League of Legends: A Legion Couldn't Stop Me - Syndra Guide

Introduction

Another guide, another mage to cover. Strangely, they all seem to fall into the meta rather well, all those mages I tend to cover. Don’t worry, I’ll get to unconventional mages sooner or later. This guide goes to cover another mage influenced and centered around something other than her abilities in and of themselves. Rather, they also work around balls. Of course, I speak of Syndra, the Dark Sovereign.

Syndra is a low mobility zone control burst mage. That’s a few terms to swallow, so let me explain. She has no mobility in her kit whatsoever, so her Flash is her only mobility. Her orbs stay in place after creating them, and her other abilities manipulate those, so this allows her to effectively block off areas of the map through her crowd control. And her ultimate is a giant stream of single target magic damage, allowing her to nuke someone from 100 to 0 within a matter of seconds. Brings a lot to the table, quite noticeably.

Her passive, Transcendent, augments every ability as soon as the last possible skill point is put in, meaning at (usually) levels 9, 13, 16 and 18, her abilities get augmented. Q gains bonus damage against champions, W has its slow duration increased, E has a broader area of effect, and R has a slightly longer cast range.

Syndra’s Q is Dark Sphere, which does as it would seem: summon a Dark Sphere at target location and deals magic damage, while the Sphere remains at its location for 6 seconds. Low cooldown and relatively low mana cost – especially early game – allowing for good poke and good zone.

Syndra’s W is Force of Will. She grabs a target enemy or neutral minion, or a Dark Sphere and renders it invulnerable. From there, she has 6 seconds to lob it to a target location, dealing magic damage and slowing all affected units, including the thrown minion if it is one. It is the basic ability with the highest mana cost and as far as damage goes, it’s a rather slow projectile so damage isn’t nearly as guaranteed as you’d like it to be, since it does deal a lot of damage – roughly the same as a Transcendent-enhanced Dark Sphere.

Syndra’s E is Scatter the Weak. She knocks back everything in a directed cone, dealing magic damage to it. Dark Spheres in the area are knocked back further and apply the same damage in addition to a 1.5s stun should you hit an enemy with one. Easily the most difficult spell to master since the Spheres are technically knocked back from wherever you’re standing, which makes for some geometry to happen. Luckily, Riot did add a little triangle that tells us where the Sphere is actually going, which is a neat addition to make the spell a little bit easier in use.

Syndra’s R is Unleashed Power. She gathers all Spheres she previously created, in addition to the three that permanently orbit her, and fires them at a target enemy champion, dealing a ton of magic damage. One neat thing about this ability is that it draws in all nearby Spheres, and then drops them near the target, which allows for a very strong Scatter the Weak to follow up and with a little luck, stun a whole bunch of the enemy champions.

Depending on my matchup, there’s three different rune pages I would use. They all have Magic Pen marks and Flat AP quintessences because Syndra’s a mage and I don’t feel that Hybrid Pen marks are worth the investment, nor the loss of Magic Pen. If I’m blind picking, I will run Armor seals and Scaling MR glyphs because those provide the best safety. If I’m up against something like a Zed or Kha’Zix, I’ll swap out the Scaling MR glyphs for Flat Mana Regen glyphs to sustain my lane as best I can; if I’m up against something mage-like (a Ziggs or something of the sort), I’ll swap out those Armor seals for Flat Mana Regen seals. Those give both the resistances needed to survive the laning phase, as well as enough mana regen to sustain the heavy poke that Syndra can easily put out at the cost of some hefty mana without actually purchasing mana points.

Masteries, I prefer 9/0/21. The most prominent thing in this mastery setup is that I get 10% CDR straight off the bat, which in combination with the Athene’s Unholy Grail and either an Elixir of Brilliance or a blue buff, will put me at 40% CDR. Cool beans. Additionally, I make sure to take both the flat and scaling AP in offense, and in utility, I make sure to take everything CDR-related. This includes the Summoner Spell CDR and the Activated Item CDR. Also mana regen, Wealth and Bandit for money when I auto-attack, and let’s be honest: who can lane without their cookies?

To start off, either a Crystalline Flask or a Doran’s Ring work. Crystalline Flask if you can put some serious harass on your lane opponent, Doran’s if you are better off with the AP and HP and would rather focus on last hitting creeps. Early game, your main poking ability has a fairly reasonable mana cost, but a very much so reasonable cooldown in addition to pretty good base damage. This allows for any Syndra to play very aggressive during the early laning. Level 2 means E, which essentially means a stun if you can check the Q onto someone, which in turn means another essentially free Q. Keep in mind that even though Q and E have rather low mana costs during the early game, spamming them means you’re going to run out eventually, and Q’s mana cost ramps up rather quickly – 80 at rank 5 – so while QEQ is a very potent harassing tool, it’s also an attack on your mana bar, which isn’t as big as you’d like anyways.

Mid game, Syndra has very high kill potential. Her spell rotation has a very good AP ratio, meaning that with every point of AP, she gains a lot of damage. Not only does she have insane burst, she can also clear waves rather quickly with QE into auto-attacking the backline (or another Q if you happen to have a blue buff). In addition to good single target burst and very potent waveclear, she’s also very adept at picking someone off guard. Spheres last for 6 seconds, meaning that during this time, if anyone should step on the same line as you and the Sphere, they’re open for a 1.5s stun, which can be quite lethal indeed

Late game, as with any frail non-mobile mage, positioning and mana management is key. If you’re constantly throwing out Dark Spheres and manipulating the battlefield with Force of Will, you’re going to run out of mana ridiculously fast if you’re not getting kills or carry a blue buff. You’ll instead want to focus on poking as much as possible with Q and trying to catch people off guard with a well-timed Scatter the Weak. Racking up a bunch of AP can easily lead to you being able to one-shot frail targets with QEWQR or even less (QEQR or QEWR, and QER for the fed ones among us). Getting a Deathfire Grasp also vastly improves your one-shotting potential, as well as your overall AoE damage output, so if you think the enemy team won’t get to you, you could delay defensive items in favor of it.

As far as items go, AP is your primary stat, but you’ll have to keep in mind that Syndra is all kinds of frail and is better off having some sort of safety policy to back up being out of position, should this happen. Two things you can do on Syndra: forsake all defensive stats and rush assassination potential, or focus a bit more on sustain, waveclear, but have the damage to back your kit up.

The first build involves rushing a Deathfire Grasp and a Void Staff to penetrate any and all magic damage and then maul someone with high burst damage. Following those could be a Rabadon’s Deathcap, Zhonya’s Hourglass and Rylai’s Crystal Scepter. That last item has an edge for me, because of the ability to spam Q as much as you can, putting out a ranged slow really easily, in addition to good AP and some nice HP.

The second build has an Athene’s Unholy Grail as its core item, as with any meta-mage nowadays. Followed by Rabadon’s Deathcap, Void Staff and Zhonya’s Hourglass. This build is actually really stale, but the last item slot opens up some possibilities for itemization. Need assassination potential? Deathfire Grasp. Need kiting potential or more HP? Rylai’s Crystal Scepter. Need magic resist? Abyssal Scepter or Banshee’s Veil. Need more armor? Iceborn Gauntlet or Randuin’s Omen or Thornmail. The possibilities are endless, but limited to one slot.

An off-build which I liked to run before I noticed that CDR is mighty strong on Syndra was one inspired by my overwhelming affection for the Archangel’s Staff. Rushing Tear of the Goddess into Archangel’s Staff and Seraph’s Embrace for massive AP damage, then getting Zhonya’s Hourglass whilst the Tear was still stacking would get me two safety policies at the 20 minute mark. High burst? Seraph’s. Delayed damage? Zhonya’s. Then Rabadon’s Deathcap and Void Staff for good AP and Penetration, and anything CDR-related as my last item. I didn’t use to think as highly of the Athene’s because of its meager AP stat, but looking at it, it’s a very cost-efficient item and getting it is never a bad thing for any mage build. I still prefer the Morellonomicon if I don’t need the magic resist though, but the Mana Font unique passive is a godsend, especially on Syndra. Then again, it becomes less useful the more mana you have, so the flat mana regen on Morellonomicon would fit this build better than Athene’s Unholy Grail.

Syndra is among the pinnacles of ‘high risk, high reward’ mage playstyle (up there with the likes of Twisted Fate). Getting your ultimate off generally means death for whomever you target, but it puts you rather close to them, and ulting a tank or frontline bruiser isn’t necessarily as useful as ulting a high priority squishy target in the back. Positioning is key, but knowing what to do when and when not to do what is also key in mastering the Baroness of Balls and the Senator of Spheres. Have fun.

Nigel Wiersma