Sion is one of those heroes you see at loading screen and immediately think something along the lines of, "Bursty AP, got it," - and most of the time you're 100% correct. I've seen quite a few attempts at AD Sion builds, and never really seen any of them do well - whether they were stacking Phantom Dancers, Tiamats, or Bloodthirsters, AD Sions seem to have a track record for just... kinda... being absolutely ignorable and awful. With a little luck this guide will help AD Sions everywhere become a bit more reputable, either by following the guide directly or maybe helping someone else come up with a good idea as a result.

The short of the guide is this: you'll be focusing mostly on crits and crit damage (301% modifier) to get the job done with this guide. As a result, intelligent use of your ult can absolutely devastate team fights, both in terms of how much damage you're doing, and how much you're healing your team.

NOTE: While there is lots of good information in this guide, and it is very fun to play, it's likely not the way I would encourage people to build, anymore. The early game is just unbelievably brutal, and while the endgame is phenomenal, getting there is a painful experience. I'm in the process of writing up an alternate guide that will address the early game. Thank you very much for your support, I never really imagined that this guide would do as well as it has, but I'm exceedingly grateful to the community for being so good to me.

• This is without a doubt a guide that focuses on LATE GAME - you are still viable early game, but you are not going to be a game changing powerhouse until 20mins at the absolute earliest. If you're not willing to play conservatively for a short while, this guide is likely not for you.
• You should be able to last hit consistently. If you can't last hit a creep with enrage and offense masteries, then you should probably be taking a look at a last hitting guide, rather than this one. If you're mindlessly autoing creeps, you're likely losing out on a fair amount of gold, and pushing the lane dangerously far forward. If you can't last hit, then this guide is likely not for you.
• Once you're starting to build up steam, you WILL be getting focused. If you're not prepared to deal with getting focused in one form or another, then this guide is likely not for you.
• You will be ridiculously powerful by late game, but you will still not be invincible by any means. If you're not able to refrain from doing stupid, stupid, stupid things just because you "can" (trying to 5v1, fountain dive, 3v1 under opposing towers against... well, anyone, but CC especially), then this guide is likely not for you.
• Until you have your core squared away, your summoner spells are your only lifeline in a cruel and unforgiving world. If you don't have the presence of mind to tell when your spells are absolutely essential, then this guide is likely not for you.
• This guide will take a lot of practice to follow well. Sion doesn't have any sort of movement utility that you personally don't give him (ghost, youmuu, PD, boots), and no slows to help you "stick" that you don't supply yourself (exhaust, red). People who are used to playing champions like Yi, Nocturne, Xin will notice that it is significantly more difficult to line up a kill by yourself without the luxuries their skill sets afford them. If you're not prepared to practice A LOT to overcome those challenges, then this guide is likely not for you.

This is one of the areas where I've run into some minor criticism for favoring offense masteries over defense masteries. Some people say that the extra damage from offense masteries isn't really necessary, as you'll do more than enough damage without the extra 10% crit modifier and 1.5% total damage increase (entirely possible), and that the defense masteries would be slightly more helpful in that if you're facing heavy CC, you're slightly less likely to be bursted down. As I see it, the problem with scenarios where you're getting bursted down is one of planning rather than pure numbers - if your team is fighting/engaging in such a way that the opposing team can safely blow ALL of their CC and nukes on a single target, then there's a larger problem than 4% damage mitigation can fix, regardless. Being a powerhouse is no excuse for sloppy or stupid team play.

Also, the crit damage modifier from offense masteries is *very* noticeable in early game, as it makes you crit like you're using an IE from level one. If you're below level 5 and get a crit on an opponent, you've likely got a free kill or an empty lane for a little while as they head back to the fountain to lick their wounds.

The new defense tree is BEAUTIFUL: if you're looking for a little more survivability from this build, I'd recommend 0/21/9. This has the advantage of giving you a bit more movespeed as well, which is pretty nice.

You will hit like a truck, plain and simple. Yes, I know, since you're not stacking APen, you won't be terribly effective against tanks - but you're not trying to kill tanks. You're trying to avoid tanks as much as possible, because they don't really do much that's a real threat to your team besides disrupt things - you're trying to kill the real problems that nuke your team and take advantage of the disruptions, and those "real problems" tend to not have much damage mitigation. What if they DO have a lot of damage mitigation? Interestingly enough, with very few exceptions, the more mitigation they have, the less of a "real problem" they actually are. Choose your targets wisely and hopefully you'll have a few teammates of your own to help you with anyone left turtling around.



Once people come to fear you (and they more than likely will), the first instinct of anyone is going to be to obtain a thornmail as quickly as possible. With your QSS and MR/lvl, you can mitigate *quite* a bit of the damage you'd inflict on yourself to make that item not nearly the hard counter it could be. That and the MR/lvl seems to make your hp stretch out quite a bit further regardless as to the presence of thornmail - you're going to have somewhere around 2.9-3.2k hp by the end of the game (depending on how aggressive a farmer you are), and mitigation of any kind can make that number seem inconquerably large.



You can save quite a bit by starting your rune page with hp/lvl seals, armor/lvl seals, or flat armor seals. Flat armor seals would help keep you alive early game, which is your weakest, most vulnerable time. If you get behind in lane, you are in some SERIOUS trouble, and flat armor yellows may help avoid that. Armor/lvl or hp/lvl both provide decent survivability boosts, and while not ideal for the build are certainly decent choices. Still, ideally you're going to want to get your marks and quints squared away pretty quickly to make this approach work.

Ghost and exhaust are pretty much your bread and butter for the first 20minutes, as they directly address deficits the character has. Barring being in areas you're REALLY NOT supposed to be in, they'll save you from quite a bit of trouble, or secure some early kills to really get you a leg up.


Viable alternative to ghost, as it can certainly get you into and out of some situations that ghost cannot - if you insist on using it, I'm certain it's possible that you CAN do well with it, but it's not really my cup of tea. Ghost is ready more frequently and lends a little more power to team fights than flash does in my opinion, but you're certainly welcome to give it a shot if you JUST CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IT.


I tried it out for awhile and enjoyed it well enough, but that was also when I was fiddling with defensive masteries. With QSS and Cleanse/merc treads, the enemy team would be hard pressed to shut you down reliably, but I'm not sure that it would be enough of a difference to merit the loss of either ghost or exhaust. If you feel like giving cleanse a shot, make sure to rush merc treads a little sooner, as the combo makes you rather difficult to deal with for 3 seconds or so. I'd give up exhaust, but I'd be pretty sad about it.



Possibly useful early game to secure that first blood or whatever to help get you fed, but its usefulness tapers off pretty substantially VERY quickly. I wouldn't bother, as being able to land the extra hit or two that ghost or exhaust affords would be higher damage than ignite at almost any level.


Pretty awesome summoner spell, but unfortunately it doesn't really address any of your major NEEDS as AD Sion (getting to and staying on the target). If you're playing with a team that you trust to provide all of your CC for you, then this would be incredible - otherwise I wouldn't bother.



Any of them could be used, sure. Just about any spell has SOME minor, situational use that you'll lose out on by not having it. The only ones even remotely worth considering would be revive, teleport, or smite (still fiddling with the possibility of a jungle Sion, but that's not what this guide is for). Basically just don't take these spells.

Sion has a 40% chance to ignore up to 30/40/50 damage each time he is attacked. The damage reduction is calculated before armor benefits are taken into account.



Not the greatest passive in the game, obviously. It lets you shrug off creep hits rather... painlessly... but most of the time you won't really notice Sion's passive at all. Oh well.




Cryptic Gaze
Blasts a single enemy, dealing 70 / 125 / 180 / 240 / 300 (+100% of ability power) magic damage and stunning for 1.5 seconds.

Cooldown 12 / 11 / 10 / 9 / 8seconds

Cost 100
mana

Range 550




Great little disable, and something you will come to give great consideration as to when to use. As a general rule, I like to save this until the opponent has reached the, "Oh no, why did I start this fight, again?" point before using it, rather than to initiate fights. All too often when you initiate with your stun, your opponent will simply panic and take off, leaving you the choice to either give up the gold or chase - neither of which is very good.

Even though I recommend taking enrage first at level one, if your team is shooting for a level one blue gank, you should take Cryptic Gaze - it is an enormously powerful stun at level one, both in terms of duration and damage and will basically guarantee your team gets the first round of kills at blue.




Sion surrounds himself with a shield which absorbs 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 (+100% of ability power) damage. If the shield is not destroyed in 10 seconds, it will explode, dealing 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 (+100% of ability power) magic damage to surrounding enemies.

Cast again after 4 seconds to manually detonate.

Cooldown 4 seconds

Cost 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 / 110mana




Non-trivial damage soak that will greatly help you survive those delicate formative levels while you're getting your train on its tracks. This is the skill you'll want every level that you can't get a point into your R or E (except for your first rank of Q).




Toggle: Increase Sion's damage by 25 / 35 / 45 / 55 / 65, and he gains 1 / 1.5 / 2 / 2.5 / 3 maximum health per kill.

Cost 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 / 14health
Range 1



This is the reason crit Sion works. Well, this and his ult, anyway - but mostly this. An extra 65 physical damage at level 9 is nuts, crazy, bonkers, completely and utterly broken. For reference, Vayne's ult only gives 55 extra damage at level 16 for 12 seconds. This is 65 extra damage ALL THE TIME. There are only two items (three if you include Atma's Impaler, potentially) in the game that give that much damage, and they're both expensive as hell. What's more? Any time you murder something (Yorick's ghosts, Heimer's turrets, Shaco's jacks, Teemo's shrooms, creeps, minions, dragon, Baron - ANYTHING), you get an additional 3 maximum hp. You get this awesome damage for the low, low price of being horribly crippled and only able to attack things within melee range.




Grants Sion 50 / 75 / 100% lifesteal and 50% attack speed for 20 seconds, additionally Sion's attacks heal surrounding allies for 25 / 37.5 / 50% of damage dealt.

Cooldown 90seconds
Cost 100mana
Range 1


This is why you're not going to worry about attack speed or life steal much. With Youmuu's and Cannibalism up, you'll be hitting at about 2.1ats - a "full" build would be critting for about 1100 raw damage per hit, 100% crit chance, 100% life steal, 50% "splash" healing. What does this mean? You are an unignorable threat - the enemy team MUST focus you down, or they will all die terrible, horrible, awful deaths. The lifesteal combined with your naturally high hp (inflated by your E), mitigation in the 50-57% range against physical and magical, makes you a tough target to knock down quickly - especially if your team is even slightly coordinated. You can use this to remove some of the risk from lower level dragon and baron attempts by keeping your team at full hp (remind them to group up close enough to get the healing). You can move around during fights and attack targets you wouldn't normally attack to get a teammate up to full hp real quick with one or two swings, or to save yourself while pursuing a squishy by healing yourself on a stray creep or champion that's wandered too close. Another use for this that you don't see very often is for healing your creeps as you push a tower - if the "siege minion" (the minion that takes 50% less tower damage) is tanking the tower, you can use your Cannibalize to hit incoming creeps and heal up your siege minion - this helps keep your creeps on the tower, nets you gold, and extends the usefulness of your tanking minion. This is a very versatile spell that will keep you alive, and your opponents more than a little terrified.

If you have absolutely *no* chance of being in a lane where you're not going to get harassed all to hell, then I'd recommend - this isn't optimal for rushing your avarice blade or making use of your crit, but you MUST keep your early game farm nice and healthy.


You'll pick up on first trip home, with / to taste. Once you get your ult, you can safely and easily make a point of healing off of creeps and going easier on health potions.


After you'll be shooting for - this is an incredibly gold efficient crit item that should also significantly help with your movespeed issues. At this point you'll start being a more noticeable threat, especially if you have red or summoner spells. To round out your core items, you'll grab a : armor pen, attack damage, crit chance, CDR, *and* a great ATS/MS steroid on-demand - this gem activated with your ult will make you VERY SCARY.


From here, you have a few options on how to progress, based on need. If you're having trouble getting to a target or with getting CC'd, you can shoot for fairly cheaply. If CC/exhaust/ignite/AP-champs-blowing-you-up are the problem, you could shoot for instead. More often than not you can (and probably should) shoot for , as it will bump your damage up from "He kinda hurts," to "Oh sweet jesus save me," which will lead to a rather noticeable increase in GPM.

Endgame is typically when I recommend picking up the mitigation items - leading up to endgame, you're trying to maximize your ability to farm quickly, but once you've got your main damage items you'll be seeing a lot of focus fire. Try to prioritize which pieces you pick up based on need, though I find pretty much across the board that ->-> is going to provide you with the most survivability. Inevitably people start saving exhaust/ignite/all-of-their-CC's for you, and QSS can completely turn a fight around.


These are the items you may use once every ten or so games, but keeping the option in mind can turn a game around, so don't dismiss them.

If you're getting "marked" by targeted CC, this can save your life. That and being able to start a fight without having to deal with ONE MORE CC can make things significantly more manageable. A little health, a bit more MR, this is also a decent choice if AP nukers are a problem.

It's a decent choice against heavy AP in that it provides pretty high mitigation, its passive synergizes well with your high health pool and can keep you out and active longer in mid-game, and movespeed is always nice. If you're not concerned about CC spam, but magic damage is still a source of concern (think about ATS Kogmaws, ATS Teemos, Thornmail damage, that kind of thing), then definitely consider this item.

This is a relatively cheap source of life steal and crit, which can help keep you out and farming longer if you had a rough start or if you're frequently getting "poked" out of lane. You won't need the activated ability terribly often, but for the occasional troublesome Mundo or AP Nidalee Team (or <insert other obnoxious healer here>), it can be just the ticket to turn a fight around.

I have mixed feelings about this item, but it definitely has a place in the situational section. There will be times (hopefully not often) where your Guardian Angel basically only affords you the luxury of dying twice, but every so often it's an efficient way to get the opposing team to burn through all their CC's and ults. This may buy your team a few moments to respond and get the situation better under control, but whatever happens, I do not recommend using your ult before your Guardian is used, as it is pretty much the only means you have of making sure you don't go back into a much deeper dirt nap. The additional damage mitigation from GA is pretty darn nice, too.

This is, believe it or not, the single highest physical damage mitigation item you can get gold-per-survivability, wise. Thornmail seems pretty good, and to a certain extent it is - but for the measly sacrifice of 775 gold and 1 point of armor, you gain an additional appx. 20% damage mitigation. What's even better? That 20% damage mitigation in the form of an ATS decrease will also help keep your allies alive. I wish more guides would mention this little gem, as it is a really incredible piece to pick up.

Sometimes the entire opposing team will have Thornmail + <whatever armor item> - this is the only scenario in which I can imagine picking up a Last Whisper. Your primary goal is to eliminate high threat targets, not tanks, and most of the time a Last Whisper will just be a wasted slot. I've played ONE GAME where the armor levels reached such ludicrous levels that I felt it merited the use of a Whisper. Use this one sparingly - if you find yourself falling back on it a lot, you should really consider your target priority.

Every so often you'll encounter a team that's something like a tank and four AD carries, or a tank and a support and three AD carries, or something similarly retarded. Obviously Tabi are a fantastic choice, so don't feel compelled to stick to Mercury's Treads just because "CC BAD" - if your mitigation is high enough, the damage they put out during CC won't matter.


This seems pretty cool, because deep down I believe everyone enjoys having 5k hp, especially if they have an Atma's Impaler on hand. The simple truth of the matter is that the extra hp just really doesn't count for much without mitigation items, and for 3k gold you could find something else that will keep you alive much better.

Sheen is awesome, don't get me wrong. Heck, even the extra hp and slow from Phage is pretty nice - but the simple truth is that this item slows you down too much. It costs 4k gold, and with the exception of Zeal, none of the items help get you up to a healthy level of crit where you can make good use of your runes and masteries, which is absolutely imperative if you are going to be any kind of threat. I've tried many times to find a good place to stick a Trinity Force in, and time and time again it takes an already-ridiculously-expensive item build and makes it just that much more unmanageable without bringing enough to the table to make up the difference.

Your number one priority is to farm - you need delicious gold. In an ideal world you'll be laned with something like a or a who can heal you all day while you last hit with relatively little fear. You have an incredibly dangerous early game until level 6, as your shield doesn't mitigate terribly much damage, and neither your auto swing damage or your stun's pathetically short duration is scary enough to discourage a well coordinated gank attempt, so above all: PLAY CAREFULLY.


You're looking at lane security here, more than anything. A selfless support such as or are excellent laning partners. You can also gain a fair amount of freedom to last hit from a hardpoke being with you, such as - making your opponents wary of approaching the creep line buys you tons of time to dart in and out collecting last hits. Also: between Enrage and your masteries, you should really have NO trouble last hitting. If you DO have trouble last hitting... then I don't even know what to tell you, except that you maybe chose the wrong game to play.


Pokers are public enemy number one. The same that are your best friends are also your worst enemies. If you're in a lane against one of these, consider picking up your shield second instead of stun to try and squeeze in some more farm. If you're in a lane against two of these, either get a lane switch, or pick up a with your to help smooth out the gold loss. You can also manage the damage by having one of those supports I mentioned earlier with you, just to keep you topped off, happy and healthy.


You're going to be spending a fair amount of time on the creep line ideally, and very little of that time should be spent actually hitting creeps. So what do you do with your free time? You smack around other melee stupid enough to wander close. Every so often you will get lucky and a GIGANTIC CRIT will appear. THIS IS YOUR MOMENT. You're going to immediately stun your unfortunate opponent, hit him as many times as you can in one and half seconds (maybe twice, if you're lucky), pop a potion as soon as humanly possible, exhaust him, and ghost yourself if necessary. Do not be shy with your cooldowns, as free kills are not going to wander into your lap terribly often, and that delicious gold is INCREDIBLE for speeding things up. Why potion as soon as possible? On the offchance you need to take a single tower hit to secure that kill, you want no obstacles. On the offchance their laning partner isn't a complete mouthbreather and attempts to pressure you off the free gold, you want to shrug it off and move forward towards a glorious, Sion-run world.


Once you hit level six, laning for you is over. Yes, you'll still probably lane a little bit when you're able - those creeps give you delicious gold and hp every time you kill them, and keeping your CS high is imperative, but you have a few other priorities now that you're six.

• Priority one: you want to secure red buff as often as humanly possible. Red buff is your wife - she's the one who will stick around and support you through thick and thin. Ghost/exhaust are two slutty sisters down the way who may grace your presence every so often, but if you're counting on them all the time, you're looking at a lot of cold and lonely nights.
• Priority two: you are going to push dragon fights as often as you safely can. This may mean springing for a ward or two - do it anyway. Sion's ability to splash heal with his ult is incredible for making quick, safe dragon kills at lower levels, and you want to take advantage of that as often as you possibly can, because as we all know, dragons are delicious gold pinatas.

That being said, this does not mean you are all powerful, yet. Unless your presence is absolutely necessary to prevent A) mid tower from going down, B) dragon from being killed, or C) a huge team fight from going to absolute shit, you still need to be farming until your core is squared away.


Every so often you may get the chance to be solo top, but it's a decision you should consider VERY CAREFULLY. If it's someone who can harass you at dangerous levels, then you probably shouldn't go. If it's a tanky melee dps with comparable harass to your own, you can give it a fair shot. It might not be a bad idea to pick up your shield ahead of stun to help your sustainability, and you have to be constantly wary of a jungle gank. If your jungler isn't providing you with a ward (and in most pugs, he probably isn't), then you need to find some gold in your budget to do it yourself: 75g is a small price to pay to not have to A) sit dead at your well for 10-25s, B) take the 10-20s required to run back up your lane to the tower, C) deal with a more powerful jungle ganker, or D) a higher leveled laning opponent. Don't be stingy, and just buy the stupid ward. If you don't have a ward - be exceedingly careful, don't stray much past river EVER, plan out your next "gold milestone" where you can buy a significant item (boots, avarice blade, or both) and a ward, and then ask your jungler for a tower cover while you b.


I don't care if it's Sona and Soraka that you're against, or some other equally seemingly "harmless" duo - while you're in the laning phase, you are not looking at taking any handicaps. This is the foundation upon which you're building the entire rest of your game:

DO
NOT
FALL
BEHIND.

No one is doing you any favors for the first 20 minutes of the game. This is the part that really, truly tests your playing ability - you will use every tool at your disposal to try and get your core done by 20minutues or so, and when you do, you will come bursting into midgame as something truly frightening.

Mid game starts for you when you have a Phantom Dancer and Youmuu's Ghostblade in hand. This is when you stop worrying quite so much about creeps and their delicious gold, and quite a bit more about team fights. Bare in mind, you are not super tanky yet, but your damage is pretty darn nice with your Youmuu's activated and your Cannibalism going. Why is keeping that in mind important? Because you need to still be somewhat intelligent about how you approach team fights. Think about how many people are present at that fight, and how many enemies are accounted for. Three allies are at the fight, with two enemies, but you only have vision on one enemy? Plan on that third guy showing up out nowhere, and be ready to deal with it, or don't bother fighting. You should rely on solid initiations to get the fight going, rather than charging in recklessly and feeding them YOUR delicious gold. The risks are going to be significantly higher in larger team fights, and your caution should carefully reflect the number of opponents. If you have red buff, both summoner spells, your ult, your Youmuu's, your stun, full hp and mana, and you're in bot lane against someone foolish enough to be visible to you when all of his teammmates are accounted for in other lanes, then your vision should go red, and you should only have one pressing thought on your mind: Why have I not yet MURDERED this inferior being and taken his DELICIOUS GOLD?!


The caution regarding teamfights that I mentioned before is going to take a few different forms. The first I already mentioned: relying on a strong initiation to get the ball rolling. You do not want to be the center of attention of team fights yet, as you are not nearly tanky enough to endure that kind of attention: avoid it at all costs. Even if you single handedly turn the tables in a group fight and you're feeling on top of the world, you don't say a single goddamn word - you let the enemies wonder what happened and how; leave the verbal taunting for Singed to do. The second form that caution takes is how you approach a team fight. Literally how you approach it. If both teams are grouped up at mid - maybe your team is tower hugging, with the enemy team on the offensive, you should be in one of the bushes on the river. Don't be visible, don't take an anticipated method of approach - you want any recourse by the opposing team to be reactionary, rather than premeditated, as hastily made decisions are often poor ones.


AP Sion is wonderful for helping push towers, as he's able to put on this huge, beefy shield, lay down a fat nuke on someone, and then rush in real quick and drop his shield bomb, all while taking minimal damage. That kind of harass is AWESOME for pushing towers.

You aren't AP Sion. If you try that tactic, you WILL die. To understand what you are supposed to do at a tower fight, first you have to understand what a tower is.

What is a tower, anyway?

Sion is a master strategist, and being the master strategist that he is, he constructed towers for both teams ahead of time. These fantastic devices protect your team from the opposing, inferior beings, and try pathetically to keep Sion out of their base. But why would Sion do that? Wouldn't it be easier to only construct towers for his own team? Good question. Sion built towers for the opponents because towers are zones where players feel safe leaving all of their delicious gold for Sion to collect, and it saves Sion the trouble of having to hide in the opposing team's red bush to mug players for gold, instead.

So how does one go about taking the tower's delicious gold?

First and foremost, you need a tank. Not a mamby-pamby tank, either - you need something with some pretty serious hp, armor, and the ability to make their method of approach sudden: something like a Rammus or Malphite. Whoever the lucky fellow is, he's going to rush under the tower, draw tower fire, and try to hold your foolish opponents as still as possible while you rush in with Ult and Youmuu fired up to heal Mr. Tank. This approach is obviously more effective against one to two opponents under a tower, so be cautious with the execution. This is pathetically easy to do and do well, but you need to have a smart tank.


If you don't have a tank smart enough to smash and grab with you, then you should avoid offensive tower fights at mid game, honestly. Offensive tower fights require either some really hard poking from the aggressors, or some fantastic coordination. You're not really a poker in any sense of the word, and you won't be contributing too much to the process unless your tank mans up and decides to take tower aggro and pray that you heal him through it. If you can't contribute, then offensive tower fights are one of the biggest stalls in your farming you can imagine - you're getting a small trickle of creeps coming through, all of which are nearly immediately obliterated by your team. No bueno. Encourage your team to break away from the tower, and then lead by example - head to a lane where some creeps are pushing, and resume your farm. Maybe drop a ward or two near dragon and setup for a dragon kill. But do not silently encourage a tower fight you are likely to lose by standing around. Worst case scenario: you leave to go farm after having encouraged them to safely disperse as well, but they persist and get destroyed. Politely point out that's why the fight was ill advised and hope they learned their lessons. Some pugs will, some won't - but maintaining a team that's willing to still work together is essential, so always keep a cool head and try to keep the ship on an even keel.


Push the advantage. Always, always push the advantage. Sometimes this will take the form of pushing down a tower - this is AWESOME. Towers are, obviously, delicious gold, but they're also map control, sight, safety, and your biggest obstacle between your team and victory. Sometimes you might win a skirmish that only nets you maybe two or three champion kills (sometimes only one!), but that doesn't mean you can't press the advantage.

• One champion kill will let you easily force a dragon kill even if you can't necessarily push down a tower.
• One champion kill can let you safely poach their red buff (always leave one creep to prevent the respawn for the opponents).
• Two champion kills can let you force a tower fight that your team can overpower the opponents at, dealing significant tower damage, if not netting a tower kill.
• Three champion kills can let your team kill Baron at level 11. You should have wards up on the opposing jungle approach for safety.
• Four or five champion kills should never, ever result in less than at least one tower being forced down. An ace during midgame is the beginning of the end - you should push to their base tower in midlane and then exploit your superior map control until they concede.

Hopefully you now have your Infinity Edge. Super! Welcome to Focus Town, population: you. You need to carefully consider who and what their biggest threats are to your personal well-being and start hastily moving towards mitigating that threat as soon as possible. That mitigation can take the form of actual mitigation items as mentioned in the Item Builds chapter, or it can sometimes take the form of brutal murder - you have options. Specific points to consider:

• Are they constantly applying exhaust and/or ignite to me, and is this keeping me from healing myself sufficiently?
• Are they crowd controlling and kiting me so that I never deal damage to my target? /
• Am I taking overwhelming amounts of either physical or magical damage?

Survivability can also be increased just by being careful about how you approach team fights. I simply cannot overstate this point: be unpredictable. If your teammates are grouped up and pushing, you are nearby but hidden. You want to be safely out of sight, and if you even SUSPECT that the opposing team will move in such a way as to catch you by yourself, you get the hell out of there. You are not an initiator. You will never BE an initiator with this build. Don't think that way, never even consider it as an option. Stop thinking it. You have a tank for a reason (if your team doesn't have a tank, then why did you lock in Sion, stupid?), make sure you let him do his job.



Part of being unpredictable is making sure you see more than your opponents. You want to fight where you have sight - no sight, no fight. Period. If you can anticipate their actions and they can't anticipate yours, the game is already over. The reverse is also true - don't be the sap with no vision, even if you have to spring the gold for wards personally.



In late game, the entirety of your mindset should revolve around murder. You need to make sure that you are never without your tools for murder, both in terms of CD's and appropriate items. If you die, you should take a moment to review your death stats and assess what (if any) mitigation you should be acquiring. You should reflect on the fight and consider what you could have done differently to affect the outcome - whether it being taking a moment to smack a creep to heal back up instead of chasing, having greater vision, simply not engaging at all because it was a poor setup, changing your angle of approach, reconsidering your target priority - whatever. Sion is concerned with a glorious Sion-run future, and his eyes are forward, not behind. However a fight goes, whether it's crushing victory or defeat, you need to consider what to bring to the next encounter to ensure it goes even better.



As in midgame, ALWAYS press the advantage. Killing a SINGLE CHAMPION in late game can spell the end of the game, depending on what role they were filling. Maybe that champion was the only source of meaningful damage, so the opposing team has no teeth. Maybe that champion was "That Fuckin' Singed" who sewed discord and led his team to victory each team fight by being unkillable and splitting up your ranks. Those kind of kills can lead to you steamrolling into their nexus, leaving the four remaining champions with the painful decision of trying to stand in your way and joining Singed with a gray screen, or watching helplessly while their base is ravaged and praying their Singed took Steady Hands over Perseverance (he didn't). Or maybe that one kill is the unfortunate Soraka who disconnected for awhile and has been stuck at level 12 the whole game because she's always in the wrong place at the wrong time (get some wards, people!) - you have to carefully consider the significance of each kill and evaluate just how much it can be capitalized on.

These bastards right here are some of the people you will hate the absolute most. One of these by itself can be pretty inconvenient, two or more can be a very, very big problem. The problem you have with knockups/knockbacks is that there is really no way to mitigate their affects - you can't prevent it (aside from outranging or CC'ing them) for the most part, and you lose a TON of uptime in fights if these effects are used intelligently. Be very wary if you see these champions on the opposing team, and have a plan to avoid them as best you can until the big damage threats on the opposing team are dealt with. Encourage teammates to either help lockdown the person doing the knocking, or to help keep your target locked down so that you're not losing too much ground.




With intelligent play, these champions can be very difficult to kill one on one until you're simply doing so much damage that their presence is meaningless, anyway. They'll often be able to jump over a wall or small cliff and create a large enough gap that chasing will almost always get you killed. It's not the end of the world, just be mindful of where you engage them and be ready to write off a lost kill without chasing and feeding the enemy like an idiot.




These are champions that have some sort of snare, root, stun, debuff of SOME KIND that you should be considering when you'll invest in a QSS. Chief offenders that you should REALLY, REALLY keep an eye out for are Teemo, fiddlesticks, Malzahar/Warwick/Urgot/Skarner, Rammus/Galio, and -maybe- Mordekaiser. Some of these effects you can simply outrange or ignore, so you have to play it by ear as to how seriously you need that QSS, but these are certainly champions that should get those wheels turning in your head.





These are some of the most common offenders, but really just about anyone is able to kite if they pick up a slow item and have the ability to either attack from range or spam abilities from range. Merc Treads can make these types of games considerably less frustrating.




Any single one of these champs can bring something great to the laning phase - whether it's a healthy poke, the ability to soak damage for you, the ability to spoonfeed you champion kills, heal you, CC the enemy, they bring SOMETHING to the lane that is valuable. With a little cooperation on each of your parts, you should come out of laning phase in a great position to move forward.




These champs tend to have enough harass, CC, or both that farming can be prohibitively dangerous. Play carefully against these champs, and hope that you have a support or a poker of your own to make the lane a bit more manageable.




These champs provide a buff of some kind that make you much, much more difficult to deal with. Coordinating with these champions so that they use their buffs when you actually need them can make teamfights seem utterly impossible for your opponents.

I hope that this guide helps people realize what a horrific monster AD Sion is, and how to exploit that. Any feedback is welcome, as this is my first shot at a published guide and I know many of you have far more experience in making meaningful guides than I do. I'll likely continue polishing the guide with additional information as it's requested, maybe some pictures, or perhaps breaking down some textwalls if any are too unmanageable, and you can aid this process with constructive feedback, so please don't be shy.

Thank you for your time, and best of luck in your AD Sion ventures.