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Sylas might be the biggest balance nightmare in the history of League

KnifeCat·1/9/2019, 11:41:11 PM·103 votes·26,119 views

Forget Azir, Kalista, and any other previous balance nightmare. Sylas will trump them all, many times over.

Over 140 ultimates, ON ONE CHAMP. How do you possibly balance that? Some of these ults will be incredibly powerful on top of the rest of his overloaded kit.

Earlier I seen a barely fed Sylas one shot 3 people in one go, with a full ap Malphite ult comboed with his own insane burst. Now the point i’m trying to make, is the difference between a Malphite ult and Sylas using a Malphite ult, is that Malphite doesn’t have anywhere near as much follow up damage/burst to follow it up with so he generally doesn’t one shot people unless he’s really ahead. This doesn’t apply to Sylas, he can use Malphite ult with plenty of follow up burst, basically breaking the fundamental rules of Malphite’s kit, a champ with barely any follow up burst outside his ult, because his ult is so damn powerful.

Sylas throws that rule out the window, and he will do that with many many other champion’s ultimates.

Not to mention his ult cooldown is 9 seconds at rank 3!! and the rest of his kit is so damn overloaded, he is extremely mobile, with two dashes, has INSANE healing/shielding, an execute, and incredible amounts of aoe/burst

160 Comments

JackMcSnipeyz1/10/2019, 12:55:16 AM50 votes

How do you take into consideration the power budget of his ult, when he can literally use any ult. Malph ult is strong as shit but at the cost of his kit, cho'gath ult is strong AF but he is immobile. Sylas has a normal kit but he can take any ult without considering his other abilities at all, and not even on a short CD aswell.

Gl balance team

Wizard Blaze1/9/2019, 11:46:53 PM45 votes

I told you. Season 9 will be Riot shenanigans season. Im not so sure but they are trying so hard to piss off the community and make us leave

Rexxiee1/10/2019, 12:49:48 AM38 votes

That champ is basically ap riven on steroids.

God bless those new ridiculous designs, i guess riot has 0 quality control nowdays since almost every new release breaks the game fundamentally.

Death by Glamour1/9/2019, 11:51:17 PM26 votes

He does seem to have an overloaded kit

Jojobees1/10/2019, 3:58:42 AM16 votes

Riot development team been smoking that good shit again. They just made a champion with 143 possible ultimate abilities. GOOD LUCK BALANCING THAT SHIT. I know that this is said with every champion release, but Sylas will never be balanced. There's just no possible way to balance a champion with 143 ultimate abilities. Not to mention, with every new champion released, they'll have to ask themselves how Sylas players will abuse their ultimate.

Not to mention, when he uses Shyvana ultimate he gets her ultimate form abilities, same with all the other shape shifters... I don't even want to do the math there, but I think it'd be safe to say that Sylas has a few more abilities than any other champion.

Monstermushmush1/10/2019, 2:15:54 AM8 votes

New champs are always stronger than older ones...

Tahminatrix 1/10/2019, 12:37:16 AM7 votes

For once im proud to be a tahm kench main, Ill just body block and let him play with my ult.

Unless ofc my team is bad and jumps out of my w into his R or something silly like that.

Once again I hate being a tahm kench main.

SpaghettiVase1/10/2019, 2:21:09 AM6 votes

{quoted}

Sylas throws that rule out the window, and he will do that with many many other champion’s ultimates.

"But don't you see?! IT'S THEMATIC! Him breaking the 'Rules' of league is TOTALLY in his CHARACTER"

TwinkiePro1/10/2019, 1:13:23 AM4 votes

The only thing game breaking about his 9 second ult is that he can use it multiple times in a fight, granted it last long enough for that. It applies an individual cooldown that is 200% of the base Cooldown of the ult stolen. Malphite ult takes damn near 2 minutes to come back, meaning sylas cant use it for another 4.

FilDaFunk1/10/2019, 1:40:10 PM4 votes

To use the specific example of sejuani, her ult was hugely nerfed (so stuns only 1 person) to allow some power budget into her kit. He just gets it for free.

Glory971/10/2019, 2:11:03 PM4 votes

Azir and Kalista were balancing nightmares, because they were complex kits, that were hard to balance, in a time where riot actually cared about balance.

So Sylas won't be the a balancing nightmare, because riot has stopped caring about balance a long time ago. They now only "change things, for the sake of changing things" and introduce kits that are fun to play (but complelty unfair to play against) for the sake of bringing fresh new things into league of legends.

It's just us, the people on the boards, who are stuck in an outdated philosophy that doesn't apply to this game anymore.

Wild Geese1/11/2019, 4:33:32 AM4 votes

I don't like his Ultimate steal just being a point and click "yoink", there's no risk to it.

Sylas stealing spells is something that is inspired from Rubick in Dota. Explaining Rubick is he had an Ultimate that could steal any spell (not just ultimates); but he only could steal the last ability that the enemy character used.

So when Rubick stole something like a Tidehunter Ultimate (A massive fast AOE stun, think Amumu but way deadlier), he had to carefully plan it, first of all to be outside of the range of that ultimate, second to actually use his spell steal before Tidehunter could spam a different ability to prevent his Ultimate from being stolen. Third to pull off an ability that put him in harms way (Rubick is very squishy)

So when Rubick could steal Ultimates, a lot of the time this was a big play. It was a game-charger and game winner, some of Dota's most iconic moments involve clutch spell-steals. A good Rubick is rewarded for their clever usage of the ability and can turn the tides very suddenly.

With Sylas however, I'm seeing none of that. Sylas will simply choose which Ultimate he wants at little cost. He is encouraged to build tanky and has CC and sustain built into his kit. I know League is a very different game from dota now, but at its heart they are both games about strategy and outplay. Where's the outplay potential with Sylas?

Massive missed opprotunity here. Nobody will be impressed by a tanky champion using his CC and point and clicking ultimates, Rubick is beloved by the dota community. Sylas will be reviled.

VelvetCrotch1/10/2019, 3:32:24 AM4 votes

Akali>Sylas>Irelia imo. but hey just reduce their movement speed by 5.

the shy top1/10/2019, 1:28:29 AM4 votes

Cant ban vayne and sylas at the same time.

Think this is the last straw.

Peace

sphinxthelion71/11/2019, 10:25:43 AM3 votes

There is no way they will EVER balance this champ.

Fízz v21/9/2019, 11:50:40 PM3 votes

Not to mention his ult cooldown is 9 seconds at rank 3!

implying you ever get to level 16.. the cd is fine before that. Also he is an ap "bruiser", who basically have no good items like item 3053 item 3078 item 3812 .

ModCaptainMårvelous1/10/2019, 7:44:06 AM3 votes

Over 140 ultimates, ON ONE CHAMP. How do you possibly balance that?

By only giving him five ults a game with no assurance the ults he'll get will be good.

While his PBE numbers are probably overtuned, stealing ults is only going to be as good as the enemy team is.

realDRdeal1/10/2019, 7:52:11 PM3 votes

The easiest way I can think of to balance him is to make the CD on his ult be based of the CD of the ult he stole. For example, if he steals karthus ult, his ult goes on CD for the same base CD as karthus's ult does (applying whatever CDR Sylas has to the base CD of the ult of course). That way if he uses a high power ult that normally is not abusable because of it's long CD, Sylas also gets gated by that CD. Now the coding for that is probably not nearly as simple as I think it is, but that is a problem for someone who actually gets paid to do coding/programming. The rest of the balancing can be achieved by first waiting to see how Sylas shakes out power wise once people have had some time to learn how to play as, with, and against him then adjusting the base damages and scalings on his basic abilities as needed.

Akali Prime1/10/2019, 2:45:32 AM2 votes

his kit seems pretty simple to me with the obvious exception of his ult.

GFREEMEN1/10/2019, 1:24:28 AM2 votes

He can be balanced. They just need to lower/remove the damage from a lot of his kit (something Riot wont do)

If they removed the damage from his E completely (so it only had the shield, dash and stun) then lowered the dash range of his W to melee range and removed the slow from his Q

He would be in a MUCH better place for balance.