Skill Order
Normal Skill Order
- Max Q first. This is Sion’s real threat button in ARAM: Mayhem. It gives you the best punish window when enemies step up to clear, overextend in the choke, or get greedy after you show on the wave. If Q is behind, people can walk through your pressure instead of respecting it.
- Put W second. Once Q is doing the heavy lifting, W is the best way to stay in the fight long enough to cash in. In long lane fights, the extra shield value matters more than a little extra poke. If the enemy team is trying to burst you down after your first engage, W second keeps your front line from collapsing too fast.
- Leave E for last. E is useful for setup and poke, but it does not replace the raw impact of Q or the staying power of W. Only lean on it earlier if your team already has enough engage and you need a safer way to start fights from range.
- Rank R whenever possible. Do not skip ultimate points to chase smaller gains. Sion’s fight pattern is still built around having his ult online on schedule.
Augment-Influenced Skill Order
- Q still stays first in most games. Even with augments, Sion usually wins by forcing movement mistakes and turning one bad step into a full punish. If an augment makes your engage pattern stronger, Q gets even more valuable, not less.
- Shift W earlier when your augments reward front-lining, bonus durability, or staying in melee after the first hit. In that kind of setup, you are not playing for a quick poke trade. You are playing to live through the counter-hit and keep swinging. W second becomes the better way to turn that augment value into actual fight time.
- Move E up earlier only when your augments clearly favor poke, spacing, or repeated long-range setup. That is the exception. If the augment package makes softening enemies before the engage more important than raw durability, E can come before W as your second max. If it does not, keep E last.
- R stays mandatory on level-up. Augments can change your skirmish pattern, but they do not change the value of an ultimate point.
What you lose by picking the wrong order: maxing E too early makes Sion feel busy but not scary. You get some extra setup, but you delay the spell that actually wins space. Maxing W too early when you need pressure leaves you hard to kill but easy to ignore, and that is bad on a champion who wants the enemy to respect his threat. Delaying Q is the worst mistake. It removes your main punish window, lets enemies walk forward for free, and makes every engage easier to sidestep or disengage.
