They listened about Syndra! Kinda...

Disclaimer: I'm not an experienced Syndra player by a long shot, I simply sympathize with their plight.

Quick context for those that may not have seen today's PBE patch notes yet:

(Q) AP ratio increased to .75 from .7

Hooray? Now her post-rework damage equalizes with pre-rework at 575 AP. She's still weaker at rank 5 Q until she reaches that level of AP, but at least it's achievable. So that's sorta good, I guess. Balance problem fixed.

But what about the players that cared about how it felt to play Syndra?

The new Passive has more problems that one simple ratio tweak doesn't fix. This rework cuts down the skill floor AND skill ceiling on Syndra immensely by making it easier for inexperienced players to do two very important things: land stuns, and fire off a 7-sphere ult. Experienced players have lost nearly all skill expression when it comes to maximizing their ult's damage, what with the new window of opportunity being roughly 3-5 seconds long. It doesn't take anywhere near the same level of coordination, and hardly any prior planning, to pull off one of the largest single-target nukes in the game now. Anyone that's at least read what her abilities can do can now achieve that incredible combo with just one cast of W while spamming Q like a madman.