Sion tip/tricks?

Hey Trogmar,

I'm no expert on Sion but I think I can give you a tip or 2 as I really enjoy playing him every now and then.

First off, the unfortunate thing about Sion is that he is currently very weak. He lacks mobility and does not really put up for it with damage, as the most optimal builds for him are tank oriented.

For runes I usually go with the following:

2x Atk Speed Quints 1x AD Quint 9x AD Reds 9x Armor Yellows 9x Mr Blues

The reason behind the flat defenses is because Sion has a weak defense stat early game. The AD reds help with last hitting, and the quints do the same when u have to farm under tower.

For masteries, go down the Resolve tree, with a mandatory Unyielding, tough skin, Runic shield, Insight, Swiftness and Grasp of the undying for keystone.

Grasp is the best mastery on Sion as his W passive makes it even more relevant as you head into late game.

For the remainer of your mastery points, I suggest going for Sorcery and Feast in Ferocity and Savagery and Secret stack in Cunning. They help you go through Lane better, and when you get past laning phase intact, the game is much easier afterwards.

For skills, you generally want to start with E, or W. E if you want to shove early under turret and rush lvl 2/3, W if you think the enemy is going to harrass alot early ( )

Then you wanna Max E, then W or Q depending on what you intend to do. Q is for kill pressure as you can deal some serious damage, and W is for defensive play, the shield scales AP and Max HP, and the damage scales with Stacks from minion/monster kills.

SUMMONERS

Always go Flash/Teleport

Flash is a must to get out of tricky positioning, and teleport allows you to roam with ulti and return to lane fast afterwards.

IN LANE

You should focus entirely on farming until you reach lvl 6. Don't over extend as Sion has very little mobility, and that means ganks can be very unforgiving.

If you intend on poking, make sure you E a minion onto the enemy, that will increase the damage they take by alot. Blowing your shield on them as you land a Q can take a squishy top down below 50% in early game.

You should rush either or first. Both these items allow you to clear easily, and both contribute to your naturaly tankyness from W.

A good, standard build for Sion in my opinion would be:

Of course you can always swap out some of these for other useful items like or

You need to adapt your builds, but always stick to the tank items, because in fights, Sion usually gets kyted easily, so the best thing to do usually is just sticking to peel duty for the back line.

MID/LATE GAME

When lane is over, you should analyse whether or not you can afford to initiate fights, if your team is ahead, you should be able to just tank their front line and zone the back line, just make sure you don't go in 1v5.

Your biggest enemy is any champ that can shred max/hp% like or .

I wouldn't recommend Sion for carrying if you want to grind out of an elo as he is heavily team reliant, his kit limits him to tanking duties, and he is easy to counter, so no first picking.

I usually pick Sion vs a Nasus, because the lane is so passive and you can afk stack with Sue afk stacking aswell, when you reach teamfights, all you have to do is peel him off your team, and he usually gets blown off since you can reduce his armor with E.

Hope that helps, have fun trying him out, he is a very fun champ to play.

P.s.- When full build, don't forget to grab an elixir of Iron to be fucking huge and spooky.

When I play Sion, I like to look at my lane opponent before I decide what my runes, masteries, and early game build will be like. If they are a slower laner who can't really dodge all that well, I'll go AD runes and grab a corrupting potion while maxing Q first for maximum smash-age.

If they're a wily little thing that can dodge out of Q very easily, I will take my hybrid pen rune page and rush 2 dorans rings early while maxing E first. The two dorans will make my already cheap E pretty much free, and the hybrid pen runes will make it so that my E and W will hurt more, while my Q and ult will still get through a bit of their armor

how i play sion: Runes 1x Armor Quint 1x Mr Quint 1x Ms Quint 9x Ad Marks 9x Armor Seals 9x Mr Glyphs Masteries 0/12/18 (Grasp Of The Undying) Build Start with and 1

get a when you can... vs AD: vs AP: final items: (you don't need boots... fuck boots!) if you need to go ham... buy this

Playstyle you can't die.

go ham.

you don't know fear.

skills

start with e if you need to poke start with w if you can farm start with q if you need to disengage lvl 1

max q first, w second

done.

I am no expert, i just use the sheild and soak up the damage while i charge up q in their face. if they try to get away i release both of them and keep attacking. i do not fear, i am sion, i will destroy. i charge, i strike, i bath in their blood. Nobody shall stand, break every walls, smash every bones.

Tip: struggles against ranged champions, dont fight

Wow! amazing advice from everybody. I'll try out your idea's and hopefully find something that works well for me. Galac seems like he plays quite a bit of Sion XD

12/18/0 masteries is what i use, i watn as much % damage boost as i can get, only exception is that i pick meditate for more manaregen as i need it to spam shit with 45% cdr

Now for the rest i grab precision more hybrid pen to boost damage

And my keystone is stormraiders surge, i use this to get clean trades, i land my E, which i max first, and then my Q and W letting my shield take a hit then stun then pop shield allows me to proc the movepseed boost and get out while they still stunned. What this does is make it so you take 0 damage and they take roughly 30-35% thats early game lkanefase ofc. The other use of this keystone is that it makes your passive a true terror early on.

i grab hybrid pen runes and the rest i use to fill out whatever i dont have in my build, for me thats an extra 10% cdr and mr in blues and scaling hp/armor/hpregen in yellows

Hybrid pen runes and masteries + the % boost masteries allow my damage to stay relevant all game long.

Then you proceed to build for armor The reason you build these armor items is simple, they also boost your damage output and give you fast clears of minion waves and jungle camps, the iceborn also gives you extra mana for spam and a slow to use after abilities and during passive. This is your Mr item more hp, the mr you need and it gives nice sustain, and this fills out your cdr. Then you have 1 more item slot left which can be anything you need, i usually go for this gives a ton of sustain out of combat and a shitload of health, with the visage combined it also gives strong hp regen during combat.

Then there is 4 boot options but in most cases i take these as they boost your damage alot combined with all the other flat pen and %damage increases you have, and has good synergy with sunfire and thornmail. Other options include or depending which one you need to either combat cc/magic damage or physical damage are also an option if they mostly have slows only.

As for enchants alacrity is always decent, furor for more in combat speed or captain so your team can more easy follow up on your ults.

This build makes you very tanky and makes you have a ton of sustained damage. It also makes your passive a real threath, especially earlygame when most people dont have much mobility. And even though you wont have much early defensive stats, you have ways to make very favorable trades with the high damage you got, and the means to get away easy af.

This is my Behemoth Sion build. It is very effective. Once you get decent at playing Sion then you will notice how powerfull this build really is.

I have plenty more builds and tricks but this one is fun, as it turns you into the behemoth juggernaut raidboss you want to be.

You can pretty much play like the zoning tank as always. Early game is a bit different then other Sion builds/guides, because you want to max E and use your pile of flat mpen to pretty much spam true damage on your opponents face to poke him out of lane. Post 6 roam with your ult Dont be afraid to die early game, put that passive to use when you do, you can dioe in a bush and wait a second or two seconds often people forget about your passive when you do then you go ham on their face. Use the piles of aoe damage to anihilate minion waves and monster camps to farm up a shitload of hp.

thats pretty much it

It can be easy to catch and kill early/mid, but late game they all get away from you.

A few things:

Don't fall into the trap of thinking Sion is a late-game hyperscaling tank because of W's passive. Sion is a powerful lane bully who transitions into a beefy engage/CC tank once his damage plateaus. Max E first in lane: hit a minion into your lane opponent when your harassing and use the slow to line up a charged Q, hit them with E directly when your going in for a kill to get the armor shred. Against most enemies, grabbing one or two Doran's Rings early will let you spam your abilities to dominate your lane. Farm up a lot to get W stacks and tank items like . You can grab if you're snowballing and your team can afford you trading some survivability for damage. Get a feel for how long you can charge Q while still hitting enemies before they can get out of it: it's better just get the slow than to try for the knockup and miss entirely.

This is a really excellent guide by a Master 1 Sion player. There's a few bits that are a little out of date: the only one that's really important is that the suicide wolves trick no longer works because of changes to jungle experience.

A lot of other players here have posted some valuable information about Sion that is really useful, and as a Sion player I wanted to touch on some intricacies on how you use his abilities that other players haven't mentioned.

The first thing to note about his abilities is his Q. A good strategy a lot of Sion players do is that to maximize its effectiveness, they let it charge as much as possible before their opponents leave its range, and then use it before they leave the range. His Q isn't normally useful if you don't hit your intended target, and a slow with some damage can still be useful if you don't get the knockup.

Also in regards to his Q, a lot of players don't value the zoning power it has. Just by charging his Q, he leaves an area where his opponents physically cannot enter. You can use this to restrict your opponent's abilities to go through different chokeholds around the map or prevent the enemy carries from participating optimally in fights.

Using his W in teamfights is a similar story. In the mid/late game his primary role is that of an initiating tank, using his ultimate to engage and using his basic abilities to draw aggro and disrupt the enemy team's carries. His W plays into this by offering a damage threat his opponents cannot ignore. Ideally, they have to deal with your shield such that they don't take a large amount of magic damage, and if they do deal with your shield then your carries don't take the damage you just took, and they can continue to deal damage without nearly as much contest.

A lot of players also use their W when they start their ultimate such that they get its magic damage when they bump into the enemy team and less for the shield it provides. Ideally, Sion's initiation combo consists of RWQ, where you R, W, and then Q after landing. RQ is guaranteed given Sion doesn't get CC'd or his opponents don't cleanse/QSS his CC, and gives at minimum a 2 second CC chain, at maximum a 4 second CC chain. That's also 4 seconds where you aren't taking damage, so his shield isn't needed to block damage and your shield loses the reason why it's good for taking aggro. Sion also gets tanky enough where you can afford to wait a few seconds for your shield to come off cooldown, especially given its cooldown starts when the shield detonates.