Hey all. This is a guide on how to play Sion as an AP stun shield bomber. What does that mean? It's a play style for Sion based on maxing out his Death's Caress and Cryptic gaze early game, and stacking up AP to blow stuff up. Both these abilities scale 1-to-1 and are quite deadly when used correctly. I want to keep this guide short and sweet. You might find that this guide works for you, or that you might want to modify it. That's cool :). This is based on what works for me, not what is necessarily best for everyone's play style. Let me know what you think thought CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Thanks!

The reasoning behind the runes is pretty straight forward. Stacking magic pen, ability power and a little mp5 will make you deadly early game. And that's really where this play style for Sion shines: getting fed early on. With the 1:1 AP ration on the 2 main skills having AP runes as well as the magic pen runes helps you deal a significant amount of damage. The MP5 helps you gain staying power. You shouldn't be taking too much damage if you time going in and coming back out of fights correctly, so mana should be your only issue. The MP5 runes should help with this.

The masteries you will use are a standard 9/0/21 caster setup. Going utility will help you in several ways.

1. Mana regen: the extra mana regen is always nice. AP sion is dead weight with no mana, and seeing as he doesnt have a high total mana count, you should be regening at a good rate relative to your mana usage.

2. Movement speed: getting in and getting out is key. The added movement speed will give you an edge over your enemy.

3. Additional CD reduction: more CD reduction = more stuns&bombs :D

4. Reduced time on flash/clarity


Everything else is standard to maximize caster damage.


As for summoner spells. I choose to take

Flash: perfect for diving. go in on a low enemy, blow them up, flash out. You can also flash into a nearly dead enemy and blow them up. Also an ideal team fight strategy is to run in blow your shield then flash out. You will deal a massive amount of damage and be out before they realize what happened. You can then go back in and clean up with a second shield bomb.

Clarity: you will run out of mana at the worst times. itll happen with AP sion. Trust me. This ensures you always have mana. It puts you at almost 100% mana when used since your total mana wont be too high. You can lane longer, and kill longer.

I start with a Dorans Ring. This really helps by providing the extra damage and MP5 that you need early game. I take this over other items but you can choose to open with amplifying tome + potion.

I follow it up with a mejais. Im pretty confident in my ability to keep stacks up.with a lot of aoe damage you should at least get assists. If you dont feed comfortable with a snowball item you can choose not to purchase this.

Third item is a rushed Sheen. After a stun your guaranteed the extra damage. It will make a difference even though its AD dependent.

At this point you should have bought level 1 shoes. Upgrade to either Spell pen or CD reduction shoes from there. Again this depends on your play style.

I then get morellos evil tome for the AP/CD reduction. again..less CD,more killing :D

After that I get deathfire. The extra nuke damage stacked with the damage output youll have really helps. Use it in between your stun and activating your W.

I then get void staff for late game Magic resist stackers.

I follow that by finishing up my Lich Bane

and I round it off with a Rabadons.

This guide is aimed at maximizing your damage output with AP sion. This outweighs the bonus health you will receive by skilling E and the lifesteal of your ult. I actually only activate my ult to take down towers end game. I dont rely on it for kills. Sure ill use it if its up and im in a team fight, but its not something i depend on to get kills. Again, this is just the way I play sion, and you can modify it to fit the way you like to play. However I found that when stacking AP, the most overwhelming amount of damage you can throw at the enemy team is a stun followed by shield explosion. This is all dependent on your ability to activate your shield and know how long you have before you throw your stun out. If you stun to early and cant activate your W its not going to work very well. You also have to be smart enough to know when to go in and when to stay out. The best thing about sion is his ability to deal massive amounts of damage while the other team is not expecting it. Go in when they are preoccupied. If they are focusing someone else, its your time to shine. A lot of times I even end up saving my teammate with a quick stun and scaring them away with my shield. Sion is more intimidating than you might think.

In summary: start with your w followed by your stun at level 2. from there max out w and put a point in your stun when shield is not available. By level 10 you should have your Q and W maxed out. Ignore your E and R til you hit 11. From there put 4 points into E. Why? Cause theres no HP gain difference between rank 4 and 5 of E. Also at this point you should have enough AP where you can blow up a large group of minions with your shield. You wont lose a lot of HP gain by ignoring this from early game; trust me. After 4 points in E you can max out your ult and finish up with the last point in E.

And always remember, have fun, adjust this guide to what works best for you, and +1 for my first guide :)

Helpful tips are always appreciated. Thanks guys!