Cheat Sheet
Itemization
Starting Items
As most melee supports, Steel Shoulderguards is the mandatory starting item since it will allow you to execute minions, granting gold to the nearest ally and to yourself in the process. Accompany it with Health Potions, and remember to change your starting relic to Oracle Lens when your support item evolves into Runesteel Spaulders.
Boots
As a Juggernaut, it's often recommended to opt for Mercury Treads or Ninja Tabi depending on the type of damage your opponents use and the number of crowd controls they have.
Core Items
- Knight's Vow reduces damage to the ally you've bonded with, which comes in handy when you have a misplaced AD carry.
- Locket of the Iron Solari gives you good defensive stats in terms of resistance. In addition, you can put a shield on all your close allies during a fight.
Situational Items
- Warmog's Armor remains a "master tool" for tanks and adapts to any situation.
- The Sunfire Cape will strengthen your lane phase against the AD champions.
- With the Thornmail, AD champions won't be able to face you without taking a huge amount of damage. It's especially true in mid-game but tends to be less relevant in the late game.
- The Spirit Visage will give you the magical resistance you need to stand up to the mages. Against champions like Cassiopeia, Rumble, Karthus... use the Adaptive Helm.
- If you need even more armor, Randuin's Omen or Frozen Heart will be your friends.
- The Iceborn Gauntlet and Titanic Hydra are two good options if you want to splitpush and/or get more damage.
- Gargoyle Stoneplate will be there if you need to be in full focus during teamfights. They will make you almost immortal for several precious seconds.
How to play Sion
As a support, Sion is mostly played as a tank, but your behavior drastically changes between the laning and the teamfight phases. In the lane, you need to annoy your botlane opponents by abusing from your E - Roar of the Slayer to send minions directly to their faces and from your Q - Decimating Smash casted from the bush to make it invisible. In teamfights, you'll be the force of engagement and, as a tank, you'll be less inclined to protect your ADC than disrupting enemy ranks by using your R - Unstoppable Onslaught combined with your Q - Decimating Smash.
- Level 1: Q - Decimating Smash allows you to surprise your opponent in a bush at the beginning of the game and will help you clean waves easily if your opponent pushes too hard.
- Level 2: Choose E - Roar of the Slayer and target minions to poke your opponents with them.
- Level 3: W - Soul Furnace allows you to take damage when charging at your opponents or just to prevent damage when getting poked.
- Use E - Roar of the Slayer to slow down your opponent, go and place a heavy Q - Decimating Smash and some basic attacks, while making the shield of W - Soul Furnace explode to inflict maximum damage.
- Level 6: Now in possession of R - Unstoppable Onslaught, you can easily roam to the midlane.
Match-Ups
Tips & Tricks
- You can cast W - Soul Furnace at any time, either when channeling Q - Decimating Smash or during R - Unstoppable Onslaught.
- Controlling R - Unstoppable Onslaught is not easy. Plan your changes of direction in advance.
- Any object created by a champion — such as Anivia's Crystallize or Jarvan IV's Cataclysm — stops the R - Unstoppable Onslaught.
- You can push a minion using E - Roar of the Slayer, which is very useful to help an allied Lee Sin to move or to push away an opposing champion jumping on your own minion (e.g. Jax, Katarina, Lee Sin...).
- Q - Decimating Smash is invisible to enemies if you are in a bush.
- R - Unstoppable Onslaught inflicts damage to buildings.
