Sion should get a buff/change
I feel bad for this champion. It's an excellent and legendary champion but he is currently sitting in the trash for whatever reason. Sion has been only receiving nerfs and forceful changes to his gameplay which do not even fit with with solo ranked games.
I have approx 1000 games total on this champion (multiple accounts). I started like everybody else with the tank items, push the lane meta. Over time I found out that this strategy is very flawed in solo ranked - Simply victory depends only on your luck. You can say this for any champion but the problem is that Sion is heavily a team based champion and this is a big problem for ranking up, nothing you can do if someone isn't playing properly.
So I tried everything on this champion (top role): Every single rune, combinations, items builds: Damage, mixed, tank, support, mixed support tank, ap, etc. And funnily enough support top was the build that I had the most success with. With all the builds, the Sion meta, I was still stuck in gold but with my made up top support strategy I went all the way from gold 5 (silver 1 in mmr) to platinum 2 max, which I have never reached. It will make no sense to everyone, that's why it was successful because the enemies had no idea how to deal with it. It was very complicated, something I built up after hundreds of games, it's hard to understand.
There where a lot of things I believed where not good for Sion, and implemented my "fixes" into this whole top support build to use Sion's full power.
(Simplified)
- First problem I saw was was that staying in lane to stack was not good for this champion. Stacking hp is what makes him unique but by stacking you're helping the enemy more than you're helping your team and that's what this is all about, helping your team. Is it really worth getting 500+ more hp to survive for a couple more seconds, while I let the enemy get their full build, do whatever they want?
- Found out tank Sion isn't good. His abilities are too easy to counter, if you don't hit your 'q' in an important moment you lost and your tankyness does nothing. So I decided to arm Sion with only support items giving him 6-7 abilities instead of 4.
- Sion doesn't need gold. If you buy damage, armor. hp, it does not effect Sion's abilities or his gameplay in some way. No matter how much you buy, Sion will always stun the same way, slow the same way and shield the same way. His essentials are still the same. What I did need gold for is the support items and after that I left it to my teammates.
- Is flash needed? A lot of games I did not touch flash very often, simply because I always engage with ult and after I engaged there was no reason to flash. The only reason I needed flash was to escape a gank and that's it, which isn't enough and I replaced it with the heal summoner spell, which did the exact same job as flash during ganks and also saved my allies when needed, baited, increased movement speed.
- Sion's passive was useless when he is tanked up, lowering survivability makes him fall faster in team fights, and with his passive he can still use his items to save teammates, deal a big amount of damage to a dangerous target, make him run away from battle.
My build was: Items: Redemption (gives me all the mana I need, team healing which needs to be nicely timed), locket, knight's vow, warmog's - after this I completely stopped farming. Summoner spells: Heal, teleport Runes: Guardian (used same was as heal sum, couldn't stack grasp in lane), demolish, second wind, revitalize Ingenious hunter (item cdr), taste of blood (effective lane healing to replace no tank items sustain)
For this build to make more sense basically what I did was lane top till 6 while slowly building support items and after I got 6 every time ult was up I ganked a lane. So when my ult cooldown reached 20 seconds, I pushed the wave or asked jg to replace me if he was there, and ganked constantly. I was barely in lane, barely farming, stacking, it was all unneeded, because I was keeping my lanes heavily ahead, not letting enemy bot or mid farm and my effectivity stayed the same late game. It was hard to counter my gank because I had heal, and guardian, redemption if I was up in gold, I could turret dive. Late game I could both engage, disengage and heal.
This whole build worked perfectly. I was not stealing gold from my carries, not letting the enemy farm (other than top), getting my team ahead in xp/gold, and made them nearly unkillable with my support items and stuns. Would I be able to do all this if I stayed in lane building up tank items?
To conclude I just wanted to say that with a build that went completely against the forced Sion meta, I had the most success with it.
Buffing 'w' passive, 'q' damage, 'w' cd nerf, hp regen nerf,... this was all unnecessary, does not help this champion, only hurt him. It's a team champion, Sion should be buffed and have the runes to support it