Sion: AD or AP?

[Deleted]

Solo/duo queueing ranked and normal (not especially high ranked as I only played about 15 ranked games so far) and like the look of Sion. I have seen him as AP and it looks good but is AD better/stronger? Any input is appreciated, thanks

[Makoblade]

AP Sion is a one trick pony. You kind of have to steamroll your opponent early and then end the game before you trail off in effectiveness. AD has an incredible late game, but struggles earlier.

You could always have runes set for both and pick whichever will help the team more based on the other 4 players.

[Riboe]

I play Sion as AP.
I go mid and always either wtfpwn my opponent or outfarm him/her by a large amount, giving me a big advantage early game.
As Makoblade said, AP is great for early game, while AD is great late game.

However, if you do good early game, AP Sion can be pretty awesome late game too.
Often I can either kill one of their carries with a stun + shield + Lich Bane, which gives my team an advantage in teamfights. As a bonus, the shield does a great deal of damage to all your enemies in a teamfight. I've often turned a teamfight by suiciding, but in the process, my shield does so much damage to the enemy team, that my own team would have no trouble winning an otherwise lost teamfight.

Overall, I'd say go for AP Sion.
Not that I'm biased in any way...

[Deleted]

AD Sion is so useless imo... Easily kited, easily killed.. no gap closer besides stun wich is negated easily by a lot of things, and his shield is laughable :P He is countered by a single Ignite.

AP sion on the other hand has survivability enough to get close with stun+shield and has retarded amounts of burst (ap ratio is just silly) And Ignite doesnt affect him!!! :P And I dont get people saying he falls off late game, get Void Staff and keep rape face..

[Deleted]

Will most likely go AP, seems fun.

[Deleted]

AP or Ad depends a whole lot of the team composition.

If the enemy has a lot of slows, stuns, cc in general, AD will most likely be rendered completely useless.
If the enemy team has a lot of ranged burst (LB, Ahri, etc.) AP will have a hard time cause' your shield is vulnerable to being removed prior to detonation.

If you play blind pick, go for AP, if you play ranked, pick what gets countered the least...

[Magicochon]

The best for you would be to make a rune set that adapt for both situation and adapt to what you'll face.
As everybody said, AD is kind of bad early but get kind of retarded late game. AP is the opposite.

In 3v3 (I know it's not the same it's just to point it) when we face a AD sion my team and I always try to rush the game and harass sion really hard cuz we just don't want to let him get any kind of gear cuz we know that he'll rip us late game. It's like

A wild Sion has appeared
You try to flee, it fails
A wild Sion use Stun
You are paralyzed
A wild Sion use "Auto Attack"
You died

[Malgru]

AP = early game massacre
AD = late game obliteration
AP = 3s
AD = Long duration 5s

That's what i go by.

[Scripted Sigma]

AD Sion is so useless imo... Easily kited, easily killed.. no gap closer besides stun wich is negated easily by a lot of things, and his shield is laughable :P He is countered by a single Ignite.

AP sion on the other hand has survivability enough to get close with stun+shield and has retarded amounts of burst (ap ratio is just silly) And Ignite doesnt affect him!!! :P And I dont get people saying he falls off late game, get Void Staff and keep rape face..

My exact thoughts.
His shield wont be as powerful as AD (defensive or ofensive, doesn't matter), and even if they nerfed the ratio of his stun (used to be 1:1, rofl) he's still strong, IMO. Strong and forgotten it seems. From being banned all the time to not even picked now.

[Helgrinder]

i cant believe noone has mentioned his ULT with AD after you have built a tiamat and some durability items...

tiamat does 50% splash dmg , you get life steal for all of your damage, even splash

idk how many times ive dove in the middle of team fights, turned on my ult and taken massive amounts of damage only to stay above 70% the entire time, it is rediculous
and since AD your shield does no dmg tiamat helps your E get charged early game...someone please try it, you wont regret it lol



my build (tiamat,merc boots, rileys, blood thirster, infinity edge,black cleaver)

[Deleted]

will try AD at some point, having fun with AP atm

[Deleted]

AP is the better pick since, as has been said, you just stay the living hell away from Sion if you see his ulti turned on to beat him. Yes, an AD sion can probably 1v x if they don't exhaust or run, but yeah, if your playing ranked I assume they will just kite and laugh. AP sion just burst out of bush with shield on and 1-shot someone, probably getting quite some hp off-a the rest as well. And his ult ican still be used for some healing up in between, his auto attacks aren't completely useless.

[Mekai]

In dominion AD is better than AP but imo prefered AP in summoners rift unless you have a team that can cc for you, both are viable though

[Scripted Sigma]

i cant believe noone has mentioned his ULT with AD after you have built a tiamat and some durability items...

tiamat does 50% splash dmg , you get life steal for all of your damage, even splash

idk how many times ive dove in the middle of team fights, turned on my ult and taken massive amounts of damage only to stay above 70% the entire time, it is rediculous
and since AD your shield does no dmg tiamat helps your E get charged early game...someone please try it, you wont regret it lol



my build (tiamat,merc boots, rileys, blood thirster, infinity edge,black cleaver)

I would never ever buy Tiamat for any reason on any champion =/

[Deleted]

With AD you'll need to build a phage or have someone else with a reliable slow on your team cause without that your gonna struggle to stay on people. Also you get shutdown by exhaust and ignites cause you kinda of rely on your ulti giving you your tankiness.

AP Sion is good at roaming, once you get your shield high enough to 1 shot creep waves you can just roam the map and just keep coming back to mid for the wave and then going again. Building something like dorans,dorans,mob boots, deathcap, dfg, lichbane is gonna make you a very strong roamer.

If you ever play againest a sion in mid its very useful to ward each side to help your team.

[Hanyuu]

I ran into an AD Sion the other day and he managed to quad kill us...like three times. We were ahead the entire beginning of the game...it was pretty ugly because he single highhandedly turned it around. He was fairly fed (like 8 kills) and managed to get up to almost 20. Our team was light on crowd control (I was playing Vayne) and if I couldn't get him close enough to a wall for condemn, we were pretty much dead meat.

After getting that destroyed, I ended up buying Sion since he was fairly cheap. He's not easy to focus if the game stretches on and in a team of people that must die, I think he'd fit in really well or people like Rammus that can disrupt kills (Or even Sona or Morganna with their aoe stuns).

[Deleted]

i cant believe noone has mentioned his ULT with AD after you have built a tiamat and some durability items...

tiamat does 50% splash dmg , you get life steal for all of your damage, even splash

idk how many times ive dove in the middle of team fights, turned on my ult and taken massive amounts of damage only to stay above 70% the entire time, it is rediculous
and since AD your shield does no dmg tiamat helps your E get charged early game...someone please try it, you wont regret it lol



my build (tiamat,merc boots, rileys, blood thirster, infinity edge,black cleaver)

Except that if they Ignite you 50% of your healing is gone, if they kite you during your ulti you're dead after, if they focus 1 stun/root on you (wich they should have you're AD and squishy) you're gonna be useless. With no gap closer and forced to go melee you're gonna be so useless...

[Deleted]

I usualy play AD sion top, but AP sion is faceroll aswell..
i sutter pik
Its 100% easier to counter AP then AD, Ap you just blast the bubble which is usualy around 600dmg lategame, then he got 1 single target ability and thats it..
AD all the way

And if you can kite AD then you can sure ashell also kite AP, as AD if you build Phantom you will get ariund 420run speed, as ap you get the standard 390.

[indigosbro]

AP sion is the only way to go, he's a common ban in mid-upper ranked ELO and it's all because of him being AP. He scales amazingly well with AP and manages to become an extremely tanky caster thanks to his HP scaling per creep kill (also counts if you kill creeps with spells) and his shield. Also quite a largely overlooked point with AP sion is that his ultimates lifesteal counts Sheen and lichbane damage. If you've got 400 AP and you hit someone with the lichbane proc while your ultimate is active you're going to be restoring about 400 HP once you take into account the initial melee damage + lichbane proc + enemy armor/magic resist mitigation.

On a side note, AD sion is fun to play, but try to keep it to normals. People tend to get mad in ranked games if you decide to build him AD.

[Deleted]

Bought Sion some time ago to try him out. To me AD Sion always seemed like the strongest 1v1 champ there is, maybe tied with Trynda. Only played him in normal games so far.

However, I guess I got this confirmed after getting double penta as AD Sion in the same game. I was obviously fed but I don't think many champs are able to do this. I know ranked would've been very different but it was... Fun