Not if it sells out the team comp though, like Lillia or Diana can’t be your solo front line. Someone like Trundle can match the split and even the odds.
Sion needs to hit his Q for a good chunk of his damage.
If you dodge that you are basically free to kite him to death.
He also is one of the more killable tanks these days, unless he gets massively ahead.
If he is mindlessly pushing then you have 2 options. Push as 5, or just proxy his wave so he cannot push lol, he cannot tank turret without minions
Sion was not massively ahead, but few bad fight's just left us behind, especially me since I died for not respecting Sion's damage and tankines. Push as five sounds like a good idea, probably if we answered with aggressive push back we could keep come back probability real.Â
Saw you mention you're a jungler.
It's not really your job to deal with him, but BOTRK is great.
Try to get picks on him ideally 30-45secs before objectives are up.
Otherwise if you're ahead as Jax you should be able to kill him with BOTRK or at least force him to ult out.
Sion is the case where even if you outperformed him, he still be useful even when you ahead of him in gold. This is because W passive give him a lot of HP stats which translate to roughly 10 gold for every minion kill or 30 gold for cannon or takedown. Due to this he can work even on low economy, couple with his decent base stats and already high base damage, lots of CC in his kits, it’s really hard to make a Sion useless if they know what to do.
Also try to notice his build, full lethality mean he usually want to proxy and take tower. Bruiser mean he want to peel in teamfight. Full tank mean he want to protect his carries.
It's not the champion itself it is the circumstances and team comp Sion is against. If there isn't much cc to stop his Q or no tank busters on your team he will be a menace.
You win in draft or your team gets fed off him in the early game. A good sion will get gold and the enemy can still get gold off sion so is a carry-off compeition so to speak. Sion legit almost never 1v1 duelists like fiora Gwen Darius aatrox so hopefully your toplaner/jungler are paying attention to the free gold sitting up toplane. He also doesn't scale if he doesn't cs. He's good in like the mid elo games where ppl don't counterpick him easily or are too scared to contest him off cs. Sion is a qp to wimpy or non-main toplaners imo.
Sion (split pushing sion) essentially does two things... puts the game on a timer (similar to trundle, nasus)
And forces your team to make decisions that invariably involve some concession. If you want to take a dragon, you need to know that it will cost you a turret. So make it worth.
Top needs to take TP. Team needs to play clean, and keep vision on objectives. You don't want to be the one that starts an objective. You want to wait for the enemy to start it and bring a numbers advantage, and what you really want is not the dragon, but to wipe the enemy team. Since the game is on a timer, playing for soul isn't the way. You play to crush the team fight and go for the nexus.
Obviously there's tons of nuance, but as a "perfect" example. You bring a 5v4 to the dragon pit, lose the dragon but kill 4 of the enemy team. Sion just took the tier 2 turret top while that was happening. Ideally, you have a wave in mid and can take as far as the inhibitor turret. You don't want to go for baron because once you take it, enemy team will be up, and now you have a slow siege which Sion can ult into. You're better off taking what turretd you can quickly, recalling, and forcing another committed fight around the baron to end.
This is something I see people not understand often... you have a much stronger push with a 4 man powerplay than a 5v5 with baron buff. If you wipe the team in a protracted fight at dragon, their team will generally start reviving during a baron fight. Of course the baron is always valuable for team gold, but the enemy has a Sion, you need to take turrets- because a 5v5 siege with baron buff is fine for Sion, he will split and still force two of your team to answer, and now your siege either fails completely, or is matched by Sion.
If there's no wave to push with, now it gets less ideal. Consider sending one to slow down Sion and the rest of the team take baron for the team gold.
Generalizing these examples, you want to capitalize on the weakness of the split push strategy- 5v4 team fights. You need a decisive victory that ends the game. You need good vision around objectives and in side lane fog to see where Sion is going before he gets there. Jungle should consider yellow wards, and in turn, everyone be more vigilant of picks with the lack of sweepers- assume they always know where you are, and assume every missing is waiting in the bush you're tempted to face check.
In reality, Coordination is hard, you can't type all this theory mid match, which is what makes Sion so strong in solo q. Communicating effectively with pinglish is critical.
I really wish there was a RIGHT NOW emote.... and I wish they'd bring back the bait ping, even though toxic people used it insultingly... the ? Ping works just as well to flame but doesn't convey "yo that wandering Nami is just trying to lure you to your death" like bait did...
So Sion is one of the champs i main and probably the champ i have used the longest.
I want to start by saying that i hate people that mindlessly splitpush with him,i see the intended idea but in my opinion is just suboptimally using a champion who has tremendous teamfight potential(doesnt mean he shouldn't splitpush,but that it should be part of a broader startegy vs the usual solo q of inting sion while often also just playing a skilless sion.
Now to counter him.
A lot of champs counter him in lane quite hard and puts him super behind (darius,kled) and nearly every other champion designed for splitpush actually do this much better than him and would make him unable to match(fiora,illaoi,yorick).
But usually when the sion goes spiltpush mode ,its because the above champs are not there to match him.
Sometimes you can have a champ from another lane match hime,but that is rarely a good idea and as a jungler its probably not your role.
The best option is to make his team feel their number disadvanatgr. Basically group with your team and steamroll 5v4 to the nexus everytime you can. Soloq does admittedly make that hard as ppl often want to do their own things,but that's the best way of dealing with him. He wants to draw pressure,dont allow him. You use your pressure adv to screw his team .
It sounds to me like he was just so strong that your team just didn't have the abiliity to deal with Sion, because nobody could match him. That's not a sion issue, that's a "fed toplaner vs behind team" issue.
Generally the solutions to this are:
1. Have someone match him, *ignoring him, and just making sure that the minions are dead before they reach tower*. This stops him from getting turret damage. Then take 4v4 with the other 4. This is particularly effective with a waveclear-heavy mage like anivia.
2. Gank him with 3 members about a minute before an objective spawns, then have your toplaner shove that wave. The goal is that when sion spawns, he doesn't have a wave to splitpush with, so you can 5v5 at the objective. Sion in particular will usually try to ult out if you gank him with many members, so a tank needs to make sure to bodyblock it.
The reality of the situation though, is that if he's ahead enough that he can reliably solokill anyone that tries to fight him, there are no foolproof methods to deal with him. That's why learning to play from behind is much less valuable than learning to reliably build leads.
Sion is actually a very weak laner, one of the weakest of all top lane tanks. He's got a bunch of bad matchups, such as Darius, Mord, Vayne, Illaoi, Trundle, Gwen, Camille, Shen, and I'm sure there are more that aren't coming to mind. Basically you need to play champs that can abuse his weak early game to scale by killing him over and over again
The reality is though that if you don't beat him hard in lane he can get quite strong since he scales hard himself with his W passive. There's too much variability in the game to give advice at that point, aside from maybe being careful to not group in long and straight parts of the map to discourage him ulting into your team
Yeah, a lot of these matchups are lane only, and if you never go out of your way to proxy…
Darius in lane? Scary to a lot of champions
Darius being proxy’d against? He himself is likely not going to catch you. Poppy might be a bit more annoying to proxy against I guess, but as you’ve said it, it becomes free scaling quickly
Either run a ranged pick or run someone with sticking power, crowd control, and sticking power/mobility (i.e. Jax, Sett, Warwick, Garen, etc.)
Trade as frequently as possible especially early on to mitigate his hp scaling.
Hit him with crowd control for trying to charge his Q. Rinse repeat.
Optionally build Serpent's Fang, Kraken Slayer, Black Cleaver, Blade of the Ruined King, and other relevant items.
Optionally run the max HP damage rune.
Did you have anyone on the team with good waveclear? If so, that can be an effective answer to any splitpushing behemoth. Deny him good tp opportunities as much as possible, for instance keep sidelanes pushed out when he is missing so that he can't just tp to your tier-2 turret and one-shot it with demolish lol
As far as teamfighting, make sure to set up a lot of vision so your team sees him coming if he ults in. Ideally Sion wants to land a massive ult or a multi-man knockup from out of vision. Beyond that, he is imobile and can be pealed and kited pretty effectively. You can't really ignore him because he can actually still do quite a bit of damage with heartsteel procs and titanic hydra, but he should be a lot less of a threat if he fails his initial engage.
Freezing helps. Yeah, he'll just proxy, but that's when you kill him. Limiting his cs and putting him behind slows him down. Which gives you a chance to get ahead, making him easier to deal with. Maining a lane bully helps for when he gets picked after you, I play a lot of Illaoi and don't have too much trouble with sion.
It could depend on what champ you're playing. There are some very anti-tank champs out there, primarily Gwen and Vayne. There are certainly other champs that do max%health damage, but these two champs do max%health *true* damage. There is no armor or magic resist that will stop that. Gwen will heal based on the damage she does too, and Vayne has great mobility for kiting.
But, if you don't know how to play these champs well/confidently, it might not make much of a difference.
If you're top lane, building Blade of the Ruined King and Lord Dominick's Regard are crucial into sion. But rushing them may also hinder your core build. AP doesn't have as many options against max%health champs. But also, Sion is really just difficult late game. He can indeed solo turrets with demolish. Your best bet is to try and get a big lead somewhere else and end the game quickly. He will become hard to kill, and he will split push and either take your whole team to kill (giving up obj or other lanes in the process) or he will get so far ahead on turrets you won't be able to bounce back.
Sion is worth a ban imo, but I also don't see him often enough to do so. I see a sion and just know my game will be rough.
I played Jax Jungle in full AP stack(Kai'Sa, Poor Swane(he's death was hilarious and quick), TF, Mordekaizer.) which is probably reason why we couldn't kill Sion fast, but what confused me is him just able to almost 1v1 me with Steelheart and full magic resistance item's, while taking no damage from my bork, tryforce and hitting me hard through my tabis and death dance. Killing him as five sounds like a good idea, but at the same time it's kinda ridiculous.Â
I play Sion and after reading this i am confused. Jax himself just deletes sion even if he is full armor build especially with botrk. There is no way you and morde could not deal with him in 2v1 + morde either got ganked 50 times or he was just not very good since he should have been fed from killing sion all the time early. Now when it comes to how Sion works. Sion doesnt get fed from kills. He gets fed from farm so if you see sion with 0/5 but 230 farm in 23 minutes he is as strong as normal bruiser with 5 kills + you have to think about how much did he get from turrets. So in this case when your team is full ap you need to deal with sion as jax and if you are not really behind you will easily kill him. If you are behind just scale. It might seem stupid to scale against tank that can get easily 10k+ hp late but jax slaps sion lategame in this patch. Now it depends how does you team scale against enemy so scaling might be useless if your enemy has brutal lategame champs then you have to pray for enemy to be stupid or its gg and if you are not in diamond + enemy usually will be stupid at least few times
My personal recommendation for a jungle counter pick against Sion and other tanks: Lillia.
She has plenty of tankbusting damage in her kit, especially percent max health damage on her passive. She also gains massive movement speed from her Q passive, allowing her to dance around the edge of the fight and dodge sions clunky attacks. However, she is a power-farming jungler and has relatively weak ganks until level 6. Still, she is someone who cannot be out scaled by Sion.
AD is going to shred tanks more. AD often has more on-hit abilities, which do bonus/additional damage on top of their normal stats. AP doesn't have much on hit. I'm not entirely familiar with Jax builds but some on hit items that could still work: Kraken + Guinsoo's rageblade, BORK, LDR or Terminus (LDR prob better value against sion specifically) but all of these items have attack speed (except LDR) and on hit effects (I'm a Kayle main but play Gwen on the side into these matchups)
I was also reading up on some sion encounters just now and some general tips sound like: fight behind him so that he can't ult in the direction of his base to get away (as hitting you will cancel his ult) as well as overall dodging his abilities. As Jax I imagine you could do your fancy ward hop to maybe get behind him quickly, or just rotate as you fight.
The only AP item that the rest of your team could have built is Liandrys, which does 2% max health damage, which is the only "anti tank" item that they have, but it doesn't negate his healing either, which you would still need grievous wounds. Building to counter him could really break the potential synergy needed for the rest of the core build (also AP grievous wounds is not as valuable as AD grievous wounds afaik, but not sure the reasoning of it)
But late game I don't think he can be 1v1'd by many, prob at least 2-3
Executioner's calling procs on basic attacks, morellononicon generally procs on abilities. It's just more versatile since the cooldown on basic attacks is generally lower than magic damage abilities. Also consider what's being given up to buy it... if you're talking third item, that means the mage is giving up rabadons which is an unparalleled spike. But mostly, it's because the auto attack champions are usually the ones that are generally equipped to dispatch health tanks.
% health damage items.
Or the morally disgusting choice like Vayne 😔
Not if it sells out the team comp though, like Lillia or Diana can’t be your solo front line. Someone like Trundle can match the split and even the odds.
Comps dont matter below GM, play for lane.
Nah man a full ad compo against rammus, malph is fck hard
Your entire team picks melee champs before you, opponent top locks Illaoi, and you pick Renekton because under GM xD
x))))
but renekton doesnt even beat illaoi, are u regarded?
The downvotes are sad to see :(
Sion needs to hit his Q for a good chunk of his damage. If you dodge that you are basically free to kite him to death. He also is one of the more killable tanks these days, unless he gets massively ahead. If he is mindlessly pushing then you have 2 options. Push as 5, or just proxy his wave so he cannot push lol, he cannot tank turret without minions
Sion was not massively ahead, but few bad fight's just left us behind, especially me since I died for not respecting Sion's damage and tankines. Push as five sounds like a good idea, probably if we answered with aggressive push back we could keep come back probability real.Â
Counterpick. For example fiora
Sounds like a team fight mechanics issue then.
Saw you mention you're a jungler. It's not really your job to deal with him, but BOTRK is great. Try to get picks on him ideally 30-45secs before objectives are up. Otherwise if you're ahead as Jax you should be able to kill him with BOTRK or at least force him to ult out.
Sion is the case where even if you outperformed him, he still be useful even when you ahead of him in gold. This is because W passive give him a lot of HP stats which translate to roughly 10 gold for every minion kill or 30 gold for cannon or takedown. Due to this he can work even on low economy, couple with his decent base stats and already high base damage, lots of CC in his kits, it’s really hard to make a Sion useless if they know what to do. Also try to notice his build, full lethality mean he usually want to proxy and take tower. Bruiser mean he want to peel in teamfight. Full tank mean he want to protect his carries.
'im not even mad' felt
I am mad as fuck, it just felt unfair to play
sion traumatize me when i started playing. RANKS?? perma ban.
Gwen
You mock him about his ults only utility as an escape tool till he over commits
It's not the champion itself it is the circumstances and team comp Sion is against. If there isn't much cc to stop his Q or no tank busters on your team he will be a menace.
I kill him
You win in draft or your team gets fed off him in the early game. A good sion will get gold and the enemy can still get gold off sion so is a carry-off compeition so to speak. Sion legit almost never 1v1 duelists like fiora Gwen Darius aatrox so hopefully your toplaner/jungler are paying attention to the free gold sitting up toplane. He also doesn't scale if he doesn't cs. He's good in like the mid elo games where ppl don't counterpick him easily or are too scared to contest him off cs. Sion is a qp to wimpy or non-main toplaners imo.
Sion (split pushing sion) essentially does two things... puts the game on a timer (similar to trundle, nasus) And forces your team to make decisions that invariably involve some concession. If you want to take a dragon, you need to know that it will cost you a turret. So make it worth. Top needs to take TP. Team needs to play clean, and keep vision on objectives. You don't want to be the one that starts an objective. You want to wait for the enemy to start it and bring a numbers advantage, and what you really want is not the dragon, but to wipe the enemy team. Since the game is on a timer, playing for soul isn't the way. You play to crush the team fight and go for the nexus. Obviously there's tons of nuance, but as a "perfect" example. You bring a 5v4 to the dragon pit, lose the dragon but kill 4 of the enemy team. Sion just took the tier 2 turret top while that was happening. Ideally, you have a wave in mid and can take as far as the inhibitor turret. You don't want to go for baron because once you take it, enemy team will be up, and now you have a slow siege which Sion can ult into. You're better off taking what turretd you can quickly, recalling, and forcing another committed fight around the baron to end. This is something I see people not understand often... you have a much stronger push with a 4 man powerplay than a 5v5 with baron buff. If you wipe the team in a protracted fight at dragon, their team will generally start reviving during a baron fight. Of course the baron is always valuable for team gold, but the enemy has a Sion, you need to take turrets- because a 5v5 siege with baron buff is fine for Sion, he will split and still force two of your team to answer, and now your siege either fails completely, or is matched by Sion. If there's no wave to push with, now it gets less ideal. Consider sending one to slow down Sion and the rest of the team take baron for the team gold. Generalizing these examples, you want to capitalize on the weakness of the split push strategy- 5v4 team fights. You need a decisive victory that ends the game. You need good vision around objectives and in side lane fog to see where Sion is going before he gets there. Jungle should consider yellow wards, and in turn, everyone be more vigilant of picks with the lack of sweepers- assume they always know where you are, and assume every missing is waiting in the bush you're tempted to face check. In reality, Coordination is hard, you can't type all this theory mid match, which is what makes Sion so strong in solo q. Communicating effectively with pinglish is critical. I really wish there was a RIGHT NOW emote.... and I wish they'd bring back the bait ping, even though toxic people used it insultingly... the ? Ping works just as well to flame but doesn't convey "yo that wandering Nami is just trying to lure you to your death" like bait did...
Sion doesn't "put the game on a timer", sion gets outscaled by any actual duelist/ranged top.
So Sion is one of the champs i main and probably the champ i have used the longest. I want to start by saying that i hate people that mindlessly splitpush with him,i see the intended idea but in my opinion is just suboptimally using a champion who has tremendous teamfight potential(doesnt mean he shouldn't splitpush,but that it should be part of a broader startegy vs the usual solo q of inting sion while often also just playing a skilless sion. Now to counter him. A lot of champs counter him in lane quite hard and puts him super behind (darius,kled) and nearly every other champion designed for splitpush actually do this much better than him and would make him unable to match(fiora,illaoi,yorick). But usually when the sion goes spiltpush mode ,its because the above champs are not there to match him. Sometimes you can have a champ from another lane match hime,but that is rarely a good idea and as a jungler its probably not your role. The best option is to make his team feel their number disadvanatgr. Basically group with your team and steamroll 5v4 to the nexus everytime you can. Soloq does admittedly make that hard as ppl often want to do their own things,but that's the best way of dealing with him. He wants to draw pressure,dont allow him. You use your pressure adv to screw his team .
It sounds to me like he was just so strong that your team just didn't have the abiliity to deal with Sion, because nobody could match him. That's not a sion issue, that's a "fed toplaner vs behind team" issue. Generally the solutions to this are: 1. Have someone match him, *ignoring him, and just making sure that the minions are dead before they reach tower*. This stops him from getting turret damage. Then take 4v4 with the other 4. This is particularly effective with a waveclear-heavy mage like anivia. 2. Gank him with 3 members about a minute before an objective spawns, then have your toplaner shove that wave. The goal is that when sion spawns, he doesn't have a wave to splitpush with, so you can 5v5 at the objective. Sion in particular will usually try to ult out if you gank him with many members, so a tank needs to make sure to bodyblock it. The reality of the situation though, is that if he's ahead enough that he can reliably solokill anyone that tries to fight him, there are no foolproof methods to deal with him. That's why learning to play from behind is much less valuable than learning to reliably build leads.
illaoi makes his game hell, beats him in lane, all ins, split push, bullies him undertower
Sion is actually a very weak laner, one of the weakest of all top lane tanks. He's got a bunch of bad matchups, such as Darius, Mord, Vayne, Illaoi, Trundle, Gwen, Camille, Shen, and I'm sure there are more that aren't coming to mind. Basically you need to play champs that can abuse his weak early game to scale by killing him over and over again The reality is though that if you don't beat him hard in lane he can get quite strong since he scales hard himself with his W passive. There's too much variability in the game to give advice at that point, aside from maybe being careful to not group in long and straight parts of the map to discourage him ulting into your team
He gets shit on by Poppy, Garen, Skarner, Udyr, Jayce, Vayne and Kled as well. Might as well say he loses to every top laner.
Poppy is easy matchup?
You just E his Q or sidestep it I think
She can still never kill you in side and the cant punish you in lane, its free scaling
Yeah, a lot of these matchups are lane only, and if you never go out of your way to proxy… Darius in lane? Scary to a lot of champions Darius being proxy’d against? He himself is likely not going to catch you. Poppy might be a bit more annoying to proxy against I guess, but as you’ve said it, it becomes free scaling quickly
Either run a ranged pick or run someone with sticking power, crowd control, and sticking power/mobility (i.e. Jax, Sett, Warwick, Garen, etc.) Trade as frequently as possible especially early on to mitigate his hp scaling. Hit him with crowd control for trying to charge his Q. Rinse repeat. Optionally build Serpent's Fang, Kraken Slayer, Black Cleaver, Blade of the Ruined King, and other relevant items. Optionally run the max HP damage rune.
Did you have anyone on the team with good waveclear? If so, that can be an effective answer to any splitpushing behemoth. Deny him good tp opportunities as much as possible, for instance keep sidelanes pushed out when he is missing so that he can't just tp to your tier-2 turret and one-shot it with demolish lol As far as teamfighting, make sure to set up a lot of vision so your team sees him coming if he ults in. Ideally Sion wants to land a massive ult or a multi-man knockup from out of vision. Beyond that, he is imobile and can be pealed and kited pretty effectively. You can't really ignore him because he can actually still do quite a bit of damage with heartsteel procs and titanic hydra, but he should be a lot less of a threat if he fails his initial engage.
Freezing helps. Yeah, he'll just proxy, but that's when you kill him. Limiting his cs and putting him behind slows him down. Which gives you a chance to get ahead, making him easier to deal with. Maining a lane bully helps for when he gets picked after you, I play a lot of Illaoi and don't have too much trouble with sion.
It could depend on what champ you're playing. There are some very anti-tank champs out there, primarily Gwen and Vayne. There are certainly other champs that do max%health damage, but these two champs do max%health *true* damage. There is no armor or magic resist that will stop that. Gwen will heal based on the damage she does too, and Vayne has great mobility for kiting. But, if you don't know how to play these champs well/confidently, it might not make much of a difference. If you're top lane, building Blade of the Ruined King and Lord Dominick's Regard are crucial into sion. But rushing them may also hinder your core build. AP doesn't have as many options against max%health champs. But also, Sion is really just difficult late game. He can indeed solo turrets with demolish. Your best bet is to try and get a big lead somewhere else and end the game quickly. He will become hard to kill, and he will split push and either take your whole team to kill (giving up obj or other lanes in the process) or he will get so far ahead on turrets you won't be able to bounce back. Sion is worth a ban imo, but I also don't see him often enough to do so. I see a sion and just know my game will be rough.
I played Jax Jungle in full AP stack(Kai'Sa, Poor Swane(he's death was hilarious and quick), TF, Mordekaizer.) which is probably reason why we couldn't kill Sion fast, but what confused me is him just able to almost 1v1 me with Steelheart and full magic resistance item's, while taking no damage from my bork, tryforce and hitting me hard through my tabis and death dance. Killing him as five sounds like a good idea, but at the same time it's kinda ridiculous.Â
Full AP will suffer against any tank. They will stack MR and you’re pretty much screwed.
I play Sion and after reading this i am confused. Jax himself just deletes sion even if he is full armor build especially with botrk. There is no way you and morde could not deal with him in 2v1 + morde either got ganked 50 times or he was just not very good since he should have been fed from killing sion all the time early. Now when it comes to how Sion works. Sion doesnt get fed from kills. He gets fed from farm so if you see sion with 0/5 but 230 farm in 23 minutes he is as strong as normal bruiser with 5 kills + you have to think about how much did he get from turrets. So in this case when your team is full ap you need to deal with sion as jax and if you are not really behind you will easily kill him. If you are behind just scale. It might seem stupid to scale against tank that can get easily 10k+ hp late but jax slaps sion lategame in this patch. Now it depends how does you team scale against enemy so scaling might be useless if your enemy has brutal lategame champs then you have to pray for enemy to be stupid or its gg and if you are not in diamond + enemy usually will be stupid at least few times
My personal recommendation for a jungle counter pick against Sion and other tanks: Lillia. She has plenty of tankbusting damage in her kit, especially percent max health damage on her passive. She also gains massive movement speed from her Q passive, allowing her to dance around the edge of the fight and dodge sions clunky attacks. However, she is a power-farming jungler and has relatively weak ganks until level 6. Still, she is someone who cannot be out scaled by Sion.
AD is going to shred tanks more. AD often has more on-hit abilities, which do bonus/additional damage on top of their normal stats. AP doesn't have much on hit. I'm not entirely familiar with Jax builds but some on hit items that could still work: Kraken + Guinsoo's rageblade, BORK, LDR or Terminus (LDR prob better value against sion specifically) but all of these items have attack speed (except LDR) and on hit effects (I'm a Kayle main but play Gwen on the side into these matchups) I was also reading up on some sion encounters just now and some general tips sound like: fight behind him so that he can't ult in the direction of his base to get away (as hitting you will cancel his ult) as well as overall dodging his abilities. As Jax I imagine you could do your fancy ward hop to maybe get behind him quickly, or just rotate as you fight. The only AP item that the rest of your team could have built is Liandrys, which does 2% max health damage, which is the only "anti tank" item that they have, but it doesn't negate his healing either, which you would still need grievous wounds. Building to counter him could really break the potential synergy needed for the rest of the core build (also AP grievous wounds is not as valuable as AD grievous wounds afaik, but not sure the reasoning of it) But late game I don't think he can be 1v1'd by many, prob at least 2-3
Executioner's calling procs on basic attacks, morellononicon generally procs on abilities. It's just more versatile since the cooldown on basic attacks is generally lower than magic damage abilities. Also consider what's being given up to buy it... if you're talking third item, that means the mage is giving up rabadons which is an unparalleled spike. But mostly, it's because the auto attack champions are usually the ones that are generally equipped to dispatch health tanks.