[Sion] please keep detonate at 2 seconds

Nebuul·Apr 18, 2015·87 votes·2,657 views

I think the change to sion w shield strength are good. It encourages tanky builds to maximize the tank skill first. However, I feel that the change to detonate is too disruptive. In most cases, it means that a w activated after a fight starts will not be able to be detonated. Even going full tank, how can he expect to survive 3 seconds of attack without popping his shield? 2 seconds can already be hard to do.

It also really hurts jungle sion tremendously. Please reconsider these combined changes.

26 Comments

MeesterMooApr 18, 201514 votes

The shield doesn't even feel strong in lane and it gets popped by one enemy ability.

MakeHongKongFreeApr 18, 20154 votes

It's not just laning that is the problem with this nerf. With 3 second delay to detonate his shield, jungle Sion will have a significantly tougher time during his early clears. Maybe that's what they wanted to do to balance Sion's early game compared to his incredible late game.

Baron of BreadApr 18, 20152 votes

I don't feel like it would affect his early clears. You walk up to the camp with your shield ready to detonate anyway and the cooldown is long enough that you can't get another one up against the camp.

OyddAWqJ5rApr 19, 20153 votes

Oh no it definitely does affect it. Most monsters generally take the shield down in roughly over 2 seconds giving you just enough time to pop it before it breaks. But with 3 seconds you can no longer use it as damage which will pretty heavily nerf his clear times. You can still use it as a precursor to starting camps as you said but it generally takes 2 W's time to clear most early camps.

Baron of BreadApr 19, 20152 votes

I have never had the problem of needing 2 W's per camp. I guess I should go play a round of Sion Jungle just to make sure, but I really don't remember getting 2 W's off against anything other than red or blue.

Loken StoneheartApr 19, 20153 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sleeper Cell,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=xHPAsUx1,comment-id=0000000000000000,timestamp=2015-04-19T11:20:15.510+0000)

Oh no it definitely does affect it. Most monsters generally take the shield down in roughly over 2 seconds giving you just enough time to pop it before it breaks. But with 3 seconds you can no longer use it as damage which will pretty heavily nerf his clear times. You can still use it as a precursor to starting camps as you said but it generally takes 2 W's time to clear most early camps.

They're also nerfing the scaling of the shield. If I'm not mistaken, the math was done in another thread-- your shield may not even tank a single attack from the big camps anymore.

shalexadeApr 20, 20151 votes

Sion is a top tier jungler. This is exactly what they are doing.

Loken StoneheartApr 18, 20156 votes

Knocked down a peg is different than destroyed. He won't be able to jungle at a reasonable speed, so he won't be picked. People seem to forget that gutting champions generally means they aren't worth playing.

DurzakaApr 18, 20154 votes

{quoted} Even going full tank, how can he expect to survive 3 seconds of attack without popping his shield? 2 seconds can already be hard to do.

He isnt, that is kind of the point.

The shield is a big "HIT ME!" sign. It is like a taunt, except if it is ignored he deals AoE damage. If people decide to focus him during his shield, that just makes him an even better tank for his team. While also simaltenously giving him a nerf that he so desperately needs.

Meep ManApr 18, 20153 votes

Yeah, I think the %health ratio nerf was enough.

TenSlashTenApr 19, 20153 votes

they're nerfing him again? lmfao. Poor guy. Riot guts all the good reworks and then number buffs the shit ones. Take it from a guy who used to avidly play pre rework eve (post stun and pre stun removal... good old stun eve.. too bad casuals QQ'd so hard it ended in a complete gutting) and pre rework katarina. pretty fun before riot decided they needed to be able to be played by every player and its mother so they made the kits easier by 2-3x to understand and gave them stupidly high damage rotations.

Now my eve is back to being worse than post stun removal eve. terrible base stats. I still make her work though despite the never ending nerf train to a champion I never wanted a rework for because I knew it would only cause nerf trains lol.

And katarina.. well.. bruiser kat was a thing for a little while after her rework because her W was just so broken that leveling Q past rank 1 was pointless. They gutted her Q and E base and shoved it all into W basically. You'd just buy abysall scepter walk up and W and the 150+ max rank base on a low cooldown harassed any other melee without counterplay for all of eternity basically. your MS buff kept you safe from enemy autos while you harassed. It was pretty annoying. I played it a little, liked it in a way. It was still easily shit on by playing any of kat's normal counters. The problem was kat was also (and should've stayed) a purely mid-early late game champ(once people get GA's kat falls of exstremely fast basically.. so around the 3-4 item area is when kat is really good as long as she's broke even with the enemy laner she's winning) now an early game champ and thats not how the rework was supposed to be. It was supposed to give her more options in a lane phase but not completely butcher any point to being the late game monster when you could just fuck people early game... The rework's been the same since its release you can now level 3 all in people still to this day because of her dumb W being so frontloaded and still her base basic ability.

Kats rework should've been a sped up Q animation/travel time and a slightly higher damage and longer duration E with a faster channel ult that delt the same damage but the damage would amp up over time instead of being spread out evenly over the course of the whole duration this way kats death lotus would actually punish teams who ignore her and reward good kat ult timing.

Riot has been exstremely bad at reworks since these new dev's joined. Probably taking advice from anyone but the mains of these champions (as usual?). And when they do finally take advice its just small pointless shit after they've already decided the big decisions for the champion. Sigh*

Dunkrius2gApr 18, 20152 votes

Don't worry. Riot has their eyes on Sion.

ThefriendlyorcApr 18, 201518 votes

Yeah, testing how many nerfs they can give him until he's utterly useless.

Dunkrius2gApr 18, 20151 votes

LOL

AkabaneKunApr 18, 20152 votes

They want us to lvl it up first, but make it almost impossible to use it offensively and since the shield scales with it's own passive if you aren't building AP it makes it even less useful defensively.

Synx7Apr 18, 20152 votes

And i always wondered if i should main him, the true TANK. Guess not anymore. Riot's balance team is pure garbage Not to mention Sion reminds me of Garrosh from WoW

AradehkApr 18, 20152 votes

What i really want for the new sion is that if in passive and he kills an enemy, he gets revived. (he still has one death, but he reverts back to normal form)

CrettApr 19, 20151 votes

{quoted}

What i really want for the new sion is that if in passive and he kills an enemy, he gets revived. (he still has one death, but he reverts back to normal form)

AD Sion would become god. I love it

RencithApr 18, 20152 votes

Sion is incredibly strong at the moment. Sure his early game isn't the best but dear God at 20 minutes and on he's just stupidly strong. The fact of the matter is its hardly fair that he gets to build straight tank and still hit super hard. He needs the nerf, and I'll be glad to see him get knocked down a peg.

Jungle Lux GodApr 19, 20152 votes

Should Sion be able to survive 3 seconds of attack without popping his shield? Probably not. Should his opponents be able to play around his shield detonation, even when he becomes a tank god in the late game? Definitely.

A tank's job in teamfights is to force the focus on the enemy team onto the tank so that he takes the damage that his team cannot afford to take. If Sion engages, the enemy team is likely going to focus Sion, but with a full tank build and the two second timer Sion will not take enough damage for the enemy team to pop the shield before they take 14% of their max health in magic damage. The enemy team will then not focus Sion because the magic damage is guaranteed, and try to hit the rest of Sion's team. With a 3 second timer, the enemy team has 1 extra second to break that shield, and Sion's opponents now have the opportunity to break the shield, forcing the enemy team to actually attack Sion so he doesn't get the damage. In this case the extra timer is good for Sion because it makes him a much more attractive target after he engages.

Sion is also at least somewhat guaranteed to get at least one detonation by timing Soul Furnace during his Unstoppable Onslaught so that he can detonate on landing his ultimate. You can do this now, and you can do this after the changes, but Sion players need to adjust so that they use Soul Furnace 1 second earlier.

Jungling with Sion will also hurt a bit, but just like his engagement pattern you can still clear with him. Sion players just need to adjust and activate W 1 second earlier (although the % health nerf is going to really sting for jungle Sion).

In most cases, Sion is going to really hurt with the extra second timer, but if players adjust themselves to adapt to Sion's new W timer he shouldn't feel it quite so hard.

FastAsHeckApr 19, 20152 votes

honestly i only play sion in the jungle, havent touched toplane in ages. it doesnt seem THAT bad (though its gonna be a pain) since you just need to activate it before starting the camp. it will just take a few more brain resources to do since you cant effectively start a camp if you have for example 3 sec left on w because if you activate it afterwards it will get popped by the camp. oh well its not a huge nerf. i agree about theamfights though, waiting 3 seconds to pop it will really hurt his damage since the shiled will die before you can pop it. maybe if they reduced the delay every time you level the ability?

LOL SpammerApr 18, 20151 votes

When was this changed? Was it on pbe?

qetzelApr 18, 20151 votes

Sion in the jungle probably needs nerfs as well... http://champion.gg/champion/Sion/Jungle

I know winrate isn't everything, but 56.6% suggests something is wrong, even with a pick rate of 2% (~8% for all champions played equally).

n810mApr 19, 20151 votes

Maybe 3/2.75/2.5/2.25/2? That would keep him as the late game tank identity which is fun and compensated by lack of damage.

junglerboy16Apr 20, 20151 votes

Agreed 100%. I can understand their concern about him getting too durable too quickly, and toning that back, but the fact that he already has to wait a couple seconds to reactivate and then extending that will hurt him in a lot of ways that they don't seem to want.

It is too late to get this reverted before the next patch goes out (according to Riot, everything is currently locked in and just being checked for bugs), so I'm just hoping his win rate drops hard enough that they feel the need to revert the delay change.