What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Sion’s rework was one of the better updates to a champion Riot has released, and it was
undoubtedly justified, since before the rework he was a very strange and awkward champion.
Before the rework he went mostly unplayed, but there is an earlier version of Sion that
most of us don’t really appreciate.
Join me today in taking a look back to find out just how good was beta sion
Here are some of my favorite comments from a previous video, where I asked what your
favorite thing about bard was.
Today’s question is what do you think about Beta Sion?
And if you enjoy the video hit that like button and if you don’t hit the dislike.
Anyway, let’s get started.
So if you played back before Sion’s rework, you’ll likely remember that Sion’s pretty
much always had two options in terms of his build.
He could go ap and become this high burst, high waveclear mage with a little bit of tankiness,
or go ap and become this melee carry bruiser with lots of lifesteal.
All the way back in beta he still had those two different options within the parts of
his kit, and both of them were equally as crazy as the next.
For those who don’t remember, Sion’s kit was clearly split into AP and AD halves: his
Q and W scaled off AP, which you took advantage of when playing ap sion, and his e and ultimate
were his ad abilities.
The concrete split of the nature of the abilities is a big reason why he had such a weird kit,
and during beta he went through a few different phases.
In the first part of the alpha stage, Sion’s Q, which before the rework was a point and
click stun dealing magic damage and scaling with AP, had a 2.2second duration on the stun,
and his q and w both had 1.0 ap ratios.
And his ultimate would cause him to gain maximum health every attack while giving 45% attack
speed.
However, on the May 9th, 2009 patch, he would get a rework that saw his ultimate change
to heal himself and surrounding allies at a ridiculous rate of 50% of the damage dealt
at rank 3, and apart from some base stats buff this is where we saw the incredible absurdity
that was AP Sion.
Apparently AP Sion wasn’t dealing enough damage, so his W was given a 200 percent ap
ratio, and keep in mind this was an aoe ability, and although at the time it had a longer cooldown,
his Q still had a 1.0 ap ratio with a 2 second targeted stun.
His W ratio would get cut in half, but then again he received a buff that saw an increase
to his Q base damage, and W base damage, and an increase to his W’s base damage to a
1.2 ap ratio, and not long after his w received a huge cooldown reduction.
And again he became a huge ap burst damage monster, with a simple but insanely powerful
combo, tankiness, and wave clear.
Finally riot would come to their senses and nerf him a lot, especially his w, and the
stun duration would get lowered as would his ap ratios and his cooldowns and damage would
take hits too.
And with all that said, the thing that I like to think about the most when looking back
at beta champions like this, is really how good would this version of Sion actually be
if he was put into the game today?
A lot of us talk about the beta champions and say they were so crazy, but there’s
a lot more champions than you might think from the beta where even if you put them into
the game today they would actually be pretty underpowered, since at the time the meta was
underdeveloped so certain champions succeeded or failed more severely than they might today.
The best way to do this is probably to make a comparison, so let’s compare this beta
AP sion to a version of a season 6 champion in the game today, Annie mid.
Annie’s a good comparison because she has the kit that is probably the most similar
to AP sion.
She has the targeted stun, lots of burst, but also the similar weaknesses of being immobile
and short ranged.
Now Sion was tankier than Annie is now, because he gets a shield from his w, and his passive
gave him a chance to ignore a flat amount of damage from basic attacks.
He also had much better waveclear than annie did, and a more reliable and longer-lasting
stun, but on the flip side, his burst combo is a bit slower than annie’s, you couldn’t
pop it off on someone instantly, since you had to get in range for your w, which left
you open to cleanse and maybe being disengaged, unlike annie where you can flash on someone
and just unload everything almost instantly.
But how does the damage compare?
Well it’s a bit unfair for Sion since he only had 2 damaging abilities while Annie
had 3, so let’s compare the two champions at level 13.
By that point both champions have their two basic damaging abilities maxed out.
Annie’s combo today at level 13 would deal a total of 770 base damage, with a combined
total of a 245% ap ratio, while Sion’s combo would deal 600 base damage, but a total of
a 300% ap ratio, so it’s the trade off of 170 damage versus a 55% ap ratio, meaning
beta sion would need 310 ability power to do more damage than annie at level 13.
Now at level 16, annie gets a bit more of an advantage with the third rank in her ultimate,
but late game with a full build Sion would definitely be dealing more damage, but for
the most part in the early game, his burst would deal a little bit less damage than Annie’s
does right now.
And on paper, that doesn’t actually sound that bad, but Annie’s burst includes her
ultimate which of course has a long cooldown, and as well in the very early levels Sion
was just insane.
Imagine going some kind of cheese build with just flat ap in runes and an amplifying tome
as a starting item, and on sion your W could be hitting for almost 200 damage right from
the start at level 1, with the 2 second targeted stun as well, and sion gets access to his
full burst combo as early as level 2, whereas annie has to wait to level 6 to get her ultimate,
and without sion would be dealing around twice as much or even more damage than annie would.
So with that said, we can look at sion as kind of like an Annie on steroids, with an
insane early game.
Now is that good?
I mean Annie has a positive win rate, and she’s definitely not underpowered, but Annie
on steroids yeah you have to admit, would be pretty damn strong, and I wouldn’t be
surprised if you put this version of beta sion into the game today, that he would be
the best champion in the game, maybe not by a lot, but he would definitely be overpowered.
And although I didn’t talk too much about AD sion, because in beta that part of his
kit was actually kind of underpowered, and in later patches when Sion had his ap ratios
take hits, the ad portion of his kit actually received minor buffs, but that doesn’t mean
that part of his kit is nonexistent, it would still give him some okay sustained damage,
and a whole lot of lifesteal in fights for sure, meaning that he could really make use
of hybrid items like guinsoos rageblade, on top of just bringing mad AP burst.
So how good was beta sion?
Well it turns out that he’s probably one of the more underrated beta champions.
When people think about the beta and what was overpowered, they think about twisted
fate, you know, blitzcrank with his 5 second aoe silence, Jax with his crazy dodge scaling,
but maybe sion fits in line with being one of the crazy beta champions.
And that’s just about it.
If you enjoyed the video subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see
you guys next time!