(Image courtesy of the League of Legends Wikia)
Sion’s passive is Feel No Pain. It gives Sion a 40% chance ignore anywhere between 30-50 damage (depending on his level) from basic attacks. This is obviously pretty powerful in the early game against enemies who rely on basic attacks as their main damage output, as it has a pretty good chance to block a pretty good chunk of their damage. Although not that effective against ability power champions, remember that it can also block incoming basic attacks from minions as well.
Sion’s Q is Cryptic Gaze. It is a single-opponent targeted ability that stuns the victim for a flat 1.5 seconds and deals magic damage. Of course, with AD Sion, the damage is not going to be significant, but because of its extreme utility, I almost always take a point in Q first.
Sion’s W is Death’s Caress. Upon activating the ability, Sion gains a shield that protects him for a particular amount of health. If the shield is completely damaged, it fades away. If the shield remains after ten seconds, it explodes, dealing a flat amount of damage regardless of how much it was damaged. Four seconds after activating the shield, Sion can manually detonate his shield by reactivating the ability. When using Death’s Caress, be sure to keep an eye on how much of the shield is remaining, and detonate it as close to its expiration as possible without having it fade away.
Sion’s E is Enrage. Enrage allows Sion to become extremely tanky and viable as an AD champion because of the two passives it provides while it is active. First, for a small health cost, Sion’s attack damage is increased by a flat amount. The health cost can be almost completely neutralized with a little bit of life steal from masteries and a Doran’s Blade. On top of that, while Enrage is active, every time Sion kills any unit, he permanently gains a flat amount of health that stacks indefinitely. Thus, the longer the game goes on, the more health Sion can get.
Sion’s ultimate is Cannibalism, another ability that makes Sion extremely powerful and viable as an AD champion. Cannibalism gives Sion insane amounts of life steal (50%, 75%, 100%) and a 50% attack speed bonus or 20 seconds. Allied units standing near Sion gain half of Sion’s additional life steal. You read that right – 100% life steal – that means that Sion regenerates health equal to the amount of damage he is dealing to his opponents with his basic attacks. Thus, building Sion as AD to maximize damage output allows Sion to regenerate health so fast that he becomes extremely difficult (and in some cases nearly impossible) to take down.
For the more popular AP Sion build, people will tell you to max your Q and W first, but that is exactly the opposite of what we want to do for AD Sion. Because Sion’s E will give him lots of damage output and help him get tanky, we want to max it first to gain the benefits of the skill as soon as possible. Then, W should be leveled second, as not only does it give a temporary shield to increase Sion’s survivability during fights, it also gives that extra bit of damage that might make the difference between a kill and a death in a close encounter. Although Q is important to take first because of its utility, the stun duration does not change as it is leveled up, so we want to max Q last. Of course, his ultimate should be leveled whenever it becomes available.
For masteries, I take all AD-enhancing masteries in the offense tree, and place all remaining points in the defense tree. I do not get any AP-based masteries in offense, as you should prioritize survivability over the tiny bit of extra damage output from his ability power skills.
For runes, I take flat armor seals, magic resist per level glyphs, flat armor quintessences, and armor penetration marks. The only two types of runes that are viable to change are quintessences and marks – you can either go with attack damage, attack speed, or stick with armor penetration. I prefer armor quintessences to increase survivability, and because a majority of viable champions on Twisted Treeline are bruiser fighters and base a majority of their damage output on physical damage.
For items, I build Sion as a standard AD carry. I start with a Doran’s Blade and get Berserker’s Greaves and Wriggle’s Lantern as quickly as possible for the mobility with the boots and utility with the wards. Then, my goal items are to get Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer, and Bloodthirster. If the enemies are stacking armor, I might prioritize Last Whisper or Black Cleaver. If the opponents are heavy on crowd control, I might get Banshee’s Veil or Quicksilver Sash; if I end up getting targeted down and my allies don’t have enough damage output, I might get Guardian Angel so I can rejoin the fight.
I generally would not recommend getting any other defensive items on Sion. Even though many AD carries get Frozen Mallet, I would not recommend it on Sion because it takes up a valuable item slot. Although the health is useful, you should instead focus more on farming and killing minions to build up your health passively rather than using an item to do so. As for the slow, instead of getting an item-based slow, try to secure the Lizard Elder’s red buff.
A lot of people might challenge this build telling me that this essentially turns Sion into a glass cannon. He has extremely high damage output, but because he has to run in the middle of his opponents to attack, he essentially becomes useless because he’s not able to kite like most other glass cannon ranged AD carries. Again, this is not true because of Sion’s E, Enrage. As long as you are good with consistently farming throughout the entire game and make sure to focus on last-hitting minions, when you start engaging in team fights during mid- and late-game, you should have enough passive health that it should be as much as what an item would be able to give you. On top of that, Sion is naturally pretty bulky – as of today, not long after the release of Jayce, Sion is the third most bulkiest champion based solely on base stats. At level 18, Sion has 2275 health; this only comes behind Nunu’s 2381 and Alistar’s 2278.
An example of a good team fight would be to initiate by stunning the squishiest enemy champion, or any champion in range. Charge in to the champion, and begin to attack. When you feel as if you can actually engage and fight (and the enemies aren’t going to quickly disengage by Flashing over a wall), activate your ultimate. It is very important to only activate your ultimate when you know you will be dealing damage, as you do not want to waste it and get caught in a team fight without it. Once you start attacking, make sure you are ALWAYS ATTACKING SOMETHING. Life steal only works when you are dealing damage. Do NOT chase enemies who are running away, because that means you are not attacking. Even if you are not focusing one specific target down, make sure you are always attacking and keep dealing tons of damage to everyone on the entire enemy team. As long as you are attacking, you will stay alive; once you stop attacking and start running around trying to chase someone, you will die. If the enemies are starting to kite you, it is acceptable to start attacking minions or jungle monsters nearby to wait for the cooldown for your stun; as long as your opponents are not hyper carry champions, you should be able to life steal health more quickly than they are able to deal damage to you.
So, if Sion is able to defeat enemies 3 vs. 1, then why don’t more people play Sion? Unfortunately, there are a few issues with AD Sion.
First of all, he is extremely boring to play. The game will literally consist of endless farming, then stunning people, dealing damage with basic attacks, then repeating the process. There is absolutely no champion-specific skill involved other than being able to constantly attack something in order to regenerate health.
On top of that, AD Sion can easily be shut down by many counter picks, and can be overall disabled by a light to moderate amount of hard crowd control. For example, if you were to solo top lane, the enemy might send up a Sivir to counter you (yes, this has happened to me before). Sivir has an ability set that is perfect for countering Sion. Sion initiates fights with his stun, but Sivir can easily use her spell shield to block the incoming projectile. Sivir is a ranged champion with a long-range harassment ability, so even if Sion is far away from Sivir, he will still take damage. If Sion decides to walk towards Sivir to start a fight, Sivir can easily back off and kite Sion, dealing tons of damage in the process and forcing Sion to retreat to avoid death.
As for crowd control, literally any form of crowd control except slows will completely shut down Sion’s ability to both tank and have massive damage output at the same time. For example, if Sion is stunned, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is airborne, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is feared, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is snared or rooted, he might still be able to attack, but most people will most likely be smart enough to take a step away from him so he cannot continue attacking. As you can see, any hard crowd control easily prevents Sion from doing the most important thing that he exists to do.
So, if he’s so easily shut down, why did I mention earlier that Sion is a strong champion? First, if you get items with tenacity (such as Mercury’s Treads), you can drastically reduce the length of the disables and might be able to hang in there long enough to start attacking again. Next, Twisted Treeline is a 3 vs. 3, not a 3 vs. 1. If your allies are half-decent, they will also be participating in team fights, and they should be able to help out enough such that even if the team fight doesn’t go perfectly and you don’t get to execute your role to perfection, it will still work out thanks to the overall combined effort of your team.
League of Legends: AD Sion on Twisted Treeline
This week, I’ll be going over a champion who I have played quite a bit in the past, and a champion who is free this week – Sion.
Most people build Sion as AP (ability power) because the champion summary shows that he deals more damage through ability power than attack damage, and because two of his abilities scale pretty nicely off his ability power. However, I play Sion as AD (attack damage) because, during late game, it allows me to engage in 3 vs. 1 fights (or any disadvantaged fights) in Twisted Treeline and still come out victorious.
Sion is a relatively cheap champion that only costs 1350 IP; I highly recommend getting him if you’re looking for a very powerful champion (if used correctly) that requires very little champion-specific skills outside of memorizing his combo and routine during fights.
(Image courtesy of the League of Legends Wikia)
Sion’s passive is Feel No Pain. It gives Sion a 40% chance ignore anywhere between 30-50 damage (depending on his level) from basic attacks. This is obviously pretty powerful in the early game against enemies who rely on basic attacks as their main damage output, as it has a pretty good chance to block a pretty good chunk of their damage. Although not that effective against ability power champions, remember that it can also block incoming basic attacks from minions as well.
Sion’s Q is Cryptic Gaze. It is a single-opponent targeted ability that stuns the victim for a flat 1.5 seconds and deals magic damage. Of course, with AD Sion, the damage is not going to be significant, but because of its extreme utility, I almost always take a point in Q first.
Sion’s W is Death’s Caress. Upon activating the ability, Sion gains a shield that protects him for a particular amount of health. If the shield is completely damaged, it fades away. If the shield remains after ten seconds, it explodes, dealing a flat amount of damage regardless of how much it was damaged. Four seconds after activating the shield, Sion can manually detonate his shield by reactivating the ability. When using Death’s Caress, be sure to keep an eye on how much of the shield is remaining, and detonate it as close to its expiration as possible without having it fade away.
Sion’s E is Enrage. Enrage allows Sion to become extremely tanky and viable as an AD champion because of the two passives it provides while it is active. First, for a small health cost, Sion’s attack damage is increased by a flat amount. The health cost can be almost completely neutralized with a little bit of life steal from masteries and a Doran’s Blade. On top of that, while Enrage is active, every time Sion kills any unit, he permanently gains a flat amount of health that stacks indefinitely. Thus, the longer the game goes on, the more health Sion can get.
Sion’s ultimate is Cannibalism, another ability that makes Sion extremely powerful and viable as an AD champion. Cannibalism gives Sion insane amounts of life steal (50%, 75%, 100%) and a 50% attack speed bonus or 20 seconds. Allied units standing near Sion gain half of Sion’s additional life steal. You read that right – 100% life steal – that means that Sion regenerates health equal to the amount of damage he is dealing to his opponents with his basic attacks. Thus, building Sion as AD to maximize damage output allows Sion to regenerate health so fast that he becomes extremely difficult (and in some cases nearly impossible) to take down.
For the more popular AP Sion build, people will tell you to max your Q and W first, but that is exactly the opposite of what we want to do for AD Sion. Because Sion’s E will give him lots of damage output and help him get tanky, we want to max it first to gain the benefits of the skill as soon as possible. Then, W should be leveled second, as not only does it give a temporary shield to increase Sion’s survivability during fights, it also gives that extra bit of damage that might make the difference between a kill and a death in a close encounter. Although Q is important to take first because of its utility, the stun duration does not change as it is leveled up, so we want to max Q last. Of course, his ultimate should be leveled whenever it becomes available.
For masteries, I take all AD-enhancing masteries in the offense tree, and place all remaining points in the defense tree. I do not get any AP-based masteries in offense, as you should prioritize survivability over the tiny bit of extra damage output from his ability power skills.
For runes, I take flat armor seals, magic resist per level glyphs, flat armor quintessences, and armor penetration marks. The only two types of runes that are viable to change are quintessences and marks – you can either go with attack damage, attack speed, or stick with armor penetration. I prefer armor quintessences to increase survivability, and because a majority of viable champions on Twisted Treeline are bruiser fighters and base a majority of their damage output on physical damage.
For items, I build Sion as a standard AD carry. I start with a Doran’s Blade and get Berserker’s Greaves and Wriggle’s Lantern as quickly as possible for the mobility with the boots and utility with the wards. Then, my goal items are to get Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer, and Bloodthirster. If the enemies are stacking armor, I might prioritize Last Whisper or Black Cleaver. If the opponents are heavy on crowd control, I might get Banshee’s Veil or Quicksilver Sash; if I end up getting targeted down and my allies don’t have enough damage output, I might get Guardian Angel so I can rejoin the fight.
I generally would not recommend getting any other defensive items on Sion. Even though many AD carries get Frozen Mallet, I would not recommend it on Sion because it takes up a valuable item slot. Although the health is useful, you should instead focus more on farming and killing minions to build up your health passively rather than using an item to do so. As for the slow, instead of getting an item-based slow, try to secure the Lizard Elder’s red buff.
A lot of people might challenge this build telling me that this essentially turns Sion into a glass cannon. He has extremely high damage output, but because he has to run in the middle of his opponents to attack, he essentially becomes useless because he’s not able to kite like most other glass cannon ranged AD carries. Again, this is not true because of Sion’s E, Enrage. As long as you are good with consistently farming throughout the entire game and make sure to focus on last-hitting minions, when you start engaging in team fights during mid- and late-game, you should have enough passive health that it should be as much as what an item would be able to give you. On top of that, Sion is naturally pretty bulky – as of today, not long after the release of Jayce, Sion is the third most bulkiest champion based solely on base stats. At level 18, Sion has 2275 health; this only comes behind Nunu’s 2381 and Alistar’s 2278.
An example of a good team fight would be to initiate by stunning the squishiest enemy champion, or any champion in range. Charge in to the champion, and begin to attack. When you feel as if you can actually engage and fight (and the enemies aren’t going to quickly disengage by Flashing over a wall), activate your ultimate. It is very important to only activate your ultimate when you know you will be dealing damage, as you do not want to waste it and get caught in a team fight without it. Once you start attacking, make sure you are ALWAYS ATTACKING SOMETHING. Life steal only works when you are dealing damage. Do NOT chase enemies who are running away, because that means you are not attacking. Even if you are not focusing one specific target down, make sure you are always attacking and keep dealing tons of damage to everyone on the entire enemy team. As long as you are attacking, you will stay alive; once you stop attacking and start running around trying to chase someone, you will die. If the enemies are starting to kite you, it is acceptable to start attacking minions or jungle monsters nearby to wait for the cooldown for your stun; as long as your opponents are not hyper carry champions, you should be able to life steal health more quickly than they are able to deal damage to you.
So, if Sion is able to defeat enemies 3 vs. 1, then why don’t more people play Sion? Unfortunately, there are a few issues with AD Sion.
First of all, he is extremely boring to play. The game will literally consist of endless farming, then stunning people, dealing damage with basic attacks, then repeating the process. There is absolutely no champion-specific skill involved other than being able to constantly attack something in order to regenerate health.
On top of that, AD Sion can easily be shut down by many counter picks, and can be overall disabled by a light to moderate amount of hard crowd control. For example, if you were to solo top lane, the enemy might send up a Sivir to counter you (yes, this has happened to me before). Sivir has an ability set that is perfect for countering Sion. Sion initiates fights with his stun, but Sivir can easily use her spell shield to block the incoming projectile. Sivir is a ranged champion with a long-range harassment ability, so even if Sion is far away from Sivir, he will still take damage. If Sion decides to walk towards Sivir to start a fight, Sivir can easily back off and kite Sion, dealing tons of damage in the process and forcing Sion to retreat to avoid death.
As for crowd control, literally any form of crowd control except slows will completely shut down Sion’s ability to both tank and have massive damage output at the same time. For example, if Sion is stunned, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is airborne, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is feared, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is snared or rooted, he might still be able to attack, but most people will most likely be smart enough to take a step away from him so he cannot continue attacking. As you can see, any hard crowd control easily prevents Sion from doing the most important thing that he exists to do.
So, if he’s so easily shut down, why did I mention earlier that Sion is a strong champion? First, if you get items with tenacity (such as Mercury’s Treads), you can drastically reduce the length of the disables and might be able to hang in there long enough to start attacking again. Next, Twisted Treeline is a 3 vs. 3, not a 3 vs. 1. If your allies are half-decent, they will also be participating in team fights, and they should be able to help out enough such that even if the team fight doesn’t go perfectly and you don’t get to execute your role to perfection, it will still work out thanks to the overall combined effort of your team.
(Image courtesy of the League of Legends Wikia)
Sion’s passive is Feel No Pain. It gives Sion a 40% chance ignore anywhere between 30-50 damage (depending on his level) from basic attacks. This is obviously pretty powerful in the early game against enemies who rely on basic attacks as their main damage output, as it has a pretty good chance to block a pretty good chunk of their damage. Although not that effective against ability power champions, remember that it can also block incoming basic attacks from minions as well.
Sion’s Q is Cryptic Gaze. It is a single-opponent targeted ability that stuns the victim for a flat 1.5 seconds and deals magic damage. Of course, with AD Sion, the damage is not going to be significant, but because of its extreme utility, I almost always take a point in Q first.
Sion’s W is Death’s Caress. Upon activating the ability, Sion gains a shield that protects him for a particular amount of health. If the shield is completely damaged, it fades away. If the shield remains after ten seconds, it explodes, dealing a flat amount of damage regardless of how much it was damaged. Four seconds after activating the shield, Sion can manually detonate his shield by reactivating the ability. When using Death’s Caress, be sure to keep an eye on how much of the shield is remaining, and detonate it as close to its expiration as possible without having it fade away.
Sion’s E is Enrage. Enrage allows Sion to become extremely tanky and viable as an AD champion because of the two passives it provides while it is active. First, for a small health cost, Sion’s attack damage is increased by a flat amount. The health cost can be almost completely neutralized with a little bit of life steal from masteries and a Doran’s Blade. On top of that, while Enrage is active, every time Sion kills any unit, he permanently gains a flat amount of health that stacks indefinitely. Thus, the longer the game goes on, the more health Sion can get.
Sion’s ultimate is Cannibalism, another ability that makes Sion extremely powerful and viable as an AD champion. Cannibalism gives Sion insane amounts of life steal (50%, 75%, 100%) and a 50% attack speed bonus or 20 seconds. Allied units standing near Sion gain half of Sion’s additional life steal. You read that right – 100% life steal – that means that Sion regenerates health equal to the amount of damage he is dealing to his opponents with his basic attacks. Thus, building Sion as AD to maximize damage output allows Sion to regenerate health so fast that he becomes extremely difficult (and in some cases nearly impossible) to take down.
For the more popular AP Sion build, people will tell you to max your Q and W first, but that is exactly the opposite of what we want to do for AD Sion. Because Sion’s E will give him lots of damage output and help him get tanky, we want to max it first to gain the benefits of the skill as soon as possible. Then, W should be leveled second, as not only does it give a temporary shield to increase Sion’s survivability during fights, it also gives that extra bit of damage that might make the difference between a kill and a death in a close encounter. Although Q is important to take first because of its utility, the stun duration does not change as it is leveled up, so we want to max Q last. Of course, his ultimate should be leveled whenever it becomes available.
For masteries, I take all AD-enhancing masteries in the offense tree, and place all remaining points in the defense tree. I do not get any AP-based masteries in offense, as you should prioritize survivability over the tiny bit of extra damage output from his ability power skills.
For runes, I take flat armor seals, magic resist per level glyphs, flat armor quintessences, and armor penetration marks. The only two types of runes that are viable to change are quintessences and marks – you can either go with attack damage, attack speed, or stick with armor penetration. I prefer armor quintessences to increase survivability, and because a majority of viable champions on Twisted Treeline are bruiser fighters and base a majority of their damage output on physical damage.
For items, I build Sion as a standard AD carry. I start with a Doran’s Blade and get Berserker’s Greaves and Wriggle’s Lantern as quickly as possible for the mobility with the boots and utility with the wards. Then, my goal items are to get Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer, and Bloodthirster. If the enemies are stacking armor, I might prioritize Last Whisper or Black Cleaver. If the opponents are heavy on crowd control, I might get Banshee’s Veil or Quicksilver Sash; if I end up getting targeted down and my allies don’t have enough damage output, I might get Guardian Angel so I can rejoin the fight.
I generally would not recommend getting any other defensive items on Sion. Even though many AD carries get Frozen Mallet, I would not recommend it on Sion because it takes up a valuable item slot. Although the health is useful, you should instead focus more on farming and killing minions to build up your health passively rather than using an item to do so. As for the slow, instead of getting an item-based slow, try to secure the Lizard Elder’s red buff.
A lot of people might challenge this build telling me that this essentially turns Sion into a glass cannon. He has extremely high damage output, but because he has to run in the middle of his opponents to attack, he essentially becomes useless because he’s not able to kite like most other glass cannon ranged AD carries. Again, this is not true because of Sion’s E, Enrage. As long as you are good with consistently farming throughout the entire game and make sure to focus on last-hitting minions, when you start engaging in team fights during mid- and late-game, you should have enough passive health that it should be as much as what an item would be able to give you. On top of that, Sion is naturally pretty bulky – as of today, not long after the release of Jayce, Sion is the third most bulkiest champion based solely on base stats. At level 18, Sion has 2275 health; this only comes behind Nunu’s 2381 and Alistar’s 2278.
An example of a good team fight would be to initiate by stunning the squishiest enemy champion, or any champion in range. Charge in to the champion, and begin to attack. When you feel as if you can actually engage and fight (and the enemies aren’t going to quickly disengage by Flashing over a wall), activate your ultimate. It is very important to only activate your ultimate when you know you will be dealing damage, as you do not want to waste it and get caught in a team fight without it. Once you start attacking, make sure you are ALWAYS ATTACKING SOMETHING. Life steal only works when you are dealing damage. Do NOT chase enemies who are running away, because that means you are not attacking. Even if you are not focusing one specific target down, make sure you are always attacking and keep dealing tons of damage to everyone on the entire enemy team. As long as you are attacking, you will stay alive; once you stop attacking and start running around trying to chase someone, you will die. If the enemies are starting to kite you, it is acceptable to start attacking minions or jungle monsters nearby to wait for the cooldown for your stun; as long as your opponents are not hyper carry champions, you should be able to life steal health more quickly than they are able to deal damage to you.
So, if Sion is able to defeat enemies 3 vs. 1, then why don’t more people play Sion? Unfortunately, there are a few issues with AD Sion.
First of all, he is extremely boring to play. The game will literally consist of endless farming, then stunning people, dealing damage with basic attacks, then repeating the process. There is absolutely no champion-specific skill involved other than being able to constantly attack something in order to regenerate health.
On top of that, AD Sion can easily be shut down by many counter picks, and can be overall disabled by a light to moderate amount of hard crowd control. For example, if you were to solo top lane, the enemy might send up a Sivir to counter you (yes, this has happened to me before). Sivir has an ability set that is perfect for countering Sion. Sion initiates fights with his stun, but Sivir can easily use her spell shield to block the incoming projectile. Sivir is a ranged champion with a long-range harassment ability, so even if Sion is far away from Sivir, he will still take damage. If Sion decides to walk towards Sivir to start a fight, Sivir can easily back off and kite Sion, dealing tons of damage in the process and forcing Sion to retreat to avoid death.
As for crowd control, literally any form of crowd control except slows will completely shut down Sion’s ability to both tank and have massive damage output at the same time. For example, if Sion is stunned, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is airborne, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is feared, he cannot continue attacking. If Sion is snared or rooted, he might still be able to attack, but most people will most likely be smart enough to take a step away from him so he cannot continue attacking. As you can see, any hard crowd control easily prevents Sion from doing the most important thing that he exists to do.
So, if he’s so easily shut down, why did I mention earlier that Sion is a strong champion? First, if you get items with tenacity (such as Mercury’s Treads), you can drastically reduce the length of the disables and might be able to hang in there long enough to start attacking again. Next, Twisted Treeline is a 3 vs. 3, not a 3 vs. 1. If your allies are half-decent, they will also be participating in team fights, and they should be able to help out enough such that even if the team fight doesn’t go perfectly and you don’t get to execute your role to perfection, it will still work out thanks to the overall combined effort of your team.