain he also smashes the ground, if Sion hits an enemy champion or group of champions, they are knocked up and stunned for a short duration, this duration increases based on the distance Sion charged.

The Problems - Again, nothing inherently wrong here either, compared to his old ultimate I feel it is a substantial nerf when it comes to dueling and tanking damage or fighting enemies, but it's function has been changed for mobility, and crowd control. Sion is a little too difficult to steer, and only benefits from straight on engagements, allowing use of this ability in the jungle to be limited. The range is massive, and it's incredibly fun to charge in as Sion, but often the enemies are missed, because they can simply step out of the way as he is so difficult to steer. the cooldown is respectable, and in later levels becomes a very satisfying low cooldown ability that you can use whenever you need to. This ability is also great for split pushing lanes, as it is an amazing escape mechanism, you can use it to run away down the lane, as you can't be cc'd so it allows a safe exit, as long as the enemies down get in front of you. No amount of speed boosts or ghosts will allow the enemies to catch up, which is pretty fantastic. there is also an incredibly satisfying inception themed war "dong" sound that plays map wide for everyone to hear whenever Sion initiates his ultimate. Overall it doesn't really need much improvement, maybe increase the ease of steering.

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SO, that is my extensive look at new Sion, and what needs to be changed to make him a more viable champion in both the top lane or the jungle, I feel he is much to weak as it stands for the reasons listed above.

I hope you found this read informative and I appreciate any feedback or responses given, and I thank you for your time! :D