Sion Champion Update Q&A [COMPLETED]

RiotFruity Sebbles··85 votes·407,145 views

> Q&A IS OVER FOR TODAY, THANKS EVERYONE! We're getting back to work making sure Sion is ready to hit the live servers as soon as possible.

http://news.cdn.leagueoflegends.com/public/images/pages/sio/img/sio-wallpaper.jpg

Hey guys,

We’ve gathered a bunch of Rioters from the Champion Update team for some Sion Q&A. If you want to get to know the big guy’s design, story or art, ask away and we'll be happy to chat with you!

Dig into Sion’s past here:

Reborn Sion, the Undead Juggernaut, Revealed Dev Blog: Reimagining Sion

1,301 Comments

Moobeat120 votes

It's going to come up so: Can you explain the choice to not do a Traditional Sion skin?

Gonefishing33 votes

I hope they will do one. It seems odd to not do it when they gave Sejuani and Karma one.

The answer to this is found below in the comments.

Whatasandwich2128 votes

And Trundle

Nox Nox67 votes

Sorry to bother you about this, probably like the 50035925th time you've heard this but; What happened to traditional skins? I've seen people attempting to give you guys ideas for one like this picture. I really hope it doesn't annoy you that I've asked, thanks for taking the time to respond! (If you did ._.) I'm gonna miss green sion. Sion

Edit 1: I read Fruity's post about Sion not getting a traditional skin, kinda bums be out, but that's alright. People have their reasons. Anyways, great job on the VU guys, this is awesome :)

RiotRiot Scruffy63 votes

Whats the story behind his peg leg?

RiotIronStylus65 votes

Well.. you see..

WAIT. YOU'RE NOT A PLAYER!

Rossstarific32 votes

Awww I was genuinely curious about that

RiotHUGEnFAST40 votes

The main idea behind the peg leg was to show history. After decades upon decades of battle, even the greatest warriors are bound to lose a limb or two (or heck, even die once or twice in Sion's case).

Rayden37 votes

Is that Sion in the picture of vel'koz incinarating helmet Bro?

You can see him in his helmet if i am not mistaken!

Maybe Vel'Koz wasnt aiming at helmet bro in the first place huh??!

RiotHUGEnFAST36 votes

WOAH! Okay, that is freaky--- I mean... intentional? I guess?

Karakazan27 votes

How much alcohol for that Sion to get drunk?

Also how Noxus managed to keep his corpse muscly for 3-4 generations?

RiotQuquroon121 votes

A lot.

He deadlifts.

RiotfizzNchips66 votes

Buh dum kshhhh...

RiotRiot Entropy35 votes

Hmm, IF "Blood is the wine of victory." THEN Blood = Wine... Drunk Sion Health Stacking HIdden Passive Confirmed!

Personally, I vote for a Gragas and Vlad collaborative venture.

Sion had a lot of time to work out while imprisoned.

SaintCrazy23 votes

WAIT. Hold up. I just noticed -

Is that splash art Sion as seen through the perspective of Helmet Bro????

RiotQuquroon49 votes

Yeah... Helmet Bro isn't exactly the luckiest dude around. I'm not sure how they keeps finding themself in these situations.

RiotHUGEnFAST25 votes

Finally we can have some empathy for the guy :)

j6CJEPS69A21 votes

Will Sion get a price increase and a traditional skin when he is released onto the main servers?

RiotFruity Sebbles81 votes

First of all, Sion will definitely not be getting a price increase with the update. We're still considering how the increased Champ update pipeline might affect overall pricing (if at all), but that's still pretty long-term at this point.

As for your other question, Sion will not be getting a Traditional skin. We focused 100% of our effort on the base Sion and his existing skins, to make sure our new Sion is the best version of Sion we can possibly deliver.

Gonefishing29 votes

That seems a tad unfair to those who enjoyed the voice over for old Sion . Could there at least be an option for the old voice work?

Courier Eight20 votes

Ditto to this- the old voice work was the draw for me and many other Sion players. Is there any way you guys can address this?

RiotIronStylus18 votes

I'd like to see our sound gent C3sound speak to that but I know there were some serious technical issues in getting all that hooked up. Also, speaking to the audience of Sion players, the voice is really specifically an NA component, and considering the amount of work it would take to technically add back in the old VO, that effort was directed entirely to giving players the world over a quality experience.

kYw36 votes

IronStylus, I'm a huge huge fan of yours ever since I saw how much you interact with the community, but I gotta disagree with this one.

I'm from EU and I know who Arnold Schwarzenegger is. Everyone who enjoys movies knows him. Hollywood is the biggest film producer and every country sees those films. And I'm pretty sure most people who play LoL in EU use the english voiceovers, so the voice is not an NA component. It's a joke the whole world can understand.

arkhammer33 votes

We focused 100% of our effort on the base Sion and his existing skins, to make sure our new Sion is the best version of Sion we can possibly deliver.

Can't the same be said for Karma, Sejuani and Trundle, and yet they received a Traditional skin with their relaunches?

RiotQuquroon37 votes

Hey Arkhammer,

As you've said, we did create three traditional skins a while back. In the past, we used Traditional skins as a way of allowing players to represent the older merits of a character that we may have glazed over during the creation process. We weren't always confident in what we were shipping, and in extreme cases, necessitated a traditional skin to execute on them in a way they should have been done. This is shown to an extreme in the case of Karma's fans, something that we know we could have done better.

The team has been doing updates for two years or so now, and we have a bit more moxie as to how this whole rodeo goes. We feel we're able to better respect the old, while pushing the bar as hard as we can. We didn't up and change Sion from an undead to a frozen warrior. He's still the same exact fantasy he was before, just executed in a way that he was originally meant to be.

If the team as it is now existed in the past, there are mistakes that we wouldn't have repeated. Karma wouldn't have lacked her fans. Trundle would have better enveloped the 'leper jesus' he was so affectionately known for. Sejuani would have just realized that a bikini wasn't appropriate snow wear. These are things that could be fixed in the future, but we prefer to continue moving forward, as there are still a large amount of characters that need some love coughpoppycoughevecough.

Essentially, we don't feel like traditional skins are the correct answer- the only way to show our love for older content. We still push for constant and continuous improvement in our updates, but we want to do so in a way that best shows respect for older content as a whole package.

Janitor Jax21 votes

Will Sion get a train skin? (plz include Leeroy Jenkins reference)

RiotRiot Entropy65 votes

Conductor Sion WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOUR TICKET RIGHT NOW!

fishbeard20 votes

I always like reading about scrapped abilities that were tried out in the creative process before landing on the final kit. Can you share any of the crazy stuff you guys tried out for Sion?

Qμiet19 votes

Did you run into any bugs/problems with Sion that were just so ridiculous they made you laugh?

RiotFruity Sebbles109 votes

My favorite was when Azir and Sion were both in testing, and when Sion would ult the Azir wall, he'd get knocked back-- but he'd still be in the charge. So he'd bounce off the wall over and over, trying to get through faster and faster. It looked like an enormous Noxian fireball jumping on a Shuriman trampoline!

Labocata17 votes

"So um... Urgot! We can't hang out anymore. I'm cool now." Urgot item 3070 "fully stacked"

Now that Sion has been reworked, Does he still used to be Urgot's commanding officer or has the relation between those two changed? (like rivals or something)

(optional: will urgot get a chance to get back at him?)

Edit: great job on Sion.

RiotIronStylus30 votes

Honestly I'm looking forward to work we'll eventually do on Urgot :D

Durpinator16 votes

Will you be making a Pre-Death Sion skin?? Something like this perhaps? http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/skin-champion-concepts/va9wX1rL-sions-pre-death-skin-yeah I think a lot of us would love a skin of him depicting his former glory as a living general. Hell, you could name it General Sion! Hope you at east consider it. Anyways, thanks for doing this AMA and all the hard work you've done!

RiotFruity Sebbles27 votes

Sion from the Glory Days would indeed be really cool. For this project we focused entirely on the existing skins to make sure the funny ones were as funny as possible and the badass ones were as badass as possible, but who knows what's in store for future skins Sion

WickedKing14 votes

Since Sion have alot of quotes against Galio (4 of them), what's the relationship between Sion and Galio?

RiotRiot Entropy45 votes

There's a natural opposition between the two that I wanted to lay the groundwork for. The dichotomy between the eternal guardian and the undying destroyer felt really compelling for a rivalry that would endure ages. Plus there's a certain irony to the fact that Galio is an artificial being who's gained a sense of humanity and Sion is a man who's become more of a warmachine than anything.

"Time to cut your strings, puppet." If only he knew.

Bídoof11 votes

What inspired his new ultimate? It's pretty hilarious, is there a story behind it? Thanks!

RiotRiot Scruffy22 votes

We tried a few different ultimates before we eventually found the one you see now. The first few focused on him smashing the ground and creating massive areas of new terrain (think of a giant trundle pillar). As you have likely inferred, those didn't work out because they blocked off too much of the map space creating some awkward gameplay spaces.

We then decided to try the slowly accelerating charge that gave him CC immunity. Then we added the steering, then we made it go a huge distance etc. These things usually start in one place and over days of iteration we end up with something awesome.

RiotRiot Scruffy47 votes

As for inspiration, I think many of us remember the xmen cartoons from the 90s...

Tappet9 votes

Does Sion kills helmetbro?

RiotIronStylus58 votes

Hmm.. honestly not sure helmet bro CAN be killed..

Ringadon6 votes

Seems Kinda op... hopefully that gets nerfed before the helmet bro champ release. It might destabilize things...

RiotIronStylus20 votes

Here's what's funny.. I think someone should design a kit for HB and his passive is that he always sqirms out of deadly situations, but he does absolute crap for abilities. Like.. no damage, or his abilities are all just super lame. Like..

Q: Sword Swing - Helmet Bro swings his sword in an arc and does 3 damage.

Etc.. I invite you to make a thread!

arkhammer19 votes

Passive: HB has 30 increased movement speed when running AWAY from enemies.

Cv5RhcYC9F9 votes

Since you guys did the same type of thing with the Naut anchor and the various terrain stuns, will sion become stunned if he ults into player made terrain?

RiotFruity Sebbles60 votes

Since you guys did the same type of thing with the Naut anchor and the various terrain stuns, will sion become stunned if he ults into player made terrain?

Yes, he'll stun himself on Anivia walls and such. If you have the reactions to to put a Cataclysm around him, then more power to you!

Related note: being stuck inside a Cataclysm with a Glory in Death Sion is not a positive experience.

Arc Noir4 votes

Are you worried about how far away from the art style he is compared to the rest of your champions?

RiotIronStylus32 votes

Personally I see him fitting in with our current style and setting a bar as to how we execute in the future.

MOBB Nightfall4 votes

Who was in charge of Sion's development? (The Sion team leader?)Sion

RiotIronStylus20 votes

We don't really have anyone "in charge". The entire team is there to make sure they're making a holistic product. Though we do have this guy Fruity Sebbles who's our producer on the team. It's ultimately his responsibility that we make the thing we're trying to make.

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