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

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

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!

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!!

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.

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

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 ❤

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

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.

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.

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.

You could say that this was the first strand-type VGU

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.

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 !

"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.

I would no life ouf of existence if Riot gives us Classic League of Legends

WHat is the background music at the beginning? It is really good and I want to listen to it

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 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

I’m getting nostalgic looking at the old league footage, makes me want to go back to those days.

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.

What's the Ost called that was used in the beginning

LETS GOOO SION FINALLY GETS HIS VIDEO ABOUT TIME BABY

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 AP sion. Hus scaling on his stun and shield was insane. Sure it was not optimal but super fun

Nice video, enjoy your content a lot lately! But the music is really distracting in this one and prob too loud

Love the shield clutch at 14:19

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.

Can you source your music

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.

sions hp stacking is not on his ult tho I am confused

Old Sion seems like he turned into the first concept for Dr. Mundo. That is before Mundo’s rework.

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 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

I remember the trailer for sion rework, and the enticipation for it... man it brough back memories

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 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.

Sion is honestly really unique too me, great video!

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 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.

When I started playing, dude's already red and not green anymore.

I LOVED playing old Sion so much

During the 8:36 clip, all those champions besides Sion look the same right now

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.

my first ever ranked game was with the old sion.... the good old days of league

old sion was super OP as an AP roaming midlaner. his point and click Q was soooo strong early

As a Sion Main, I love everything besides his Passive. His Passive does only connect to his kit in theory.

Wasn't the first "aatrox level rework" the one on karma?

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 very late discovered int sion meta when he make more dmg from pasive to building when demolish was stronger when item was stronger

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.

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.

ngl the background music being the dragonborn theme with just a few note changes made me way more uncomfortable than it should have

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.

Was concerned you were gonna do the whole sion video without mentioning babus

5:04 Sion hp stack passive comes from the W not the R

I remember playing sion/tarik with my duo on twisted tree lines back on 2010... good old days

I really miss the old sion. It killed me when they reworked him. But I understand why they did it

It may sound strange but my entire body shivers when I deviler full-charged Q at my opponents...amazing feeling.

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.

I loved playing him Ap mid 1shotting with stun lategame. Or having to go full ad with lifesteal and nobody killing me

Original sion with Atma’s Impaler, zekes herald and 4 phantom dancer’s was super powerful if you could last hit during laning

I actually started playing this game around the Sion rework and Azir coming out

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

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

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

I really miss AP Top Sion Q max with DFG, fun fun times!

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.

Old sion reminds me a little of Wraith King from Dota 2, maybe this was the idea they had for him in the past.

His passive can be the difference between a triple kill and a quadra kill... still haven't gotten that elusive penta yet...

Oh but you see Old Sion had an identity. He was a walking talking Arnold Schwarzenegger reference.

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.

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

Curious about this one.

I miss AP Sion 😔

5.05 sions hp scaling is not attached to his ult and never was

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 used to be i sion mainn before the rework. 5 phantom dancers and you were unstoppable...

I would love to play old Sion. It just works. I wouldn't care if people don't like it.

My gameplan with Sion is literally "Look at me! I'm a giant distraction" 80% of the time, that's enough 😂

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

Is the old Xerath update worth making into a video? Looked clunky as hell in the original champ spotlight hahahaha

Sions infinite health scaling is attached to soul furnace (w) not unstoppable onslaught (r)

i like how every good rework is ¨oh no they deleted the old champion¨ and every bad rework is ¨good they kept the point click stun or the outdated asset in his kit bc thats part of the champs identity¨

I miss just playing AP scion tho. That shield explosion! Point and click stun! Ugh!!!!

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

His infinite stacking isn’t linked to his ultimate now, it’s on his W

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.

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

*plays Skooch's Sion Gameplay.

AP Sion with that Q and W was insane

I love your league vids, but it would be great to get another rotmg series!

*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!!!"

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.

ah i miss the sion spit of death

"It's been too long." Indeed.

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.