User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Sion, the Undead Champion/@comment-24385282-20140510185204/@comment-1330314-20140517003541

The whole "spend health to gain health" issue is actually something I wanted to address in my rework. The problem with is that it's a false choice: sure, toggling the ability on will drain your health as you autoattack, but in lane you absolutely need to start stacking your health as early as possible, just as  or  need to stack their own resources as quickly and as early as possible. If you ever happen to duel your opponent, the extra AD you get means you deal far more damage to the enemy champion than to yourself, so you're going to keep it toggled on. Once you get lifesteal, you can heal away any damage you self-inflict on autoattack, so you're going to keep your E toggled on at all times for the massive AD bonus it gives. Effectively, you'll always have Enrage toggled on, since it's always more advantageous to toggle it on than off. The cost doesn't actually impact on the decision, so it might as well not be there. Also, the maximum amount of health you can gain per kill is 10, at level 17 (5x2=10).

Also, I intended for Sion to build AD and still be super-tanky. Unlike most tanks and fighters, my version of Sion has very little crowd control. himself has some of the strongest, most crippling slows out there, whereas my Sion has a skillshot slow that decays extremely quickly. He also has terrible mobility, an intended weakness. That's partly why I kept the shield and gave him the resurrect: he's meant to be super-aggro and hard to kill, but also very ponderous. If he weren't innately resilient, he'd get blown up before he'd be able to reach his target, and if he weren't capable of dealing tons of damage, he'd be useless even if he got to his opponent. I don't want to give him any hard CC because that would stop his enemies from attacking him, when he's meant to be scary precisely because he can survive all the pain you throw at him, so instead I gave him a skillshot slow. The problem with giving champions like, or  too much damage and tankiness at the same time is that they have inbuilt ways of circumventing some counterplay, whether it be through hard crowd control (Jarvan and Vi) or immunity to it (all of them, but especially Olaf). My Sion, on the other hand, is always fully vulnerable to everything you throw at him. He can afford to be tanky and scary in melee range because there's nothing he can do to stop you from attacking him, aside from scaring you away.

Sion is actually not the only champion to fit this archetype: champions like and  also become capable of dealing tons of damage while being super-tanky, except I think my Sion does this in a healthier way: if he wants to deal a lot of damage, he really needs to heavily invest in damage items, and his tankiness isn't guaranteed, whereas Shyv and Mundo naturally become godlike due to their free stats and utility: Shyvana wrecks face with a  alone, and Mundo doesn't even need to build any damage items to deal it in heaps, due to the free stats he gets and nonexistent offensive scalings (only his W has a damage scaling, the rest is free steroids and percent-health damage). Sion's passive, shield and revive also isn't going to make him tankier than an actual tank unless he itemizes for it as well: pure health stacking is eminently counterable, not just with BotRK and but also simply through lifesteal, since all the health Sion has is health a marskman can use to heal themselves. Even when going full damage, he's going to have to build at least one defensive item, and when going full tank he has the potential to be a lot tankier than any other champion, but at the cost of not having any strong CC and far less damage than full AD Sion.