What I would do to Sion's kit if he had not been released yet

Hello Everyone

In my second of three posts on Sion, I would like to discuss what I would do to Sion's kit if I could do anything at all, without hurting the expectations of the player base. Basically, what I would do to fix his kit if someone proposed this kit to me, with the magical zombie who was a powerful warrior in life theme.

PLEASE NOTE! This is not how I would actually fix his kit, because it would go against player expectations for how Sion should be, and upset many a player.


Based on my previous post, it is clear where I think Sion's main issue lies; it is in his W. It does not really fit thematically with the theme that Sion is trying to bring to League, and it also allows him to build AP, which while not a bad thing in and of itself, doesn't fit as well with the rest of his kit. So basically, I would just remove the ability to play as AP (keep in mind, this is assuming players never knew that he could be played that way) by changing his W completely.

So, how should his W be changes? First of all, let's looks at what role it fills for AD Bruiser Sion. All his W is for this kind of Sion build is some occasional extra health, that doesn't last very long in a fight, but can help him stay alive, especially if maxed second. Considering the role Sion was intended to play, I like the idea of having something that makes him beefier, so lets go with the idea of keeping him strong defensively.

There are many ways to make a champion tankier, from shields, to defense steroids, to %less damage taken. They all already exist in League. So what would be a fun thing to put on a champion, that would not make him too beefy?

Well first of all, let us take his passive, and make it be a passive part of his W. He automatically gains the chance to take less damage. At rank 1 it can reduce 20 damage, up to 60 at rank 5.


Now we also add a new active. This active could behave in a few different ways, and I would prefer testing it before deciding which is better. Basically, we could either have a w active similar to Garens', or to Rammus', gaining either %damage reduction, or armor/magic resist for a few seconds.


This active would have the same effect for Sion as his shield does currently, making him more survivable in fights, without the harmful splitting his kit in half effects that the ap scaling shield has.

So now you may be thinking "but Rikukun! how is this a better fit thematically?" Well just sit right there and I will tell you how. Zombies do not have many weak points like a human does. Their brain is their only real vital point. So this means that a zombie, like Sion, would take less damage from attacks than a human would (assuming that the zombie didn't have easily removable rotting flesh, which he doesn't "have" to have, especially in a game like League of Legends). So adding in a defensive steroid to make him take less damage does fit the theme of being a zombie in my opinion, so long as it is the beefy hard to kill kind of zombie, like some of the more powerful ones in the Left for Dead series.

After this change, Sion now has room for a new passive ability, since his old passive is attached to his W, which I mainly did because having defensive abilities split up like that just feels kind of weird to me. So what should this passive be? To answer this, I think we should look at what problems Sion has currently as an AD bruiser (since we did not really change how that plays) and find something to help with his weaknesses.

So what are these weaknesses? Well, I have not played too much Sion myself in a while, but from my experience, and from drawing on the experience of some others I know, his biggest issues right now seem to be how easily he can be kited. To fix this, there are several routes we can take. The most obvious route is to give him conditional bonus movement speed. However this is very similar to how udyr's new passive works, so I would prefer not to copy it.

Another idea is to give him passive tenacity like Irelia has, but I would hesitate to do this because it might be too strong on someone with his healing capabilities, and might make him really hard to counter. So what does this leave? Well, one thought that I have had is to give him resistance to slows. Either they have a smaller effect on him, or have a shorter duration against him. To not devalue tenacity on him, I think that making slows weaker on Sion would be better. So basically, he starts out only taking something like 90% of the effect from a slow used again him, and then this value perhaps changes over time to a min of 70% or 80%. Or perhaps just the flat 90% would be enough throughout the game. This would require testing to know for sure.

So this new passive would definitely bring Sion's kit as an AD Bruiser more together design wise, and I don't think that this is too bad of an idea thematically either. The reason being that many slows involve ice, and I don't think a massive hulking zombie is going to care too much about a little chill, and it makes sense to me that the undead body would be more resistant to some attacks and abilities against him anyways, like in my argument for his new W.

Until next time! 

"Stop being a bonehead."

-Rikukun