A little late to the party on this one, but I finally had an opportunity to play Sion again a couple of days ago.

It takes Sion a lot of mana to trade. He has difficulty with anyone that can shield or sustain through the damage he does.

The nerfs have made it harder for him to flat out dominate some of the lanes he could when he was still overtuned after his re-work.

His ultimate and other crowd control plus his ability to infinitely stack health and still do respectable damage make him a super tank that is just about always useful to have on your team assuming you need a super tank with decent engage.

Patch 5.8 notes

Soul Furnace

After activation you have to wait 3 seconds before you can manually detonate the shield, assuming it hasn't already been broken.

% max health damage dropped from 10% at all ranks to 6/7/8/9/10%.

Analysis of Changes

Yeegads, the bump on self detonation from 2 seconds to 3 seconds is annoying. The increased delay definitely gives your lane opponent more time get out of range before you can detonate it and now it does less damage at lower levels. Sadz face is sadz. :(

Sion is still in a decent spot, but the nerfs have definitely brought him closer to the rest of the line as far as Top Laners go.

Roar of the Slayer is still key though as it gives you a slow which gives you a window to harass with Decimating Smash and Soul Furnace while weaving in the occasional auto attack.

The tricky thing with that is not going going out of mana (OOM) after a combo or two.

Match-ups

Aatrox - I've tried this match-up twice now and this is how it goes. Aatrox kicks your butt and sends you crying to mommy. Seriously just take Smite and beg your jungler to switch places with you. Because whether or not your jungler will trade positions with you, you will want Smite and Skirmisher's Sabre to try and reduce Aatrox's potential to all in you, which he can do at level two and pretty much any time thereafter because his resource is health and he can heal up off of minions.

If that doesn't work for you try going 9-21-0 and do your level best to get your lane to freeze just outside of your turret's range so that you can run to the safety or your turret after he has engaged on you with Dark Flight.

Garen - another tank. You will have a hard time killing him and he will have a hard time killing you unless you let yourself get low enough that he can execute you with Demacian Justice. Basically always keep enough mana for a Roar of the Slayer and if he runs at you slow him and bop him with Decimating Smash or walk away if he still has Decisive Strike active. Your best bet to dominating this lane early is stealing the enemy team's blue buff because that allows you to spam your abilities frequently enough that that you may be able to harass Garen out of lane or kill him.

Teemo - just flippin hurts early game no matter what you do. Steal the opposing teams bluff buff then TP to lane with a couple of extra mana and health pots and bop him every time you can with Roar of the Slayer and just walk away from him if he tries to poke you. Recommend Attack Damage Runes and Quints so you can more easily get farm when you aren't blind. When you get 6th, work on getting his health down and if he foolishly stays then run him over and kill him. Because of Move Quick he is really hard to hit with Unstoppable Onslaught from any angle other than straight on.

Nidalee - not so much a commentary about laning against her, but I had one dodge Unstoppable Onslaught by I believe pouncing through me as I was about to collide with her, which is likely a bug.

Yasuo - Does stupid amounts of damage even early game. Play carefully until you get some armor. Even then you really can’t take him because he can dash all over the place and knock you up and then ult you. You probably won’t die from it until he gets a Blade of the Ruined King, but it just makes trying to lane against him feel like an organized retreat. Try to poke him with Roar of the Slayer when his shield is down. After some armor get some early boots to dodge his tornado and walk away from him faster if he does go in on you. I think he can interrupt Decimating Smash by dashing onto you and his tornado will definitely disrupt it. Overall it is a a pretty annoying lane though hardly the worst. Like 7 out of 10? Jungler help highly recommended. Basically just try to keep him busy so he doesn’t roam and either follow him or take his tower if he does roam.