User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Sion, the Undead Champion/@comment-6016076-20140618235325

As designer of a rework, you have full freedom to take the champion in whichever direction you'd like. I'd say any criticism is only appropriate for judging whether the rework solves the champion's initial flaws. So, I'll be angling my critique in that direction, and I'll try to limit it otherwise to objective qualities like in-game performance (as best as I can assess it).

In my opinion, Sion's initial (still current) flaws lie in his unstoppable wave clear that kills any interaction in lane and his targeted stun, which has proven notihng short of toxic on a burst-centric champion. I know you also expressed a desire to remove his steroid ult.

Conceptually, your rework has solved all of these elements. The stun is now soft CC attached to a skill shot; his shield has been oriented more defensively and its base damage too low to clear waves.

Thematically, you've lent him what feels like a lumbering brute, who deals enough damage to be a concern, but is also exceptionally difficult to kill if he maximizes his optimal scenario.

Numerically, I feel some of the values are too high, but I'll go into this individually. Numbers are probably the most nebulous form of feedback, because it's impossible for either of us to ever determine what the right numbers are without actual testing. I'll include it just to be thorough and as a matter of discussion. This mostly applies to late game, because his early game numbers seem to be ok for the lane. His mana costs are a lot more forgiving which is nice.

Passive

As you saw from my own rework, I can only heartily agree moving the ability to his passive. It retains an iconic mechanic while tying it to his passive to make it more accessible, which is more fun for the player. I was going to say the numbers are too high, but now that I've read the description, that's really clever how you balanced his base values with his passive. What this has done is allow him to scale much faster in the late game. I still feel the numbers are too high, but the idea is really intruiging. He's going to lose most all-ins in lane because of this, but his Q's double damage is pretty significant which might make up for it. It's too close for me to call.

I haven't thoroughly examined the average experience curve, but I'd estimate level 13 is definitely obtainable by 20 minutes. Typical CSing should be at least 160 at this point; 200 is more reasonable. Assuming the CSing continues up to 300 or 350 in a longer game, Sion basically becomes the ultimate hyper carry. He's probably recouped the ~300 HP deficit by the time he's level 13, so everything after that is pure bonus. Doing the math on an additional 100-200 CS, he can reach bonus health values of 1000. These are multiplied by his resists, and I think that's too high.

I wanted to compare this to Nasus's Q by pointing out that his Q damage doesn't have any multiplicative factor like health with resists, but it's so hard to compare offensive and defensive stats. Offensive stats can be dealt multiple times in a fight, so you can't treat them as absolute values for direct comparison to defensive stats.

Q

This is a great addition to Sion. It provides poke, a form of engage, and the "ripping out" is viscerally consistent with his theme. As a skill shot, it has the counterplay Cryptic Gaze never had. The slow is very powerful.

W

I like the use of slow resist. It's actually very powerful. My concern here is hard CC. Sion is essentially like Olaf but even worse at closing gaps. It's a different argument whether the problem lies with Sion for not having the right tools or whether it's a fundamental issue of LoL, but as it stands, Sion has a lot of strengths here that he can't access later.

I feel straight tenacity would would be better served here.

I'm concerned about the 6 second cooldown, depending on whether it begins upon activation or just after. 15% bonus health is a multiplier on his EHP, and given the synergy with his passive, it will scale really fast. Having that up multiple times in a fight makes him unkillable, particularly with items.

The shield cooldown should begin after the explosion (in case it already doesn't).

Otherwise, the ability goes right along with the theme, and the damage seems right for AoE and not too punishing for destroying it.

E

Tying in his lifesteal aspect is great. The effect is interesting. The mana cost is quite low so it can be used for sustain. I think such a lifesteal-based champion would be tons of fun, and it's something that's always been a bit unique about Sion (since Warwick's feels less noticeable to me).

R

Really cool revive mechanic. Definitely satisfies the feel of an ult. It's somewhat conditional to trigger. I'll talk more about this ability below.

Overall

So overall, I have a positive reaction to the kit. You've put together a great kit that's kept in mind fair weaknesses, counterplay, and unique design. At the same time, it holds true to and further develops his theme. This is a great backbone for a kit. I  expressed qualms about numbers, but that's not really as important as the general direction of the kit.

If I had to express feedback in the form of criticism, here would be my main point:

The kit makes Sion very feast or famine

Here's a bit of my design philosophy (inofficial, since I am not a designer): Champions have to be balanced around an average performance. The more inconsistent this average performance is, the better the highs need to feel in order to make the champion worthwhile (and by extension, the more pronounced his weak points). At a certain point, the high is so strong that it becomes a hard counter to other champions, which doesn't promote skillful interaction but a simple "I did X, so now you lose." Some people like this, and that's great, in which case you can disregard everything I'm about to type.

The issue at hand stems from Sion's susceptibility to kiting. Sion relies on his Q and his %Slow resist to help him against kiting. If the enemy has hard CC rather than slows, already his W feels useless in helping him close gaps. This leaves it all up to his Q. If he misses his Q, he does nothing. That's it. This is why he needs such huge numbers for survivability, to compensate for the all-too-realistic scenarios where he does literally nothing. With that, let's examine his ideal scenario, his "high," because I believe it is too strong.

His ideal scenario is in a 40+ minute game with at least 300 CS, probably pressing into 5 items and in a teamfight where his team helped him initiate. He has massive health from his items and passive, which is further multiplied by 1.15 from his W, and *if* he gets his ult off, he has an effective 1.5x multiplier from that as well. His E, after resists, can be expected to rake in, say 300 health over the course of a fight. So his defensive steroids add up to around 800 bonus HP, and with at least Randuin's + SV, he has around 3500 max health. Collectively, he's getting about 800 + 0.65 * 3500 = ~3000 bonus health. Even factoring for his low base health, he's hitting probably the best defensive steroid in the game. Even Mundo, who is probably tied with Alistar for best defensive steroid in the game, clocks in at "only" 60% health and comes with a 20% current HP cost.

Let's discuss his low scenario: It's obviously when he's being kited, or when he's missed his ult. Between his gap closer, his ult, and his E--which relies heavily on hitting multiple targets at once-- three different abilities whose power spectrum varies wildly between success and no success, with no middleground in the case of his Q and his W.

It's a bit of the Jax syndrome, where if he gets to his full build, you are pretty much screwed. The only difference is in Sion's late game case, it's put on a 50% chance of being screwed or not, depending on whether he fulfills his conditions. I don't know if that's any better. I would rather see:

Lower Numbers

Easier anti-kite from his W (tenacity)

A reimagining of his ult that's less black and white.

For his ult, something like this:

Sion enters a bloodlusting frenzy for 10 seconds. His next autoattack becomes a brutal blow and is enhanced to deal X damage and cause a bleed for Y damage. He may reactivate this ability twice more during the frenzy. If Sion is felled during the frenzy, he will be revived with health equaling 20% of his total damage dealt from his frenzied autoattacks and brutal blows/bleed.

The ults power is no longer discrete in that either it activates revive or nothing, but it grows continously throughout the duration of the ult. This means there is an opportunity to counterplay it at every second for the opponent. Every autoattack you avoid means 60 less health when he revives. This doesn't require Sion to kill his opponent in order to revive himself, now, so the "low" scenario has been remedied. You can also afford to tone down its maximum scenario of 50% bonus health because the ability is more consistent.

The lows have been raised to help with frustration for the Sion player, while the highs have been reduced to help with frustration for the opponent. It's in my opinion a better game design because it maximizes the role of continuous use of skill between both parties in determining an outcome, rather than one moment of skill by either party (which sometimes involves patterns of luck), after which the outcome is already certain.

To compare with Mundo, one thing that tips the advantage in Mundo's balance for me is that his defensive steroid (ult), while considerable, requires a full 12 seconds to develop and can be countered by Grievous Wounds. In addition, it grants him enough +%MS to not be kited. This streamlines Mundo's highs and lows because he has less feast or famine gameplay than if his ult transpired over 7 seconds based entirely on some condition, and he had no +%MS to chase with. Mundo's not exactly a paragon of perfect counterplay and balance; his power curve is a bit like Jax's, which is feast or famine, but his interaction late game has more options in dealing with it. I think the tenacity might be a bit much on his W, but just fundamentally there is more interaction between players with Mundo involved.

For another example, this time on kiting, we could use Skarner. One of Skarner's problems after his rework is that despite bonus %MS from his W, his extremely narrow E was still the primary determiner of whether or not he could close the gap. Laying it all on that one ability is too feast or famine, and indeed many players complained about this. Better would have been had Skarner's W not had a ramp up time on the %MS, and then scale his combat power accordingly to compensate. Then his low becomes "I need 3 seconds to reach you because I missed my E" while his high becomes "I need 1.5 seconds to reach you because my E slowed you." I find this much more stable to balance the rest of his kit around.

So to reiterate, less feast or famine would be better, in my opinion. The key points to address this are in his ult and in his ability to close gaps. I'd honestly even go for a wide range Q that is relatively easy to land.

I know this is a huge wall of text, but I am mega tired from the day and having a lot of trouble in school lately. I hope you don't mind it took me so long to answer, and that my format on the post is not so good. You can copy this if you'd like and then delete this (or I can do it on request) so it doesn't take up too much space on the page.