Sion Top Build & Guide — Patch 26.18

Overview

Sion is an HP-stacking tank with a global engage ultimate and one of the most threatening lane CC abilities in the game. His kit revolves around two ideas: stack max HP forever (Soul Furnace (W) passive grants permanent HP per kill, Heartsteel banks a slice of the damage its charged hit deals as permanent HP), and turn that HP into pressure with Decimating Smash (Q) for stuns and Unstoppable Onslaught (R) for global engage. Top lane suits him because the side lane gives him space to scale safely while his R waits to flip dragon and Rift Herald fights from across the map.

His game plan is direct: survive the early lane phase by farming minions with E knock-back and Q stuns, hit level 6, then look to R any objective fight that starts on the opposite side of the map. The unique twist is his passive Glory in Death — when you die, you reanimate for a few seconds as a sped-up auto-attacker with bonus % max-HP damage, which means you can trade your life for a kill or save your team mid-teamfight even after going down.

Recommended Build

Starting items: Doran's Shield + 1 Health Potion. Standard tank top start — the regen helps against poke matchups and the HP scales your Grasp procs harder.

Core items (in order):

1. Heartsteel — the signature Sion item. Stand near an enemy champion for a few seconds and your next attack against them deals 70 plus 6% of your maximum HP as bonus physical damage, and banks 10% of that damage as permanent maximum HP. It is one charged hit per target, not every auto, and it recharges on that target only after 30 seconds: the play is to walk at them, wait for the charge, then hit. Combined with Soul Furnace's passive and Grasp of the Undying, you snowball (turn a small lead into a bigger one) into a mountain of HP nobody can chunk down.
2. Plated Steelcaps — early Armor and reduced auto-attack damage. Default boots into AD lanes.
3. Sunfire Aegis (2800 gold, up from 2700) — HP, Armor, and a burn aura that 26.16 rebuilt around bonus Health: 20 (+1.5% bonus Health) magic damage per second instead of 20 (+1% bonus Health), applied at 150% against minions instead of 160%. The smaller minion modifier and the bigger scaling cross at roughly 300 bonus Health, and Sion is never below that line once Heartsteel is stacking — at 2000 bonus Health the aura burns minions for 75 a second where the old one did 64. So it is a better waveclear item than it was, not a worse one, and it keeps getting better as the Heartsteel stacks pile up. Together with Heartsteel you become unkillable mid-game.
4. Spirit Visage — Magic Resist, HP, and amplified healing/shielding from any source (Soul Furnace shield and Glory in Death lifesteal included).
5. Warmog's Armor — completes the HP stack. With Warmog's passive you regenerate huge chunks of HP between fights, so you reach the next skirmish at full.

Situational items:

• Mercury's Treads — boots swap vs AP-heavy enemy team (3+ magic damage threats) or heavy hard CC chains (multiple stuns/roots).
• Frozen Heart — vs auto-attack reliant teams. Big Armor plus an Attack Speed slow aura that neutralizes carries like Yi and Tryndamere.
• Thornmail — vs healing-heavy AD carries. Reflects damage and applies grievous wounds (cuts enemy healing).
• Force of Nature — vs squads with two strong magic damage dealers (e.g. Brand + Syndra) for layered Magic Resist.
• Randuin's Omen — vs crit-stacking carries (Tryndamere top, Yasuo + Yone): cuts critical strike damage taken.

Boots: Plated Steelcaps is the default into AD lanes. Swap to Mercury's Treads if you need Tenacity (faster recovery from CC) against heavy AP or chain CC teams.

Skill order: Max Q first (main damage and stun duration), W second (better shield and detonation damage), E last (rank 1 is enough for the slow and Armor shred — extra ranks mostly buff damage you don't need as a frontline). Take a point in R at levels 6, 11, 16.

Runes: Primary Resolve with Grasp of the Undying (auto-attack proc that grants permanent HP every 4s in lane), Demolish (burst HP off the enemy tower on your first siege), Bone Plating (eats 3 short-trade hits per cooldown), Overgrowth (raw bonus HP that scales with the minions you absorb in lane). Secondary Inspiration with Magical Footwear (free boots around minute 12) and Cosmic Insight (18 summoner spell haste and 10 item haste, which shortens Flash and every item active but not your abilities).

Key matchups

• Darius: Stay back from his Apprehend (E) pull range for the first 4 levels and farm with Roar of the Slayer (E) at minions. His all-in (full trade until kill) is brutal pre-6 — wait for Sunfire Aegis before contesting trades. After level 6, R lets you roam bot and Darius cannot match cross-map pressure.
• Vayne: Hard counterpick. She kites you (moves backward while attacking, keeping distance) the entire lane phase, and her Silver Bolts (W) deal % max-HP true damage (damage that ignores Armor and Magic Resist) that punishes your HP stack. Stack Plated Steelcaps early, ask your jungler for level-3 gank pressure, and group with your team after first back.
• Fiora: Even-to-unfavorable. Her Riposte (W) can parry and stun your full-charge Decimating Smash (Q) — fake the cast by tapping Q briefly to bait her parry, then re-cast for the real charge. Don't let her get Grand Challenge (R) vital triggers on you: her ult deals true damage scaling on your max HP.
• Garen: Survivable. His Decisive Strike (Q) silences you mid-Q charge, so save your Q for after his Q ends. E-knock-back a caster minion into him to chunk his HP. He can never kill you 1v1 because Spirit Visage plus your passive heal mid-fight; he can only out-CS you.
• Quinn: Counterpick. Her Blinding Assault (Q) blinds your auto-attacks, which kills your Glory in Death (Passive) reset value. Her Behind Enemy Lines (R) roams faster than your R charges. Play safe under tower, take CS losses, and group with team — Quinn falls off hard once teams group at objectives.

Power spikes & win conditions

• Level 2-3: With E plus Q you can E-knock a minion into your opponent for a slow plus Armor shred, then walk in and full-charge Q for a stun. First all-in window in lane.
• Level 6: Unstoppable Onslaught unlocks. From this point, every objective fight on the opposite side of the map is a potential R engage. Walk to fog of war (the unwarded part of the map) on the river side and look for a flash-R pickoff (eliminating an isolated enemy out of position).
• Heartsteel completion (~ minute 14-16): Every charged Heartsteel hit banks 10% of its damage as permanent HP, one hit per target, so you walk at the enemy and wait for the charge instead of trading autos. You become the primary HP-snowball threat: every short trade in side lanes adds permanent value. First major teamfight power spike.
• 2 tank items + boots (~ minute 22-25): Mid-game peak. Sunfire Aegis plus Spirit Visage on top of Heartsteel stacks lets your R-engage absorb 3-4 follow-up rotations — even diving 1v3 you usually live long enough for Glory in Death to net a kill.
• Late game (4-5 items, ~ 30+ minutes): Pure utility frontline. You will not carry damage; your value is locking 2+ enemies in place with Q stun while your carries clean up the fight.

Common mistakes

• Throwing a half-charged Decimating Smash for poke. A half-charge Q does almost no damage and zero CC. Hold the charge to maximum (the bar lights up white) so it knocks up and stuns; if you cannot guarantee the hit, cancel by walking away — never release early just to "use" the cooldown. Patch 26.13 cut the minimum-charge damage from 40/60/80/100/120 to 30/45/60/75/90, so a released-early Q is now worth even less than it used to be. The same patch raised Soul Furnace's mana cost by 10 at every rank (75/80/85/90/95), so you get fewer shields per mana bar in lane: hold W for the trade you actually intend to take.
• Using R as escape. R is unstoppable but costs a 140-second cooldown at rank 1, dropping to 100 and then 60, and it locks your direction. Saving it as a panic flee turns a defensive R into a dead R. Use R to engage on your terms; for escapes, E the minion line backward to make distance.
• Not stacking Soul Furnace HP on minions. W's passive grants permanent HP per kill — including minion last-hits. Be the one who hits the killing blow on cannon minions, large jungle camps you pass through, and any kill you can secure cleanly. Soul Furnace banks 4 permanent HP per small kill and 15 per large one or champion takedown, so missing 50 minions is 200 HP gone, more if any of them were cannons.
• Auto-pushing the wave to enemy tower. Sion has no escape and slow Move Speed. Pushing past river gives the enemy jungler a free gank window. Slow-push the wave (let it build up in the middle of lane) instead, then crash it on a recall reset.
• Wasting Glory in Death on the wrong target. After you die you have a handful of seconds of empowered auto-attacks — longer the more HP you have banked and the more you are being healed. Don't blow them on a tank — pick the lowest-HP carry you can reach and tower-dive (going under tower to kill them despite tower shots) or chase into their fountain if you have to. The kill is worth more than your respawn timer.

Advanced tip

Practice the Q-cancel feint: tap Q briefly to start a charge, then cancel by pressing S (stop command) or walking away before the swing releases. The enemy's reflex is to dodge or pop a defensive cooldown (Riposte, Stopwatch, Zhonya's) on the visual tell of your Q charge. Once they have burned the cooldown, re-cast Q with a full charge and land the real stun while their defensive window is on cooldown. In high-stakes 1v1s versus parry/stasis champions (Fiora, Pantheon, Jax), this single feint is the difference between landing your win condition and feeding your kit into their counter.