Syndra public opinion poll

kcStranger··19 votes·2,821 views

So, I picked up Syndra towards the end of season 4, and obviously at the beginning of season 5 she got some pretty significant nerfs (Q base damage at lower levels and E stun width). Her laning was admittedly very strong, but it seems to me now that she's at best balanced and likely underpowered. I've commented elsewhere that I feel she could at least use some small buffs to her mana costs, although I think the biggest thing holding her back is the reliability of her stun.

Although her winrate is currently fairly low (45.5% according to lolking), this is perhaps to be expected given her high skillcap and poor positioning in the meta (mana-hungry burst mage in a field that rewards tanks and high sustained DPS). I've heard people on both sides of the argument in terms of how strong she is and whether she ought to be buffed, so I was just curious to put out a poll to hopefully get a better sense of just how many people feel each way. (Note: For the question below, I'm imagining Syndra's power level given that she is played proficiently, not perfectly. I don't think it's reasonable to balance every champion around how well Faker can play them; it is reasonable to balance around good Diamond players, though.)

COMMENT (added later): Below, some folks have rightly pointed out that regardless of her intended power level, Syndra has some bugs that clearly need fixed. There is, however, some evidence that Riot is working on this (though apparently it's a really hard problem...); see the Riot response to this post.

63 Comments

Troy2426219 votes

I really hate "Stuns you then bursts you down before the CC wears off" champions, and I especially hate that it has such a long range. I'll give that she's pretty underpowered, but I don't know if I'd like to see flat buffs. Maybe just fix her bugs and go from there?

I'm not saying keep her weak but when you have a design like this you have to be careful about flat buffing it.

LankPants8 votes

I really hate "Stuns you then bursts you down before the CC wears off" champions

Kinda ironic coming from the Shaco main, just a thought.

Troy2426211 votes

{quoted}

Kinda ironic coming from the Shaco main, just a thought.

Shaco doesn't stun. If you walk into a JitB, that's your fault >_>.

Morsigil1 votes

if you walk into the jitb I put on top of you while you're slowed and you have no way to avoid it without flashing

Fixed that for you.

Troy2426211 votes

{quoted}

Fixed that for you.

Sounds like you f*cked up if you let him pull that off.

Morsigil1 votes

Yeah I guess I really messed up to walk anywhere with no vision of another place.

Troy2426211 votes

{quoted}

Yeah I guess I really messed up to walk anywhere with no vision of another place.

If you're against a Shaco and it's early game, yeah, that's exactly what you shouldn't do. Green wards are sufficient, just bury them deeper into the lane entrance than you normally would. Unless he ganks from lane or from behind, you'll see him coming.

Morsigil1 votes

And the rest of the game? Ward the entire map? Over every wall? Please.

Troy2426211 votes

{quoted}

And the rest of the game? Ward the entire map? Over every wall? Please.

item 3364 ,item 3362 ,item 3361, item 2044, item 2043, item 2045, RekSai, LeeSin.

Also not travelling alone as a squishy, and if you spot Shaco once, based upon which direction he's moving, you can guess where he's probably going to go. So tack on smart play to that list.

Morsigil1 votes

So your answer to " I should ward the entire map?" is "yes". lol

Thanks man, so helpful! I will never die to Shaco, nor any other champion, ever again with your helpful tip!

HadesBlades2 votes

{quoted}

I really hate "Stuns you then bursts you down before the CC wears off" champions, and I especially hate that it has such a long range. I'll give that she's pretty underpowered, but I don't know if I'd like to see flat buffs. Maybe just fix her bugs and go from there?

I'm not saying keep her weak but when you have a design like this you have to be careful about flat buffing it.

Lets be honest though, from before her nerf yes she could be a lane bully, but could also be very bullied if you didn't know how to position or play carefully with her mana cost, with the nerf to her Q and her E (aka her stun reliablity) I think it is safe to assume that she is in no position to burst people unless they are playing undoubtedly out of position. Her Q level 1 does around 70.... thats not really over oppressing in lane at all considering it is i think 55 mana level 1

Slamurai Jack7 votes

They hit her Q damage too hard. It's not even worth spending mana on at lvl 1, that's how bad it is. You can't just expect to cut off 30% of a spells early power and expect it to be fine. 70 to 50 damage was such an overreaction.

LankPants2 votes

I Think it has the lowest base damage of any non on-hit spell at level 1 that doesn't either have a total AD scaling or some way to increase it's damage (single target skittle ect.)

XeroKimo5 votes

"Underpowered, but don't buff" HEY GUYS BARD IS UNDERPOWERED SO DON'T BUFF HIM! Sorry I just love the irony of this quote.

For Carthage1 votes

Bard isn't underpowered. Check out his winrates.

Riot said they don't coincide with a champions strength, but there's some kind of connection when they're showing 100% winrates in Master and above in teams.

XeroKimo1 votes

Win rates don't really mean he isn't underpowered, but regardless, I just chose bard since he was underpowered... or I guess hard to play properly

For Carthage1 votes

The reason winrates aren't meant to coincide with how balanced a champ is is because... well, let's use Syndra as an example.

She's terribly bugged. Clearly. But ignoring this, her 45-46% winrate average doens't mean she's underpowered inherently because a fair amount of that could be a population of people who don't regularly use Syndra. Weigh this against her 2%-ish playrate and 4 people who don't normally play her and get demolish will factor in a lot more than, say, a champion that's played 26% of the time.

The reason Bard's winrates reflect his current stature as strictly very powerful is because these are stats from your 5v5 ranked Master tier - the best you can get Bard to be in what is basically how the game is supposed to be played, as a full five-player team working together. The fact that Bard regularly sees 100% winrates on days with over 5% of that population of people playing him is downright fucking scary, considering that about half the rest of the roster doesn't even see over that amount of play.

If you don't believe me, take a looksie - http://www.lolking.net/champions/bard&region=all&map=sr&queue=5x5&league=challenger#statistics

Now while there's bits where Bard's winrates dip below 50%, Master rank can also be incredibly volatile as small mistakes can cost you the game - the fact that Bard is even capable of seeing straight 100% winrates in multiple days is enough to raise some alarms.

FistOfSharkiesha5 votes

She's weird. She needs to be rebalanced not necessarily buffed. Tons of range and power and even reliability in the laning phase but she sucks lategame. It's pretty absurd how high her base damage on her ultimate is. Dodging 3/4 of her kit then losing 60% of your health to her ultimate alone doesn't seem right. Not a lot of counterplay.

I wouldn't mind her power being moved around to keep her relevant throughout the game but not have a click to win ultimate like Veigar.

Malix Farwin3 votes

{quoted}

She's weird. She needs to be rebalanced not necessarily buffed. Tons of range and power and even reliability in the laning phase but she sucks lategame. It's pretty absurd how high her base damage on her ultimate is. Dodging 3/4 of her kit then losing 60% of your health to her ultimate alone doesn't seem right. Not a lot of counterplay.

I wouldn't mind her power being moved around to keep her relevant throughout the game but not have a click to win ultimate like Veigar.

well that is kinda how burst mages are suppose to be like, Annie Brand Malzahar Veigar can all essentially do that with their ult however, every other burst mage has more reliability in their kit outside of their ult except syndra. This is the main reason veigar got a lot weaker when the initially nerfed his stun, he lost a lot of reliability in his kit outside of ult. Syndra needed to be as strong as she was and she was full of counterplay.

kcStranger1 votes

You have a good point. The only thing I would point out is that despite being point-and-click, getting the most out of your ult (6-7 spheres) actually requires quite a bit of precision and timing.

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

All it needs is a simple combo which is extremely easily to pull off in lane, and some CDR helps as well.

Baseball3b5 votes

I started maining Syndra at the end of Season 3 when I hit 30 and she's been my favorite ever since. Obviously fixing her bugs are the first priority. I've lost so many games and kills because of them. That aside, I'd like to see her Q nerf reverted -- the biggest reason why she terrorized mid lane so well some time ago was because of the ridiculous hit box on her stun. The gutting of her Q's early game damage along with the hitbox gutting was just a knee-jerk reaction and completely unnecessary. Secondly, the nerfs to Athene's/mana regen in general hit her especially hard. While she shouldn't be able to constantly spam spells, she shouldn't go OOM from just 2 combos either.

TLDR; Start with bug fixes and reverting of the Q nerfs and go from there

LankPants4 votes

I voted needs buffs but that's not really what she needs. What she actually needs are some of her bugs fixed.

GuiltyGecko4 votes

IMO she needs a new passive. Everything on her passive could just be moved to their respective skills. If she got a new passive, perhaps it could be something like she gains temporary bonus AP for how many balls she has out or maybe her autos do bonus damage based on how many balls she has out.

Could also buff her current passive so her late game power for maxing out abilities is scarier.

For Carthage4 votes

She needs fixes on her E. That's by and large the thing she needs.

Her E's collision is so fucking buggy that it's a 50/50 shot that you just won't get a stun off. It's 50/50 that you won't even do damage with it, let alone any of the CC it comes with.

Somebody get Riot to stop faffing about and fix their fucking champs. It's crystal clear some of them are seeing far more attention than others for little reason other than, "LCS BIG PLAYS YEEEEEEEEEEE", and then the champ updates that basically turn old champions with simple mechanics into "LCS BIG PLAYS YEEEEEEEEEEEE".

Fuck you and your LCS.

air tiger1 votes

The really crazy thing is.. some of the champs seeing LCS play are still bugged AF.

Looking at you Azir

For Carthage1 votes

Yeah, but Azir's bugs no longer involve:

A) the only form of safety and self-peel he has being completely ineffective or

B) any of his spells for some reason not dealing any damage whatsoever.

air tiger1 votes

Clearly you are unfamiliar with Azir's bugs. One of them is his soldiers feigning attack. They motion, they sound off, but they cause no damage. A second is that his wall will sometimes completely fail to interact with enemies in its pathing. There's nothing like using wall defensively just to watch it completely miss the assassin that will now kill you.

For Carthage1 votes

I've seen his soldiers physically attack the air and have it do nothing, but there's also no enemies there to attack. I always see them do damage if there's enemies there.

For the wall, the most that I've seen it miss enemies is if you're trying to pin them on a wall (thanks to Riot "fixing" that so they will actually just stop short of walls half the time) and one time an Akali made it through but she was mid-R and was actually passing through Azir, so he may have done it too late. They've fixed the vast amount of game-breaking bugs Azir had and he's nowhere near as completely unreliable as Syndra is with her E.

air tiger1 votes

Have you seen it through other people playing him? I'm just asking because I've seen it through experience. Azir has been one of my main midlaners since I've played (for <1year) and his bugs are certainly not fixed.

Yes, his soldier will sometimes not attack - even if there is an enemy champ in the pathing of the damage. I'm not talking about the pump fakes that they are doing lately. I'm talking about a timed auto-attack that was scheduled to hit, sounds like it does, motions like it does, but theres no damage. That's shit. I've lost out on kills because of this.

Yes, his wall lets enemies pass through at times. No, I'm not talking about trying to pin them to a wall. Just open combat ult usage being completely negated because of a bug. This has gotten me killed multiple times.

So Azir has bugs affecting both his offense and defense, and they've been there for a long time. I'm not about joining a circle jerk about who's bugs are bigger. Your point was that it would take LCS play to have a champs bugs fixed, and it simply isn't the case.

DarthSpectrum3 votes

Syndra used to be a terror. Her ultimate did the same damage to everyone as a Veigar ultimate on a full AP glass canon champion.

She can miss all her skills while trading, but press DFG, ignite, and 100-0 you with an un-dodge-able 6 balls+ ultimate. However, her recent Q nerfs made it only deal slightly more damage than an auto. In addition, her E range is abysmal unless the enemy is right in front of you or if you do it with more than one ball.

She probably needs some damage buffs or cost reductions to be relevant so she can at least hurt her enemy more than herself by using up her mana.

HadesBlades3 votes

{quoted}

Syndra used to be a terror. Her ultimate did the same damage to everyone as a Veigar ultimate on a full AP glass canon champion.

She can miss all her skills while trading, but press DFG, ignite, and 100-0 you with an un-dodge-able 6 balls+ ultimate. However, her recent Q nerfs made it only deal slightly more damage than an auto. In addition, her E range is abysmal unless the enemy is right in front of you or if you do it with more than one ball.

She probably needs some damage buffs or cost reductions to be relevant so she can at least hurt her enemy more than herself by using up her mana.

dont forget dfg is gone, so now how can we compensate that as well, even though ludens seems like a nice other factor it has been recently nerfed, hurting her ability to poke and clear as well! :)

NuSix33 votes

Underpowered is not the right term. Her damage is fine (wiuth the exception of her rank 1 q, which isn't a huge deal).

She's just a huge victim of mobility creep, mana regen nerfs and having to cast 2 spells to land her CC. Her damage is perfectly fine.

Penguin Eclipse4 votes

{quoted}

Underpowered is not the right term. Her damage is fine (wiuth the exception of her rank 1 q, which isn't a huge deal).

She's just a huge victim of mobility creep, mana regen nerfs and having to cast 2 spells to land her CC. Her damage is perfectly fine.

Thing is, she wasn't a victim of mobility creep before her Q nerfs. In fact her surge of popularity was almost solely because she did so well against one of the most mobile champions in the game. LeBlanc. Her two spell crowd control wasn't a problem either. In fact it used to be way harder to land before the E buff. And really her mana problems are not worse than any other mage although she does have to use more Q's now thanks to the lower damage.

Her identity was a high-damage, lane-bully. She doesn't really have a strong identity now. That Q nerf really did a number on her.

Dengeden1 votes

Are you sure about that? If I remember correctly, Syndra's rise to power was around the time LB got her silence removed. If she was such a specific counterpick, she'd lose a great part of her identity.

Vistha Kai1 votes

A number of people used Syndra back when LB got her rework. That was a year before LB had her silence removed.

The thing was despite LB still having her silence nearly all of her damage shifted from Q to W and W being a champion dash was something any decent Syndra player was able to hard counter, silence or not.

Vistha Kai3 votes

It's hard to tell whenever a champion is overpowered or underpowered if every single basic ability said champion has has at least 3 different bugs.

Complex bugfix is the best buff Syndra can possibly get right now.

Whenever she will be too strong or too weak after should be put on hold until Rioters will move their lazy asses and fix shit they're suppose to fix a year ago.


As is I vote for "Underpowered, needs buffs."("buffs" not "buffed", duh), because it is the closest to the truth.

The Grunzarvian3 votes

Underpowered: Rank 1 Q literally does the damage of her basic attack -_-

MacDthree3 votes

I used to main her, and do really well if I played right. Which is what I liked about her - all it took was a galio, some movement speed, a yasuo, etc. and I was either screwed or had a really hard time. Taking DFG out of the game was another big hit for her I think. I have been absolutely unable to play her since. Most likely just because I got used to how her kit did damage - but I can't seem to do anything but die with her now. She does so little early, that it's embarrassing I think.

Blainezy2 votes

I'm a Syndra main and she needs to help. But it's probaby mainly because of the current meta. She still works well under some circumstances, but her burst isn't as effective anymore. So I haven't played her much recently either :(

LionelLeon1 votes

imo, shes not underpowered, she has potential to all in, only reason she seems underpowered because of she is mana hungry + the meta is all about tank now, she cant burst the frontline to get to the backline anymore, if saying Syndra is underpowered then what is lux?

Penguin Eclipse4 votes

{quoted}

imo, shes not underpowered, she has potential to all in, only reason she seems underpowered because of she is mana hungry + the meta is all about tank now, she cant burst the frontline to get to the backline anymore, if saying Syndra is underpowered then what is lux?

Syndra and Lux are quite different champions.

LionelLeon1 votes

none of the champions are alike, im just putting lux as an example because shes weak in this meta but balanced overall

LankPants1 votes

If you want to compare Lux to another champion Morgana is a much better comparison. Syndra can't really be fairly compared to another champion.

LionelLeon2 votes

in terns of playstyle, Syndra is similar to Zyra and Orianna because they're immobile and they can manipulate their enviroments and keep track of something other than your champion

LankPants3 votes

Could you do me a favour and actually play Syndra, Zyra and Orianna before you make claims about their playstyle? While playing against all 3 might be similar to play against (respect their zones of control and such) they really feel nothing like each other when you actually play them.

Malix Farwin2 votes

{quoted}

imo, shes not underpowered, she has potential to all in, only reason she seems underpowered because of she is mana hungry + the meta is all about tank now, she cant burst the frontline to get to the backline anymore, if saying Syndra is underpowered then what is lux?

one of the biggest problems i have with her is answering this question "why play Syndra when i can play any other burst mage and not only snowball harder but have a much easier time and a lot more lower skill floor"

Mirage Seraph1 votes

I just want some of her damage shifted to her skillshots from her ult.. Dodge all the flying balls but get 1 shot because she's a little fed by a point and click ability? Yayyy... Love Syndra's design, her gimmick, all that. But when she's strong, her ult is so frustrating.

Penguin Eclipse1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Mirage Seraph,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=fwGjuleY,comment-id=0018,timestamp=2015-06-17T20:40:21.987+0000)

I just want some of her damage shifted to her skillshots from her ult.. Dodge all the flying balls but get 1 shot because she's a little fed by a point and click ability? Yayyy... Love Syndra's design, her gimmick, all that. But when she's strong, her ult is so frustrating.

Exaggerations are not helping anything. The vast majority of Syndra ultimate's are 3-5 spheres. Unless you are insanely underfed and she is insanely overfed, she won't be 1 shotting.

kcStranger2 votes

No self-respecting Syndra player should perform 3-sphere ults with any frequency. I think the usual goal is to get at least 5 spheres, with 4 being something that happens from time to time when appropriate and 6-7 being difficult but possible.

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