Sion is way too weak except as a trick character, in that you build AP and get early game kills and snowball. You can build yourself into a decent late game character with AD, but then you look at your skills/stats and based on the role on your team (semi-tanky, very sustainable DPS) you might as well have picked Jax or Morde.

Sion got hit with a couple nerfs to weaken his AP game that nerfed his AD game even more: 70 less starting HP and .5 reduced duration on his stun.

The thing is, despite good AD from Enrage, he has one of, if not the worst, base attack speeds in the game. So much so that even with his ulti, his attack speed doesn't outclass any other melee dps of similar level and equipment. Simply put, it's a bit hard for him to 1v1 unless he has his ulti.

Other fighters with good sustain (better sustain) such as Xin, Morde, Udyr, WW all have scaling magic resist, Sion doesn't -- it's 30 the whole game unless you itemize. Trouble is, you need more attack speed than other melee characters to get rolling, so that's just one fewer item slot you have to really build correctly. Would be a good area to consider for a buff.

Buff his attack speed (base and scaling) already so he is on par with other melee dps, or at the very least, has top tier AS for the mage class. I think the only other champ with worse AS is Annie, and she more than makes up for it with her awesome spells. Sion's spells are good, but essentially, he needs buffs to make up for the fact that there are only two of them. His initial burst is quite good if built with AP, but the next salvo is gonna take a while, meanwhile you don't have armor pen, crit, or decent attack speed, so even with your ulti up, your DPS is **** -- if you were Annie, 3 seconds later you'd have another nuke up while the whole time Tibbers was doing decent DPS with his attacks and aura.

The only other buff I can think of that would be thematically appropriate would be a buff on his ulti. It's pretty good, except it depends on items way more than it really ought to -- maybe on activate it should give some armor penetration or crit chance so Sion is more viable as a hybrid... his ulti should feel like an ultimate, not like a farming tool, even if built with AP -- AP Sion should be like Gunblade Morde a little bit -- a scary initial burst, decent sustain, with his autos doing enough damage to actually threaten -- AD Sion should be able to do enough damage during that 1.5 seconds so that the stun is on par with Xin's knock-up, for example.

Anyway, I'm running out of steam for now -- any thoughts or discussion on the direction to take Sion?

Good Sions build AP and nuke down their carries with just Q and W.

Yes and no, the amount of farm it takes to get to that point is way above average. To really maximize AP Sion, you need Lich Bane on top of a Deathcap, plus boots and a couple Doran's Rings. Yeah, you do get a good laning phase and some good ganks, but that's what you really need to be able to kill a carry late game -- plus a Banshee Veil pretty much ruins you. I'm not looking to really make AP Sion better, I'm looking to make Sion fit his own character while still being equally viable built AP -- he's like Morde or Singed flavorwise, but plays a bit like a watered-down Annie --- the stun being more reliable is nice, but it's considerably less of a big deal now that it has been nerfed.

He used to be classified as a tank and a mage, now he's just classified as a Fighter, but he doesn't fit the Fighter role that well at all -- he's not tanky enough without sacrificing damage, basically, the ideal build would be an AP/AD hybrid so you could do a decent burst and then use your ultimate to leech doing decent DPS until your stun was ready again -- which would fit the unstoppable juggernaut image portrayed in his flavor text.

But to accomplish that, you need too many stats, and it's just too much money to get a character that doesn't really equal his rivals. Jax, Morde, Singed, yeah, pure AP he does more burst (maybe) but his sustained is worse and his tanking is worse. He's such an early game champ in his actual gameplay yet the way his "E" scales suggests he was intended to scale better into the late game than he actually does.

If he's to be even with his main rivals, he basically just needs some attack speed and some other buffs so that his sustained presence and tanking are a little better while not hurting his initial burst too much.

He used to be an awesome champ (I mained AP Sion for a long time, and played a fair bit of AD Sion too) but now the only reason he's good is all the experience I have under my belt. Hextech Gunblade, for example, should be an awesome item on him, but it's not, and a big part of that is how slow his attack speed is and how badly it scales. Morde, for example, at level 18 has >1.0 attack speed, Sion end-game has barely .9, might even be in the high .8. You go to use his ulti, which adds 50% attack speed, and you're still not faster than some characters' base level 18 AS! Dumb. Even built AP, his ulti should be more meaningful in a team fight, built AD, he shouldn't require more items than every other AD melee to compete.

I mean, if you want to keep him exactly the same, I guess you can, but then he's just a less viable version of other mages who doesn't need to build RoA to have good hit points, but whose damage is less. One Sion combo is less than one Annie combo, Brand combo, etc., unless he has Lich Bane which requires him to be up and personal with the enemy -- I'll say one thing, his combo is better than other mages when those mages ultis are down, but Annie, Brand, etc. can also repeat their combo faster and chain spells together more efficiently.

Sion's shield could be really awesome if it burst when it took enough damage, making him kind of a suicide bomber, , which if Riot were to do a rework, would be my #1 wish -- but it doesn't, it just fizzles out -- it would be very cool to tank him out a little, get a Deathcap, and start beating on the carry with autos with everyone afraid to attack you cuz they might accidentally kill the carry from bursting your shield, all the while throwing down stuns left and right to really disrupt a team. Then your shield bursts and you're pretty much dead, but for those 10 seconds, you'd feel like the unstoppable berserker you were born to be.

Sion just needs some attention, there are any number of ways to do it -- I just hope he doesn't end up reworked and turn out as lame as the Kayle or Tryn remakes. Wouldn't mind if it turned out to be more of a GP remake, though.

To put things simply about Sion he is too highly spread out to be effective anymore. You go AP and his E and R become semi-useless. It's cool that you can still deal melee damage and heal your allies with them, as well as giving HP every time you get a kill but the main problem with Sion lies in the fact that if you build one way you will get skills that are semi-useless.

For AP sion you lose effectiveness on is E and R. While for AD Sion you lose effectivebess for his W and Q.
Riot needs to push Sion to either AP or AD not in between.
(Bear in mind that all comparisons made are without runes, masteries or items)
Lets touch on AD Sion first:
His W loses the most effectiveness, the protection from it is minimal without AP, it's similar to Shen's but has a longer cooldown, sure it deals damage but thats providing that burst from mages like Ryze and Veigar don't pop it first. Hell in a melee fight against someone like Tryndamere Sion will lose his shield incredibly fast. One - Two hits if he's lucky. To make this up to scratch you could make Sions shield scale with AD (Granted at a lower rate than 1:1 it would be crazy otherwise), you could also increase the base shield on it and maybe even make it reduce damage taken.
His Stun is still incredibly good on AD sion and 90% of stuns are only used for the stun itself and not the damage so he doesn't lose anything other than damage output by going for AD and combining it with a Frozen Mallet and his ultimate and his damage output goes through the roof on the character he has hit. The main problem is how easy he is to stun/snare/knock up in this situation, if anyone is nearby your damage output will not be high enough to take their health out before they get to you, with the large cooldown on his stun and the massive mana cost on his skills (And of course his low base mana) getting a kill and then escaping is insanely tough. Still though the stun is fine as it is for AD Sion. Its his base stats that kinda ruin him. To encorporate this into an AD set buffing the stun to 2 seconds again may be necessary but it may be fine where it is only testing would tell.
Now then his E, Enrage, his most noteable skill in AD. He gains HP and a ton of AD along with it and with lifesteal he can easily prevent the HP cost of his attacks. Compare this to Master Yi's Wuju style though. It has much a more reliable AD steroid (Even when not active) and combined with his ultimate can decimate players fast. Sion may have a similar ultimate but it doesn't let him catch up without item reliance since his MS is low as is. Compare again to the AD steroid on Tryndamere. Since trynd doesn't need items to crit the steroid is much more useful and he has much more reliable gap closers past a single stun. Making Trynd a much better pick, Ashe, Irelia, Miss Fortune, Yi, next to all carries have more gap closing available to them making the AD steroid from Enrage alot less useful that it could be. The HP buff is still nice but with the AS proccing builds on characters like vayne, kayle and kog'maw running around it doesn't help as soon as they get a Madreds. What does this mean? Well we get more magic resist to prevent this damage. This sacrifices damage on Sion however and although this happens with other carries Sion doesn't have the base stats to make up for it as previously stated.
And now, the Ultimate. This thing is absolutely amazing but it doesn't help in a team fight as much as it should since CC is just too common thus preventing his from life stealing anything. As a result if you gave him something like 10 Tenacity on top of his ulti's effect (Maybe reduces the lifesteal) he would be much more effective at fighting in a team fight and getting his allies to live with that AoE auto attack heal I love so much. Other than that the ultimate is fine.
His passive reduces damage from auto attacks, but in a team fight the bulk of Sions damage taken comes from back row mages. Buffing this to make it reduce magic damage and then nerfing the reduction a little would work nicely.
Making Sion an AD character would need buffing of his Base AS and Mana along with their builds however reducing the mana costs on his skill would also work wonders since after his initial burst round he doesn't have enough mana as an AD to continue.

With that leviathan of text out of the way, it's time to touch on AP Sion:
With his stun he nukes hard and can only be compared to the 1:1 ratio on Tarics stun. They are both single target nukes and deal a substantial stun, while tarics is less reliable it can ultimately do more in a situation while Sions stun is well rounded. If pushing Sion to AP is the way forward then leaving this skill as is would be fine.
Next up his shield. God **** when you get AP as sion you have one hell of a white bar on your health bar. Its almost as large as Blitcranks but it can be brought up without being in danger of low HP essentially giving him around 700~ extra HP to soak up some damage with. The AoE nuke from it is incredible too, if it stays up you do a boatload of damage to everyone in the team fight. If it doesn't they're wasted alot of damage potential that can be used on squishies to pick them out. So its a win win situation. This would be fine the way it is if Sion was made AP.
Now then, enrage. The HP buff is delicious on the nuking side of things. It lets him run in, farm an entire minion wave, gain around 70~ HP and then run out, while in a team fight it lets him take a few hits while bursting and then get out. It's the AD buff where the problem lies. I would personally suggest giving his E a magic damage steroid similar to Kassadins in which scales with AP and allows him to attack and deal damage after his initial burst. Keeping him in a team fight. Again though for this to be useful his base AS needs to be buffed. The HP cost could also become a Mana cost.
Now then for his ultimate. It works as a nice heal for allies after a team fight in an AP sion set, but thats about it. Using it in a team fight would be pointless, but what if you made the lifesteal spell vamp? That lets him nuke down a whole minion wave with his shield, spam and heal him to full and if you made the spells AoE heal like his auto attacks did then it would give him a wonderful way to keep a push/teamfight going. Along with this if the magic damage toggle on his E was incorporated too it would make healing with auto attacks also work!
His passive again needs the same thing as his AD set however.


There you go my comprehensive as hell input as to how to change Sion. Your thoughts?

The issue is that as AD, Sion is less dangerous than champions that were specifically designed to be AD (such as Xin and Noc), he's got a lower movement speed and attack speed than a normal melee AD champion and his only significant steroid is his ult and it's on a far longer CD than it should be. His stun isn't really much, it's decent but in my opinion is a poor skill when you go AD because of the casting animation that causes Sion to stop when you cast the spell -he's already a little slower than other melee champions and the pause basically makes his stun a gap closer more than something to pin his target down while he wails on them. His W as AD is worthless, honestly the skill doesn't exist on AD Sion unless you max it first and then it's only noteworthy for a handful of early levels. His E is perfect.

Basically if he goes AD 2 skills are wasted, if he goes AP 2 skills are wasted, if he goes hybrid 4 skills are wasted because none of his stats are high enough to make any of them dangerous.

I'm not really advocating that he get transformed into a strictly AP or AD character, I really think he's a hybrid like Akali, old Kayle, etc.

That said, I played a few games with AP Sion and worked really hard at timing my spells perfectly and bringing out my "A" game, and yeah, it's still really viable and you can carry pretty hard.

That said, what I'd like to see is Sion buffed in such a way that you can build mostly AP to abuse his Q and W, but then build a bit of AD, and the that AD plus your ulti is enough to do moderate damage and survive for another round of QW -- unless you get CC'd enough that you can't leech.

That said, Sion's skillset is really, really good early game, and maybe it's too difficult to give him good scaling without making him OP. One point in enrage is really good for last-hitting, one point in ulti is good for recovering after a fight without having to go to base.

What does everyone think of the idea where the shield explodes rather than gets cancelled if enough damage is done to it? IIRC, there is a DotA champ with a similar abiliity, though IDK if he's considered UP, OP, balanced, or what, or what his other skills are.

Also, Tserris, you've just about summed it up perfectly -- though I wouldn't say useless, I'd say limited in usefulness to limited scenarios. Sion is an awesome ganker and laner, but very situational in teamfights.

Ultimately, I think what would make him good played AP, AD, or hybrid, without unbalancing any existing build, would be a small MS boost on his ulti while active (10% or so), and improved AS scaling/base AS...

Another idea I had was a passive on his ulti similar to WW's blood hunter -- except rather than damaged opponents, it gives the boost for underarmored opponents -- the potential to taste the flesh of his enemies (I mean, it is called Cannibalism) excites him.

Phreak said something about Sion.
He said (summarizing)
They're not going to rework Sion because some people like the 1-2 one trick pony he is and that he's fine like that.

It made me mad.

AD Sion, 1k Crits and heals late game. Nuff said.

Only 1350 champ I don't or won't ever own for a reason.