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So I noticed there's no Sion champion thread and figured I'd make it since I've been on a little bit of a Sion kick recently.
Sion, the Undead Champion
Sion's essentially an early game AP Carry. Some people will tell you he's viable as a Tank or a Melee DPS, but really Sion's underwhelming as anything other than a beefy AP carry who abuses 2 extremely strong 1:1 AP Ratio Skills. Tank doesn't really work because basically the only thing he does as a tank is use a single target stun every 8 seconds. DPS doesn't work solely because of his poor base attack speed. With low base attack speed, he scales poorly off of attack speed items and thus can never really compete with true DPS champions. If you really wanna bark up either of these trees, I suggest trying to roll them up into a hybrid-type build, but I really have no idea what to suggest there... maybe d-ring -> boots -> sheen -> merc treads and then shoot for stuff like Triforce, Atma's Impaler, Guardian Angel, Banshee's Veil, Phantom Dancer and Last Whisper. I dunno, it seems stupid to me. Aight, let's get to the nitty gritty.
Pre-game Spec
9/0/21 Sion has no need for Strength of Spirit because you never take damage due to Death's Caress being OP as hell so you might as well take the 15% MPen IMO.
Marks: MPen
Seals: Mana Regen/Level
Glyphs: AP/Level or Flat CD. I have AP/Level on my page and I hog blue buff, however, without blue buff, IMO you want Flat CD to have the 40% CDR for late game.
Quints: Flat AP
Flash so that you can position yourself to blow up your shield on as many targets as possible
Ignite to abuse your early burst and make people respect your ability to kill them
Laning
He's really strong in a duo lane, but in my opinion he's one of the strongest, if not the very strongest, solo top in the game as at worst he just trades free farm with people who can shrug off his harassment like Morgana and Sivir. So try to get solo top. Open d-ring + hp pot and take W first unless you had to take stun to try to pick off someone in a level 1 encounter. Sit around and last hit, using your shield at first to shrug off their harass as you last hit. Also camp the brush vs. ranged champions until you need to pop out and last hit. Brush camping is really powerful with Sion because it lets you get your shield to the point you can detonate it before they can do anything to knock it down. At level 2, you grab Q. Sometimes E sounds tempting since you could get some extra health as you farm here, but ultimately I don't think 20 heath is worth the risk of seeing an early gank coming and not having your stun to run away. At level 3, you grab the 2nd level of W and you can start to use your W to farm creep waves that have been beaten up. E at level 4 to start netting some health for farming like a boss. W again at level 5, R at level 6, W > Q > R > E. Level 3 Shield almost one shots ranged creeps, level 4 shield does, and when you grab a NLR, you can pretty easily 1-shot entire creep waves, especially if you soften up the Melee creeps with auto-attacks as you sit in Death's Caress.
So your basic strategy here is to farm until level 3 or 5, depending on how squishy your opponent is and then just walking around his creep wave and trying to detonate your shield on him after letting him helplessly waste time and/or mana on trying to fight through it. You can stun him too if you'd like, but be careful about managing your mana. I typically only stun when sitting on full mana or setting up a kill. Also feel free to towerdive with your creepwave on the tower if you know you have the burst to kill the opponent. With your shield up, stun the opponent, ignite, auto, detonate shield after it takes 1 or 2 towershots for you and then briskly walk away and then come back and keep farming with imba caress.
Item Build
d-ring
boots
NLR or Sheen (NLR if you can, Sheen if for whatever reason you're failing and need more mana to hang around in the lane)
Deathcap
CDR Boots
Blue Elixir pump starts here
Lichbane
Void Staff/Abyssal Scepter/Zhonya's Hourglass/Banshee's Veil/Guardian Angel
Later Game Play
Run around and 1-shot massive amounts of farm. I typically outfarm sivirs up until 20 minutes or so into the game simply by 1-shotting my lane and then jacking up opposing jungle with my shield or covering other lanes and 1-shotting them. Once you have Deathcap + CDR boots + Blue Elixir, you're sitting on like 300 AP and 40% CDR if you have CDR runes or blue buff, making you a fucking unkillable monster until the opponents start grouping up and focusing down your shield. Once they figure that out, you have to learn better shield timing that lets you detonate it before they can do enough damage to blow it up. Lichbane + your ult is a slick trick to heal yourself and your teammates for a ton of health too.
Uh, that's pretty much all I got, Sion's wicked easy and wicked powerful. Lemme know if I missed anything :p
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I tend to skip taking my ult until level 10 when I can put two points into it in a row and go WQWEWEWEWRR then R>E>Q (W is maxed). E over Q because the stun duration doesn't change, the damage you do from it DOES but it still has the same AP ratio regardless and I enjoy getting more HP per kill because you will be farming like a boss during this part of the game. It really makes you super tanky later on with Hourglass against phys dps and Abyssal/Banshees against casters.
IMO Ghost/Flash for the chase-stun kills but ignite is legit too.
Also, don't forget that E has to be active to gain the health bonus on kill!
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You trade 10 AD per autoattack and .5 HP per kill for 45 magic damage per stun and 1 second less cooldown. Per rank in Q/E. Imo that's a huge hit on your midgame burst, so I would at least consider it situational to level E over Q (can't burst hard enough anyways/already kill people with the lower damage).
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Yea, you just leave E on all the time.
The main reason you level Q, IMO, is for the CD. It goes 12/11/10/9/8, so it's a pretty big difference between level 1 and level 5 (50%). Also, the 200 extra burst damage is big before your AP goes into the stratosphere.
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Actually, how do you teamfight as Sion? When do you engage, who do you target, do you retreat after you used your shield, when do you stay and pop your ult? Sion always felt rather awkward to me because his survivability explodes with his shield.
Didn't really play him much because of this and I don't see him a lot either.
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Another big problem DPS Sion has similar to folks like Nasus who also can deal a large amount of melee damage is: he doesn't have any moves that make him good at getting up to people. Since there are so many AoE CCs in this game (ashe volley, aniv ult, for example) that will be going up in fights, these guys can be CC'd into almost uselessness without even being focused.
As far as AP Sion goes, that second skilling order seems interesting and I'll definitely try it out (E>Q and R delayed until 10).
For items, I've always liked Deathfire Grasp. It's not particularly expensive, gives useful stats, is built from cheap components, and gives you a third AP scaling move. While Lich Bane + Deathcap + Blue Pot is probably more damage than any other combination of items for the same cost, getting Deathfire -> Deathcap should make Sion's strong early/midgame that much better.
I don't like an early Sheen on Sion now that they removed the pool. The easiest way to use his combo is to activate shield, run towards them, stun, hit, explode shield, and you'll only get one sheen proc out of it. Trying to add in some 2 second gaps in this combo is difficult and not always possible. For the same cost a Codex supplies a similar amount of AP and effective mana while giving CDR as well.
I haven't played Sion since the Zhonya's split, though, and while I definitely got Deathfire before Zhonya's prepatch, I'd maaaybe consider rushing the Deathcap now.
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On January 15 2011 06:54 spinesheath wrote:
Actually, how do you teamfight as Sion? When do you engage, who do you target, do you retreat after you used your shield, when do you stay and pop your ult? Sion always felt rather awkward to me because his survivability explodes with his shield.
Didn't really play him much because of this and I don't see him a lot either.
Depends on teamcomps and shit, but super late game where you just explode after your shield does, you flash in, explode shield, stun, activate zhonya's, shield when you come out of Zhonya's, activate ult, whack someone, stun, explode shield if you're not dead.
Earlier, I tend to stun, run up, explode shield without exposing myself to too many of them and then run away until my CDs come back. I'm usually a poker with my shield and insta-gibber once I see a squishy under 75% HP.
DFG is an interesting thought to help scale lategame, but I can't imagine it being better earlier than after lichbane.
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I don't like sheen or lichbane on him tbh, he just doesn't have enough cooldowns for it. Doesn't proc enough
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Marshall Islands3404 Posts
pro AP sion tip (used to main him on my weaker acct before people found out how good it was) :
if your vs a team that has strong kiting abilities, buy mobility boots. with your shield on you keep the movement speed until it bursts very useful
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I play Sion a lot.
Mainly jungling AD Sion. At times AP as well.
I don't think AD is bad. Yea, he has low attackspeed. But if you gank, you probably couldn't attack them at your max attackspeed anyway because they are running away from you. You have to run next to or behind them while hitting them, and in these situations higher damage instead of faster attackspeed is good.
Usually I just go lantern, merc, ghostblade on him.
APen marks, manaregen seals, magicres/lvl blues and movespeed quintessences what I use.
Your ultimate + ghostblade gives you a huge attackspeed boost. You kill squishies in 4-5 hits usually with ghostblade+green elixir.
Your ganks are quite deadly with stun+shield and your high damage, you can gank at lvl 4.
After lantern you can take down dragon with your ulti really fast (lvl 6-7). You will come out with max health also.
You can own with him really hard if you are fed. I also won a few TL inhouse matches with jungle Sion (not like it's that much of a feat).
About AP.. well the previous few posts had some good info, thanks. About skipping early Sheen, I will try that.
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United States47024 Posts
So I'm sort of confused about this weird aura Sion build I've seen Dan Dinh play more than a couple times.
Ghost+Heal, Aegis/Mercs/Starks/GA
What exactly is the goal of this sort of playstyle?
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On January 15 2011 09:40 TheYango wrote:
So I'm sort of confused about this weird aura Sion build I've seen Dan Dinh play more than a couple times.
Ghost+Heal, Aegis/Mercs/Starks/GA
What exactly is the goal of this sort of playstyle?
he's naturally unkillable because of shield, high HP, great rounded defense from aegis/GA, AND revives because of GA, so he's able to provide lifesteal for whole team with his ult and starks, heal whole team with Heal, defensive stats for whole team with aegis, and constantly be stunning their carry/peeling for his own carry while the other team has no incentive to focus him. imagine centaur warchief from dota - you've got no incentive to attack him cause it will just set you behind, but if you don't, he is constantly nuking and stunning your whole team. it's an annoyance support build, not a carry build
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On January 15 2011 08:39 freelander wrote:
I play Sion a lot.
Mainly jungling AD Sion. At times AP as well.
I don't think AD is bad. Yea, he has low attackspeed. But if you gank, you probably couldn't attack them at your max attackspeed anyway because they are running away from you. You have to run next to or behind them while hitting them, and in these situations higher damage instead of faster attackspeed is good.
Usually I just go lantern, merc, ghostblade on him.
APen marks, manaregen seals, magicres/lvl blues and movespeed quintessences what I use.
Your ultimate + ghostblade gives you a huge attackspeed boost. You kill squishies in 4-5 hits usually with ghostblade+green elixir.
Your ganks are quite deadly with stun+shield and your high damage, you can gank at lvl 4.
After lantern you can take down dragon with your ulti really fast (lvl 6-7). You will come out with max health also.
You can own with him really hard if you are fed. I also won a few TL inhouse matches with jungle Sion (not like it's that much of a feat).
About AP.. well the previous few posts had some good info, thanks. About skipping early Sheen, I will try that.
In terms of whether you want to go AP or AD nowadays, i think its less that AD sion is bad (its still pretty decent, just takes awhile to get started) and more that AP sion is stupid good with deathcap. the fact that you can hit 300 ap with deathcap, 3 drings and some AP runes is just insane. not to mention the old zhonyas active was kinda useless on sion.
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On January 15 2011 06:44 spinesheath wrote:
You trade 10 AD per autoattack and .5 HP per kill for 45 magic damage per stun and 1 second less cooldown. Per rank in Q/E. Imo that's a huge hit on your midgame burst, so I would at least consider it situational to level E over Q (can't burst hard enough anyways/already kill people with the lower damage).
Interesting, I just learned something about the champ. That cooldown reduction is pretty significant in teamfights actually.
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Don't you guys run into mana issues in mid/late with no mana items at all? I tend to get a RoA first, it slows down your AP rolling ofc but it gives you some much needed mana and makes you pretty tanky.
If you get bluebuff every time and don't die I guess it's bearable but in solo queue honestly that's not always a a given 
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United States47024 Posts
On January 15 2011 18:43 Woony wrote:Don't you guys run into mana issues in mid/late with no mana items at all? I tend to get a RoA first, it slows down your AP rolling ofc but it gives you some much needed mana and makes you pretty tanky. If you get bluebuff every time and don't die I guess it's bearable but in solo queue honestly that's not always a a given
mp5 per level runes plus smart mana management should cover your needs. Sion isn't super-spammy, and even in fights, you really only need to fall back on two spells. Your mana demands aren't enormous.
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Sion's an asshole don't teach others how to play this asshole champion.
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On January 15 2011 18:43 Woony wrote:Don't you guys run into mana issues in mid/late with no mana items at all? I tend to get a RoA first, it slows down your AP rolling ofc but it gives you some much needed mana and makes you pretty tanky. If you get bluebuff every time and don't die I guess it's bearable but in solo queue honestly that's not always a a given
mp5 per level yellows easily do the trick, plus sion grabs sheen -> lichbane after hat which is an extra 200 -> 350 mana. I don't really have mana problems on him at all. If you still have problems, just go steal blue buff from your jungler, chances are they won't need it. His spells are kind of expensive, but during teamfights you're gonna get one shield, one stun, maybe 2 stuns off
Also, AP Sion is effing lulz to play.
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On January 15 2011 08:39 freelander wrote:
I play Sion a lot.
Mainly jungling AD Sion. At times AP as well.
I don't think AD is bad. Yea, he has low attackspeed. But if you gank, you probably couldn't attack them at your max attackspeed anyway because they are running away from you. You have to run next to or behind them while hitting them, and in these situations higher damage instead of faster attackspeed is good.
Usually I just go lantern, merc, ghostblade on him.
APen marks, manaregen seals, magicres/lvl blues and movespeed quintessences what I use.
Your ultimate + ghostblade gives you a huge attackspeed boost. You kill squishies in 4-5 hits usually with ghostblade+green elixir.
Your ganks are quite deadly with stun+shield and your high damage, you can gank at lvl 4.
After lantern you can take down dragon with your ulti really fast (lvl 6-7). You will come out with max health also.
You can own with him really hard if you are fed. I also won a few TL inhouse matches with jungle Sion (not like it's that much of a feat).
About AP.. well the previous few posts had some good info, thanks. About skipping early Sheen, I will try that.
Could you elaborate abit on jungle sion, I tried some stuff out in a custom game but couldnt really find a way to not be super low when i hit lvl 4. What route do you take and and skill order do you take? I presume you start with normal cloth+5pot aswell?
edit:what masteries do you use aswell? In my tries I was running 1-8-21 since I was kinda winging it.
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The trick with Sions mana is realising that the stun is incredibly overpriced for what it does on it´s own. To make it worth it to use it over the much more awesome Shield (which is better than 1:1 since you get damagemigitation and AOE (!!) damage out of it) you either have to save your own life or get a kill. You can´t harrass with it, or even with it and a shieldexplosion.
Rather than that scare people off with the Shield and keep lasthitting. During laning you actually don´t want to blow it - yet make the enemy think you do. Leveling the stun is imho a bad idea because you can´t actually want to use it frequently while laning - it´s too expensive together with the shield and you always want to use the shield.
Later in the game you need to abuse the 2 second Stun on a 8 second base CD. It´s possible to keep one enemy stunned for 40% of the time, look at it like that. In that aspect it´s as good as Rammuses Taunt.
You want to be farmed enough that you can stand next to an enemy and heal your Team with your ult and possibly even get shieldexplosions off.
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EPT
