playing Sion support is troll. it can work but its like picking.. sion instead of Nautilus or Leona. however its fun and can catch people off guard especially in a decent matchup. picking Unsealed Spellbook + Relentless Hunter gives you a strong roaming and utility power. your high base damage + Smite from the spelbook means you can easily farm or steal enemy jungle camps and objectives.

i want to preface this by saying this is a genuine *** pick (duh). if you dont win lane and omegasnowball early, your chances to lose diminish dramatically. maybe im just a bad player, but i find that if you dont have a high gold lead by minute 20-25, you might as well genuinely ff. you get outscaled like hell, as youre basically playing vegan sion.

the good

• bullies lane
• a lot of CC
• semi-global ult
• versatile
• interesting possibilities for synergies

the bad

• melee with low range, no dashes
• no true utility besides CC

you know, that alone is why sion support is not a thing...

there isnt a perfect first item for sion support. recently Redemption was nerfed, but its still good. you can try first item Locket of the Iron Solari into Trailblazer but it feels awkward. Dead Man's Plate into locket seems most logical which is basically a clone of Poppy support core build. i advice you to try different options and see what feels the best for your playstyle.

your goal is to bully the lane as much as possible, because if you dont win early you become useless. never leash, if you see ur adc trying to leash gently try to ping them away. stand in far bot lane bush level 1 and try to get an early charged Q Decimating Smash for free. depending on your comp you can of course invade the enemy top or bot jungle for a kill. if you hit medium to full charged Q, enemy wont be able to follow up, so you now get a vital free lane advantage.



bush control is imortant, so its recommended you take Oracle Lens lvl 1. look for Q's as much as you can. your E Roar of the Slayer and ult Unstoppable Onslaught are pretty much sole engage tools. this is why taking Approach Velocity is so important. you are melee with no dashes.

your W Soul Furnace passive is not really working when you play as a support, but to make best use of it, try to use your World Atlas support item stacks on minions instead of champions, and prioritize cannon minions, as they give more health. this way you will get more health, but less gold. and dont forget that you can kill enemy jungle camps fairly easily!

try to roam whenever you can. and if your adc is very ahead and plays something long range and safe ( Aphelios, Kai'Sa, or even a very fed Draven and Samira), you can try to roam off your timers, but be sure to communicate it and actually get something from the roam. this is where Teleport from spellbook is very useful. roaming itself is very important for this strategy. you have to get other lanes ahead, and be on objectives (which is kinda what are you supossed to do as a support anyway...).

what kind of sion should i play?

for the more in-depth reasoning, scroll further, but if you just want to get into the game, here is simplified flowchart:

runes

if youre not sure, pick guardian page, and build tank. this is very safe blind way to go. do NOT pick Grasp of the Undying or Aftershock. they might not be entirely useless, but their value is significantly less than any other option, and they are far more conditional and specific.

if your team has enough frontline, pick spellbook. Glacial Augment was an old way for utilty sion double-jungle / support (tilterella), but nowdays i find it useless. i really dont see a why would you want to pick it over spellbook, but still i included it as an option if you cant / dont want to use spellbook.

if your team has no AP, and/or if you play against an unplayable botlane, where you literally cannot walk up and interact with the enemy ( Vayne + Lulu), you can try your luck with comet rune page, and build AP. it goes without saying that its not for the faint of heart, sion was never meant to be played as a mage. your only abilities that scale from AP are E (damage) and W (shield and flat damage). in theory you just spam E all lane and thats it, thats a fair bit of poke damage with comet and Zaz'Zak's Realmspike.

items

for the builds and reasoning behind them check item section and notes about them. but if you want to see a more in-depth explanation of mine, here it is. also, no Heartsteel on tank sion!?

why no heartsteel / unending despair / "other sion items"?

pretty much for the same reasons why other tank supports dont build them. youre playing utility. an support. not solo lane. also, many ad carries can build Blade of the Ruined King, and then you become squishy and useless. however, heartsteel might be a tempting purchase if enemy has no %health damage, and honestly if you want it then whatever, go bananas, but literally anything else will be more useful.

suppose you have this draft. immediately we see enough tankiness and CC, thanks to Ornn, and enough damage, but we have no utility. because of this, we should go Unsealed Spellbook page, and build, well, utility. that means go for Redemption first, then the rest of the stuff. but oh no, look at the enemy team! well, in this case, nothing special about them. there are 3 AD picks. 2 of them might build Crit Chance, and / or Attack Speed. that means depending on what they end up building, you can choose between Randuin's Omen and Frozen Heart. but where do we stick them? usually its the 3rd item, but depending on how the game actually goes, you might want to rush them earlier, or delay for later. say, you hard lose lane, enemy Sivir got an Infinity Edge second item, then there is no practical reason to go Knight's Vow for you, build randuin's second instead. but what if your ornn builds it? well then you go for frozen heart. what if we dont lose lane? then you go frozen heart, because both Garen and Sivir will for sure build attack speed. ornn already has it? then we dont deviate from our path and build normally. but wait, enemy team has Aurelion Sol and Seraphine. we can omit seraphine, as aurelion in this case is the main threat, but what a coincidence, aurelion can very easily stack Force of Nature for us! one item alone will laregely mitigate most of the magic damage on the side of the enemy team. hold on, im getting lost, where do we put it? if you dont deviate from your template build path - its the 3rd item, but in our case, lets consider this sitiuation: sivir got fed, we bought frozen heart as a second item, then we simply build force of nature third, and at this point your build might look like this: however, every game will be different... as you can see, its not that complicated. and remember unless youre actually a sole tank and engage, its not exactly your responsibility to build any of those tanky utility items. but you play with random people, and people might not do what you expect, so you have to adapt to your team.

lets consider another draft. your team has engage, frontline, damage, but there are several issues. first one is lack of AP, second one is the botlane matchup. look at this and think - can you play into this? the answer is... maybe? Ashe and Neeko poke + CC hard counter us. you might think "i just ult them / flash on them / use E" and those are reasonable choices but, you play with Caitlyn, a champion that simply doesnt work with enagage supports. imagine this: you ult them, ashe uses flash, and then you both die. okay now she doesnt have flash. but wait a minute, your ult cooldown at level 6 is 2 minutes, flash cooldown is around 5 minutes, so even if you do that, you only have a small window to actually catch and kill her. what if she never gives an opportunity? okay, ashe slips, you land ult on her, get rooted by neeko, and if everything goes flawlessly, you actually kill her. great! does that really change anything? not really... youre still stuck in lane, unable to poke them or reach in any way. your ult is on a long cooldown and ashe's flash is up again. and even then what about pre-6? just tank the poke? what if enemy jungler camps you? basically, this is unplayable. and this is not even the worst example. so what should we build then? you might think tank is good there, and you can, but should you? you might think building Boots of Swiftness and Dead Man's Plate will counter the slow, and that makes sense, but again is it worth it? by the time you will get enough money for those items the laning phase might already be close to an end. remember youre solo AP, and whether youre a tank or not you still unable to reach the enemy. thats when you should pick Arcane Comet rune page and build poke AP. this way you actually do real damage, can contest the lane, and synergize with caitlyn's archetype, which is poke. building poke AP, okay, but what about gap closing? how do i land other abilities? indeed. if whole enemy team is hard to catch, thats where you should consider Hextech Rocketbelt or Shurelya's Battlesong. pick the latter as a cheaper alternative and utility for the team.

about ap sion...

with regular sion builds we already know how to play. its simple and intuitive. but what about AP sion? well, truth be told, i dont know either. games where its viable are rare. i will say tho, just play as a mage. throw your E's, try to explode the W on the enemy, and dont use R to go into the enemy alone.

roaming

of course, as a support you have to roam and be on objectives when you can. i assume youre familiar with this, but just in case you dont:

in its simplest form, you roam every time after you crash a wave into enemy tower. thats it. consider this: you crash a wave, then depending on your health and gold you can recall and roam top / mid, or go mid right away. nothing to gank? then go into enemy jungle for deep wards. or do both! you really want to ward enemy camps to know where is the jungler. the percise position doesnt always matter, as long as you can see camps and entry points in the jungle.

but in more complex way, you can roam when you dont lose experience from the minion waves, or when reward outweighs the losses (securing an objective). think about it: you abandon your ADC to go for voidgrubs, or a rift herald, there is a fight, but its 4v3 at best, the enemy botlane pushes the lane 2v1. you secure the grubs, and what did enemy botlane got? 1, or maybe 2 platings, and even that - shared. we traded a permanent buff from objective over several minion waves and a couple of platings. what if there was no fight and objective was uncontested? you still got the most important part, while your enemies were forced to make plays elsewhere. even if your adc gets dived on 3v1 with enemy jungler youre still even at worst.

as a universal rule, you should contest for the push, crash the wave then recall before the objective. by the time its around 30 seconds before objective spawn you already should be in base and walking to them. you need to try your best to be the first there over enemy support, contesting vision, and looking for kills.

what does that have anything to to with sion? well with sion you have your R and Q. R gives a free engage with AOE CC and damage, and with Q you can fish for the kills. if youre the first on the objective you can stand in bush and just camp the enemy.

threats

anything that outscales you is a gg. sion is supossed to be a scaling champion, but it kinda isnt when you play support. anything that outscales you is: all enchanters; adcs like Caitlyn, Vayne, Draven, Twitch, Jhin. tanks in lane are problematic as well, you cant really do much to stop or punish their engages.

in general, pretty much all current meta botlaners are hard to play into.

to keep it simple, lets try to break down the top 3 current meta ADC's youre most likely to run into.

sivir

fortunately, its not the worst matchup for us. she never builds Blade of the Ruined King, has no %health damage, and no dashes. the only thing to play around is her E Spell Shield, however, with your Q Decimating Smash, she cant always quarantee it. its purely a skill thing. you need to watch how she uses the ability to determine how far can you charge your Q. the cooldown of the shield is 24 seconds at level 1, giving you a lot of time to play around it.

ashe

this is where it gets serious. her passive Frost Shot will permanently slow you, even more so after she builts crit. she will slow you, poke you, and you wont be able to reach her easily, and then she will kill you with Lethal Tempo as you try to retreat. there is unfortunately not much you can do. you can rush Boots of Swiftness and Dead Man's Plate to try to couteract the slow but its hard to reach this point, instead you might simply build poke AP with Arcane Comet and call it a day.

vayne

the worst of the worst. the best way to deal with her - ban every time you play sion support. im dead serious. its very bad. but if you ever end up there: try not to give her free procs of W Silver Bolts in lane, watch her Q Tumble and more importantly E Condemn cooldowns. her E is a main tool that will completely nullify your all-ins. the Tumble gives a lot of opportunities to simply dodge Decimating Smash. her Q is lower cooldown than your Q, meaning she will always have it if youre the first to use Decimating Smash ( Q HIS Q).

as with ashe, there is barely anything you can do. you go in first - she messes it up, then runs you down with Night Hunter passive and Lethal Tempo stacks. she has it all - true damage, self peel, CC, and will build Blade of the Ruined King.

you might think that building poke AP just like with ashe will help, but no. ashe is immobile. vayne has Q Tumble, and even invisibility on R Final Hour. its hard to actually land the spells, including shield explosion, as she will either run away, use the E, or simply destroy your shield before you can recast it.

unless the enemy botlane makes severe mistakes, and you with your adc play gods game, you will have hard time to win. you need your jungler to help with it.

what about supports?

usually, the enemy support pick wont be a defining factor of your laning phase. unless its something hyper aggressive like Pyke, Brand, or tanks like Tahm Kench, Alistar. for the reasons of simplicity i will not cover it. because think about it this way: you just track the enemy support cooldowns and be aware of their engages. thats kind of about it. im oversimplifying but what can you do about alistar all-in? nothing. you tank the CC. what about tahm kench's kit and damage? well you can build Serpent's Fang and thats it... pyke? just be aware of his hook and mobility

synergies

besides very specific interactions ( Jhin, Senna) sion suppport works well with something that can win and scale early. Draven, Aphelios, Twitch, Jinx are all great because they have good or neutral laning phase, long range, and scale really well. picks like Kai'Sa and Vayne in theory should be good too because of their self peel and ability to be a bit independent later in the game.

jhin

without a doubt, it might be the best ADC pick for sion. his W Deadly Flourish will synergize extremely well with all your abilities, besides W Soul Furnace. mainly, it will work this way: you land your E Roar of the Slayer, it slows, making it much easier for jhin to land his W root, then you walk up with your Approach Velocity and land a charged Q Decimating Smash. that is a ton of CC and damage, and also your E reduces the armor by 25%, and slow scales with levels, so there is a lot of sense in putting 3 points into E before maxing other abilities.

remember that your E range is very long if you land it on a minion (it even works on jungle camps, Daisy!, Summon: Tibbers and other pets / summons!), jhin's W is also very long range, so you can snipe the enemies from afar, use your R Unstoppable Onslaught and then land Q, all while jhin is using his R Curtain Call as well, meaning if you just land the E, the enemy is dead.

apart from jhin's W, your kit also makes it easier for him to actually explode E traps Captive Audience on enemy champions.

senna

note: this is mainly a duo pick. you really cant pull it off with randoms, because of how hard it is. the synergy goes like this: senna lands her W Last Embrace on a minion, and then you launch it with your E into the enemy champion. if you get the timing just right, it will be an instant root, you then follow up with the rest of your abilities. it is nowhere near as OP as jhin, but still fun and useful. also, your E slow makes it easier for senna to snipe and finish the enemies with her R Dawning Shadow, or simply land a W Last Embrace senna's E Curse of the Black Mist can hide your Q Decimating Smash unless youre very close to the enemy

you were talking about the shared farm...

yes. but i havent got the opprtunity to test it. so i warn you - i dont know how well it will work, if at all. the concept is simple: let sion kill every cannon wave. why would you want to do that? from the senna's passive Absolution description:

Minions and lesser monsters that Senna kills have a 10% chance to spawn a Mist Wraith.
Large minions that Senna does not kill will always spawn a Mist Wraith, while lesser minions and lesser monsters that Senna does not kill have a 28% chance to spawn one.

what it means is that senna gets more stacks from being near the dying minions, than from actually killing the minions herself. because of how support item works, we are not allowed to farm a lot of minions, but only killing every cannon wave should not trigger that effect. however in case it does - simply skip a wave.

so, senna sacrifices some gold from the waves, but instead gains a little more stacks, and still gets the gold from all other sources, and sion gets his free health scaling + some pocket money.

and again, this is purely mine speculation, im unable to test it thoroughly.

honorable mention - bard

bard Q Cosmic Binding + sion E Roar of the Slayer. that is an OG pick and what baus himself played with a duo. its meant to be played with sion as a botlaner, so its irrelevant to this guide, just a shotout.

sion has a passive (shocker), but you will end up not utilizing it intentionally. unless you play on an antarctic supersever once and a revelation comes to your mind, or just watch enough baus streams... you can do an inting sion botlane. however, do not force it with randoms in soloq. your adc will likely get lost, not knowing what to do, not following up, then you will get nothing and your team will flame you, and if it happens often enough you might actually get banned.

for example: when you see that youre getting ganked and you know youre unlikely to get out alive, it is often best to try and land your crowd control and then die immediately. if enemy has low enough health and they used their CC's, you can very often get a kill or two (or a Flash, or they just get out alive anyway...). some people simply forget they are playing against sion and disrespect the passive, then die.

when you play duo, esecially with draven or other strong pick, you can "intentionally look for a death angle"(c) and get your bro a free double kill and lane advantage. and the opposite applies, if you are losing lane, both low on health, wave is about to crash and enemy bot is only about 50-70% health, you can look for a death and either kill, or burn their flashes, make the lane more volatile, and get your adc uncontested farm. but if you play against something like cait lux or they have a lot of cc then its very tricky, and in the end your jungler might never come to punish the flash :(

i also cant stress enough how many times enemy lived on 1 hp from my passive and you just cant reach them without any gapclosers, but thats more of a tank sion problem.

gapclosers?

its something that.. can close gaps... like Phase Rush.

in our case, however, we cant pick phase rush, instead we got items, and yes, you can use then while being in your zombie passive:

• Youmuu's Ghostblade
• Hextech Rocketbelt
• Shurelya's Battlesong

thats pretty much it.

if youd like, you can also check out my (poorly made) sion support video here (not a guide): Play Video