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On Syndra Nerfs

Overlord Forte·5/30/2017, 7:38:12 PM·54 votes·4,822 views

Hi, I'm Overlord Forte, I've played thousands of Syndra games, blah blah blah blah ...

Anyway, I'm going to walk down the list here as we touch the design behind Syndra a bit, and the layers of thought that goes into how she works. From there, we can paint pictures on what may or may not be able to be done about her.

At her core, Syndra is a Control/Burst champion. The control play pattern, with its spacing, area control, and zoning feeds into her burst one via a ramp mechanic, and the burst makes up for short comings in the control side (vice versa). The more time she exerts in generating dark spheres, the stronger the burst is--up until the spheres expire, then she loses power. Hence, a natural up and down rhythm. Syndra wants to cash out at the high notes as much as her enemies want to avoid letting her do it. This turns her kit into a very self feeding design principally governed by how much time she spends on a problem.

The contentious part of this design is her burst ultimate, which deals what is essentially the highest single target damage spell-based ability in the game against Champions. Runner up is Veigar and LeBlanc, who do need to incorporate other abilities into their rotations just to match her ultimate after sphere stacking. Veigar's R itself, though, is equivalent to her 5th/6th sphere ultimate depending on enemy HP. The price for this damage is speed: her ultimate is one of the slowest to use in the game from a no-spheres-generated scenario. She must spend time stacking them up and it is not a quick process.[1] At 20% CDR and post level 9, her 7th sphere ultimate (as of 7.10 patch) can take 9.6~ seconds to unlock. The 6th sphere can be reached in around 6.4.

Consider the following for some context:

  • Most team fights resolve in 5-15 second windows.

  • All Assassins achieve their full combo rotations, including ultimates, under 2.5 seconds.

  • Many high damage ultimates achieve their effects, with almost no comparable setup, in around an average of 1.5 seconds.

This time expense is one of two reasons why Syndra's spheres don't require her to hit enemies to use her ultimate, essentially. In such a world, you would have not only an ultimate with two-to-three times longer preparation time than 95% of other ultimates in the game, you then throw on a hit mechanic requiring her to be damaging enemies to achieve meaningful damage. This in turn places her, an extreme glass cannon, no mobility/defensive spell, stun-knockback/slow only, in reach of almost all of her dangerous threats. Her kiting is strong, but kiting requires moving out of range of even your own reach sometimes to be safe. Forcing her to stay in range, ironically, mitigates the effectiveness of her kiting because she loses more damage otherwise. This setup can force the fragility of her kit to become much more apparent as she has almost no choice in dealing with danger zones.

The accuracy conundrum is the second reason. Consider this: burst means at a certain HP threshold, the target will die. If you don't reach that threshold, the burst is mostly useless.[2] They'll disengage without dying if you expend it, leaving you depleted and overly vulnerable. So, every spell missed means time spent not getting to that threshold. In this case, of a sphere 'on hit' mechanic, every missed Q blast means even less damage: the missed Q blast, and the lack of damage on her ultimate. It's a double hit that pushes her farther away from her burst threshold. This meaningfully impacts her trade windows, especially in early duels to the death, and then later on in any heavy trade scenarios. It can come down to the extent that if she misses literally one ability in the beginning of the fight, she auto loses the trade. Enemies collapse onto her so frighteningly fast there is no recovery time, and she has to retreat (or often, just die). This is already on the live server, and such a mechanic would widen the windows in which this hard-failure can occur.

Thusly, it seems an innocuous change: 'Syndra's ultimate damage scales, in some manner, by her spheres hitting enemies'. But the gravity of this idea contorts how her kit works, by not only affecting her safety in an already very fragile design, but by making her loss in damage via inaccuracy even more punishing. There is no relief mechanism in such a design that doesn't inevitably circumvent it.

Or, in other words, such a change either doesn't do anything (because it can practically ignored), or breaks her design in unsustainable ways.[3]

Now, let's shift to some wide-lens perspective for a moment.

As a Champion, her personal damage profile has shifted very little (her ultimate has, in fact, not changed its damage values in years), but the game environment around her has. Mage damage in S5 was very different from mid-S6 onwards. New masteries added more overall power, and the MYMU completely torked how mages operated from what they used to have for virtually most of their life time. The swap from Athene's Unholy Grail to Morellonomicon is particularly damning in this regard. Instead of a 60AP+25MR item most every midlaner picked up (thus reducing the damage you took from your enemy in the process), we now have a 100AP item. That's a +40 AP (blasting wand) and -25MR shift, which nets around to a Large Rod's worth of damage adjustment to every mid laner. It's a big swap by itself from how mages were balanced prior.

Her incredible damage profile these days is helped largely by these two main facts. She's benefited a lot in the damage department directly/indirectly, but still feels the pain from MR rushes affecting her burst windows. To those who can't afford such item strategies, she gets more than she ever did before in fighting them. These factors made my brow go very quirky during the MYMU era, and was even something I became deathly afraid of. AP ratio bumps, new mechanics that break her sphere safety designs, competition getting nerfed, itemization getting massively buffed ...

It was all a lot of things happening for her at once, which is pretty much why she shot up to 97% ban rate at S6 worlds. It was a silver platter to the spot light. This context is important because, for many years, the mechanics of Syndra's ultimate were considered 'high skill cap'. Using it efficiently was something of an artform itself, but the moment she was made "more accessible", we have the torrential flood of 'r button monkey champ' memes from riot casters to pretty much every other forum.

The two culprits from this were Q and W passive changes.

The triple-sphere throw mechanic is gone, removed for the reasons I feared in my above blog post. Infinite stun walls and 6-7 sphere ultimates once achieved is pretty much a Reddit topping 'how to make a champion broken with 1 change' thread post. That being said, the idea has merit, but her kit has to be reworked to have it. I digress, however.

But, one thing does remain: the +2 second Q timer. On its surface, it's fairly innocent looking, but it's directly damaging one of her design's safety valves. Her spheres remaining longer on the field not only means all her ultimate windows are longer by a flat 2 seconds, the enemy has to wait 2 seconds more before spheres start dying. This makes approaching her less feasible, as her mana expenditures and CDs are the same, she can expend the same expenses but get more out of in non-interactive ways. This is essentially the source of the 'stack spheres and flash R' concept, since stacking spheres by itself before this change was much more punishing resource wise to do.

Okay, we have the two major framings: she has a lot of damage increases, and her operational window is much bigger than she ever has had before. Let's start looking at options.

Trimming damage from a kit is fairly straight forward, but given 95% of Syndra's purpose is incredible damage (and her incredible stun), it can be dangerous to do. Despite being a burst champion, her ability to burst targets is not unique. Many other champions can shotgun out comparable damage at the speed of her regular abilities, so it'll be easy for them to overshadow her if she loses 'too much' damage. That said, she's overly benefited from the MYMU, so an overall trimming back in this department isn't out there. I don't have a spreadsheet on hand to play with to see what numbers wise that might be, but this is an area I'd pass attention over.

The next major bit is determining her ultimate's accessibility. Of most of the hardliner Syndra mains I've spoken to, and my own assessment, we continue to use her pre-MYMU sphere stacking as the healthiest version of her mechanic. That being said, the 7th-sphere ultimate being a pipe dream, once-every-five-games-maybe effect was depressing. You literally needed 30-35% CDR minimum and, after expending over 10 seconds of time stacking up, had a 0.5-1.5 second window to actually use it. That's a late game build in an environment you can die in a second for mispositioning.

I believe modifying her Q passive to be an on-hit mechanic, or something else related to the 7th sphere specifically, would help in this department. The more it is gated, the less the rest of her ultimate (6th and 5th sphere especially) and general sphere mechanic is affected. Experienced Syndra mains can reliably hit 6th sphere ultimates in the windows they desire well before the Q passive matters. So, adding the current passive onto it just makes it grotesquely easy to do. Hence, I would look at a way of specifically benefiting the 7th sphere. This'll help enemies play around her spheres better if they're waiting to deal with 6 second spheres rather than 8 as well. A more extreme change, like 4 second base spheres with 8 seconds if the Q hits, would make her kit become too swingy at her current CD values.

A harder hit may potentially be making her E+spheres stun combo stopping the stun on first Champion target hit. This would massively punish her team fight presence, especially post-ultimate. I actually wonder if this would kill her team fighting outright as a unique strength ... anyway.

W's hit box is already being hit without compensating its slow throwing speed, I believe. This'll be a hard nudge into the E 2nd max play style, so Syndra DPS play style will die out in the mid game. In the E 2nd max build, W is a junk ability--you use it to stack spheres and apply a questionably useful slow. When ranked up its actually quite powerful, but if its practical application drops, there will be less reason to care about its damage potential. It is also a bit notorious for screwing with her sphere-stack combos, as applying W optimally for her R often makes usage of W itself inefficient. I could make a whole thread about that but we'll put this one aside.

Another, build-changing option would be to increase Syndra's mana costs. She is 'already expensive' (her 6th sphere can be around 300-400 mana for a full combo), but the current game environment is mana flooded (Morello's+Meditation+50%mregen Drings). A shift to forcing an Archangel's or double mana item build can affect her early/mid game significantly. It also has the double effect of punishing low mana builds for recklessly mana spending as well. May also slam her early game lane bully status, but that can potentially be a pick-viability killer as well.

Those are what come to mind as surface options. Deeper mechanical changes are problematic for me to consider without knowing what can, or cannot be, touched.

Anyway, thank you all for reading this post. I'm not adverse to changes, but thus far I've not seen suggestions that make me comfortable with the world Syndra might live with after them. With what I've written in mind, feel free to let me know of any counter design or changes you think might work.

[1]The effect of this time expenditure can be mitigated by Syndra's pre-stacking spheres as they go into combat, but this shifts the practical time expense rather than the literal. She is still expending those cooldowns, but the context of price payment is different. On average this tends to be 1 dark spheres worth of CDs, though I've seen semi-frequent instances of 2 spheres. Changing battlefield conditions can affect how practical this idea is, though.

[2]Bursting to remove the 'safe' HP of high priority targets is the second most useful form of burst. An ADC/APC/etc at 10-20% HP can be picked off by allies much more easily. This does, however, leave the burst vulnerable to being more powerfully mitigated by healing, disengage, or other tools that prevent the weakened target from dying. Overall this is 'making best of a bad situation' rather than 'ideal' for a burst-based champion.

[3]Examples would be:

  • Hit an enemy, receive a buff that boosts her ultimate's nerfed damage to original values (Hit literally any target, ignore them while ulting who you actually want. Essentially pointless, literally only stops no-damage, 7 sphere R flash ultimates).

  • Hit a specific enemy, receive buffed damage against that enemy (Massively nerfs her ultimate's versatility and triple-punishes her for missing abilities).

52 Comments

nononthesnake5/30/2017, 7:44:37 PM16 votes

I've already said this, and Forte repeated it in the post above, but when people complain about her ultimate, they keep forgetting that it's always has been the same spell ever since Syndra's release. The only thing that's changed has been that Q passive and the (now long gone) dreaded multi-throw on her W. Adding 2 seconds to her spheres timers adds so much time to her 7 spheres ultimate and (most importantly) to her 6 spheres one, and for being the highest damaging single target nukes in the game, that's not a really good thing all things considered.

So yeah, changing how her ultimate works mechanically ( make it deal less damage if she misses her basic abilities, for example) it's just bound to ruin how her kit works overall, and I think that taking a look at the Q passive would be better than doing any of that.

Cosmic Warper5/30/2017, 8:18:57 PM9 votes

Her passive for Q needs to be changed, period. It makes her ult have a much larger window for success than before. Her passive should enhance Q somehow, not her R. The idea behind it was to increase her sustained damage and reliability in fights with longer orb times, but as a result made her ult too reliable in strength.

Siegfriedx15/30/2017, 9:37:57 PM7 votes

One of the best posts I ever read here so far. Gj.

Zerenza6/1/2017, 12:10:10 AM4 votes

I'v recently started to love syndra, she's become on of my favorites, i used to be unable to play her and my friend's would say "Just press R" the thing is, after going from mastery 1-6 with her that isn't true at all. Sure, a fed syndra can still on shot you, so can a fed anything, but what people don't see is how much work she put's into the set up to get to her ultimate. Her ultimate will not one shot you if she only has it's basic 3 sphere's, if she has 2 more, it will probably kill you at 60% hp(meaning she'll need to hit you with her Q, W or E to get you low enough) and at 6-7 sphere's there is a very high likelyhood you'll die at around 75-80% HP, but what people don't seem to understand is to get to that level she has to use her Q 3-4 Times, her W 1-2 Times and her E once to make sure she can get you low enough. The time it takes to set this up is actually plenty enough time and is completely fair when it comes to one shotting someone, she can't just walk up to you and press R, that's not how it works. Even if she does walk up to you from a bush, chances are she sat in that bush for 10 seconds setting up before running at you.

The real problem, i feel, is her passive, the Q, the W, the E, the R. They might just want to try fiddling with her Passive and the changes it gives to her other abilities but for the love of god do not give her the triple pickup on her W again.

Hovering Hentai5/31/2017, 10:39:50 PM3 votes

*Enemy casually let's Syndra stack up her spheres then walks into ult range

"OMG so op rito pls nerf"

TekkenPlayer5/30/2017, 8:32:45 PM3 votes

I honestly believe the w hitbox is extremely too wide and almost guaranteed within a certain range providing the counter matchup is immobile

Charmed by Ahri5/31/2017, 3:03:18 PM2 votes

Flawlessly articulated. Hands down, one of The best writers the forums has seen, when it comes to the understanding of literature and if i may say so myself quite the demon genius when using the english language. Always interesting and intelligent. First off Syndra is one of those champions when played skillfully is a pinnacle of artwork in terms of gameplay. She really can be a hit or miss champion though. Coming from someone who enjoys high mobility champions. When I play her, sometimes I feel like I'm handicapped, but trade off with a lot of control and zoning power. She does indeed have a quite a bit of weakness and thankfully counterplay since the W change. I've told you before, her non-mobile adversaries are probably having a worse time vs her. What they fail to understand, is how much patienience, stacking, shot prediction and risk Syndra takes to do what she does effectively and if she mispositions its over for her.

I may add, Syndra is in a state where she has a lot of power, to a degree no one challengers her at a particular stage in the game(if she's competent). For fear of her control of the field and her ult.

Personally I think she's OK. Considering the W max over E. Granite I play E max Syndra so when I say hit or miss champion, that's just my experience. Even with the majority of her player base playing W. She has clear weaknesses and can be exploited quite easily. At early stages of the game. She's similar to Teemo, Zyra, Anivia, GP. They are usually the most effective when they are capable of setting up their field of control. If the enemy allows her to do so. Then they ef'd up. Her Orbs don't even last for any amount of comparable time when side by side a lot of champions who take time to set up an area for their kit. And the mana at which she expends to do so can take it's toll. But at the same time, she doesn't really have to go for the field of control play style. And you said it above, mages and their items have changed drastically since previous seasons. Mages do different things, have different numbers, items etc. Than the past. So yeah i get it too.

I seen a Syndra the other day show casing some awesome field of control/zoning power she has whilst playing the single target burst mage and amazed me with their ability to kite like a boss. Sadly this community fails to stop and see the good players and what they can achieve. And would rather complain endlessly about how x champion made them respawn, when they simply could've done so much more in terms of preventing yourself from dieying. They continue to fail at seeing how they made a mistake and or how you/or what you did to get them to respawn. Or they may have some semblance of understanding and seen what was done or the mistake made. And I quote "Why does this champion do this/that". Like what? It is Syndra. And not everyone is complacent either. So my QQ about others QQ doesn't necessarily mean everyone is the same. Like when I say not every Syndra has an understanding of similar prowess that Syndra I spoke of. Thus possibly show casing what makes her easy and annoying to some degree. ... Just my take on it.

Helmight5/31/2017, 8:10:12 AM2 votes

I posted a thread about possibly nerfing Syndra's sphere duration unless it hits an enemy champion, but I think you raise some very good counterarguments for that common suggestion. Very good thread here. Hopefully Riot can find a way to balance out Syndra without overly nerfing her.

Mira Arya Enthe5/31/2017, 3:22:29 PM2 votes

2309 words? Damn now I have to make a post with 2310.

Perma CC5/31/2017, 4:31:42 PM2 votes

As someone that has been a die hard Syndra one trick since season 3-4. I honestly think the biggest issues with her are the accessibility of her max sphere ult. The maxed Q change is a hidden op that is veeeeeeeeeery powerful but isn't very noticeable. Similar to how Aura's were super strong but people were unaware of just how strong. Syndra's W most definately should not be the target of her nerfs. IT's already got several delays. Picking up something, and the throwing animation as well as having a pretty small AOE. Riots setting her up to be gutted... what needs to happen is she needs to be reverted back to what she was prior to MYMU. To be honest tho... I wouldnt mind her ult being completely reworked tho into an entirely new ability if people are having that much of an issue with it. I think it could be cool to have the ult turned into a skillshot of sorts... with a small hitbox... obviously would mean lowering the ult cool down since she would lose out on having a reliable ability in herkit, there would need to be a gain of some sort because of that.

GigaPube5/31/2017, 9:00:29 PM2 votes

now THIS is constructive criticism

Hyrum Graff5/31/2017, 1:15:45 PM1 votes

What if we nerfed the ult damage but allowed it to attack up to 8 spheres? I don't play syndra, but from a design standpoint, if her ult is still useful when not fully stacked, I don't have a problem with making the fully stacked version a rare event.

As far as what deeper mechanical changes are OK, generally everything is on the table as long as you aren't going to alienate too much of the existing player base; the big constraint is generally art. If you're going to require model or animation changes, you're asking for a larger scope project, so it's less likely to be prioritized over other work.

Cosnirak5/31/2017, 2:35:39 PM1 votes

So here's my problem with your line of thinking. If you let the really good players still do the same stuff but make it harder to do/less consistent/require more skill you don't actually fix Syndra at all, you just make her inaccessible to players new to her. People have to main her and practice her a ton to just do ok. League already has too many such champions, and most of them are iconic problem childs (like Azir) due to all the issues that come with such designs.

You know what would make Syndra reasonable? Just nerf her R damage a little. Let it not be that hard to pull off. Let it be reliable, fast, easy. Just stop letting her kill me with Q+aa+R because she got one kill before that.

I can't track her spheres and basic ability cds and know if I can get near or not all game. And unless I also play Syndra a ton I will never be able to. Her counterplay simply can't reasonably consist of that kind of thing. I can dodge her Ws and Es sometimes and rarely her Qs and I can try to make use of the tiny window between when she presses R and when it's done turning me into dust and that's enough counterplay. If I as a non Syndra player have to pay attention to her spheres beyond dodging her E it's too much.

Psyrix5/30/2017, 10:04:17 PM1 votes

This is an incredibly well thought out post :) as a Syndra main myself I agree with several of ur points especially the comment about the q passive massively reducing the "skill" that was required in Syndra before the MYMU. lol, the three sphere thing as completely broken especially paired with the q 8 second change, made me question how people didnt comment beforehand that it was too much. Reverting the sphere cd to 6 seconds will most likely make her more balanced as then it brings back the more difficult ball management that made her harder to master. Your idea about a q requirement for the 8 sec duration interests me, as it adds another factor to keep in mind when using the w to reposition and reset the time. I think the w true damage change was fine and should be kept as is.

TyrekGoldenspear5/31/2017, 10:35:40 PM1 votes

Phew, you get an upvote for the sheer amount of work you put into this.

I Might Lose5/31/2017, 3:24:22 PM1 votes

Can we get a tldr I took my English final already

NineTailedMystic5/31/2017, 12:15:41 AM1 votes

What about removing that obscure, yet frustrating interaction of QE still launching a stun box despite the orb not being there, as well as how it removes the whole counterplay to her normal stun maneuvers.

AirKingNeo5/30/2017, 10:25:32 PM1 votes

Lower her Q ap ratio to 0.6 from 0.75.

Solved, fairly easily.

MysticFlameHaze5/31/2017, 12:28:52 AM1 votes

"As much as i love syndra maybe have the ult only grab spheres within a certain range similar to how azir soldiers will fade quicker outside a specific range, that way she'd lose out on randomly spewing spheres all over the place and the ult just making up by taking all her misses in.

So say the area of syndra's ult range would be the reach point for it grabbing spheres and only using those, she'd have to position better and for her ult to actually work properly."

posting this here from when i said it on Meddler's board talking of Syndra. i thought this would be a good way of putting more skill into her playstyle

Spice POWAH5/31/2017, 2:41:29 AM1 votes

If they nerf Syndra, I'd personally want them so that her E does not hit orbs that have not started existing yet. Here's what I mean:

Several times I've seen Syndras use QE before the orb has a chance to deal damage, and I can tell this because she'll e and a ball will fly out of nowhere to stun her enemy, but then you'll see the animation for creating the ball where it would have been made, right? So why not just remove that functionality so that the ball would have to appear in game before you can e it into someone. It looks weird anyway.

Lord Desert5/31/2017, 10:34:44 PM1 votes

A TL;DR: would be nice on threads with such length, trust me I have experience with wall of texts! It helps massively.

I personally dislike the mechanic that she can 1 shot squishys, without hitting any skillshots, the most. My suggest to fix this is a mark. If she hits someone with a Q or a QW/QE combo, the enemy gets marked and will recieve the current ult dmg. But if she ults a target that doesnt have the mark, the dmg will be lower. It could be something between 66% to 75% of the current dmg without the mark.

With this change Syndra needs to hit atleast something to 1 shot someone and this honestely should not affect anyone at and above the average syndra level. This change basically rewards skill.

Nombae5/31/2017, 11:06:13 AM1 votes

I see you try extremely hard to make it sound as if she's not as ridiculous as she is. She should be able to do one of the following: high single target burst and reduced control/aoe, medium burst, aoe and control or the opposite of the first. The fact is, she does high aoe, high control and high single target burst. Her single and aoe sustained damage is also insane. This shouldn't happen on any champion, the sacrifice for mobility doesn't justify this (compare vs Veigar/Lux/Brand, etcetc). She's out of line and needs adjustment. Even if she had her ultimate neutered I'd still play her for the control and sustained aoe damage she brings..