About The Sylas E Nerf

For the past several patches Sylas has gotten several nerfs, particularly to his W, but in patch 9.7 the cooldown of his E was raised from 12/11.5/11/10.5/10 (per skill point) seconds to 18/16/14/12/10 (per skill point) seconds. I'd like to express my reasoning as to why I think that this specific nerf was unnecessary, and how it hurts him much more than Riot had originally intended.

Introduction:
I'd like to preface this argument by briefly talking about "gated" combos, which is something that most champions, and therefore most players, should already know about but don't always take into account with regard to nerfs. The simplest way I can explain this is by using Jarvan IV's EQ combo as an example. His base Q cooldown scales from 10 seconds to 6 seconds with skill points, however the base cooldown of his E is 11 seconds regardless of skill points. This means that regardless of how many points the Jarvan IV player puts into Q, this combo will always be at least an 11 second cooldown when ignoring cooldown reduction from items, and this combo is arguably more power than the combined individual benefits his Q and E offer separately. This same concept of "gated" combos applies to most champions, and heavily influences their preferred max order. This is the reason that Leblanc players generally max W first, even though maxing Q offers more damage. Their QW combo is "gated" by the cooldown of their W, which is much longer than their Q cooldown before putting several points into it. It's the same concept that encourages Fizz players to max E first instead of W and Camille players to max E instead of Q first.

Pre-Nerf:
The reason I choose to bring this up because up until the nerf to Sylas's E, his all-in was gated by the cooldown of his W, the base cooldown of which scales from 14 to 12 seconds per skill point. Before the 9.7 patch nerf, the base cooldown of his E was 12 seconds at one skill point. This meant that by level 13, which was when your W would now be full maxed, both your W and E would have a 12 second base cooldown, allowing you to freely take trades and skirmishes every 12 seconds after trading (again ignoring cdr from items). Every skill point added to your kit would now go toward bringing your E to a 10-second base cooldown, with the exception of maxing out your R. Even with your E fully maxed, the base cooldown of your entire kit would still be gated by your 12-second W cooldown.

Post-Nerf:
With the addition of the nerfs from 9.7, Sylas's trading combo is now gated by his E cooldown at every level up until level 17, which is when his W and E once again have the same base cooldown. This assumes that the Sylas player maxes E last, which is where my primary concern comes in. Sylas's E is designed to give him mobility, survival, and crowd-control all in one ability, and primarily exists for the purpose of locking down his target during the explosion of his Q while simultaneously closing the distance to land his W. In most matchups, especially at higher levels of play where laners know more advanced wave-control techniques, Sylas must max Q first in order to have some semblance of waveclear as he naturally struggles at last hitting under tower, (in comparison to other AP bruisers such as Fizz/Diana/Akali,) due to the nature of his passive. After maxing Q, Sylas cannot afford to max E before W without giving up the necessary damage and healing his W offers for him to stay relevant in the midgame, resulting in his entire kit suffering a nerf due to the nature of E during the levels 13 through 17, without even taking into consideration the three separate nerfs in 9.4, 9.5, and 9.7 which all punish Sylas for maxing W.

Conclusion:
I can understand the frustration of dealing with an ability such as Sylas's W, and in all honestly I feel as though his kit is much more overloaded than it appears at first glance. Each of the abilities, even barring his insane ultimate, have so much impact on their own at the cost of some pretty high base cooldowns. The correct way to balance the overall effectiveness of these abilities (in my opinion) is not by increasing their cooldowns, nor do I even think crippling their damage (or healing in the case of W) would solve this. Raising the overall mana cost of some of these impactful abilities would punish the Sylas player for missing an integral part of their kit, (especially in the case of his E which is his sole method of proccing aftershock at early levels,) and would bring Sylas a similar level as other protobelt-abusers such as Fizz and Ekko, whereas crippling the numbers on his W and/or his overall cooldowns instead leave him a worse version of these champions.

I'd also like to end by making the claim that I believe Riot really jumped the gun on the most recent nerf. Halfway through patch 9.2 he was giving minor buffs to his E damage and base AD, along with MR scaling, with the reasoning "He was weak so we're buffing him." Since then he's gotten nothing but direct nerfs (save for adjustments to the ratio on his W healing which is a direct nerf until 600+ AP). I feel as though Riot didn't account for the typical process of "new champ comes out -> people learn how to play the champ -> people learn how to play against the champ" and gave Sylas several nerfs after players figured out how to properly player him, but before the rest of the community could react and play accordingly versus players who can play Sylas to his peak potential. He's fallen out of meta quickly after nerf, and now not only have players learning to take his W healing and cooldown into account when trading with Sylas, but now Sylas's W has become less reliable as an ability due to the several nerfs it has received, leading him up the painfully unnecessary nerf to his base E cooldown.