Talk:Sion/@comment-20434720-20140806020900

So I've decided that when playing Sion AD top there are two general playstyles/build paths to follow: one for splitpushing / duelling, and one for teamfighting. The splitpushing one hugely emphasizes damage over defense, as in a 1v1 you're much less likely to be bursted down, and the teamfighting build emphasizes abusing the natural HP you farm, your natural auto attack damage, and the utility your team heal and point-click stun bring to a team.

Which playstyle/build to follow depends largely on your teams. If you have an easy, sit-back-and-farm lane, 99% of the time you'll want to go for the splitpush build, which would usually include Ravenous Hydra, Atma's, Last Whisper, a crit item (IE, PD, or SS) and a situational defensive/offensive item (Mercurial Scimitar, Randuin's, Frozen Mallet, GA, etc).

But if you have a somewhat rougher lane that doesn't hand you farm on a stick, you should probably emphasize durability and tankiness. Build should still include ravenous hydra or blade of the ruined king (and atma's, for obvious reasons), and end up stacking a lot of health and resistances. Personally I like to go for (in no order), ravenous hydra, atma's, spirit visage, randuin's, situational boots, and either frozen mallet or last whisper.

As always, the tendency is that in solo que, a selfish splitpushing playstyle will usually give more reliable results, while playing with your team can in theory yield better results overall (especially if you have an ADC who gets more than 4 auto attacks off in a 10 second team fight, unlike one I recently played with. Life's hard).

I will say, though, that even if your team isn't too cooperative, playing 3-defensive-items-atma's-and-a-hydra Sion is absolutely hilarious. 5k health, 150 MR, 200 armor, and 400 AD. BIG heals. If you get caught out with that build 45 minutes in because you're trying to ward baron (I don't recommend it, make your mobile teammates do it if you don't know where the enemy is) and just turn your ult on and stand there and fight all 5 of them, it will take them over 10 seconds to bring you down.

Funnily enough, after a game that my team lost (which I've made a bunch of references to above) where I went with the tanky teamfighting Sion build, the enemy elise called Sion OP and that he needs nerfs really badly. Which made the loss sting a bit less. It also didn't hurt that I looked at the stats and found that I did twice as much damage as our ADC, took 3x the damage, and died half as many times.