The inconsistency of his power really does fit the raid boss theme, given for a raid boss you have to play around their rotation to take advantage of the windows, and that's a healthy thing, because it punishes misplays
It feels kinda weird. Sion has inconsistent power but very consistent power at the same time. Thats why sion is a safe pick because you can stay even in lane and scale up to the late game where the base damage and tankiness shine
@Toasted Marsh that's actually a bit untrue for the base damage part, if anything late game is where base damage matters least because item scaling is at its most prevalent and its doubly true for sion. He doesn't struggle as much now due to sunfire damage scaling, but back in the day before the item rework, if you built pure tank, sion would actually fall off a cliff after mid game because his base damage on his abilities didn't scale well and his cc was unreliable because it relied on skillshots. Even now it's still true as sion usually likes to build a bruiser item or two like hullbreaker or titanic even when he's the tank because he struggle to consistently do damage without some ad to help him out. An example of a tank who can still rely on his base damage late game when building full tank is ornn bc of his percent health damage.
@@jeremyshiu Sion should be build Dmg .... in solo queue if sion full tank he get ignored ;) my favor sion 5k hp 350 dmg and like 60 cd ;) too bad his tower slam dmg got nefted quite hard nowaday
@@PhungBach_nv I mean if you build him full tank take Glacial so they can't ignore you, its less trading power than grasp but makes you a much bigger threat in teamfights and works really well with your passive. It basically means if you land any CC they are slowed to death, and if they kill you and ignore you in a fight you will still slow them to death.
Old Sion was the first champ I got a penta on during an Aram game. At the time I had no idea how I got it, and today I boil it down to pitty from my opponents
Also, Sion Rework had the BEST LAUNCH of any champion like ever, it had history, intrigue, special sites, a freaking build up of his body and all the shit, dude it was insane, and I was unable to find any of print screens and stuff about it!!
WP to this Sion he played safe during laning phase, minimised deaths and yea he let some CS go but now he is scaled and is working up with his team to win the game! Well played to this Sion!
Sion is one of my fave champs ever, his gameplay has so much depth in a way that gives the player interesting choices in every situation. EDIT: To me it's mostly about abilities. You can choose to charge his Q or not, to explode his shield early for more damage or keep it as a shield, you have to use E with a minion or small monster nearby to make it stronger and you can use his ult either for instand quick CC in a pinch, or to engage or even to run away! Even when you die it gives you a chance to make one last important push.
Small Q when enemy engage,Big Q when in bush or enemy is CC,Spam W when fighting,E when poke and lastly E+Q when in bush. Beside that other combo is either too niche or braindead
Funily enough, Old Sion was basically pretty much a standard Dota Strenght carry back in the day, not unlike a Sven, Wraith King or Chaos knight, with his passive being almost word for word a built in Vanguard, and his E being a built in Armlet of Mordiggian, with even the toggle included And yeah, without active items to complement them, all 3 of those heroes are pretty one dimensional
And of course, the Q point and click projectile single target stun that ate 90% of your mana pool to use twice. With Leoric for example, using his Hellfire Blast was more a matter of timing and resource management than of twitch skill expression. You really couldn't afford to harass with it if the harass didn't lead in to atleast half or more of the other guy's health.
@@serialkillerwhale Made sense that it ate so much mana though. Hellfire Blast was literally the only spell he actually casted, the rest of his kit were passives. Ultimate costed mana but that was probably the only way to ever counter him in any meaningful way.
@@freshlymemed5680 True, but you can't deny that it's really the mana management aspect that made the ability more than just a mindless button on those heroes. Imagine having someone with 260-something mana and a 140-mana ability on their Q. Levels made it more bearable but the need to make every shot count was definitely something in a player's mind.
I think one of the main reasons that old Sion's abilities were so funky was just the conventions of the game at the time. Unless I'm mistaken, abilities pretty universally scaled on Ability Power, the only thing that AD modified was their attacks unless you got very specific hybrid scaling off of something like an empowered autoattack. Scaling off of anything that wasn't AP or AD was basically unheard of, too... although you did have "Add a percent of X attribute to Y attribute" passives like Singed. It's the reason we got all these weird gimmick builds like AP Master Yi, AP Sion, AP Nasus, AP Nunu... everyone kind of played by the same rules in Itemization.
@@kreeperkiller4423 also explains why alistars moves are AP. otherwise it seems weird that a minotaur smashing the ground or headbutting you deals magic damage
I started playing League of Legends back in October 2013 (almost 10 years ago now). I first gravitated toward Nocturne and Xerath, but soon found I was more comfortable playing durable frontlines. I remember seeing old Sion once in a blue moon, even trying him for a game or two, but he never stuck in my mind. Then came the rework. Now, I was one of the nerds who cared for the lore, such as it was back before Riot started to care for their worldbuilding. And I distinctly remember the presentation of Sion's rework, the art and lore. It offered a taste of a concrete world at long last. Then I got my hands on him, and for the first time ever a champion clicked for me. There was a learning period of course, but I had finally found my main. And I still consider him my main today, even though I have stopped playing. Sion and I have weathered the years of changes; we went through the Summoner's Rift rework, the glorious events which brought alternate game modes, innumerable changes in the meta, and not to mention other champion reworks. Looking back now, I stand by my belief that Sion's rework was a major turning point for champion design and worldbuilding. He was the first of his kind, a harbinger of things to come. More beloved and more contentious reworks have come in the time since, but Sion was the first that really mattered - to me, if no one else. And there was a reason I stuck with him. Few other champions make me feel like a boss fight. I'll argue that Sion, above all else, is honest - even to his own detriment. Even during times in which he has been overtuned, he's never felt cheap. Like a lumbering Dark Souls boss, he winds up; you know to get out of the way, or suffer. As such, patience and discipline reward the Sion player. You don't have a quick rotation, you can't blow someone up out of nowhere (barring bush cheese), and the enemy will almost always have a chance to react. You know what you're going to get out of a Sion, for better or worse. He's a consistent force, and that's no mean feat for a kit nearing 10 years old. Unlike many other champions in that time, he hasn't seen substantial changes. The world has changed around him, but just like in his lore, Sion is eternal.
An explanation that comes to mind is when Baus popularised inting sion. Soon after a bunch of people started playing it thinking dying was the main objective or that dying was inconsequential because of the strategy's namesake. Rather than dying as a means for pressure and objectives.
Just had a crackhead Sion in one of my games run it down top lane with hullbreaker and get constant triple kills when enemies tried to stop him, love this champion so much.
When I saw Sion being reworked and his ultimate animation, I thought of Wario's shoulderbash but overall I love new Sion, feels wayyyy better to play and play against
as a Sion main i can attest to the Raid Boss feeling you get when playing him. whether you go full tank, or you build for damage, nothing feels better than watching the enemy team struggle to stop your rampage. even if his inconsistencies don't feel as punishing as one might expect because even a Sion that's behind can still make contributions to their team if played right. there's a certain level of satisfaction you get from watching the enemy team squirm around trying to stop you from running down their back line, or watching them panic as you split push one of their inhibitors and then try to catch you as you ult away laughing at them over extending and giving your team the opening they need to either catch one of them or take another objective.
The thing I like about sion's ult is that even if the entire enemy team manages to sidestep you and you zoom past them, you technically haven't failed yet. Cause now their only escape option is blocked off by the 10k hp raid boss and they have to come to you now.
something I think isn't mentioned enough in general(as in not specifically in these videos) is the flavour in these reworks, with Sion there's quite a bit of effort put in(he has a different set of voicelines based on his max hp from W foor example) and it really gives him life, same with urgot, morde, aatrox and warwick, all of these characters are popular ish because of how well their gameplay and flavour meshes together.
Yeah I love Sion’s lines. I say them all the time when playing him. The voice actor did an amazing job making sounding Sion’s endless rage and desire for killing. All he can feel is the urge for violence, bloodshed, fighting, war. But it’s tragic at the same time because he doesn’t know why at all. He doesn’t even know he’s still alive. He thought he died fulfilling his countries ideology, killing Jarvan the 3rd, but now he’s been ripped back to life to be used as a war weapon. No resting in piece, just existing only being able to feel uncontrollable anger and bloodlust. And when you’re not fighting…you just feel like a completely empty husk with no reason for your existence. Sion loves the fighting, but it’s only thing that makes him feel anything. Like you’ve gotta just hear the trembling aggression for each of his ult screams. “Why…do I feel…nothing?!…” “Why do these scars bring no pain?!” “No…pain…no…….feeling….but hunger……” He’s was forced to live again, but not on earth: in his own personal hell.
tnx for the video dude , it was insane ; Just one thing i feel like Sion's passive should have cover a bit more on the video , idk about what but i feel like there was some argument missed about the fact his passive was the source of major problem , talking about Inting Sion without telling what it was about ; those things. But Still great video ! and Thanks for giving him lights !
One thing they did really well with the Sion rework is make him fun to play AND fun to take down. Fighting a Sion you feel like David vs Goliath, you have to sidestep his big swings, watch your spacing, kite him, and strike while he's recoiling from his heavy hits. He feels like a raid boss to fight. Even once you kill him, you have a few moments of "oh shit" while he charges at you, and you've got to shut him down again. He's one of the best designed champs in the game, except for the degenerate strategies enabled by his passive.
"Unwieldy and awkward." Actually its not because he is zombie at least in my opinion. In the lore they say not even noxians can fully control him. So its just fits him even the "summoner" has hard time controlling him.
That's not a good reason for an annoying champ kit, its communicated still in the rework with his lack of control during passive and ult, and how awkward the swing on his slam looks when cut early
@@nekocup5524 Lack of control for you is just lack of skill in reality. There is plenty of Sion mains that use his kit to full effectiveness. Take Tilterella who has hit top rank with Sion multiple times.
@@deathstar6998 Man you took the weirdest thing from my comment lmao, point was you can still have a an effective and fun kit while maintaining the berserker rampage theme, which you prove my point, so... good job?
@@nekocup5524 But his theme is not the berserker rampage theme its I am the juggernaught bish and he is big and clunky and cumbersome. Its like you misunderstand the champion at every base.
I love playing sion. Yeah his numbers and ratios are a bit janky, and his passive is SUPER CHEESY, but for what his kit is he is one of my only favorite tanks to play. There is ALOT skill involved in his kit, Q in bushes, e-ing through minions, saving items for his passive like prowlers claw. Him and chogsth are the only 2 tanks that feel alpha to play, really going in.
To this day, the most kills I had in a single game, was with pre-rework AD Sion. It was almost a decade ago now, but I still remember running into the team over and over again, two shoting them all while taking basically no damage... I miss old League sometimes lol.
i remember playing old sion with old taric bot lane with my friend. 3 second point-and-click stun along with sion's AD boost and taric's armor shred. it was so deadly
@@lukazivkovic4944 Not sure if we’re getting that video any time soon. Vars has sadly expressed that he fundamentally disagrees with Sion passive being in the game.
I remember one twisted treeline game as it was yesterday. Old Sion, along with two inting scrubs, built 3 phantom dancers and 3 bloodthirsters, way back when those items were nothing but stat sticks. He absolutely curbstomped us, basically winning 1v3 premade game. Nowadays new Sion was my main and is my go to champ whenever I decide to revisit the game. The crunch he give when perfectly executing, the satisfaction given, when you realize they had dozen of ways of countering me and I still didn't let them, especially if it is 2v1... The W never feels cheap with him, unlike many champions nowadays, imho.
When I watch at old Sion again, I kind of feel like he belongs in DotA2. Many Heroes there feel like this. Having different Abilities without any real interaction.
Yeah the reason for that design is to make team composition more important In that way you build your strength with another players hero with combos and synergies
Great video! I never thought that inting Sion was a problem, even before the nerfs they did to his turret damage when in passive. Generally speaking the inting Sion strat would work positively only when someone knows what is doing, if not he is just dieing without purpuse. I think that both macro and micro are important so you should be rewarded for being able to use both well
How is he not a duelist? He was probably the strongest 1v1 champ in the game. He would heal himself to full with a single AA and thanks to his tons of HP you couldnt oneshot him. His R lasted 20 seconds which is enough for any person to get killed.
Sion's rework is my personal poster child of what rework should actually be. Back when Sion rework was released, it was just pure hype. That rework was a massive game-changer. They turned... whatever mess the previous Sion was into a very fun champion. No wonder why people remember it with such positivity.
I only remember near his rework playing old Sion as a support. It was almost a meta worthy pick as it actually did make Sion closely resemble the tanky juggernaut he is now, albeit as a support. The old ZEKES HERALD was reasonably good for what I wanted, along with the tank support item with the execute that supports still use today allowed me to still farm some HP, stacking HP & Damage ENOUGH to be a front liner while also a healer to my team that the enemy had to do something about me before they could tackle my ADC who usually was a duo partner that needed me to soak attention, if we coulda added zekes convergence or knights vow this might have got the meta's attention. After they reworked Sion, I think I just did the same idea with Gangplank before he got his rework, this turned out to be even better, when we swapped out the execute tank support for the old golden coin that gave move speed at the time, PLUS Zekes Herald again & the frozen gauntlet to give GP ranged slows, it became pretty badass. The old Gangplank with Zekes Herald & E max first would gave me and my ADC +40 AD, and something like +10% life steal. We stat checked ALL OTHER bottom lane duo's. Enemy supports of the time relied on CC & quick bursts,, Annie, Morganna or Thresh, but GP oranges made their kits look really ineffective. Other ADC's struggled to out trade GP early game as I was stacking damage AND armour, this was unique as no other supports scaled with AD back then, they all scaled with AP or purely built tank stats. Late game the large AOE slows and ally speed ups just meant our team could run circles around the enemy teams. These were some of the best supports I think I ever played, unironically, the next best duo I ever found had to be Garen & Yuumi, and I say I found it, because we started doing it when Yuumi was still PBE, so I can say I was ahead of the curve. So it is always interesting to me how some reworks and removed items really did take away some weird playstyles that the meta never really discovered, but I feel comfortable in saying some of these would have become meta had Riot kept them as they were.
His passive is insane with glacial augment and it used to be good with Frozen mallet but with how many dashes there are in the game and the fact most teams don't know that when a Sion engages they need to follow up even if he dies because giving his passive an opportunity to hit people keeps it there and keeps it as a threat and can end up taking someone out the fight.
Sometimes I wonder if I would've had more fun playing league during its earlier years. Then I remember that Jax's counter strike didn't have a visual indicator for the longest time.
as in, i expect the last ones from the bar to be the ones from dragonborn and the anticipation grows as the bar progresses and at the end it lets me down, not that i dislike the music itself, just a brain getting outplayed by music
Old Sion was a Frankenstein's monster. Thematically, visually and ability-wise. A bunch of abilities that made no sense together, but still worked. I'm sure he was designed as a fighter drain-tank. Q and W AP scaling was irrelevant in an AD build, because they provided a stun and a decent shield in a pinch, while his power came from smacking the enemy in the face. AP build was more of the off-meta build that seemed to be a theme back in those days (remember AP Yi?)
I don't think its fair to call him "inconsistent" by design, or on purpose. He's supposed to feel big, powerful, hulking, just as you described him. That's the intention. So the "inconsistency" is a side effect more, where when designing powerful abilities that have huge impact (pun intended) like his Ultimate; it has to be offset by some sort of drawbacks such as slow wind-up time HENCE then it is a challenge for the players to use the kit depending on the individual's skill, therefore the inconsistent side effect. If the design team *really* did want the main theme of a champion to be "inconsistency" then they'd make all kinds of RNG elements in an entire kit for every detail. This is just a hyperbole for effect. As for redesigning a champion from scratch entirely, like Aatrox, I think where they failed with Aatrox is the disregard to what the players/community want and what the developer/designers want. They explained, back then as far as I remember, that Riot did not like how Aatrox didn't fulfill their own fantasy of this "war demon" some sort of unkillable raging demon of conquest or whatever the theme was. So hence they wanted to recreate that thematic. To that extent, they did succeed and the VGU Aatrox feels just like that. HOWEVER, the community and players who played Aatrox did not use him as such, and were attached to his more hacky-slashy playstyle. This is a quandary between design and user experience. They chose to impose their design intention over the user experience, and hence the community felt "old" Aatrox was deleted. I think, imho, that merging the designer's intention AND user experience is the BEST possible outcome, where both parties are happy. At the end of the day, the players are your audience and customers, and they should be made happy. If that quandary were to arise again with some other rework or VGU, I hope they side with user experience and design around that; then create a new champion for whatever theme they actually originally wanted. Sion, is a great rework, they picked a theme and really delivered on it whole. As you said even though his "before" and "after" are wildly different like Aatrox, the "before" was so bad that it wasn't even missed that much in light of the impressive and solid rework.
The old Sion had the best looks in the game. He was the reason I started playing League. I don't like his model as much as the old one cause it looks less undead but now he is much stronger. The same goes for Yorick. He looked soooo good back then bad he was trash.
@@kreeperkiller4423 nope. The old ones looked very cool. The ones now feel like they don't want children playing the game getting scared. Riot has gone soft on some designs these days. Yorick now looks just like an ordinary monk. Back then he was a ghost gravedigger. Best champion in the game visually. Sion was half a skeleton. Now he has flesh and iron.
@@NikosTsoup The old Yorick looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame with a shovel and a Lantern growing out his back, he wasn't scary or intimidating he was comedic. Sion looked like a parody of that one playstation game that features a quirky skeleton knight with a narration sounding like a children's bedtime story. Nothing about them was intimidating or scary at all. Yorick now looks like an actual revenant and yeah he could use a tune up gameplay wise but the theme song that plays when he summons the maiden is one of the most haunting OST's in the game even when compared to thresh's theme song. Sion now looks like he can crush your head like a grape, sure he looks less undead now but he gives serious Friday the 13th vibes he just needs a full mask.
@@deathstar6998 I still think the old Yorick was the best looking champion in the game. He was filthy with a dark face and yellow eyes. He couldn't walk properly and his hunchback was insanely cool. His ghouls looked silly but he was dope.
My friend played a lot of old Sion. Most memorably was Sion Jungle, take blue for level 2 and go straight mid. If the midlaner had a CC it was guaranteed first blood. The one I always bring up however, was level 2 old Sion Support tower dives. Still makes me laugh.
To be honest I dont like the hp scalling. With the amount of hp to dmg conversions in the game it increases his dmg more than his actually tankiness, since everyone has %max hp dmg. Armor or mr stacking could be better since true dmg is much rarer than %map hp dmg
Probably the best rework they have ever done is pantheon.The new abilities were similar to the old but gave more skill expression.And visualy and lore wise the champion became even cooler.
Old AD Sion was THE raidboss champion. Grab hydra, find a clump of enemies, activate ghost and ult, and run in and break shit. You've got a 118% lifesteal not just to your hits, but to whatever the hydra hits too, and if you built AD you'd end up with 465 AD at full build, meaning if you were in a group of enemies you'd easily be healing for over 1k per hit, and if you've been farming properly you should have at LEAST 4k hp, so unless the enemy either kites you to death, or CCs you for so long that you can't AA anything, you're going to win the fight. It was completely degenerate, and seems like a no-skill champ, but Sion also had the weakest early game in the game at the time if you were going AD. You don't get any abilities that actually scale with AD, the base values on your Q and W were abysmal and the mana costs absurd, and your E, the only ability that was giving you any advantage, dealt damage to you. It gave amazing bonus AD (85 at rank 5) but it damaged you for half of that value, and the passive ability to get 3 hp per kill only functioned if E was turned on, meaning that to start snowballing that max hp for later in the game, you'd be damaging yourself in lane, with no tools to actually threaten the enemy laner consistently. If you can make it to lategame without being demolished, it was quite the payoff though. In short, AD Sion had the same problem that Kayle had when she first got reworked, with an early game so awful you can do nothing, but a lategame so powerful that the enemy can do nothing, except Sion was even more exaggerated. I understand why they removed him, but damn do I miss him.
Yeah Sion was my first Mastery 7 achievements. It was so good just mastering and once I started getting used to him. So he has a special place in my heart tbh.
This one's tough for me. I had an AP Sion smurf account that I played when I didn't have the mental capacity to push on my main, who was your cliche hardstuck Diamond 5 - 3'er (usually 5). However I had SO much fun climbing with him (topped at Plat II) because I felt like I was playing a secret champion. Seriously every other game was "wtf is a Sion" or "did you seriously just first pick Sion mid?". And just how stupid he looked. Popping W to push the wave, and taking off with that godawful char model rocking my mobi boots, to simply walk down to the bottom laners, flash, look at them with Q, press W, delete the ADC, smack the turret down (weird underrated feature of AP Sion, yes your E and R were almost useless, but make you weirdly good at tacking down objectives for an AP assassion) only to turn back around with my stupid looking toy hammer (Hextech bb), run mid, W the wave, and roam top. I would KILL to have old Sion back. Its so hard not to have fun when your playing the walking dumpster fire with his unfitting Arnold Schwarzenegger one - liners. Really was a "its so bad its good" kind of thing. WITH THAT SAID, yes this was neccessary and for the most part, a big success. Sion was clearly meant to be what he turned into. I'm personally not a fan, the inconsistency is to much. I also think his E was a big miss, its cool thematically and functions fine, it just feels tacked on to me. Otherwise, he feels well put together, unique enough and plays how he looks. Sure me and the three other Sion fans were sad, but this was a good -rework- rebuild. Wish his ult had an AP ratio though. Sion should be an AD raid boss, but that would have been a fun little nod for us old AP Sion boomers. No, it wouldn't be good, but it would at least be somewhat playable.
I have been here since closed alpha and trust me for 11 12 years now don't remember any more Sion is well worth like he is now compared to before I love him only him volybear orn tryndamere and a couple more make you feel like a zed feels in mid lane like u can head but kill people same like a Mundo and a nasus and renecton there are almost no champions left like that so having a modern version is truly amazing and I personally love playing him that's how playing a tank should be reminds me the blood stance death knight In world of warcraft
sion was my FIRST main back in season 3 and i loved him! He was so fun my god when u can just eat the damage from all 5 opponents while steal being 100% health, mannn those were the days ahahah those were the days *sigh* and dont even get me started on that stun... T_T RIP
I really like his passive but at the same time its his worst part. If you aren't going AD with claw and Phase rush then its really hard to do anything with his passive. Baus started demolishing towers using passive and Riot basically made it useless against towers. Tilterella is stealing jg camps at the start of the game using passive and now Riot are nerfing damage to enemy's camps so this becomes harder to do again. So what is the poing of having this passive if Riot dont want you to use it?
I main both sions I miss his ad playstyle and his ap playstyle when he first got his rework his strongest build was Ap sion not many were aware that his ap scaling for his e and w were pretty busted as chip damage there wasn't anyone able to stay in lane with him by minion bowling them to death. The new sion is a champ that rewards you for knowing your match ups and having the ability to max whichever abilities you need to survive or go even with. Like for example take teemo a match up sion really cannot lose unless you aren't really paying attention you can still chip teemo down with e max and kill him that way you can max w and burst him in a safe manner or you can q max and burst him harder but the build varies for each sequence ability max and what you wanna build can be optimized for each situation That said new sion struggles in close quarters combat as he is very proximity heavy if your opponent is too close you cannot have access to your q which is dreadful if you've been maxing it all game e is a the only tool you have to create enough distance to even land a q or in most cases set up enough distance to catch up to land a q either way its really up to how seasoned a player is familiar with their timing and precision on how it's executed I really have to say out of the tanks sion really is the most skill expressive out of the bunch no offense to ornn I've enjoyed my fair share of matches with ornn to know how rewarding it is to learn ornns playstyle but it's not as rewarding as knowing sions play style mechanics at least the inner workings on the surface it looks simple on paper but execution it's another story
10:08 I wouldn't call it as awesome since personally with the current league it's very slow making SIon prone to faster enemies like Fiora, wildrift compensated it and I know it's a mobile game, the 1.75 second of his Q would be suitable for modern league
One thing you glossed over... his ult HEALED HIS WHOLE TEAM ON HIT. So while ad was very hard to get out of laning with, if you managed it somehow, you would literally heal your whole team back to full by killing one enemy, and easily outheal your soraka in the lategame. Pretty goofy
I think the difference between the Sion rework and the Aatrox rework is that Aatrox had a clear identity whereas Sion didn't really and it was understood that Sion needed to be given an identity when he got the rework. To me there's a difference between giving a champion one coherent identity and giving a champion a new identity.
One of my biggest fears with the sion rework came true. I was afraid riot would take away Sion’s point and click stun with the rework. They did exactly that, and did the same thing to taric. I loved the point and click stun on both champions specifically because it was no skill needed hard crowd control. I felt the removal on both of these champions was a huge nerf.
For ld sion riot made damn sure nobody would want to play him. He and poppy were removed from free week rotations and we're basically ice boxed. Nunu on the other hand was retained almost all of her a ld gameplay minus the jungle buffs. It's not that people didnt care for them, prior just managed to retain their core champ theme. Riot did me tin after the Aatrox rework that they would never delete a champ like they did previously with him. And it shows with every new rework being well received even for more popular champs
They honestly didn't change the compatibility part. His kit still has 2 AP scaling abilities and 2 AD scaling abilities. They changed his AP ratios, so it isn't worth to build AP Sion now a days, which takes away from his versatility. New Sion's kit is also a lot more clunky than old Sion, due to the new Q/R which didn't feel great as everything you'll go up against in top have dashes or blinks so your chance of landing a fully charged ability is pretty slim. I think if they made his Q similar to Aatrox's Q in a sense, it would feel a lot better with all the mobility, they can tone down the CC/damage to make up for it. I just want it to be more skill expressive so he can compete better as a laner and less of a troll pick. If you go AD on new Sion, then he's squishy and played more like an assassin because of his AD burst but he needs to get close with prowler's. If you play him as a tank, then he'll run out of mana in fights before he gets much done if the fight goes on long enough to use your whole kit. I agree that his old kit definitely didn't fit AP Sion as much, as it was played like a burst mage and didn't synergize with his ult. His E was okay for farming minions, that's about it. His kit however, fit AD Sion. AD Sion utilized the Q (similar to new Sion's E) as a gap closer, to lock down a single target to smack with AA's. He played the same as old Master Yi or Olaf and hyper carried/drain tanked.
The top 3 highest played champions displayed on my profile in my 2k games played, are 1. Urgot 2. Sion. And 3. Mordekaiser. Proudly decorating my profile.
it was a lot more fun and creative back then though. you could build champs in many different ways and make it work. You had custom runes that made your playstyle and choice of runes actually unique in game. But too many idiots in game couldn't figure out how to play, riot had to make it really ez and streamline for them. and the rise of popularity of the game also forced them to make it more simple and easier to get into.
*Sion gets removed from the game and replaced by a different champion* League community: "This rework is solid and very good" *Aatrox gets removed from the game and replaced by a different champion* League community: "REEEEE THEY REMOVED THE OLD AATROX!!! WORST REWORK EVER!!!"
the truth is nobody played or even liked the old Aatrox the rework turned him into one of the most fun juggernauts in league of legends I'm glad the rework happend
Just pointing a little mistake, nothing bad, but at 5:08 you said his HP stacking came from his ult, but it's actually his W. You 100% know that and it probably was on accident but i just wanted to point it out. Glad to see AP sion gone tbh, AP on ad champs was TRAUMATIZING (ap yi 🥲)
The inconsistency of his power really does fit the raid boss theme, given for a raid boss you have to play around their rotation to take advantage of the windows, and that's a healthy thing, because it punishes misplays
It feels kinda weird. Sion has inconsistent power but very consistent power at the same time. Thats why sion is a safe pick because you can stay even in lane and scale up to the late game where the base damage and tankiness shine
@Toasted Marsh that's actually a bit untrue for the base damage part, if anything late game is where base damage matters least because item scaling is at its most prevalent and its doubly true for sion. He doesn't struggle as much now due to sunfire damage scaling, but back in the day before the item rework, if you built pure tank, sion would actually fall off a cliff after mid game because his base damage on his abilities didn't scale well and his cc was unreliable because it relied on skillshots. Even now it's still true as sion usually likes to build a bruiser item or two like hullbreaker or titanic even when he's the tank because he struggle to consistently do damage without some ad to help him out. An example of a tank who can still rely on his base damage late game when building full tank is ornn bc of his percent health damage.
@@jeremyshiu And Maokai nowadays, a spammable Q that does pretty decent damage.
@@jeremyshiu Sion should be build Dmg .... in solo queue if sion full tank he get ignored ;)
my favor sion 5k hp 350 dmg and like 60 cd ;) too bad his tower slam dmg got nefted quite hard nowaday
@@PhungBach_nv I mean if you build him full tank take Glacial so they can't ignore you, its less trading power than grasp but makes you a much bigger threat in teamfights and works really well with your passive. It basically means if you land any CC they are slowed to death, and if they kill you and ignore you in a fight you will still slow them to death.
Old Sion was the first champ I got a penta on during an Aram game. At the time I had no idea how I got it, and today I boil it down to pitty from my opponents
100% lifesteal go brr
The 100% life steal is nothing to leer at, it was op if you went full ad
Also, Sion Rework had the BEST LAUNCH of any champion like ever, it had history, intrigue, special sites, a freaking build up of his body and all the shit, dude it was insane, and I was unable to find any of print screens and stuff about it!!
First time im hearing about this
jinx's was preetty damn good too
Jhin's the best
@@distributistsshrekvideo jinx was reworked? didn't know that...
@@monelmonelmonel jhin's was reworked as well? damn I really missed some years of lol
WP to this Sion he played safe during laning phase, minimised deaths and yea he let some CS go but now he is scaled and is working up with his team to win the game! Well played to this Sion!
So funny and original haha I fell off my seat, what a knee slapper
Sion is one of my fave champs ever, his gameplay has so much depth in a way that gives the player interesting choices in every situation.
EDIT: To me it's mostly about abilities. You can choose to charge his Q or not, to explode his shield early for more damage or keep it as a shield, you have to use E with a minion or small monster nearby to make it stronger and you can use his ult either for instand quick CC in a pinch, or to engage or even to run away! Even when you die it gives you a chance to make one last important push.
Kill myself or kill myself without a strategy, so many ways to develop a play
Small Q when enemy engage,Big Q when in bush or enemy is CC,Spam W when fighting,E when poke and lastly E+Q when in bush.
Beside that other combo is either too niche or braindead
@@mantraki Usually people don't go around proudly announcing just how much they suck, but hey, you do you
@@Megaman-2407 Don't use solo queue idiots as an example of a champ's depth
@@OccuredJakub12 bro it was a joke, don't take it personal.
Funily enough, Old Sion was basically pretty much a standard Dota Strenght carry back in the day, not unlike a Sven, Wraith King or Chaos knight, with his passive being almost word for word a built in Vanguard, and his E being a built in Armlet of Mordiggian, with even the toggle included
And yeah, without active items to complement them, all 3 of those heroes are pretty one dimensional
And of course, the Q point and click projectile single target stun that ate 90% of your mana pool to use twice. With Leoric for example, using his Hellfire Blast was more a matter of timing and resource management than of twitch skill expression. You really couldn't afford to harass with it if the harass didn't lead in to atleast half or more of the other guy's health.
Ohh I just realized yes your right
@@serialkillerwhale Made sense that it ate so much mana though. Hellfire Blast was literally the only spell he actually casted, the rest of his kit were passives. Ultimate costed mana but that was probably the only way to ever counter him in any meaningful way.
Big difference in Dota 2 however is everything about Sven, WK and Chaos Knight works together. Nothing about Sion's old kit works together.
@@freshlymemed5680 True, but you can't deny that it's really the mana management aspect that made the ability more than just a mindless button on those heroes. Imagine having someone with 260-something mana and a 140-mana ability on their Q. Levels made it more bearable but the need to make every shot count was definitely something in a player's mind.
I remember when his rework came out. For a solid week the BOOM of his ult has the entire enemy team run for their base. So epic
THEY COWER IN FEAR
Lmaao
I think one of the main reasons that old Sion's abilities were so funky was just the conventions of the game at the time. Unless I'm mistaken, abilities pretty universally scaled on Ability Power, the only thing that AD modified was their attacks unless you got very specific hybrid scaling off of something like an empowered autoattack. Scaling off of anything that wasn't AP or AD was basically unheard of, too... although you did have "Add a percent of X attribute to Y attribute" passives like Singed. It's the reason we got all these weird gimmick builds like AP Master Yi, AP Sion, AP Nasus, AP Nunu... everyone kind of played by the same rules in Itemization.
Very interesting! That explains why so many old AD champs were auto attack dps champs.
I was about to add the same, but you've written it better, than I was going to, so gj.
@@kreeperkiller4423 also explains why alistars moves are AP. otherwise it seems weird that a minotaur smashing the ground or headbutting you deals magic damage
@@Underworlder5not for a support, from what ive seen. The outliers are really just pantheon, senna, and pyke. But the rest are like all AP
I started playing League of Legends back in October 2013 (almost 10 years ago now). I first gravitated toward Nocturne and Xerath, but soon found I was more comfortable playing durable frontlines. I remember seeing old Sion once in a blue moon, even trying him for a game or two, but he never stuck in my mind.
Then came the rework. Now, I was one of the nerds who cared for the lore, such as it was back before Riot started to care for their worldbuilding. And I distinctly remember the presentation of Sion's rework, the art and lore. It offered a taste of a concrete world at long last. Then I got my hands on him, and for the first time ever a champion clicked for me. There was a learning period of course, but I had finally found my main. And I still consider him my main today, even though I have stopped playing. Sion and I have weathered the years of changes; we went through the Summoner's Rift rework, the glorious events which brought alternate game modes, innumerable changes in the meta, and not to mention other champion reworks.
Looking back now, I stand by my belief that Sion's rework was a major turning point for champion design and worldbuilding. He was the first of his kind, a harbinger of things to come. More beloved and more contentious reworks have come in the time since, but Sion was the first that really mattered - to me, if no one else.
And there was a reason I stuck with him. Few other champions make me feel like a boss fight. I'll argue that Sion, above all else, is honest - even to his own detriment. Even during times in which he has been overtuned, he's never felt cheap. Like a lumbering Dark Souls boss, he winds up; you know to get out of the way, or suffer. As such, patience and discipline reward the Sion player. You don't have a quick rotation, you can't blow someone up out of nowhere (barring bush cheese), and the enemy will almost always have a chance to react. You know what you're going to get out of a Sion, for better or worse. He's a consistent force, and that's no mean feat for a kit nearing 10 years old. Unlike many other champions in that time, he hasn't seen substantial changes. The world has changed around him, but just like in his lore, Sion is eternal.
My brothers! We have finally taken the throne of a dedicated video! Relish in this moment, for love has finally been given to us!!! Thank you Vars ❤
Baus ruined Sion
@@clowntears777 explain?
@@clowntears777 nah if anything, he gave hope for Sion mains.
An explanation that comes to mind is when Baus popularised inting sion. Soon after a bunch of people started playing it thinking dying was the main objective or that dying was inconsequential because of the strategy's namesake. Rather than dying as a means for pressure and objectives.
Just had a crackhead Sion in one of my games run it down top lane with hullbreaker and get constant triple kills when enemies tried to stop him, love this champion so much.
When I saw Sion being reworked and his ultimate animation, I thought of Wario's shoulderbash but overall I love new Sion, feels wayyyy better to play and play against
as a Sion main i can attest to the Raid Boss feeling you get when playing him. whether you go full tank, or you build for damage, nothing feels better than watching the enemy team struggle to stop your rampage. even if his inconsistencies don't feel as punishing as one might expect because even a Sion that's behind can still make contributions to their team if played right. there's a certain level of satisfaction you get from watching the enemy team squirm around trying to stop you from running down their back line, or watching them panic as you split push one of their inhibitors and then try to catch you as you ult away laughing at them over extending and giving your team the opening they need to either catch one of them or take another objective.
The thing I like about sion's ult is that even if the entire enemy team manages to sidestep you and you zoom past them, you technically haven't failed yet. Cause now their only escape option is blocked off by the 10k hp raid boss and they have to come to you now.
something I think isn't mentioned enough in general(as in not specifically in these videos) is the flavour in these reworks, with Sion there's quite a bit of effort put in(he has a different set of voicelines based on his max hp from W foor example) and it really gives him life, same with urgot, morde, aatrox and warwick, all of these characters are popular ish because of how well their gameplay and flavour meshes together.
I love urgot because his execute voice lines are so savage lmao
@@randomcatname7792 honestly
Yeah I love Sion’s lines. I say them all the time when playing him. The voice actor did an amazing job making sounding Sion’s endless rage and desire for killing. All he can feel is the urge for violence, bloodshed, fighting, war. But it’s tragic at the same time because he doesn’t know why at all. He doesn’t even know he’s still alive. He thought he died fulfilling his countries ideology, killing Jarvan the 3rd, but now he’s been ripped back to life to be used as a war weapon. No resting in piece, just existing only being able to feel uncontrollable anger and bloodlust. And when you’re not fighting…you just feel like a completely empty husk with no reason for your existence. Sion loves the fighting, but it’s only thing that makes him feel anything. Like you’ve gotta just hear the trembling aggression for each of his ult screams.
“Why…do I feel…nothing?!…”
“Why do these scars bring no pain?!”
“No…pain…no…….feeling….but hunger……”
He’s was forced to live again, but not on earth: in his own personal hell.
You could say that this was the first strand-type VGU
tnx for the video dude , it was insane ; Just one thing i feel like Sion's passive should have cover a bit more on the video , idk about what but i feel like there was some argument missed about the fact his passive was the source of major problem , talking about Inting Sion without telling what it was about ; those things. But Still great video ! and Thanks for giving him lights !
One thing they did really well with the Sion rework is make him fun to play AND fun to take down. Fighting a Sion you feel like David vs Goliath, you have to sidestep his big swings, watch your spacing, kite him, and strike while he's recoiling from his heavy hits. He feels like a raid boss to fight. Even once you kill him, you have a few moments of "oh shit" while he charges at you, and you've got to shut him down again. He's one of the best designed champs in the game, except for the degenerate strategies enabled by his passive.
"Unwieldy and awkward." Actually its not because he is zombie at least in my opinion.
In the lore they say not even noxians can fully control him. So its just fits him even the "summoner" has hard time controlling him.
This would have made sense in the past lore but in the current lore summoners are not a thing
That's not a good reason for an annoying champ kit, its communicated still in the rework with his lack of control during passive and ult, and how awkward the swing on his slam looks when cut early
@@nekocup5524 Lack of control for you is just lack of skill in reality. There is plenty of Sion mains that use his kit to full effectiveness. Take Tilterella who has hit top rank with Sion multiple times.
@@deathstar6998 Man you took the weirdest thing from my comment lmao, point was you can still have a an effective and fun kit while maintaining the berserker rampage theme, which you prove my point, so... good job?
@@nekocup5524 But his theme is not the berserker rampage theme its I am the juggernaught bish and he is big and clunky and cumbersome. Its like you misunderstand the champion at every base.
I love playing sion. Yeah his numbers and ratios are a bit janky, and his passive is SUPER CHEESY, but for what his kit is he is one of my only favorite tanks to play. There is ALOT skill involved in his kit, Q in bushes, e-ing through minions, saving items for his passive like prowlers claw.
Him and chogsth are the only 2 tanks that feel alpha to play, really going in.
I would no life ouf of existence if Riot gives us Classic League of Legends
To this day, the most kills I had in a single game, was with pre-rework AD Sion.
It was almost a decade ago now, but I still remember running into the team over and over again, two shoting them all while taking basically no damage... I miss old League sometimes lol.
His old design was pretty goofy but a Traditional Sion skin like they have for Trundle or Karma would be neat to get this skin back
i remember playing old sion with old taric bot lane with my friend. 3 second point-and-click stun along with sion's AD boost and taric's armor shred. it was so deadly
LETS GOOO
SION FINALLY GETS HIS VIDEO
ABOUT TIME BABY
we are waiting for the perfectly designed sion video
@@lukazivkovic4944 Not sure if we’re getting that video any time soon. Vars has sadly expressed that he fundamentally disagrees with Sion passive being in the game.
I remember one twisted treeline game as it was yesterday. Old Sion, along with two inting scrubs, built 3 phantom dancers and 3 bloodthirsters, way back when those items were nothing but stat sticks. He absolutely curbstomped us, basically winning 1v3 premade game.
Nowadays new Sion was my main and is my go to champ whenever I decide to revisit the game. The crunch he give when perfectly executing, the satisfaction given, when you realize they had dozen of ways of countering me and I still didn't let them, especially if it is 2v1... The W never feels cheap with him, unlike many champions nowadays, imho.
i always play sion with all the tenacity runes and mercs, it makes you feel even more like a boss, big, tank and now almost unstoppable
When I watch at old Sion again, I kind of feel like he belongs in DotA2.
Many Heroes there feel like this. Having different Abilities without any real interaction.
Yeah the reason for that design is to make team composition more important
In that way you build your strength with another players hero with combos and synergies
I remember playing AP sion. Hus scaling on his stun and shield was insane. Sure it was not optimal but super fun
Great video! I never thought that inting Sion was a problem, even before the nerfs they did to his turret damage when in passive. Generally speaking the inting Sion strat would work positively only when someone knows what is doing, if not he is just dieing without purpuse. I think that both macro and micro are important so you should be rewarded for being able to use both well
I’m getting nostalgic looking at the old league footage, makes me want to go back to those days.
How is he not a duelist? He was probably the strongest 1v1 champ in the game. He would heal himself to full with a single AA and thanks to his tons of HP you couldnt oneshot him. His R lasted 20 seconds which is enough for any person to get killed.
i just assume anyone who plays league doesnt really know how their own game works nowadays tbh.
a bruiser? sure, a duelist? no. leave that to camille and fiora
5:04 Sion hp stack passive comes from the W not the R
Sion's rework is my personal poster child of what rework should actually be. Back when Sion rework was released, it was just pure hype. That rework was a massive game-changer. They turned... whatever mess the previous Sion was into a very fun champion. No wonder why people remember it with such positivity.
The teaser of his statue being slowly destroyed is still fresh in my memory
Yes, I agree! That was so awesome!
WHat is the background music at the beginning? It is really good and I want to listen to it
I only remember near his rework playing old Sion as a support. It was almost a meta worthy pick as it actually did make Sion closely resemble the tanky juggernaut he is now, albeit as a support.
The old ZEKES HERALD was reasonably good for what I wanted, along with the tank support item with the execute that supports still use today allowed me to still farm some HP, stacking HP & Damage ENOUGH to be a front liner while also a healer to my team that the enemy had to do something about me before they could tackle my ADC who usually was a duo partner that needed me to soak attention, if we coulda added zekes convergence or knights vow this might have got the meta's attention.
After they reworked Sion, I think I just did the same idea with Gangplank before he got his rework, this turned out to be even better, when we swapped out the execute tank support for the old golden coin that gave move speed at the time, PLUS Zekes Herald again & the frozen gauntlet to give GP ranged slows, it became pretty badass.
The old Gangplank with Zekes Herald & E max first would gave me and my ADC +40 AD, and something like +10% life steal. We stat checked ALL OTHER bottom lane duo's.
Enemy supports of the time relied on CC & quick bursts,, Annie, Morganna or Thresh, but GP oranges made their kits look really ineffective.
Other ADC's struggled to out trade GP early game as I was stacking damage AND armour, this was unique as no other supports scaled with AD back then, they all scaled with AP or purely built tank stats.
Late game the large AOE slows and ally speed ups just meant our team could run circles around the enemy teams.
These were some of the best supports I think I ever played, unironically, the next best duo I ever found had to be Garen & Yuumi, and I say I found it, because we started doing it when Yuumi was still PBE, so I can say I was ahead of the curve.
So it is always interesting to me how some reworks and removed items really did take away some weird playstyles that the meta never really discovered, but I feel comfortable in saying some of these would have become meta had Riot kept them as they were.
As a Sion Main, I love everything besides his Passive. His Passive does only connect to his kit in theory.
It'll be nice if there were more you could do with his passive like If it could be upgraded based on max hp or passive stacks
His passive is insane with glacial augment and it used to be good with Frozen mallet but with how many dashes there are in the game and the fact most teams don't know that when a Sion engages they need to follow up even if he dies because giving his passive an opportunity to hit people keeps it there and keeps it as a threat and can end up taking someone out the fight.
Love the shield clutch at 14:19
When I started playing, dude's already red and not green anymore.
must have started after season 4 then (or late s3 not sure when he was reworked)
Sometimes I wonder if I would've had more fun playing league during its earlier years. Then I remember that Jax's counter strike didn't have a visual indicator for the longest time.
ngl the background music being the dragonborn theme with just a few note changes made me way more uncomfortable than it should have
as in, i expect the last ones from the bar to be the ones from dragonborn and the anticipation grows as the bar progresses and at the end it lets me down, not that i dislike the music itself, just a brain getting outplayed by music
Wait till you hear the ESO renditions of the leitmotif
Old Sion was a Frankenstein's monster. Thematically, visually and ability-wise.
A bunch of abilities that made no sense together, but still worked.
I'm sure he was designed as a fighter drain-tank. Q and W AP scaling was irrelevant in an AD build, because they provided a stun and a decent shield in a pinch, while his power came from smacking the enemy in the face.
AP build was more of the off-meta build that seemed to be a theme back in those days (remember AP Yi?)
During the 8:36 clip, all those champions besides Sion look the same right now
I don't think its fair to call him "inconsistent" by design, or on purpose. He's supposed to feel big, powerful, hulking, just as you described him. That's the intention. So the "inconsistency" is a side effect more, where when designing powerful abilities that have huge impact (pun intended) like his Ultimate; it has to be offset by some sort of drawbacks such as slow wind-up time HENCE then it is a challenge for the players to use the kit depending on the individual's skill, therefore the inconsistent side effect.
If the design team *really* did want the main theme of a champion to be "inconsistency" then they'd make all kinds of RNG elements in an entire kit for every detail. This is just a hyperbole for effect.
As for redesigning a champion from scratch entirely, like Aatrox, I think where they failed with Aatrox is the disregard to what the players/community want and what the developer/designers want. They explained, back then as far as I remember, that Riot did not like how Aatrox didn't fulfill their own fantasy of this "war demon" some sort of unkillable raging demon of conquest or whatever the theme was. So hence they wanted to recreate that thematic. To that extent, they did succeed and the VGU Aatrox feels just like that. HOWEVER, the community and players who played Aatrox did not use him as such, and were attached to his more hacky-slashy playstyle. This is a quandary between design and user experience. They chose to impose their design intention over the user experience, and hence the community felt "old" Aatrox was deleted. I think, imho, that merging the designer's intention AND user experience is the BEST possible outcome, where both parties are happy. At the end of the day, the players are your audience and customers, and they should be made happy. If that quandary were to arise again with some other rework or VGU, I hope they side with user experience and design around that; then create a new champion for whatever theme they actually originally wanted.
Sion, is a great rework, they picked a theme and really delivered on it whole. As you said even though his "before" and "after" are wildly different like Aatrox, the "before" was so bad that it wasn't even missed that much in light of the impressive and solid rework.
The old Sion had the best looks in the game. He was the reason I started playing League. I don't like his model as much as the old one cause it looks less undead but now he is much stronger. The same goes for Yorick. He looked soooo good back then bad he was trash.
This has to be a joke comment, right? The old models, while somewhat nostalgic, are absolutely a pain to look at when compared to more modern models.
@@kreeperkiller4423 nope. The old ones looked very cool. The ones now feel like they don't want children playing the game getting scared. Riot has gone soft on some designs these days. Yorick now looks just like an ordinary monk. Back then he was a ghost gravedigger. Best champion in the game visually. Sion was half a skeleton. Now he has flesh and iron.
Old Sion was a cool looking undead skeleton. Now he is just a Zombie that has no bone showing. He could have been cooler looking I believe.
@@NikosTsoup The old Yorick looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame with a shovel and a Lantern growing out his back, he wasn't scary or intimidating he was comedic. Sion looked like a parody of that one playstation game that features a quirky skeleton knight with a narration sounding like a children's bedtime story. Nothing about them was intimidating or scary at all. Yorick now looks like an actual revenant and yeah he could use a tune up gameplay wise but the theme song that plays when he summons the maiden is one of the most haunting OST's in the game even when compared to thresh's theme song. Sion now looks like he can crush your head like a grape, sure he looks less undead now but he gives serious Friday the 13th vibes he just needs a full mask.
@@deathstar6998 I still think the old Yorick was the best looking champion in the game. He was filthy with a dark face and yellow eyes. He couldn't walk properly and his hunchback was insanely cool. His ghouls looked silly but he was dope.
I LOVED playing old Sion so much
My friend played a lot of old Sion. Most memorably was Sion Jungle, take blue for level 2 and go straight mid. If the midlaner had a CC it was guaranteed first blood.
The one I always bring up however, was level 2 old Sion Support tower dives. Still makes me laugh.
Old Sion seems like he turned into the first concept for Dr. Mundo. That is before Mundo’s rework.
I really miss the old sion. It killed me when they reworked him. But I understand why they did it
To be honest I dont like the hp scalling. With the amount of hp to dmg conversions in the game it increases his dmg more than his actually tankiness, since everyone has %max hp dmg. Armor or mr stacking could be better since true dmg is much rarer than %map hp dmg
old sion was super OP as an AP roaming midlaner. his point and click Q was soooo strong early
Probably the best rework they have ever done is pantheon.The new abilities were similar to the old but gave more skill expression.And visualy and lore wise the champion became even cooler.
my first ever ranked game was with the old sion.... the good old days of league
I remember the trailer for sion rework, and the enticipation for it... man it brough back memories
Old AD Sion was THE raidboss champion. Grab hydra, find a clump of enemies, activate ghost and ult, and run in and break shit. You've got a 118% lifesteal not just to your hits, but to whatever the hydra hits too, and if you built AD you'd end up with 465 AD at full build, meaning if you were in a group of enemies you'd easily be healing for over 1k per hit, and if you've been farming properly you should have at LEAST 4k hp, so unless the enemy either kites you to death, or CCs you for so long that you can't AA anything, you're going to win the fight.
It was completely degenerate, and seems like a no-skill champ, but Sion also had the weakest early game in the game at the time if you were going AD. You don't get any abilities that actually scale with AD, the base values on your Q and W were abysmal and the mana costs absurd, and your E, the only ability that was giving you any advantage, dealt damage to you. It gave amazing bonus AD (85 at rank 5) but it damaged you for half of that value, and the passive ability to get 3 hp per kill only functioned if E was turned on, meaning that to start snowballing that max hp for later in the game, you'd be damaging yourself in lane, with no tools to actually threaten the enemy laner consistently. If you can make it to lategame without being demolished, it was quite the payoff though. In short, AD Sion had the same problem that Kayle had when she first got reworked, with an early game so awful you can do nothing, but a lategame so powerful that the enemy can do nothing, except Sion was even more exaggerated. I understand why they removed him, but damn do I miss him.
It may sound strange but my entire body shivers when I deviler full-charged Q at my opponents...amazing feeling.
Original sion with Atma’s Impaler, zekes herald and 4 phantom dancer’s was super powerful if you could last hit during laning
Yeah Sion was my first Mastery 7 achievements. It was so good just mastering and once I started getting used to him. So he has a special place in my heart tbh.
i very late discovered int sion meta when he make more dmg from pasive to building when demolish was stronger when item was stronger
This one's tough for me. I had an AP Sion smurf account that I played when I didn't have the mental capacity to push on my main, who was your cliche hardstuck Diamond 5 - 3'er (usually 5).
However I had SO much fun climbing with him (topped at Plat II) because I felt like I was playing a secret champion. Seriously every other game was "wtf is a Sion" or "did you seriously just first pick Sion mid?". And just how stupid he looked. Popping W to push the wave, and taking off with that godawful char model rocking my mobi boots, to simply walk down to the bottom laners, flash, look at them with Q, press W, delete the ADC, smack the turret down (weird underrated feature of AP Sion, yes your E and R were almost useless, but make you weirdly good at tacking down objectives for an AP assassion) only to turn back around with my stupid looking toy hammer (Hextech bb), run mid, W the wave, and roam top.
I would KILL to have old Sion back. Its so hard not to have fun when your playing the walking dumpster fire with his unfitting Arnold Schwarzenegger one - liners. Really was a "its so bad its good" kind of thing.
WITH THAT SAID, yes this was neccessary and for the most part, a big success. Sion was clearly meant to be what he turned into. I'm personally not a fan, the inconsistency is to much. I also think his E was a big miss, its cool thematically and functions fine, it just feels tacked on to me. Otherwise, he feels well put together, unique enough and plays how he looks. Sure me and the three other Sion fans were sad, but this was a good -rework- rebuild.
Wish his ult had an AP ratio though. Sion should be an AD raid boss, but that would have been a fun little nod for us old AP Sion boomers. No, it wouldn't be good, but it would at least be somewhat playable.
I have been here since closed alpha and trust me for 11 12 years now don't remember any more Sion is well worth like he is now compared to before I love him only him volybear orn tryndamere and a couple more make you feel like a zed feels in mid lane like u can head but kill people same like a Mundo and a nasus and renecton there are almost no champions left like that so having a modern version is truly amazing and I personally love playing him that's how playing a tank should be reminds me the blood stance death knight In world of warcraft
Nice video, enjoy your content a lot lately! But the music is really distracting in this one and prob too loud
sion was my FIRST main back in season 3 and i loved him! He was so fun my god when u can just eat the damage from all 5 opponents while steal being 100% health, mannn those were the days ahahah those were the days *sigh*
and dont even get me started on that stun... T_T RIP
I really like his passive but at the same time its his worst part. If you aren't going AD with claw and Phase rush then its really hard to do anything with his passive. Baus started demolishing towers using passive and Riot basically made it useless against towers. Tilterella is stealing jg camps at the start of the game using passive and now Riot are nerfing damage to enemy's camps so this becomes harder to do again.
So what is the poing of having this passive if Riot dont want you to use it?
Can’t wait for Riot to reduce his damage to minions in passive too! Thanks Riot for making my champ’s passive useless 😊
I remember the good old days of unga bunga sion where you just run down people with infinite life steal, even out healing their fountain.
if you had fun with that try full crit aatrox with ult you can still out heal fountain laser
I main both sions I miss his ad playstyle and his ap playstyle when he first got his rework his strongest build was Ap sion not many were aware that his ap scaling for his e and w were pretty busted as chip damage there wasn't anyone able to stay in lane with him by minion bowling them to death. The new sion is a champ that rewards you for knowing your match ups and having the ability to max whichever abilities you need to survive or go even with.
Like for example take teemo a match up sion really cannot lose unless you aren't really paying attention you can still chip teemo down with e max and kill him that way you can max w and burst him in a safe manner or you can q max and burst him harder but the build varies for each sequence ability max and what you wanna build can be optimized for each situation
That said new sion struggles in close quarters combat as he is very proximity heavy if your opponent is too close you cannot have access to your q which is dreadful if you've been maxing it all game e is a the only tool you have to create enough distance to even land a q or in most cases set up enough distance to catch up to land a q either way its really up to how seasoned a player is familiar with their timing and precision on how it's executed I really have to say out of the tanks sion really is the most skill expressive out of the bunch no offense to ornn I've enjoyed my fair share of matches with ornn to know how rewarding it is to learn ornns playstyle but it's not as rewarding as knowing sions play style mechanics at least the inner workings on the surface it looks simple on paper but execution it's another story
I loved playing him Ap mid 1shotting with stun lategame. Or having to go full ad with lifesteal and nobody killing me
I would love to play old Sion. It just works. I wouldn't care if people don't like it.
10:08 I wouldn't call it as awesome since personally with the current league it's very slow making SIon prone to faster enemies like Fiora, wildrift compensated it and I know it's a mobile game, the 1.75 second of his Q would be suitable for modern league
I remember playing sion/tarik with my duo on twisted tree lines back on 2010... good old days
Was concerned you were gonna do the whole sion video without mentioning babus
5.05 sions hp scaling is not attached to his ult and never was
i prefer old sion to the new honestly but then again i like stat check champions but it seems riot is pretty well killing those off.
One thing you glossed over... his ult HEALED HIS WHOLE TEAM ON HIT. So while ad was very hard to get out of laning with, if you managed it somehow, you would literally heal your whole team back to full by killing one enemy, and easily outheal your soraka in the lategame. Pretty goofy
sions hp stacking is not on his ult tho I am confused
I think the difference between the Sion rework and the Aatrox rework is that Aatrox had a clear identity whereas Sion didn't really and it was understood that Sion needed to be given an identity when he got the rework. To me there's a difference between giving a champion one coherent identity and giving a champion a new identity.
Sion is honestly really unique too me, great video!
I actually started playing this game around the Sion rework and Azir coming out
4:25
"No talking about yummi on my christian league channel"
One of my biggest fears with the sion rework came true.
I was afraid riot would take away Sion’s point and click stun with the rework. They did exactly that, and did the same thing to taric. I loved the point and click stun on both champions specifically because it was no skill needed hard crowd control. I felt the removal on both of these champions was a huge nerf.
His passive can be the difference between a triple kill and a quadra kill... still haven't gotten that elusive penta yet...
i used to be i sion mainn before the rework. 5 phantom dancers and you were unstoppable...
What's the Ost called that was used in the beginning
For ld sion riot made damn sure nobody would want to play him. He and poppy were removed from free week rotations and we're basically ice boxed.
Nunu on the other hand was retained almost all of her a ld gameplay minus the jungle buffs. It's not that people didnt care for them, prior just managed to retain their core champ theme.
Riot did me tin after the Aatrox rework that they would never delete a champ like they did previously with him. And it shows with every new rework being well received even for more popular champs
Old sion reminds me a little of Wraith King from Dota 2, maybe this was the idea they had for him in the past.
They honestly didn't change the compatibility part. His kit still has 2 AP scaling abilities and 2 AD scaling abilities. They changed his AP ratios, so it isn't worth to build AP Sion now a days, which takes away from his versatility. New Sion's kit is also a lot more clunky than old Sion, due to the new Q/R which didn't feel great as everything you'll go up against in top have dashes or blinks so your chance of landing a fully charged ability is pretty slim. I think if they made his Q similar to Aatrox's Q in a sense, it would feel a lot better with all the mobility, they can tone down the CC/damage to make up for it. I just want it to be more skill expressive so he can compete better as a laner and less of a troll pick. If you go AD on new Sion, then he's squishy and played more like an assassin because of his AD burst but he needs to get close with prowler's. If you play him as a tank, then he'll run out of mana in fights before he gets much done if the fight goes on long enough to use your whole kit.
I agree that his old kit definitely didn't fit AP Sion as much, as it was played like a burst mage and didn't synergize with his ult. His E was okay for farming minions, that's about it.
His kit however, fit AD Sion. AD Sion utilized the Q (similar to new Sion's E) as a gap closer, to lock down a single target to smack with AA's. He played the same as old Master Yi or Olaf and hyper carried/drain tanked.
The top 3 highest played champions displayed on my profile in my 2k games played, are 1. Urgot 2. Sion. And 3. Mordekaiser. Proudly decorating my profile.
I started playing league a year ago and I gotta say, old league hurts to look at. Even the clips from when he was reworked
it was a lot more fun and creative back then though. you could build champs in many different ways and make it work. You had custom runes that made your playstyle and choice of runes actually unique in game. But too many idiots in game couldn't figure out how to play, riot had to make it really ez and streamline for them. and the rise of popularity of the game also forced them to make it more simple and easier to get into.
I really miss AP Top Sion Q max with DFG, fun fun times!
ah i miss the sion spit of death
Oh but you see Old Sion had an identity. He was a walking talking Arnold Schwarzenegger reference.
I miss AP Sion 😔
Rod is coming back.
I have faith in you, you can make it work
*Sion gets removed from the game and replaced by a different champion*
League community:
"This rework is solid and very good"
*Aatrox gets removed from the game and replaced by a different champion*
League community:
"REEEEE THEY REMOVED THE OLD AATROX!!! WORST REWORK EVER!!!"
The difference is that old sion kit had 0 sinergy while old aatrox only needed a modernization of his kit
the truth is
nobody played or even liked the old Aatrox
the rework turned him into one of the most fun juggernauts in league of legends
I'm glad the rework happend
@@izonwreda2633 I did, specially his lore, the sword and the W
Sions infinite health scaling is attached to soul furnace (w) not unstoppable onslaught (r)
post rework sion feels like smash ultimate ganondorf, just strength and brutality over everything else.
*plays Skooch's Sion Gameplay.
Wasn't the first "aatrox level rework" the one on karma?
longest lasting sheild i think is rakan passive... but of a activated ability... probably
(I'm talking about sions old w)
Sion is such a fun character I love playing him
His infinite stacking isn’t linked to his ultimate now, it’s on his W
Just pointing a little mistake, nothing bad, but at 5:08 you said his HP stacking came from his ult, but it's actually his W. You 100% know that and it probably was on accident but i just wanted to point it out. Glad to see AP sion gone tbh, AP on ad champs was TRAUMATIZING (ap yi 🥲)