Champion Evaluation
What defines a champion? When someone mentions a champion what automatically comes to your mind? Perhaps the persona built for the character(Teemo, Draven) or how its kit is very cohesive (Zed, Syndra). When it comes to the champion Sion, only one thing really comes to mind. How did this champion pass its design phase? Being one of the original 40 champions is not a saving grace for this guy(maybe being one of the first four is) as Riot displayed that they were able to create multiple characters with cohesive kits. I'd argue that Sion is the only one without one, how did Riot go from creating great kits like Anivia, Karthus, Blitzcrank, etc to this? Now when I attack this champion I'm not saying that he isn't viable but I believe he needs to be changed so that his kit works like an actual kit. |
| Sion, the Undead Champion |
Sion's Passive
No matter what path you take to rework Sion, its clear that his passive needs to be redone. Riot has started to phase a few things out of the game, namely global skills/passives and RNG based skills/passives. Since its unreliable, the passive has to have a lot of power to make up for that. Sion's passive is very RNG based, so lets try to normalize it first before we do anything with it to see if its any good.Feel No Pain
Sion has a 40% chance to ignore up to 30 / 40 / 50 damage each time he is hit by an autoattack. The damage reduction is calculated before armor and percentage damage reduction benefits are taken into account.
Lets use 100 autos to change this to a normalized passive.
Since it procs 40% of the time, its reasonable to say that it would block 40/100 autos, or 40% of those autos. If Sion's passive procs 40 times which allows him to ignore 30 dmg, he ignores 1200 dmg in all. We want to take out Sion's passive, so we make it so that he procs his passive 100 times (instead of 40 times) while ignoring the same amount of damage. 1200 dmg divided evenly amongst the 100 autos is 12 dmg ignored each auto.
Feel No Pain
Sion ignores up to 12/16/20 damage each time he is hit by an autoattack. The damage reduction is calculated before armor and percentage damage reduction benefits are taken into account.
Now that we got rid of the percentage chance we can start to really look at whether the passive is useful or not. In a teamfight the previous Sion may proc every time which makes him seem a little tanky or it may not proc at all and the passive is worthless, but now that its normalized the passive seems very weak. Blocking 20 damage isn't anything late game and percentage damage reduction benefits are taken into account. While it does technically scale, we need it to scale into lategame effectively and this can be done by blocking a percentage amount of damage.
The average base damage of a level 1 is 54 among the 116 champs. This means that at the start of the game Sion can block up to 22.2% of the base auto damage from champions at level 1. We'll use this number to help us create a new passive that scales into the game but blocks a percentage amount of damage.
Feel No Pain
Sion ignores up to (20/25/30)% damage each time he is hit by an autoattack. The damage reduction is calculated before armor and percentage damage reduction benefits are taken into account.
While it may seem like a lot, it should be taken into account that the percentage amount blocked is effected by percentage damage reduction.
We'll use this version for the passive for Sion for now.
Sion's Kit
To edit his kit we must know what path we're planning to bring Sion to, whether it be a mage, assassin, support, etc. In my opinion, Sion best works as a fighter. Sion's abilities require quite a bit of mana because they have a lot of damage and utility. The iteration of Sion I've thought up will be using rage instead of mana and his skills will be changed because of it.Q - Cryptic Gaze
ACTIVE: Sion's gaze terrifies a single enemy, dealing magic damage and stunning it for 1.5 seconds.
Now this skill scales with AP very well, incentivizing people to build Sion with AP. I want Sion to scale off AD, so the first thing we can do is make it scale off AD. It now scales off AD, requires no mana and does magic damage. This skill has a little too much power, especially since it makes it hard for people to itemize against Sion. We can change the skill a bit to make it more in line with the rage mechanic.
Q - Axe Raze
FIRST CAST: Sion beings to wind up his axe, gradually increasing its damage and maximum range over 1 second. While in this state Sion cannot attack or use his other abilities and his movement speed is slowed by 15%.
SECOND CAST: Sion slams his axe to the ground, dealing physical damage to everyone around him and stunning enemies for 1 second.
This skill would scale off of bonus AD, range would be 100 - 400 (maximum). 18 second c/d starting.
W - Death Caress
ACTIVE: Sion surrounds himself with a shield which absorbs damage for up to 10
seconds. After 4 seconds, if the shield has not been destroyed, the
ability can be cast again to explode and deal magic damage to
surrounding enemies. It will explode automatically after the 10 seconds
have passed.
Another skill that incentivizes people to build AP on Sion. Being that it is a shield, we don't need to make it scale off AD but it would be nice to make it scale off his fury.
W - Death Caress
ACTIVE: Sion consumes all of his fury and surrounds himself with a shield which absorbs damage for up to 10 seconds. After 4 seconds, if the shield has not been destroyed, the ability can be cast again to explode and deal magic damage to surrounding enemies. It will explode automatically after 10 seconds have passed.
This skill would scale similarly to Tryndamere's heal, increasing the amount of shield given to Sion depending on how much fury his has collected. Scales with AP as well, the AP scaling increasing with the amount of fury Sion has.
E - Enrage
Toggle:
While toggled on, Sion has increased attack damage at the cost of some
health for each autoattack. While Enrage is active, Sion permanently
increases his maximum health whenever he kills a unit with either his
attacks or abilities. This effect is doubled against champions and large
units.
I think this would be a good skill to implement his fury, since its already a passive. We can still give the same feel of the skill by letting it give free AD. The part about increasing the maximum health will be removed though.
E - Enrage
PASSIVE: Sion's basic attacks grant 2 fury and passively generates 1 fury every second. Permanently grants Sion attack damage, granting a larger bonus per fury gained.
It would most likely be something like 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 attack damage plus 0.1/0.2/0.3/0.4/0.5 AD per fury.
R - Cannibalism
ACTIVE: For 20 seconds, Sion gains bonus lifesteal and 50% attack speed.
Additionally, Sion's autoattacks will heal surrounding allies for a
percentage of the damage dealt.
This ultimate has a ridiculous amount of power. This is part of the reason why Sion's first two skills scale with AP, if they didn't Sion would have too much power. Since our skills scale with his fury/AD, we're going to have to strip a lot of power from this ultimate. However, we'll try to leave some so that it feels similar.
R - Cannibalism
TOGGLE: Sion consumes 5 fury per second and no longer generates fury passively. Sion gains 10 / 15 / 20% lifesteal and his auto attacks steals 5% of enemy champions movespeed (up to 15/20/25%) for 2 seconds.
Sion has a lot of trouble because he can easily be kited. His stun is a small aoe around him so it makes it hard for him to catch anyone. However, with this ultimate once he does catch an enemy he can stick on his opponent much more easily.
Reworked Sion:
Passive - Feel No Pain
Sion ignores up to (20/25/30)% damage each time he is hit by an autoattack. The damage reduction is calculated before armor and percentage damage reduction benefits are taken into account.Q - Axe Raze
FIRST CAST:
Sion beings to wind up his axe, gradually increasing its damage and
maximum range over 1 second. While in this state Sion cannot attack or
use his other abilities and his movement speed is slowed by 15%.
SECOND CAST: Sion slams his axe to the ground, dealing physical damage to everyone around him and stunning enemies for 1 second.
W - Death Caress
ACTIVE:
Sion consumes all of his fury and surrounds himself with a shield which
absorbs damage for up to 10 seconds. After 4 seconds, if the shield has
not been destroyed, the ability can be cast again to explode and deal
magic damage to surrounding enemies. It will explode automatically after
10 seconds have passed.
E - Enrage
PASSIVE:
Sion's basic attacks grant 2 fury and passively generates 1 fury every
second. Permanently grants Sion attack damage, granting a larger bonus
per fury gained.
R - Cannibalism
TOGGLE: Sion
consumes 5 fury per second and no longer generates fury passively. Sion
gains 10 / 15 / 20% lifesteal and his auto attacks steals 5% of enemy
champions movespeed (up to 15/20/25%) for 2 seconds.
This is my reworked version of Sion with some insight as to why I changed some things. Feed back would be appreciated!
After some feedback from the reddit thread located here, a second updated version of the kit was made.
SECOND CAST: Sion slams his axe to the ground to launch himself at the targeted area, dealing physical damage to everyone hit and slows them for 2 seconds. This consumes 30 fury.
After some feedback from the reddit thread located here, a second updated version of the kit was made.
Passive - Feel No Pain
Sion reduces damage taken by 2% + (0.05/0.1/0.15)% per fury missing.Q - Axe Raze
FIRST CAST: Sion beings to wind up his axe, gradually increasing its damage and maximum range over 1 second. While in this state Sion cannot attack or use his other abilities and his movement speed is slowed by 15%. Releasing the skill before the charge is complete consumes no rage and stuns enemies within a 200 radius.SECOND CAST: Sion slams his axe to the ground to launch himself at the targeted area, dealing physical damage to everyone hit and slows them for 2 seconds. This consumes 30 fury.
