Talk:Sion/@comment-20434720-20140228062537/@comment-20434720-20140306071950

Q has a set mana cost, and ranking it up decreases cooldown and increases damage by just as much as W. On the other hand, W mana cost goes up as you rank it up. While in theory, your W can net you a 600 HP advantage due to both doing damage AND shielding, however in practice this doesn't really work because most top lane matchups can easily destroy the shield and you're left with a higher CD on your cc ability, which has a set mana cost and is painful to ever use at rank 1 because of the terrible mana efficiency that scales much better with ranks than W.

W shouldn't really be a farming tool most of the time, as the mana efficiency means that you can use it maybe 3 times and then have no mana to do anything. It's much better to simply leave the pushing to the ravenous hydra I highly recommend building. Having Q come off CD faster can, arguably, help just as much as the shield in surviving ganks. And maxing W before E seems a little... questionable. The entire point of AD Sion is to maximize E farm, which unlike Nasus Q scales with ranks in E, meaning that until you hit level 13 you're getting sub-optimal HP stacking...

That said, I haven't tried maxing W over Q, and it would be interesting to try out. The important thing is that you choose one and NEVER use the other (except in emergency)... while other champs' skillsets allow them to utilize the utility of an ability they aren't maxing, Sion's does not, due to the very high mana costs.