Sion is dead. Long live Sion.

Sion is one of my favorite champions. I'm a sucker for necromantic stuff in games, but I didn't pick him up right away because I was intently focused on Karthus, an undead mage having more appeal to me than an undead warrior. But I did eventually get around to buying Sion, and then I worked on learning how to play him. I became a huge fan.

I played Sion as a tanky fighter. My runes and masteries gave me some attack speed where it was accessible and went purely into defense otherwise. My item build was Ravenous Hydra, Mercury's Treads, Phantom Dancer, Frozen Mallet, Atma's Impaler, Guardian Angel. My Sion was an all-in late game gambit, which made me hesitate to play him much, since my laning phase was so bad. The idea was that if I played cautiously and farmed where possible, I could survive the laning phase and get a decent start on stacking my bonus maximum health from the passive on Enrage. This coupled with the offensive and defensive capabilities my items provided and with the massive boost from my ult, turned me into an unstoppable force. Eventually. With infinite scaling on the bonus health and Atma's Impaler to translate some of that into more damage, Sion could outscale almost anything. But that could take a long time and by then it could be too late. Still, I did try it on occasion. I described my approach to playing Sion as going into the laning phase "like a little girl." I didn't want to fight. It wasn't about killing my lane opponent. It wasn't about denying my lane opponent CS. It was all about surviving and farming. Some players hated it, but most of my teammates wound up appreciating what I was doing, just because it usually paid off. When it failed, it failed badly, but it usually worked. Last season, I even took my Sion into Ranked play for a single match. And in that match, I stopped a push on my team's inhibitor by scoring a pentakill, and then proceeded to lead my team back from the brink. That ended up being the final Ranked match for me in the season, and I didn't pick Sion up again in Ranked this season, just because I knew I wasn't going to top that performance. I did think about it. I certainly had fun with Sion in Normals. I even picked him in a couple of Ranked lobbies, but those got re-queued.

Sion may not have been my most played champion, but he was my favorite anyway, or my second favorite after Karthus, depending on my mood. For most of the time that I've been playing him, though, I had the lingering fear that Riot would rework him and ruin him. Well, they went and reworked him. Since then, I've been testing him out in co-op games to find out if the rework ruined him. While I do miss my old Sion, I've since come to the conclusion that new Sion has his own advantages. Maybe he'll even become one of my favorites. It's too early to tell. Breaking down the rework, Sion's old kit consisted of...

• Feel No Pain (passive): This passive was basically crap. It offered minor early game damage reduction, which could help Sion survive attacks by minion waves and such. Eventually, everything outscaled it into uselessness. This was a very, very bad passive.
• Cryptic Gaze (Q): As a targeted stun, this was exceedingly simple to use. It offered some protection early on and could help win duels or catch squishies later, but the flat damage was puny and the scaling was AP, meaning that for my purposes, this was practically a non-damaging stun.
• Death's Caress (W): Again, the damage was based on AP, so it was paltry on my build. Unfortunately, the magnitude of the shield itself was also dependent on AP, so this skill really fell off. Still, it offered some early tankiness to make up for the rest of Sion's bad early game.
• Enrage (E): I took this right away, maxed it first, and always left it toggled on. In some long games, I rebound it to a different key so that I wouldn't accidentally toggle it off. Enrage gave a huge boost to Sion's autoattacks and, most importantly, allowed him to permanently gain maximum health for killing things. Most champions only get gold from farming. Sion got gold and he also got tankiness.
• Cannibalism (R): This was what made my Sion a viable choice. The infinite scaling on the E, while very nice, was too slow to turn Sion into a dominant tank by itself. But the massive boost here allowed Sion to actually have a presence in fights. It also saved me in lane, letting me heal back up after being picked on by an opponent.

It's obvious that this kit was problematic. The Q and W were extremely weak without ability power. But I knew that if those skills were fixed and Sion got a real passive, it would mean that the skills I really cared about would need to be changed too. If I'd had my way, I would have reworked the Q into a skillshot and given the defensive portion of the W maximum health scaling. Of course, I knew that wasn't going to happen. Then the rework was finally announced. I knew the damage was going to be done. I got a couple of farewell Sion games in, with the last one being a very fun teambuilder match (I lost lane, but went on to murder enemies under their own turrets). But that was old Sion. And he's gone. What about new Sion?

• Glory in Death (passive): The concept of having Sion gain massive life steal and attack speed was shifted from his ult to this passive, which only does anything after Sion dies. In theory, this passive, which lets Sion keep on being a killing machine even after he is taken out, seems good. I mean, Sion gets to keep on doing things for a while after he's dead? That's reminiscent of Karthus, my other favorite champion. But in practice, it didn't work that way. When I tested Sion, I found this passive to be like a bad version of Kog'Maw's passive. Sion in his passive form can easily be avoided and his health drops so quickly that he has no time to stay around and fight the ones who killed him.
• Decimating Smash (Q): While this is harder to use than the old Q, it still has some crowd control and also does a lot of damage. It's great against minion waves and in big fights.
• Soul Furnace (W): This inherited the health stacks from old Sion's Enrage. I was dismayed to see that kills now add only 2 health instead of 3. But more on that in a moment. As for the active portion of this skill, it's essentially an upgrade to Death's Caress. The shield now has maximum health scaling and the damage scales off of enemy maximum health and covers a much wider area. All of that means that this new version of Sion's W can continue to be useful all game, not just early on. 
• Roar of the Slayer (E): This skillshot has AP scaling, but it comes with a short-lived slow and armor reduction, which are obviously useful to have. Shredding enemy armor could be especially useful for duels. There's also the potential to launch minions into enemy champions with this skill, which could be valuable in some situations.
• Unstoppable Onslaught: This is a big, flashy gap-closer that's reminiscent of Nocturne's ultimate. It lets Sion move with incredible speed, but it's very difficult to steer. Struggling with trying to hit enemies with this, I started saying, "Choo choo, here comes the moron train."

This version of Sion seems more like an AD caster than the old one, which isn't what I wanted. Trying the new Sion out against bots, I found that he didn't seem as robust as the old Sion. Yeah, the new abilities are generally better, but it bears emphasis that Cannibalism was one of the best ultimates in the game. I had a better pre-6 laning phase, but my old build just wasn't working. Once I came to terms with the fact that my old approach to Sion wouldn't work, I pondered whether he could still be a good champion. Well, I haven't tested the new Sion against human players yet, and I'm still working some details out, but there's definitely something to work with here.

Firstly, Ravenous Hydra isn't going to cut it anymore. I got away with that as my only life steal item because of Cannibalism. No more Cannibalism means that I need to move on. But one of the main advantages of Ravenous Hydra for old Sion was that its passive and active AOE damage could be used to kill minion waves. The new shield is so much better than the old shield at doing that, so it's not much of a consideration. I switched from Ravenous Hydra to Blade of the Ruined King. More attack speed early on. I might even build a Bloodthirster too in a final build, or throw in Ravenous Hydra at some point. But Blade of the Ruined King is just looking too good to pass up, since it gives both life steal and attack speed, both of which were missing from the loss of Cannibalism. The amazing passive and the useful active are also considerations in this.

Secondly, I realized that while the health scaling on minions got weaker, it's now triple for large monsters and for kills and assists on champions. This makes jungling, rather than laning, a more tempting choice for farming up health stacks.

Thirdly, I realized that jungle monsters let Sion engage on them by fully charging up his new Q. They don't notice the Q charging up, so it easily deals full damage to them. This combined with a better shield makes new Sion's early clears in the jungle way better than old Sion's were.

Fourthly, I realized that if I was building Sion as a jungler and already putting one on-hit item on him, that it only made sense to include our lord and savior, Feral Flare.

Fifthly, I found that his new ult, while it pales in comparison to Cannibalism, isn't half bad for ganks.

So yeah, new Sion isn't a laner like old Sion was. He's a jungler. I've been building him with Blade of the Ruined King, Mercury's Treads, Feral Flare, and Atma's Impaler. Well, he's no Udyr, but I'm convinced that this actually works. Now to figure out the rest of my build...