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Sion's numbers are wrong, his concept is right.

Khristophoros··35 votes·4,076 views

Obviously the idea is low base health and then he scales up past everyone else. The problem is that in reality he scales up to a mediocre level of health and then the game ends.

Let's look at some typical numbers and then look at Sion's.

High base health gain per level: 90+ (highest is 102) Medium base health gain per level: 80-90 Low health gain per level: 70-80 Mini Gnar: 65 Sion: 70

Sion gains 2 health per minion, 8 per champion or large unit.

IIRC, each lane spawns 2 waves per minute and 1 of them has a large minion, so Sion can get 24 health off the regular minions and another 8 per minute off the large one for 32 total per minute if he has freefarm.

Old Sion had 104 health per level so he lost a total of 34 per level, 544 total. So this means he needs freefarm for 18 minutes to match his old base health or reach similar health to other melee champions.

Getting 100% of the minions for 18 straight minutes is not very realistic especially when you're playing a melee champion with one of the lowest base health totals in the game.

This type of design doesn't fit in LoL because most champions were designed so that their abilities are in addition to normal base stats. Veigar does not give up stats for his AP gain. Nasus does not give up stats for his Q damage gain.

In fact, if you look at champion stats you'll see that they tend to compliment the champion's strengths rather than subvert the strengths. Nasus has one of the highest base HP regen stats in the game on top of his lifesteal passive. Both if these things allow him to sustain in lane so he can farm up his Q and scale into late game. His kit and stats compliment each other.

Meanwhile, Sion's stats make him so weak he has trouble farming up his health due to poor laning. To make matters worse, the scaling he's given to supposedly compensate is so weak that even if he is highly successful in lane (18 minutes of straight freefarm) he will only match the natural base health of his rivals.

What more is there to say? Fix Sion's numbers please.

60 Comments

BlazingSalvo13 votes

Not to mention Sion falls into the "kitable bruiser" category.

He could have 6k health and it wouldn't even matter some games, since some games he's going to be nothing but a damage soak for skill shots since he's certainly not going to autoattack a Lucian almost ever. Just imagine him trying to touch even new Viktor.

Literally all he has going for him is living forever, similar to Cho'gath as a health tank. At least Cho has 2 useful AOE hard CCs. If Cho'gath is allowed to be in the top 50% of champions for base health as well as get up to 900 bonus HP, why not Sion?

EDIT: I mean, look at the effective HP of Alistar: One of the highest base totals in the game, plus his heal multiple times a fight, plus his ultimate. And Alistar has arguably more damage, easier, faster crowd control, a true gapcloser, and is certainly more powerful a disruption tank than Sion. The fact that Alistar can rush Trinity Force/Statikk Shiv and still somehow more or less be a true tank is testament to this. I fail to see why Sion can't at least hit 2.8k HP before items most games. Alistar hits 2600 HP with a Trinity Force.

Vellich0r3 votes

compared to sions two useful AoE hard cc's, percent health damage, high post six mobility, great base damages when his abilities are used intelligently, percent max health shield (that soaks shit tons of damage up) and massive damage even after death, armor shred, slows for days, ungankability, etc? Don't get me wrong, most people play sion entirely wrong and yeah if played wrong he sucks, but for those who have any clue how to play him and especially how to build him any bumps in numbers would put him over the edge and get him nerfed shatless. lucian would be hardpressed to escape a sion in a team fight (because sion is a teamfight tank who engages hard core and does massive damage with a 3 second stun lock almost guarenteed on the first champs hit) sion is extremely effective when used properly, it is just that most people are not used to him yet and are building stupid things that don't complement sion well.

Burhead062 votes

i agree to this to a extent , if played properly he can do work , but the fact that as the math states , he needs 18 minutes of free farm to even out to being a good tank (base stat wise) is detrimental. you are forced to build more dense then you might like to be viable in a team fight. yeah sure being a full tanky meat shield is nice and all if you want to do that. but the lack of any kind of base stat means , if you want your w to last more than one hit , you need to build tanky. if you look at other bruiser champions they can get away with A, not building a tank item first. and B not needing 3 tank items to be viable. like shyv for example. you can easily build 1 or even 2 offensive items first and still be a monster in team fights , but you can also build her pure tank and be a unkillable dragon. sion on the other hand can have his q easily juked by anybody with a single mobility skill same for his e outside of like point blank ranges. and NEEDS tank items to to really anything unless its paired up with another teammates abilitys , but in most team comps he is the initiator , not the secondary initiator. even if they dident put his natural hp per level stat to where it used to be , but better than about as low as it gets would balance it out alot. instead of having him at 70 , put him at 80-85 , still a good 17-22 below what it used to be , but atleast its not 32 per level lower. thats just brutal.

Vellich0r2 votes

I tend to play him in the jungle, and the standard build (if you know what you are doing) is elder lizard brutalizer then full tank. You become unkillable very quickly from my experience, I mean a slight numbers tweak wouldn't push him over the top but his natural tankiness isn't near as low as people seem to believe.

BlazingSalvo1 votes

His skills could be 10 second stuns and deal 200% max HP true damage, and his autoattacks could heal him for his entire lifebar on hit and crit for 2000 and he would still have some games where he would be useless since he has no true gapcloser.

Vellich0r1 votes

no true gap closer? his R is a half map long gapcloser, and I have never had issues turning it, maybe i am just really skilled and that results in being able to use an unviable champion to great effect, but he definitely has a gap closer.

SquidLyf1 votes

no true gap closer? his R is a half map long gapcloser, and I have never had issues turning it, maybe i am just really skilled and that results in being able to use an unviable champion to great effect, but he definitely has a gap closer.

I love when someone gives the passive-aggressive "maybe I'm just skilled ..." Cracks me up every time.

Vellich0r1 votes

It was a point making convention, I have used Sion to fantastic effect, maybe thats because ive played him since he was first released on PBE, but I am only silver 4 and I can use him effectively against people higher rank than me by a good little bit, so how is it that he isn't viable?

BlazingSalvo1 votes

Hecarim's E is not a reliable gapcloser. Ghost is not a reliable gapcloser. Sivir's ultimate is not a reliable gapcloser. Garen's Q is not a reliable gapcloser. Well, sure, they could be used to close a gap, but consider movespeed steroids are applied before slows, and it is not a reliable method of reaching an opponent at all. It's not like he can just pop it mid-fight or mid-gank and retroactively decide to use it to continue dealing damage. Its ramp up is too slow and its reliability too poor to actually consider using outside of running down a lane and hoping your global sound effect didn't tip everyone off and make them step 2 feet to the side.

Vellich0r1 votes

you mentioned a variety of speed ups, sion ult is CC immune making it totally different, a gap closer closes the gap and sion ult does just that rather effectively, the build up is not at all slow, and if they sidestep you press R again to do the same damage and same knockup/ slow as if you hit them directly.

Khristophoros3 votes

His skills could be 10 second stuns and deal 200% max HP true damage, and his autoattacks could heal him for his entire lifebar on hit and crit for 2000 and he would still have some games where he would be useless since he has no true gapcloser.

This is just useless hyperbole. He would win literally 100% of his games with those numbers.

BlazingSalvo1 votes

Eh, no, he would win probably around 80% of games, if not less. Because he deals zero damage and heals zero HP as long as he has no way to move within 150 units of a champion, regardless if his numbers approach infinity. Garen is less kiteable than Sion.

Outdated9 votes

Sion feels durable and dangerous against some melee champs in the early game but his offensive scaling is pants-on-head retarded. Decimating smash ( Q ) does poor damage at low charge, is unreliable at a high charge, & obviously is limiting Sion's damage-per-second by standing still and channeling while a comparable bruiser might be attacking - making the damage scaling of decimating smash seemingly meaningful in theory - but underwhelming in practice.

Beyond that; his most reliable damage skills, Soul Furnace ( W ) & Roar of the Slayer ( E ), scale with Ability Power, except with both long cool-downs & poor AP ratios. I would probably consider AP Sion to be the most viable offensive build if the ratios &/or cool-downs on those abilities were better.

The only strong and satisfying scaling Sion does is with raw HP through the defensive portion of Soul Furnace ( W ) . But raw HP does not cause player deaths - and it's arguably one of the poorer ways to buy effective health given the prevalence of %health damaging abilities & Blade of the Ruined King.

Where do I even begin on his ultimate, Unstoppable Onslaught ( R )? I can't count the number of times Sion players have missed champions all together, ran into parallel walls, ran into minor barriers, or halted abruptly upon hitting the enemy teams strongest tank in a meaningless expenditure of what is generally a champions most meaningful skill. At present the skill is far more useful for running away than initiating a team fight.

Does anyone else find it odd that "Unstoppable Onslaught" stops after colliding with the first (likely unintended) fill in the blank. Be it the enemy's most robust tank, a parallel wall when you made the mistake of thinking you could navigate that narrow or winding cooridoor, or some barrier outcropping that prevented you from making it through an entry / exit - "Unstoppable Onslaught" gets pretty easily stopped. It should be called "Stoppable Onslaught"

Unstoppable Onslaught really needs improvement:

  1. Only collision with a perpendicular wall should cause a halt. Sion should be able to slide along a parallel wall.
  2. Unstoppable Onslaught needs to actually be: Unstoppable. It really shouldn't immediately stop on the first champion hit.
  3. Unstoppable Onslaught needs more accurate means of applying its effect to an intended target. LoL is becoming increasingly saturated with Hyper-Mobility champions. Most opponents in a given match can easily avoid collision with Sion's Unstoppable Onslaught as enemy dodging is far easier than Sion's steering.

In my mind - this ability should split into a multi-part effect. The first champion hit should be stunned ( makes more sense as knockup, really) and and receive a portion of the effects damage. Then, Sion has a second of forward momentum left to press R again to dash an additional length in ANY direction within a 210ish degree arc - applying the rest of the damage in an AoE and slightly slowing. This could be animated as Sion hooking his Axe into the ground the to his side and using that leverage to swing around or simply leaping if his intended direction is, more or less, directly ahead. If no enemy champion were struck before pressing R the second time - the secondary mobility effect would carry the damage and stun of the first part. The effect of this is that Sion would have control to actually hit the intended target. If the target is alone you would have the control necessary to apply the full effect. If the target was protected by a high-health champion - you wouldn't stun the back line without landing a followup ( Q ) but at least your unstoppable onslaught would put you in a position to be disruptive.

At present - when playing Sion I think to myself "This champion would be so much better if he had Malphite's ult, Nautilus' ult, Zacs ult, Leona's Ult, Sejuani's Ult, Mundo's ult... etc" When you are playing a tank and you would gladly trade your ultimate ability for the ultimate of most of the other tanks in the game your champion has problems.

Zanphyra16 votes

I feel like they focused too much on counterplay for Sion and not actually play.

I agree completely with all you have stated.

Burhead062 votes

another possiblity for his ult is you treat it similar to vi's ult , as he is bulldozing through everything neutral monster/enemy minions and champions alike are pushed aside and he only does the knockup when he either A reaches the max distance or B repress's r to manually apply the end of the skill. this would make it easier for him to hit what he intends while still leaving it possible to dodge it (like flashing over him or ezreal using archane shift to jump past/to the side.)

regardless i LOVE the idea of parallel walls not stopping the skill. (maybe slowing down the momentum slightly)

Khristophoros1 votes

I think Unstoppable Onslaught is overall a decent ability but the use cases are messed up.

  • Using it to run away is an effective use case.
  • Going into the fight first and then using it to guarantee the stun and damage on a priority target is an effective use case.
  • Charging a long distance to initiate is a poor use case because you'll either hit the tank, miss completely due to the low turn rate, or hit a wall.
Sir Bulldog1 votes

My brother-in-law was playing a game where there was a jungle sion on his team. He tried to gank mid from the river with this ult. He came flying across the lane and up the other river, missing everything.......

Vellich0r1 votes

he was coming from river, of course he would get juked, its a lane ganking ability, which is very effective I might add.

Maccabeus641 votes

Its Also Good In The Jungle If You're Willing To Use It For A Shorter Than Optimal Distance

Vellich0r1 votes

it isn't though, people don't seem to know how to use the ability from what I have seen in my games with sion not in my hands, they build wrong, and play wrong. and people dont seem to realize it can be used from relatively close range for great effect.

Sir Bulldog1 votes

My thoughts exactly....at present i think old sion was better

Sire Hippington5 votes

Thats not the only problem. His entier kit, while devasting if it works, is easy to outplay(thus lower winrates at higher elos) His Q is easy to dodgem so is his ult and his passive, and his W shield often gets popped befor it can deal damage if he is behind. He is to high risk, to high reward and needs to get tuned down on both sides

THe basic concept is finw though

GermanEskimo5 votes

I have no idea why you guys are saying sion is weak atm, havent lost a game with him or do bad, maybe u guys are just playing/building him wrong. IMO sion is pretty beasty atm

SquidLyf4 votes

I have no idea why you guys are saying sion is weak atm, havent lost a game with him or do bad, maybe u guys are just playing/building him wrong. IMO sion is pretty beasty atm

Yeah, that one game with Sion on your history against some pretty horrible players. 0/11 Warwick jungle, and a 0/12 Janna support. You could almost play blindfolded and beat that team.

Vellich0r1 votes

ive felt like i was against bots with sion a lot.

Kikirino2 votes

I think Sion is fine. He actually might be strong. But I take him jungle and go tank... not bruiser top.

Sogreth3 votes

They won't increase his health unless they lower his shield then. 10% of max health shield is insanely powerful, even Naut doesn't have that, his is BONUS health.

I do agree though, his health does seem low. You also have to take into account, while his base health is lower than Old Sion, Old Sion was also able to stack health too.

Sire Hippington4 votes

lets compare nautis and sions shield for a moment: Naut gets 300+15%bonus health. Sion gets 130+10%health. even at lvl 18, that equals 130+168=298, so same base value at lvl 18 but 50% less scaling...the passive hp gain hardly will make up for that, and he needs longer to reach that value than naut does

Sogreth2 votes

lets compare nautis and sions shield for a moment: Naut gets 300+15%bonus health. Sion gets 130+10%health. even at lvl 18, that equals 130+168=298, so same base value at lvl 18 but 50% less scaling...the passive hp gain hardly will make up for that, and he needs longer to reach that value than naut does

My main point still stands. They won't raise Sion's health unless they change the shield.

Khristophoros3 votes

lets compare nautis and sions shield for a moment: Naut gets 300+15%bonus health. Sion gets 130+10%health. even at lvl 18, that equals 130+168=298, so same base value at lvl 18 but 50% less scaling...the passive hp gain hardly will make up for that, and he needs longer to reach that value than naut does

My main point still stands. They won't raise Sion's health unless they change the shield.

10% health is nothing. Rammus goes into Defensive Ball Curl and gets +120 both defenses which is 120% of his health added to his EHP. That lasts 6 seconds so it general mitigates vastly more damage than Sion's shield ever will.

Fluffymangusta3 votes

The way I see Sion currently is somebody you are going to pick with like a Trist or a late game comp/stall comp, because if you can force that late game he will keep scaling quite strongly, but the problem is he isn't terribly strong even once he gets there, he is just a big meat shield.

Khristophoros2 votes

The way I see Sion currently is somebody you are going to pick with like a Trist or a late game comp/stall comp, because if you can force that late game he will keep scaling quite strongly, but the problem is he isn't terribly strong even once he gets there, he is just a big meat shield.

Or just pick Cho'Gath because he can get 900 bonus health at level 16. He is a good tank for a stall comp. Sion takes unreasonably long even by stall comp standards.

Like I said, the numbers are wrong.

Fluffymangusta1 votes

Exactly. As I said even if he manages to get to super late game he still isn't that useful and someone like cho would be much more reliant, which is saying something as cho hasn't really been viable since S1- part of S2.

Kuroi863 votes

Sion hasn't really been out that long, so complaining is pretty pointless. Keep playing, Riot watches the numbers, if he needs tweaking, he'll get tweaks, simple as that.

Doumz3 votes

I'd like you to calculate Sion Jungle HP gain, which for me could seem greater, since big monster give 8. And it scale with Spirit of the Ancient Golem.

Also, his shield is now %hp which can really compensate for the hp gain "loss".

Khristophoros3 votes

I don't know his clear times but a full clear should yield 68 health I think. That means he needs 8 full clears to reach his old base health. That seems more promising than laning but the fact remains you're only breaking even with other tanks after significant farming.

Drukyul2 votes

He seems like a bad Nautilus right now.

SquidLyf2 votes

When I kill someone with Sion, I feel a tremendous amount of gratification. It's too bad that it is ridiculously easy to kite me anywhere, anytime.

UrGayTwink042 votes

Sion's concept is not right. There is no place in League of Mobility for an infinitely kiteable bruiser with impossible to land abilities. Even if they tweaked his numbers he is doomed to be nonviable. How did this rework ever seem like a little bit of a good idea to anyone at Riot?

Khristophoros2 votes

Sion's concept is not right. There is no place in League of Mobility for an infinitely kiteable bruiser with impossible to land abilities. Even if they tweaked his numbers he is doomed to be nonviable. How did this rework ever seem like a little bit of a good idea to anyone at Riot?

Not really. Old Sion wasn't unviable because he was kitable. He was unviable because he sucked in lane and couldn't match the uberjunglers like Lee and Elise before her nerfs. He couldn't really match the high tier junglers either which left him in top lane. In top lane, almost every matchup was bad for him so it was difficult for him to make it to his strong lategame.

I played him a bunch before his rework and if I was able to be successful in lane I could transition to a strong lategame where I was tanky enough to make up for the lack of mobility. It worked just fine if you could go even in top lane. It was not reliable because he struggled in lane so he wasn't really a solid pick overall.

JusticePauldrons2 votes

I agree, he needs more health. His abilities force him to be in the enemies grill to work, but his health per level is so low that he is punished heavily for trying it. Up his health to 104 per level and see what happens.

LemonadeDan1 votes

hmm...True...but if you think of it when Sion gets to level 18 he cannot increase any more health before his rework (Without buying health items) but...minions still spawn after you are level 18...so your health can still increase AFTER he is level 18 meaning he might have 544 health less...but he can still continue farming for more health...also before his rework, killing an enemy doesn't give him more health does it? so in team fights he can still earn more health if he gets kills...as long as he can earn more than 544 health after he reaches level 18 it is worth is...although after laning phase you don't farm as much as normal I think u can still get more health

Khristophoros4 votes

hmm...True...but if you think of it when Sion gets to level 18 he cannot increase any more health before his rework (Without buying health items) but...minions still spawn after you are level 18...so your health can still increase AFTER he is level 18 meaning he might have 544 health less...but he can still continue farming for more health...also before his rework, killing an enemy doesn't give him more health does it? so in team fights he can still earn more health if he gets kills...as long as he can earn more than 544 health after he reaches level 18 it is worth is...although after laning phase you don't farm as much as normal I think u can still get more health

Typical games don't go long enough for you to keep farming after level 18 for a significant amount of time.

Featherztorm1 votes

Idk, my Sion games on my smurf seem to go really well in my favor. 5.2k hp by level 16, crucial engages, lots of saves, and as you mentioned, lots of damage absorption while putting out a lot of cc/dmg. May just be because I know how to play him, or something. Idk.

Sire Hippington3 votes

ur sion games on ur smurf...and what about that on ur main? I guess it'S that the people u face on ur smurf don'T know how to play against sion rather than u knowing how to play him...

Featherztorm1 votes

ur sion games on ur smurf...and what about that on ur main? I guess it'S that the people u face on ur smurf don'T know how to play against sion rather than u knowing how to play him...

Considering I was 3-1 for a huge portion of the game, even through my teammates feeding lanes. I normally jungle sion. The smurf is currently in Silver 1 - Gold 5 promos, pitting me against Gold 3+. I've shied away from playing too many games on this account, as the teammates I get feed a little more than those on my smurf. I will gladly play a game with you, though, on this account, me using Sion, as my sion skills have increased substantially since playing him a substantial amount. I feel confident enough that my Sion game has improved drastically, and it will reflect that the recent Sion game on this account was simply inexperience mixed with feeding teammates.

EckHearT Geminus4 votes

Idk, my Sion games **on my smurf **seem to go really well in my favor. 5.2k hp by level 16, crucial engages, lots of saves, and as you mentioned, lots of damage absorption while putting out a lot of cc/dmg. May just be because I know how to play him, or something. Idk.

...

Sire Hippington8 votes

it's not like old sion got a healthgain from cs aswell.... U can get more health in the late than most champions, but definitly not more than old sion, and even though he can reach high health, he'S not gonna do that much with it anyway at his current state

TrianbleMan1 votes

Yea I heard someone say they thought it was funny when they were reading posts stating "maybe I'm just good with him" but the truth is the new Sion takes way more skill to play than old Sion and each of his individual skills are not very similar to other champions abilities, in fact all of them are fairly unique except his and all of his abilities are skill shot oriented now. Even though his W functions the same you have to know when to pop it to actually do dmg and how to make the most use of it for effective HP. Now combine all those skills into one kit and you're finding people who have only played a handful of games with him and are already declaring his viability. I would like to see some gameplay video's of players who think he is so horribly outmatched and I'll bet comedy will ensue. I certainly know the first handful of games I played with him made me laugh at myself. In fact he has to be one of the most hilarious champions to watch a player learn to play.

Sozan51 votes

Let's be honest here - usually Riot actually don't give stats based on what role they have... Nor even they look what abilities champion have. It seems a bit random to be honest.

Let's compare Sion to Zed for an example.

Sion Health: 420 +70 Health regen: 7,5 +1 AD: 53 +4 AS: 0,679 +1,2% Armor: 18 +3 MR: 30 +1,25

Zed Health: 445 +80 Health regen: 6 +0,65 AD: 49 +3,4 AS: 0,658 +3,1% Armor: 21 +3,5 MR: 30 +1,25

As it's apparent here: Zed's offensive capabilities are a bit smaller than Sion's while his defensive stats are clearly superior. And yes, that's comparing the mana-eating not too mobile Zombie with the energy using extremely mobile Ninja. So not only does Zed have abilities to completely avoid damage - he also takes less punishment if he fails to do that. Mind you, Zed's defensive abilities are actually very good for no reason (and he's not the only one to be like that) - his armor is higher than champions like Volibear, Hecarim, Braum, Olaf, Taric!, Gragas, Warwick, Vi, Nautilus, Renekton, Shen etc.

It really makes me wonder, why they give non-mobile champs lower defensive stats than high mobile ones (Zed is not the only example, there are way more champs like this).

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