On the Syndra PBE Buff(s)

Hello,

I'm quite intrigued by the Syndra buffs on the PBE and would love to see some context from anyone on the Riot balance team.

I've whinged a bit in the past on how lackluster Syndra's team fighting is (currently), though True Damage on her passive wasn't something at all on my mind. Immediately, this is what my mind conjures up on reading the suggest changes:

• Abyssal Scepter/flat MRES rushers are easier to deal with (Hexdrinker remains somewhat of a problem)
• Aegis/Locket MRES, ontop of its nerf, won't hurt her as much now for a double bonus
• Tanks cannot ignore her for long since she starts ripping huge chunks of health away quite quickly.
• Her level 9 powerspike is a bit better, scaling up harder with items than it is currently.

In essence, her post-laning phase is going up without impacting her laning directly, which I note is something distinct when balancing her. I'm admittedly not a fan of how steep her mana/damage coefficients are levels 1-to-5, but that's probably a distinct power allocation choice. Me, I'm old school and love pre-level 6 lane aggro mages, so I should probably just live with the times ...

This definitely helps, some of the numbers I've ran have bumped her appreciably into better kill windows against certain match ups. Tanks can't just walk through her anymore and she has more meaningful presence when she's nearly out of mana and just dropping down Dark Spheres. Squishy mages aren't going to like her, but considering she doesn't have mobility/blinks/untargetable/shields/self-healing/resistance bonus effects, it sounds a tad reasonable? (hue bias)

 

Notably, however, these faults are still in her kit:

• Force of Will / Scatter the Weak still have a strange power discrepancy going on, worsened by Scatter's conical buff.
• Mana management can be exorbitantly taxing as a consequence of the above point when Force of Will is maxed.

Force of Will is fantastic for team fighting, but it costs too much to level second, even ignoring Scatter's impending buff. At 100 mana at level 13, it eats 10-12% of her total base mana pool every cast - on a mage who has to deadlock 50% of her total pool for her ultimate's combo. So, realistically, you only have a few chances to use it in before running into a dangerous mana starvation situation ... where as Scatter has literally twice the allocation room due to its flat 50 cost. Of course, that's her only meaningful defense/CC skill against gap closers, so spamming it is nearly suicidal.

Do you just want to keep Force of Will firmly the third max option and emphasize Scatter the Weak, then? Distinct playstyles follow either one, and with the Scatter buff, it seems increasingly unreasonable to max Force of Will second. I really just want to get an understanding on the dynamics here to see if it's a point I should be harping on about or not.

Thank you for your time.