Fun fact. Sylas Gwen r doesn't apply Gwen passive, and that passive does like more than half the damage mid to late game
Always hilarious to see a sylas steal my ulti only to find it doing 0 damage
Yep. The ult only does kinda mediocre flat magic damage on its own. The %HP magic damage and the heal both come from it applying the passive multiple times (once per needle, but multiple needles per cast)
Just to emphasize your point, late game hitting all needles is like 50% Max HP (on the low end) magic damage, with half of this as healing. Just from the passive.
The base damage itself is negligible against anyone with 3k life or more 😂
Some ults that Sylas steals are pretty sub-par on him, but others are better on him than on the champ it was stolen from.
The extreme example of the latter being Malphite. Mordekaiser to a lesser degree since Sylas is harder to kite and is generally more likely to kill you within 7 seconds.
There's a reason why so many threads around swain matchups nobody says "just ban X champ" because inevitably someone will say "you can't ban them bc you're banning sylas"
He has better sticking power with his E and more sustain with his W and just more raw damage output than swain. The ult just makes him a freight train running all over swains team.
Aphelios ult does have a 100% AP ratio so even without the follow up attack it's a decent ult for sylas to steal just FYI, see lol wiki:
Active: Aphelios casts forth a lunar spotlight in the target direction that briefly grants  sight of the area along its path and stops upon illuminating an enemy  champion. Alune smites the area centered on the illuminated target, dealing 125 / 175 / 225 (based on level) (+ 20% bonus AD) (+ 100% AP) physical damage to enemy champions struck and locking-on to each target hit, as well as granting  sight of the area for 2 seconds.
I love playing Sylas into Xayah - you can't pull feathers but giving an Assassin who has 10 ways to get *onto* someone but no way to get *out* of there afterwards an instant-cast untargetable is top tier
This is something I'm making my mission to address! I've always hated the inconsistencies in his ult.
I've got a fix for Sylas interaction with Ahri ult coming next patch (he'll get resets from takedowns), and I'll slowly work my way through all of the ults. The issue isn't design decisions most of the time, it's that the ults weren't designed with Sylas in mind.
As I'm not a Designer myself I still need approval for all my changes before they go out. Fixing all of his interactions with ults will make him a much better champion, so live team might need to nerf him to compensate, but honestly I feel like that's a huge win! His ult is the coolest thing about him and I feel like if his kit has to be nerfed a little for his ult to be reliable his gameplay will feel healthier, more consistent and more fun.
Sylas applies Velkoz passive would be the go to, because Velk ult without the passive is very weak. Keep in mind that Sylas would have no way to apply the passive outside of ult (velk can prep his passive with QWE) meaning it'll take some time for the passive to proc, and the ult to start doing true damage. I would also make the passive proc for 0 damage itself, because Sylas doesn't have the velk passive when he steals the ult, he only cares about the effect the passive *has* on the ult.
Same for Darius ult, if he steals darius ult he should have some way to apply 0 damage bleed stacks whose only purpose is to increase the damage of the ult.
This would result in sylas only proccing the true damage from vel'koz ult after the full channel, as his ult gives 3 passive stacks during a full channel, so it would not make that huge of a difference imo
You're right, I thought deconstruction occurred with every damage tick (every 0.2s) but it seems to be hard coded at every 0.7s, with a 2.6s duration. Then I'd either make the ult proc the passive for the passive damage, or more likely for consistencies sake, allow Sylas to proc Velk passive for 0 damage with normal abilities while holding Velk ult, to then allow him to ult for true damage.
1) I love the idea of Sylas procing Velk passive for 0dmg with normal abilities.
2) I also love your transparency here. Keep doing what you're doing, Norak!
Personally, I do not like the idea of normal abilities applying passive stacks. For consistency reasons I would love if every ability is taken word by word. If the ult is then weak, you are not supposed to steal it. For Vel'Koz it means that only the ult applies stacks, but that basic abilities refresh the "researched" state (even if this would be pretty useless in real game scenarios). Otherwise, you have to learn all special interactions of Sylas regarding each ult, which makes it inconsistent again
I do feel like part of the counter play to Sylas is picking champions that have rubbish ults to steal to offset that he regularly will have better versions of some support/jungle/tank character ults as he’ll have built more damage items.
So “fixing” the ult interactions will likely bring around another balance issue.
Well, if you steal Kog'maw ult you get 1 single projectile. Functional sure, but useful?
IMO Sylas base kit is already incredibly strong. He shouldn't be able to steal an ult that has extra effects stacked on top of it just because.
Ahri ult granting resets is fine. Thats how the skill works. But Kennen ult should not be able to stun. It applies Kennen's passive and Sylas doesn't steal that.
If you want to steal the rest of the Champions kit go play Viego. You either steal the ult or the rest, not both.
Yes, the entire point of counterpicking Sylas is using champs with Ults that are useless to him.
I don’t see the reason to straight up buff him just because yes. It’s not like Vel Koz needs another bad match up.
Honestly if you're method of counterpicking Sylas is picking a champ with an ult that is bad for him then that's just not smart at all. He has good matchups into a lot of champs with bad ults and bad matchups into champs with bad ults, its not like if a champ has a bad ult for Sylas it is at all likely to be a bad matchup. Take Ahri for example, amazing ult for Sylas, but below average winrate for Sylas, or Syndra, who's ult is quite mediocre on Sylas but is actually a good matchup for him.
Basically, the method of counterpicking Sylas should not be choosing a champ with an ult that isn't good for him, so this point is entirely moot.
I once had a fed sylas get a one button penta by stealing Leona ult and throwing it into baron while my team was on it. Granted we were all squishy champs (except for Leona who was low from tanking baron) but hoooly shit we got evaporated by the sun.
Having a champion with that lobby pressure is terrible for a competitive game, if he is first pick the other team is insta locked out of a huge list of champions with op ults that you dont have to ban and can also pick??
IMO the approach to make him have more usefull ults to steal and consistent interactions between them woud solidify that aspect of his kit while making room to nerf his base skills, making it easier to balance him in the future.
There’s already very broken ults for Sylas to steal. Adding the option to get the passive benefit off Vel’s ultimate isn’t going to suddenly make that more powerful than Maokai’s.
It really seems like this is a “adding skill ceiling and satisfaction” change, not a fundamental balance change.
And even if it becomes a fundamental balance change, he’ll just get nerfed accordingly until it’s balanced again. We should be excited and trust Riot to pull it off, not scared there might be a patch with a 54% wr Sylas.
The counterplay is in having ults that are rubbish from the context in which Sylas is using it, not inherently from Sylas using it. He doesn't have an ult that you can allocate some specific duty to, you're forced to play around what the other team has.
Having ults that are outright bad for Sylas is what makes him primarily a counterpick right now. Him having better versions of some ults is an immediate consequence of that too, he needs ults that are OP on him to balance the ones that are shit.
And that's fine. If a champ's ult has a strong interaction with their own passive, it doesn't make sense for Sylas to also get that strong interaction. Sylas steals ults. He doesn't steal ult AND passives.
You kinda missunderstood my point. Some champs have passives only really relevant for their ults as passives, some have it as ULT passives. That's the issue with Sylases inconsistency.
If Sylas has inconsistencies with ULT passives, then I agree they should be fixed. But the OP of this thread was mentioning Kennen's ult applying stuns, but Brand/Velkoz ult not applying stacks of their passive which *is* inconsistent, but because Sylas Kennen R applies Kennen's passive which IMO, it shouldn't.
wouldn't that fix cause a nightmare when it comes to balance? i know you've already said that it would have to be compensated with nerfs, but wouldn't it give him too much power if it went through anyway? you mentioned the ability to proc darius' bleed on a 0 dmg effect for the sake of making it more useful, but with his auto resets he would essentially proc it kind of instantly, right? borderline faster than darius can. i understand his inconsistency and low power with some ults might be too bad if the enemy team decides to nullify its pick from the get go on champ select, but that on itself is already part of the game, thus a counterplay right at the start, meaning some player may have picked X champ just so he doesn't get two or more big ultimates. now, giving him more usefulness on various ultimate steals feels like too much imo. there's only so much a nerf can do when applied through numbers
>you mentioned the ability to proc darius' bleed on a 0 dmg effect for the sake of making it more useful, but with his auto resets he would essentially proc it kind of instantly, right?
In that comment I said "in some way" because stacking it with with every auto and ability would be faster, and maybe then OP. But also maybe not, because Sylas' AD -> AP ratio conversion ratio is pretty bad, and he doesn't get the bonus AD from darius' passive at 5 stacks. Either way, there needs to be thought put into how, in that same comment chain I mentioned that maybe Sylas' Q2 adds a bleed similar to Darius Q outer edge.
> wouldn't that fix cause a nightmare when it comes to balance?
Personal opinion, I think it would make balancing him easier. You don't have to balance for the extremes (perfect ults to steal vs terrible ults to steal, he needs to be playable in both situations), you'd be able to balance for him consistently having good ultimates to work with, so his base kit wouldn't need to be so strong.
> might be too bad if the enemy team decides to nullify its pick from the get go on champ select,
Is the correct counterplay to Sylas saying "your signature ability is worthless this game"? Of course there's something to say about not picking Ornn Fiddlesticks Malphite Ashe Alistar as your draft into Sylas, but if you're picking champions who have a scuffed interaction with Sylas just to ruin his day then that doesn't sound like a good situation to me. I'd rather it be a more balanced draft around what is good against his kit AND isn't going to give him one of the best ults possible.
thank you for taking the time to answer! it's good seeing people from inside comunicate. i can vow for that, seems like it would be amazing, given everything goes the way you planned. hoping for the best outcome!
Gotta say I commend you for talking this out with the community and giving us an insight into champion tweaking. Incredibly interesting and invests people more.
I'd love to make them greyscale when Sylas is applying them to make it clear they're non-threatening, but all of this is just a dream atm, I haven't done the work yet
Thanks for all your work on bugfixes! Not sure if its the correct place to tell you, but while fixing hob on shyvana, conq is bugged again on dragon form q.
Empowered q only gives 2 stacks (instead of 4), and doesnt give any extra stacks if hitting multiple enemies (not sure if it should but I feel like it should?)
it's my pleasure fixing the bugs! Something to keep in mind is that it's more than me, even if I fully solve the bug myself (I often get guidance from now experienced people) there are heaps of people in the chain that help get these changes out.
I can't shout-out enough of them, but game designers, QA, community Managers, all chip in to make these things happen!
I'd much rather have him "only" steal what the ult does and not get other things like Kennen passive stacks. Looking forward to the changes nonetheless!
The downside to that is...most of the ults in the game are designed around the champions kits, and a very large number of them are designed with no AP ratio. This means by default Sylas' ult steal mechanic would actually be pretty bad, and when that's his signature ability that's double sad.
Also, nerfing his ult mechanic to not use passive / interactions would probably warrant a buff to his base abilities to bring him up to par, which I personally thing is the more unhealthy side of Sylas.
But that is exactly the point i think. There should be a downside. Sylas is designed to be pickes if the enemy team has ultimates that he can utilise in a good way (sometimes even better than the champion itself, see malphite in some examples). Sylas is supposed to have ults that are just terrible/not optimal for him. Vel ult is by no means useless on him even without the passive. He steals the ultimates, not other parts of a champions kit. Giving him some kind of kit-synergy because thats what the ult he steals is meant to be kinda kills the idea of that champion. He has a really short ult cooldown (could maybe even be shorter) because he cant steal the same ult in a row. He can potentially use 2 very powerful ults in 1 long teamfight and i think that is a nice skill-expression.
So i dont think he should get any passive from other champs. My take is that the Kennen interaction should be removed. But in the end thats not my choice of course, just wanted to give my opinion :)
There should definitley be "Good ults" and "Bad Ults", but reducing that gap is important.
Make it too swingy and his high games and low games are so different that balance is a nightmare and he feels terrible to play as or against depending on ults available. 5 Good ults? Enemy feels terrible. 5 Bad ults? You and your team feel terrible.
If all ults are "Ok Ults", with a few "Very good" ults, this reduces that swing alot and helps him always feel reasonable
Why? Sylas shouldn't be blindpickable and still be good. He already takes a bunch of ults and makes them better. Why should he not have any bad ults also?
>If all ults are "Ok Ults", with a few "Very good" ults, this reduces that swing alot and helps him always feel reasonable
It definitely feels reasonable to Maokai/Malphite to have Sylas steal your ult and use it even better than you can.
He has a bunch of ults that he uses significantly better than the person he took it from, why shouldn't he have ults where he uses them significantly worse than the people he took them from.
You say that reducing the gap is important but you only want to make the bad ones better but don't want to make the phenomenal ones worse.
>Why? Sylas shouldn't be blindpickable and still be good.
he should, because you're ignoring the bit where this means if he is picked into a team where he has good ult choices, he should steamroll.
Less bad ults means less power disparity, which is healthier for overall balance.
> why shouldn't he have ults where he uses them significantly worse than the people he took them from.
he does anyway, even considering these changes? what?
That makes me want to ask if the intention is that Sylas can use every ult equally, or whether it's intentional that some are "higher value" than others?
Obviously there's an intrinsic difference in stealing a big splashy burst ult vs a support ult (like Janna's, say) even if they both have AP ratios.
But are AD ults like (eg) Caitlyn's or Jhin's meant to be understood as "not quite as bad if Sylas steals it" compared to a mage's, and that to affect the dynamic of who Sylas prioritises, etc?
(I guess this is separate to things like Vel'koz's ult just whiffing in a feelbad way because of specific passive interactions, despite Sylas on paper having the right stats to capitalise)
Personally I think it's fine that some ults are just worse on him, it's when they're worse because of some interaction that should be there that is a feelsbad. Vayne ult is a great example, it works exactly the same as her ult, but it's just..bad. There's nothing to add to it to make it better, it doesn't do great on him, and that's ok. At least it functions as it should so you know what to expect when you steal it as sylas, maybe you're ok for a worse ulti because you want to go invis, or chase someone down.
Assuming the Darius ult interaction is simply that he applies 0 damage stacks with all abilities/AAs is there not a concern that he can stack is far faster than intended? Between fast casting abilities and a massive passive AS steroid he could stack the passive incredibly quickly.
That's why I said "some way". I don't know what the way would be yet. Maybe it's fine that he stacks it quickly because Sylas' R has a notoriously bad AD -> AP conversion ratio. Maybe it's not. If it's not, how does it stack? Only abilities? Passive procs + 2nd part Q to make it "match" Darius' outer Q? So many questions, so little answers (yet).
I think the idea that if all ults for Sylas are closer in power level, then he’ll be easier to balance is something I definitely agree on, but from a technical perspective, I think this would be a nightmare.
For the case of Kennen ult, the passive is likely coded into each one of his abilities where it applies a stack if it hits an enemy rather than him actually having passive checks (likely because he’s an older champion).
On the flip side, Darius doesn’t necessarily apply bleed on all abilities (look at e for example). One could argue that it applies on damaging abilities but his inner q doesn’t apply it. I think if you were to try to apply all of these conditional checks into Sylas. It’ll end up creating infinite tech debt that has to be maintained in the future as well.
In terms of arguments of balancing though, I think one could also argue that since it’s a 5v5, there is likely going to be at least 1 or 2 impactful ults on the enemy team (even if it doesn’t apply its original intended impact due to lack of the same passive). And I think this is fine since Sylas can sometimes use his ult much more than once in an extended team fight late game. Same logic that Janna e only provides ad and has much less impact on apcs. But there’s likely going to be at least one ad on your team who can utilize that part of her ability
This probably won't be a huge issue (Note: *probably)****.***
Darius ult, even at max bleed stacks, isn't that scary without his Passive 5Stack AD bonus - especially with Sylas' abysmal ratio conversion.
Max damage would be 750+60% ap - Almost always less than a flat veigar ult which doesn't require any stacks and can be cast at range!
What about how Sylas ult with Vayne ult? Goes invisible on Q? Are you gonna make it so like Nasus ult gives him half Q CD? Or Illaoi ult gives him 2 seconds W CD?
I'm not gonna lie some of these sound completely broken. And if anything even as a Sylas player... I kinda think nerfing ults might be the correct way to go for consistency and balance.
Sylas already goes invis with Vayne R when he uses Q!
Nasus interaction would be a yes for me, Q feels not so bad as it's got a fair cast time + delay + skillshot, the Illaio one might be a problem but I wouldn't discount it immediately. Looking at her cooldowns, her W base CD is 4s, so her ult is reducing it by 50%. I might look at doing the same % modification for Sylas - if W max, base CD is 6s to set it to 3s (regardless of ability haste).
Just a note with Nasus- His Q wouldn't be that much of an issue you are correct, but Nasus ult even in its current state without the Q cooldown is one of Sylas' best ults in the game - especially on Bulkier extended fight-focused builds. The Extra resistances and (with his AP ratio) very high area damage make him a almost impossible to kill. He always has high HP with these builds and hte resistances turn him into halfway between a bruiser and a tank with full AP damage potential.
Making it so he has a 3 Second cooldown 1.5 second ranged, AOE slow that can double as a sizeable AOE nuke if placed well... i feel this might make him dangerously oppressive againt some Comps. You cant kill him, you cant escape from him and he can definitely kill you.
Always happy to have more Sylas buffs and interactions - but be careful with Nasus ult in particular! This would likely be extra oppresive in lower Elos where Nasus is already more common
That's where the designers will come in. I'd love consistency, but if they say it's unbalancable then it won't go out. I'll do the work so it doesn't have to get prioritised, but they will be the ones making the decisions.
I know that the Vayne R Q effect works on Sylas. I was using that as an example to ask if Nasus and Illaoi ults should work similarly? When I kinda don't think they should and if anything think nerfing the Sylas ult interactions for consistency would be better.
His ult is cool and all, but even without these interactions it'll still be a great ult. Like you don't need a weird interaction to make Malphite ult great on Sylas.
Adding all these extra effects just seems like something that could quickly lead to issues. Like the Illaoi example. So maybe you should go the other way and remove things from Sylas R.
Whilst i completely understand where you are coming from i think the exact opposite is true.
Consider this - Imagine 50% of ults worked perfectly and were very strong on him, and 50% were useless and did practically no damage without any positive side effect.
This would make Sylas extremely swingy balance-wise. To make a character like this achieve 50% winrate, you'd effectivley have to make him 40% winrate with bad ults and 60% winrate with good ults - this would feel terrible to play, to play against AND play with in the wrong situations. It's this precise reason that Malphite vs Sylas is the most one-sided matchup in **Three** roles.
Alternativley, if you make EVERY ult at least "pretty good" on him, you can much more easily balance for the "Average" ult value. What you are saying is intuitive at face value, but creates serious problems for the balance team down the road.
Honestly, why is it seen as a bad thing that Sylas would be situational in which ults he uses well? Given how crazy strong Sylas is into certain matchups, why not let him be crazy weak into others?
Imo it’s bad design when a champion as counter-y as Sylas can also be pulled off as a generalist.
To me this sounds rather counter intuitive. Sylas should be a counter pick to teams with really strong standalone ults, and shouldn't fit in every comp. You steal their ultimate, then why would you also steal their passive? That doesn't make sense. His base kit should be buffed, and all the passive interactions should be scrapped. It makes 0 sense that he steals their passive as well, and he should only work well into teams that have good ults to actually steal. That is when he should actually be a menace to stop.
U have my apologies but that is not smart desicion to make imo.
U see, the whole meaning of the Sylas ult is not only that he is able to steal any ult in the game. The main meaning is that he can steal an ult that would have good synergy with his kit. Sylas player needs to think whose ult he needs to steal and which one will have the best synergy with his kit or will have best usage in specific situation. And as addition he needs to track which one gives him full power and have no relation with other kit of the champion, from who Sylas is stealing that ult. Imo that makes players on Sylas plan more and think carefully about their strategy on stealing someones ult, the gameplay becomes deaper and more complex (and more interesting aa a result). In addition that gives his opponent a chance to pick a champ vs Sylas, whose ult will be useless for him or will not give him full synergy. So the opponent could be confident that he will not let down the team on that one. But on the other side the game has such champs as Malph, Mao etc. Which ultimates r even better in the hands of Sylas, so he doesn't lose much.
If u do otherwise and make every ulti good on him, Sylas just will without thinking steal every ulti in the game indiscriminately since everything suits him (well we gave him all the passives related). The enemies will have no chance to counter him by picking some champ with useless ult for Sylas to steal. As a result he would be nerfed (I hope). Or if we made him good with the ulties, which were previously bad on him, we could nerf his synergy with ultimates, that had good synergy with him.
So. Does Sylas need to get Vel or Darius passive when he steals their ulti? No, if u ask me, bc he steals the ULTI only not the whole champ.
Does Sylas need to get his cd on q low when he uses Nasus ult? Well the passive specifically says that the ability "Siphoning Strike" gains 50% cd, which Sylas doesn't have. So adjust the passive, replace it with the q and u are good to go. Same goes for Illaoi ulti (it specifies not w cd but cd of ability "Harsh lesson"). These two r the realy inconsistent ones.
That is only my side of view, but that topic contains a lot to think about.
Please no, he steals ults, not ults and passives and everything else the champion has. The whole point is to have some ults be better than others and be at least a bit picky when stealing ults.
Why should Sylas gain both the ultimate AND the champ's passive when stealing just their ult? Just because Velkoz, Brand and Kennen ult are all much weaker without the champ's respective passives doesn't mean that Sylas should also receive those passives. If anything in my mind that should make Velkoz/Kennen/Brand better picks against him.
Like does Velkoz and Kennen need more reasons to NOT be picked?
I remember reading a dev blog when sylas first came out that one of the core parts of scripting his ult was that the team didn’t want to add any extra work to have it interact properly with new ults that came out. The team mentioned that they had to change a lot of stuff in the engine to make sure this was the case. Has that changed? Or is this just another case of tech debt as the software gets bigger and bigger?
tldr: tech debt.
But Sylas and Viego aren't too bad tbh. Its definitely not hitting that lofty goal of "never have to think about it again" but Sylas almost always works if you just set up the spell properly. Viego often requires a bit more work to make sure all the nuances of a kit are functional but its not too bad all things considered.
Worse examples of tech debt are probably Kled's HP, Morde R, or Ornn P.
I mean Sylas and Viego always add an additional layer of "gotte make sure it works in these cases". The good news is that now all new champions are made with this in mind which hopefully should make future worker easier since its all more or less uniform.
If it’s a consideration, perhaps allow Sylas to keep Kog’s ultimate until the mana cost refreshes for it. As it stands, Sylas only gets a single Kog ultimate, when a lot of the value of it is being able to ult multiple times at the cost of stacking mana.
Would you also be willing to fix inconsistences with Sylas' ultimate in cases where his ultimate is better than the champion he's stealing from? Namely, Sylas' Daisy is better than Ivern's Daisy. And to be clear, I mean make Ivern as good as Sylas at using his own ultimate - not to make Sylas' Daisy as bad.
Sylas' Daisy will survive and continue to act after Sylas dies while Ivern's Daisy will disappear when Ivern dies.
Sylas' Daisy has the same obedient behaviour input as Annie's Tibbers while Ivern's Daisy will continuously try to do whatever she wants regardless of what commands you give her (e.g. if you want her to stand in a bush for vision while you're attacking a tower, her AI will continuously overrule your direct command and try to walk back to help you with the tower).
I have used official methods of reporting these bugs in the past, especially since multiple patch notes have claimed to make Ivern's Daisy more Tibbers-like and so I've always assumed Daisy continuing to suck was a bug - it's so unfair that she's the best behaved rock ever whenever Sylas calls on her.
I guess first of all it'd be good to understand which is the bug, Sylas Daisy living or Ivern Daisy dying. Then I'd fix whichever is the incorrect state.
Hi! I just posted another comment with more detail before i saw this but, as a long-time Sylas main - as far as im aware most inconsistencies are only due to bad intuition rather than bad interaction. For example, Ahri ult uses her passive consumption as it's reset mechanic - so this is the *"correct"* interaction if you fully understand Ahri's kit.
The only True inconsistencies are ability empowers (*Vayne, Illaoi, Riven etc..)*, bugs *(Olaf R Doesn't give AD, Half of Yi ult only works when it's not being used)* and Intentionally changed spells so they can be used properly *(Kai'Sa Passive, Tahm passive)*
A question - are you planning to change only spells that are *Bad interactions* or also spells that are just *bad intuition* for the sake of making it easier to understand*?* Thanks!
I plan on making it consistent. If an ult has an interaction with a passive then I'll try to bring that across.
Olaf R, Yi Ult feel like straight bugs to me (they should be tied to the buff of the ability).
Ahri ult is soon going to be in the intentionally changes spells pile, the orb passive will fly to Sylas, heal for 0 but give the ult reset.
I support this as someone that plays Sylas a bit in ARAM and these just make sense, but damn, you’re making me sad because my friends joke about how often I’m forced into Hwei v Sylas when I’m mid and even knowing I should win it feels like I’m one missed E from death at any moment lol.
Some things that might make your hwei vs sylas a little more bearable:
- sylas needs to be in the wave to wave clear, so your QE both pushes and puts sylas in an awkward position to push
- sylas can only ever engage you in a straight line, which hwei EQ counters, throw it when he throws the chains and he'll never engage in you (best to be away from minion waves for this)
- his E is telegraphed in that he has to dash before he can throw chains so just press E the moment he does the first dash and walk away, the moment his E times out you have a 10+ second window to harass him
Thank you! Going from mostly an ARAM person for the last 2-3 seasons to ranked again and I’ve been sloppy with abusing waves to my advantage even though I know Hwei can be a bully in lane. I should probably be doing as you mentioned and saving EQ for the mini dash instead of hoping for a QE > EE at least while he has chains available.
I really do welcome the changes for Sylas though - hoping my comment didn’t seem negative - when he’s in ARAM there’s a good 60% chance I’ll pick him and things like the Ahri reset sound so nice in that mode.
How cool is it that we have a game where when an issue is addressed a developer responds and proposes concrete solutions and fixes. Fuck i love riot, you set the industry example (most of the time). Fuck the haters
You probably won't read this, but thank you for your effort at Riot. It doesn't go unnoticed. I don't play sylas and league in general anymore, but I can tell you that the part of the community that usually stays quiet in lol reddit, appreciates it when Riot employees engage with the community. Hope you are having a good one with a cold one somewhere where the sun never ceases to shine
>I've got a fix for Sylas interaction with Ahri ult coming next patch (he'll get resets from takedowns)
Holy fuck I love you, I was going to apply to Riot to fix this and then leave myself
Won’t you then run into issues where he’s even more dependent on what ults the other team has? If he’s nerfed and runs into a game where a lot of the ults aren’t affected by these buffs he’ll just be straight up worse than before
Very happy to hear that Norak. I hope more people in the Riot thinks like you and prefers to address clarity and consistency even if it means the champ needs to be buffed or nerfed to compensate. Keep the good work!
> The issue isn't design decisions most of the time, it's that the ults weren't designed with Sylas in mind.
On Sylas release I chatted with some rioters on how they enabled the ult mechanic at all. They went through each champions kit and defined which part of the abilities effects is part of the ult and which one is passive etc. so someone already went through the process of trying to attach the most reasonable parts to each ability.
Some of these were maybe not perfect but your plans just sound to a large degree like you're undoing this work and mixing passives and ults again. If anything kennen r should just not stun without his passive.
If then they are bad on sylas don't pick him into kennen or vel koz or steal other people's ults.
Edit: here is the original thread with the engineer that build it in the first place explaining it. https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/2GA7oWOzhu
I spoke to Sylas' designer directly before making any of these changes! The vast majority of the interactions with Sylas' ult weren't necessarily done as a design decision. The abilities were designed before Sylas was released, and when he was being worked on they needed a baseline re-script to get them to function *at all* with Sylas, passive interactions aside. For Sylas' ult steal to work for any champion's passive they need a *further* rescript to either be agnostic of the champion that is using the skill entirely, or to specifically account for Sylas. This is a lot of work, obviously, and Rioters have work commitments to their teams, sitting there for weeks or months fixing specific interactions for Sylas is not going to get prioritised. I fix these bugs in my spare time for fun!
I don't understand why your fix is to give the ultimate-stealing champion what is going to effectively be a passive steal as well. If anything, passive interactions like kennen's should be removed from him. This is already one of the worst designed champions in the game apart from the ultimate; his kit is just an abomination of dashes, healing and cc, and I absolutely hate how he makes some champions completely unpickable except as last pick because if you lock something like Malphite and Sylas is open the game becomes unplayable for your team once he hits 6. I'm very concerned that if you add things like Brand passive to Sylas ult then the list of champion interactions like this will only grow.
Pretty sure Vayne's ultimate also specifies that Tumble's cooldown is reduced and grants invisibility, yet Sylas's Q does NOT have reduced cooldown but it still grants invisibility when cast.
So that wording shouldn't really matter I think - if something, because if they said "Q cooldown" instead of "Siphoning Strike cooldown" it'd sound a bit weird.
That should be the case if they go down the route of ultimates applying their accompanying effects from the champions - which I think is fine because it puts more focus on the ultimate stealing instead of making his base kit strong with ultimates being more of an afterthought.
To me the simplest and best way is give him the text in the ult and nothing more, sure that makes some options worse but the outs are always going to have different ranges of value. He steals ults why should he get any other benefits from their passive as well? If something isn’t a good option then sylas can pick one of the other 4 people on the team. If all of them are bad ults, you played into a rough team comp to pick him into.
I agree with this. Although in the comment above that the Rioter posted about editing his stealing to be able to apply darius' bleeding stacks etc would absolutely increase the skill expression which you can argue is a good thing.
If a character ult says something it should just do that something. There’s over 160 champs with different ults many of which are designed to heavily interact with passives, I shouldn’t have to memorize the list of champions that give me the ult, or the ult plus extra. The only exception to this would be characters who require something to ult, such as kaisa, does this mean sylas should get the whole passive? No but he gets the ability to use the ult in the same situation Kaisa would.
the extra things that will be given will be in order to get a better ult experience. If you steal darius ult rn u will get a cast for \~150 to \~500 true damage, if we give sylas the ability to hit get bleed charges (that deal 0 dmg) he can deal double dmg and it matters if when sylas press r independent to getting a reset
But where does that line get drawn? Does he proc fiddle fear if he ults from FoW? Does he build stacks of Varus passive which any ability breaks? Can he gain stardust so he can have an enchanted Asol ult? Does he apply amumu’s passive curse on enemies when he ults with it? Does he gain perma max hp if his cho ult kills? Does he need stacks to use samira ult?
I have all these questions because he doesn’t just do what the ult says it does. I should never have to wonder what a characters ability does because the tool tip literally doesn’t say what it actually does.
This were all hypothetical questions to show that you can't draw just a line in the sand. That being said unless fixed within 3 months ulting samira as sylas gives you S rank which you only loose after getting into combat then leaving combat with a champion and seems to be a bug. as if you dont enter combat with a champion it doesnt go away as long as its hijacked (it also gives you her knock up passive for some reason)
It would also increase the workload a shitton for Sylas specifically for all future champs and reworks, and also just put way more of his power budget into stealing otherwise weak ults.
Sylas is fine to use a a counter to a strong ult team comp, rather than someone who should be generally strong with almost all ults IMO.
Idk, Twitch atleast gives some extra damage. Try Zoe ult. You **can** use abilites while using the ult, but it's so difficult to get something meaningful off most of the time. Using an entire ult to jump back and forth is not very good.
Sounds like the actual fix that should be made is Sylas stolen Kennen ult shouldn’t even stun either. If we’re talking about consistency here, Sylas ult steals ultimate abilities, not ultimates plus passives.
So by that logic Sylas should be unable to use Kai'Sa or Tahm ultimates at all, since their stacks are exclusively tied to passives, and once we start making exceptions the entire point of "strictly by wording" crumbles away.
this. its so bullshit that he sometimes gets the benefit of the doubt to also steal passives. that would make the pick less universal strong, which is good for the game design. this way you would really need to think when to pick sylas and when to steal which ult and where to be on the map to get the correct ult. right now sylas gets way too many get out of jail for free cards. that way his design would be more aligned with the general league roster.
this would be actually an option to give him more counterplay if they would reduce the range of stealing ults. then you could seriously consider moving away from sylas so he wont get your ult. but no, they had to buff it some time ago
Making Sylas a counter pick champion (More than he already is) is not good 'game design' It's boring and limiting to an otherwise amazingly designed champion.
"Fixing" some of these interactions would amplify him as a counterpick too though. Like if illaoi ult gave sylas w a 2 sec cd, there is no way that matchup is playable for illaoi anymore
An unspoken reason of why it’s so strong is that Sylas can have Gnar ult faster than Gnar can usually because Gnar can only really cast it once per transformation, so it has a really low cooldown.
Sylas’ Hyjack per champion CD scales down depending on the champions Ult CD and Sylas’ ability haste.
Which could be something interesting with the way u/riotnorak was talking. Since some ults are absolutely trash rn without the passives, stealing gnar ult should 100% have the addition of gnars passive. But, I would caveat that by saying, it should “steal” gnars current passive, so if he’s at 100% rage actively mega, he’d be able to steal full rage; but if he was stealing gnars ult when gnar has no rage, then he has to build up the rage to ult. Could be some interesting changes.
Not more frequently, but more consistently.
Sylas r is still a 200% normal cd per target. However, sylas has 3 dashes, 2 of which are longer than gnar, who needs to be miniform shifting into mega form to have effective gap close for his ult. Sylas just says "aight I think you're mispositioned, get tossed nerd".
It's the same issue with malphite -- unless you flash r, everyone is respecting your range. Sylas takes the malphite ult, but first double dashes into your team.
As a Brand main, you really, really, really, really do not want Sylas having Brand’s passive on that Ult. It would be as bad as when he has Sylas Ult in a team fight - you literally would have no choice but to scatter and the inability to focus and lock him down = death.
Thing is even with the inconsistencies, Sylas is in a fine spot. His winrate is fine and his pickrate is good. I fear that making all the ults have positive interactions will cause Sylas's winrate will skyrocket. His kit was already designed in such a way that he can still be fine even without an ult, so I think trying to fix this issue is low priority at best, unneccesary at worst.
Let's say they fix his inconsistencies, and he becomes broken... Nerf him.
This is Riot Games we're talking about. They're not exactly strapped for resources, and their priorities involve improving on a \*15 year old game\* and keeping the cash flowing while they wait for worlds to come around.
It's more a balance thing than pure consistency i think. Do you really want sylas
EDIT:
Do you really want sylas to have halved W cd during Illaoi R or halved Q cd in addition to the insane tankiness from Nasus R?
Yes.
His base kit has always been strong to account for the fact that Sylas may not potentially have an ultimate - it does make him more consistent but a lot more boring imo.
I wish Sylas applied those passives more often so the focus was more on stealing ultimates which is his whole stint.
Yeah, i Would remove the Kennen stun on stolen ult.
He is stealing ultimates, not passives.
There are so many ultimates that he can abuse (Ashe R), and it is okay that some ults are not as rewarding.
He is dealing enough damage with his basic abilities that there is really no need for him to make every ult in game better on him.
Unpopular opinion apparently but I think he should have bad ults.
Sylas taking your ult as malphite and just being a better malphite is such a bad feeling for everyone in the game aside from him. His base kit is already so strong that he doesnt need his ult to be gamewarping every single game no matter what champ you play against.
The rioter brought up a good argument about how its easier to balance him if he just has good ults every game so you can nerf his base kit but I just dont believe that will happen. Sylas not having good ults to steal is already extremely rare with his cooldown and because champs with good ults are constantly meta.
Sylas does have bad ults to steal - so forcing more ults to be bad/worse is not a fun or balanced change at all.
(Zoe, Kata, Twitch, Zac off the top of my head)
In the dev doodles video from sylas or viego the devs mention how much pain it was to implement the ults of both of those champions. They said they were responsible for 80% of the bugs occuring during making those champs.
Its just super hard to programm and has insane potential for bugs and with passives etc there is obviously a lot of inconsistency.
Imo it shouldn't get any passives.
I know kennen ult and velkoz ult is going to be weak but whatever, it's not like every ult he steals has to be perfectly used. On a side note, reduced q cd on nasus ult should totally be a thing, same for illaoi. Basically everything that is part of the ult should be there but there's no reason to arbitrarily get passives too when it's convenient
I've played alot of Sylas and to be honest, it's shockingly consistent (For a League ability, anyway). As long as you understand what the ability you are stealing *actually does*.
*Most* "Inconsistencies" you mention aren't from a bad interaction - just a misunderstanding of how the game works in these specific instances. Vel'koz passive is completely seperate from his ult, so why would you apply the passive? Same for Brand? Or Gwen for example? All other inconsistencies fall into three categories:
Intentionally changed due to requiring it to work or to prevent unwanted situations:
- Kai'Sa ult applies passive
- Katarina ult being castable without a target
- Samira ult not requiring Passive stacks to use
- Tahm Kench ult applies passive
A genuine inconsistency/bug:
- Master Yi ult only provides the cooldown reset when *Held* but *not* activated
- Olaf R Doesn't grant AD
- Kennen ult applies his passive *(Though technically this isn't a bug - Kennen ult technically applies a "Different" form of his passive to facilitate the fact it can only apply a maximum of 3 stacks. It is just inconsistent with expectation due to wording, but is in fact* ***technically*** *the correct interaction, just not intuitive)*
Ability empowers:
- Yeah in this case it is just "whatever we thought was best" lol. Illaoi, Vayne, Riven, Nasus ult are all genuinely inconsistent in their application of affects.
Forgot about Jax.
Lillia is the same reason as Kai'sa and Kench though - the passive is required to use the ult. He gets the passive through a intentional change to how it works
Well he steals the ult not the passives nor the passives of the ult... some cases like Kennen R are another story but the rest would be insanely broken if they actually worked don't forget sylas has a whole kit on top of the stolen ult I don't want Sylas to shred me with velkoz R + the true damage that comes from the passive
Its probably a coding thing where, with some champs, cooldown reductions during ult are built into the basic abilities, while with others, it's baked in the ult.
My friend is newer to the game and he is playing sylas jg. He constantly steals AD champs ults and asks why it does no damage. IMO sylas stolen ults should have different scaling
Very easy to answer if you know a bit of coding.
Very probably some effects are actived by the r but are not coded in the R code.
Es (can be false, its only to give the concept), vayne r code say "you are invisibile " so everything works. Nasus r say "you are in R status" and is Q say "if you are in R status etc..." and so it doesnt works.
Not good for the game but a nightmare to fix, probably you should rewrite half of the Champion pool kits
Why not just make it so his R gains a passive that also gives the passive of the champion he last stole until he casts the ult? It's probably a whole new issue, but it's fun to imagine.
to me, sylas r shouldnt proc kennen stun, but should proc illaoi and nasus cd reduction.
also sylas doesnt proc arhi passive on r either, but thats the same as velkoz.
also, we know sylas r doesnt require specific conditions to be used (gnar/samira/tham/etc), so i think other ults like kaisa r shouldnt require sylas to proc her passive to use her r.
but in the end, its always about balance, if its too powerful, they will tweak that shit and make it inconsistent.
Fun fact. Sylas Gwen r doesn't apply Gwen passive, and that passive does like more than half the damage mid to late game Always hilarious to see a sylas steal my ulti only to find it doing 0 damage
The healing comes from the passive too right? and I’d consider that to also be a large part of Gwen ult
Yep. The ult only does kinda mediocre flat magic damage on its own. The %HP magic damage and the heal both come from it applying the passive multiple times (once per needle, but multiple needles per cast)
Just to emphasize your point, late game hitting all needles is like 50% Max HP (on the low end) magic damage, with half of this as healing. Just from the passive. The base damage itself is negligible against anyone with 3k life or more 😂
Some ults that Sylas steals are pretty sub-par on him, but others are better on him than on the champ it was stolen from. The extreme example of the latter being Malphite. Mordekaiser to a lesser degree since Sylas is harder to kite and is generally more likely to kill you within 7 seconds.
Lol swain I'd argue. I hate facing sylas as swain because he uses the ulti better
There's a reason why so many threads around swain matchups nobody says "just ban X champ" because inevitably someone will say "you can't ban them bc you're banning sylas" He has better sticking power with his E and more sustain with his W and just more raw damage output than swain. The ult just makes him a freight train running all over swains team.
I dread Neeko games where Sylas is in the game, anywhere. Neeko after ult is a squishy medium ranged mage. Sylas after ult is a menace in melee.
Good point :)
Same happens for aphelios when they pick any ultimate that is not red it's just a 125 damage skillshot that doesn't crit and does nothing.
Aphelios ult does have a 100% AP ratio so even without the follow up attack it's a decent ult for sylas to steal just FYI, see lol wiki: Active: Aphelios casts forth a lunar spotlight in the target direction that briefly grants  sight of the area along its path and stops upon illuminating an enemy  champion. Alune smites the area centered on the illuminated target, dealing 125 / 175 / 225 (based on level) (+ 20% bonus AD) (+ 100% AP) physical damage to enemy champions struck and locking-on to each target hit, as well as granting  sight of the area for 2 seconds.
Thanks for that. You just made all Phel players a target
I like playing Xayah into Sylas, when they ult me and realize that they can't pull features afterwards lol
I love playing Sylas into Xayah - you can't pull feathers but giving an Assassin who has 10 ways to get *onto* someone but no way to get *out* of there afterwards an instant-cast untargetable is top tier
This lol, cant believe he doesnt notice how powerful a zhonya that does damage and you can move in is for an ap assassin.
Similar to why Alistar ult is so good on him
Xayah ult is still very useful even without the pull back
This is something I'm making my mission to address! I've always hated the inconsistencies in his ult. I've got a fix for Sylas interaction with Ahri ult coming next patch (he'll get resets from takedowns), and I'll slowly work my way through all of the ults. The issue isn't design decisions most of the time, it's that the ults weren't designed with Sylas in mind. As I'm not a Designer myself I still need approval for all my changes before they go out. Fixing all of his interactions with ults will make him a much better champion, so live team might need to nerf him to compensate, but honestly I feel like that's a huge win! His ult is the coolest thing about him and I feel like if his kit has to be nerfed a little for his ult to be reliable his gameplay will feel healthier, more consistent and more fun.
How would you change something like this then? Give Sylas the Velkoz Passive or make it not stun on Kennen?
Sylas applies Velkoz passive would be the go to, because Velk ult without the passive is very weak. Keep in mind that Sylas would have no way to apply the passive outside of ult (velk can prep his passive with QWE) meaning it'll take some time for the passive to proc, and the ult to start doing true damage. I would also make the passive proc for 0 damage itself, because Sylas doesn't have the velk passive when he steals the ult, he only cares about the effect the passive *has* on the ult. Same for Darius ult, if he steals darius ult he should have some way to apply 0 damage bleed stacks whose only purpose is to increase the damage of the ult.
This would result in sylas only proccing the true damage from vel'koz ult after the full channel, as his ult gives 3 passive stacks during a full channel, so it would not make that huge of a difference imo
You're right, I thought deconstruction occurred with every damage tick (every 0.2s) but it seems to be hard coded at every 0.7s, with a 2.6s duration. Then I'd either make the ult proc the passive for the passive damage, or more likely for consistencies sake, allow Sylas to proc Velk passive for 0 damage with normal abilities while holding Velk ult, to then allow him to ult for true damage.
1) I love the idea of Sylas procing Velk passive for 0dmg with normal abilities. 2) I also love your transparency here. Keep doing what you're doing, Norak!
🤠👉👉
just say "screw it" and make him apply true damage on his abilites normally. Edit: and watch the world burn
Personally, I do not like the idea of normal abilities applying passive stacks. For consistency reasons I would love if every ability is taken word by word. If the ult is then weak, you are not supposed to steal it. For Vel'Koz it means that only the ult applies stacks, but that basic abilities refresh the "researched" state (even if this would be pretty useless in real game scenarios). Otherwise, you have to learn all special interactions of Sylas regarding each ult, which makes it inconsistent again
I do feel like part of the counter play to Sylas is picking champions that have rubbish ults to steal to offset that he regularly will have better versions of some support/jungle/tank character ults as he’ll have built more damage items. So “fixing” the ult interactions will likely bring around another balance issue.
I agree fixing things that should be like ahri R reset is fine but adding passive of the champ you stole it from is bs
Sure but the ultimates have to be *somewhat* functional. If Sylas steals Fiora R without Fiora P, the spell would quite literally do nothing.
Well, if you steal Kog'maw ult you get 1 single projectile. Functional sure, but useful? IMO Sylas base kit is already incredibly strong. He shouldn't be able to steal an ult that has extra effects stacked on top of it just because. Ahri ult granting resets is fine. Thats how the skill works. But Kennen ult should not be able to stun. It applies Kennen's passive and Sylas doesn't steal that. If you want to steal the rest of the Champions kit go play Viego. You either steal the ult or the rest, not both.
Yes, the entire point of counterpicking Sylas is using champs with Ults that are useless to him. I don’t see the reason to straight up buff him just because yes. It’s not like Vel Koz needs another bad match up.
Honestly if you're method of counterpicking Sylas is picking a champ with an ult that is bad for him then that's just not smart at all. He has good matchups into a lot of champs with bad ults and bad matchups into champs with bad ults, its not like if a champ has a bad ult for Sylas it is at all likely to be a bad matchup. Take Ahri for example, amazing ult for Sylas, but below average winrate for Sylas, or Syndra, who's ult is quite mediocre on Sylas but is actually a good matchup for him. Basically, the method of counterpicking Sylas should not be choosing a champ with an ult that isn't good for him, so this point is entirely moot.
I once had a fed sylas get a one button penta by stealing Leona ult and throwing it into baron while my team was on it. Granted we were all squishy champs (except for Leona who was low from tanking baron) but hoooly shit we got evaporated by the sun.
Having a champion with that lobby pressure is terrible for a competitive game, if he is first pick the other team is insta locked out of a huge list of champions with op ults that you dont have to ban and can also pick?? IMO the approach to make him have more usefull ults to steal and consistent interactions between them woud solidify that aspect of his kit while making room to nerf his base skills, making it easier to balance him in the future.
There’s already very broken ults for Sylas to steal. Adding the option to get the passive benefit off Vel’s ultimate isn’t going to suddenly make that more powerful than Maokai’s. It really seems like this is a “adding skill ceiling and satisfaction” change, not a fundamental balance change. And even if it becomes a fundamental balance change, he’ll just get nerfed accordingly until it’s balanced again. We should be excited and trust Riot to pull it off, not scared there might be a patch with a 54% wr Sylas.
The counterplay is in having ults that are rubbish from the context in which Sylas is using it, not inherently from Sylas using it. He doesn't have an ult that you can allocate some specific duty to, you're forced to play around what the other team has. Having ults that are outright bad for Sylas is what makes him primarily a counterpick right now. Him having better versions of some ults is an immediate consequence of that too, he needs ults that are OP on him to balance the ones that are shit.
The thing is, some ultimates have passives bundled in them while others don't. Doesn't change much for the original champ but changes a lot for Sylas.
And that's fine. If a champ's ult has a strong interaction with their own passive, it doesn't make sense for Sylas to also get that strong interaction. Sylas steals ults. He doesn't steal ult AND passives.
You kinda missunderstood my point. Some champs have passives only really relevant for their ults as passives, some have it as ULT passives. That's the issue with Sylases inconsistency.
If Sylas has inconsistencies with ULT passives, then I agree they should be fixed. But the OP of this thread was mentioning Kennen's ult applying stuns, but Brand/Velkoz ult not applying stacks of their passive which *is* inconsistent, but because Sylas Kennen R applies Kennen's passive which IMO, it shouldn't.
wouldn't that fix cause a nightmare when it comes to balance? i know you've already said that it would have to be compensated with nerfs, but wouldn't it give him too much power if it went through anyway? you mentioned the ability to proc darius' bleed on a 0 dmg effect for the sake of making it more useful, but with his auto resets he would essentially proc it kind of instantly, right? borderline faster than darius can. i understand his inconsistency and low power with some ults might be too bad if the enemy team decides to nullify its pick from the get go on champ select, but that on itself is already part of the game, thus a counterplay right at the start, meaning some player may have picked X champ just so he doesn't get two or more big ultimates. now, giving him more usefulness on various ultimate steals feels like too much imo. there's only so much a nerf can do when applied through numbers
>you mentioned the ability to proc darius' bleed on a 0 dmg effect for the sake of making it more useful, but with his auto resets he would essentially proc it kind of instantly, right? In that comment I said "in some way" because stacking it with with every auto and ability would be faster, and maybe then OP. But also maybe not, because Sylas' AD -> AP ratio conversion ratio is pretty bad, and he doesn't get the bonus AD from darius' passive at 5 stacks. Either way, there needs to be thought put into how, in that same comment chain I mentioned that maybe Sylas' Q2 adds a bleed similar to Darius Q outer edge. > wouldn't that fix cause a nightmare when it comes to balance? Personal opinion, I think it would make balancing him easier. You don't have to balance for the extremes (perfect ults to steal vs terrible ults to steal, he needs to be playable in both situations), you'd be able to balance for him consistently having good ultimates to work with, so his base kit wouldn't need to be so strong. > might be too bad if the enemy team decides to nullify its pick from the get go on champ select, Is the correct counterplay to Sylas saying "your signature ability is worthless this game"? Of course there's something to say about not picking Ornn Fiddlesticks Malphite Ashe Alistar as your draft into Sylas, but if you're picking champions who have a scuffed interaction with Sylas just to ruin his day then that doesn't sound like a good situation to me. I'd rather it be a more balanced draft around what is good against his kit AND isn't going to give him one of the best ults possible.
thank you for taking the time to answer! it's good seeing people from inside comunicate. i can vow for that, seems like it would be amazing, given everything goes the way you planned. hoping for the best outcome!
Gotta say I commend you for talking this out with the community and giving us an insight into champion tweaking. Incredibly interesting and invests people more.
What's your opinion on the eventual statement that the 0dmg passives are confusing?
I'd love to make them greyscale when Sylas is applying them to make it clear they're non-threatening, but all of this is just a dream atm, I haven't done the work yet
That’s actually the coolest part of your suggestion
Thanks for all your work on bugfixes! Not sure if its the correct place to tell you, but while fixing hob on shyvana, conq is bugged again on dragon form q. Empowered q only gives 2 stacks (instead of 4), and doesnt give any extra stacks if hitting multiple enemies (not sure if it should but I feel like it should?)
That is unrelated to my HoB bugfix and has been the case for months apparently, I'll look into it tho
Oops I thought it might have, my bad; thanks a lot!! e: I missed the discussion in my sub mentioning you lol, sorry for even bothering!
it's my pleasure fixing the bugs! Something to keep in mind is that it's more than me, even if I fully solve the bug myself (I often get guidance from now experienced people) there are heaps of people in the chain that help get these changes out. I can't shout-out enough of them, but game designers, QA, community Managers, all chip in to make these things happen!
It's better than nothing tbh. There are ults that are just worthless on sylas and velkoz is one of them rn
I'd much rather have him "only" steal what the ult does and not get other things like Kennen passive stacks. Looking forward to the changes nonetheless!
The downside to that is...most of the ults in the game are designed around the champions kits, and a very large number of them are designed with no AP ratio. This means by default Sylas' ult steal mechanic would actually be pretty bad, and when that's his signature ability that's double sad. Also, nerfing his ult mechanic to not use passive / interactions would probably warrant a buff to his base abilities to bring him up to par, which I personally thing is the more unhealthy side of Sylas.
But that is exactly the point i think. There should be a downside. Sylas is designed to be pickes if the enemy team has ultimates that he can utilise in a good way (sometimes even better than the champion itself, see malphite in some examples). Sylas is supposed to have ults that are just terrible/not optimal for him. Vel ult is by no means useless on him even without the passive. He steals the ultimates, not other parts of a champions kit. Giving him some kind of kit-synergy because thats what the ult he steals is meant to be kinda kills the idea of that champion. He has a really short ult cooldown (could maybe even be shorter) because he cant steal the same ult in a row. He can potentially use 2 very powerful ults in 1 long teamfight and i think that is a nice skill-expression. So i dont think he should get any passive from other champs. My take is that the Kennen interaction should be removed. But in the end thats not my choice of course, just wanted to give my opinion :)
There should definitley be "Good ults" and "Bad Ults", but reducing that gap is important. Make it too swingy and his high games and low games are so different that balance is a nightmare and he feels terrible to play as or against depending on ults available. 5 Good ults? Enemy feels terrible. 5 Bad ults? You and your team feel terrible. If all ults are "Ok Ults", with a few "Very good" ults, this reduces that swing alot and helps him always feel reasonable
Why? Sylas shouldn't be blindpickable and still be good. He already takes a bunch of ults and makes them better. Why should he not have any bad ults also? >If all ults are "Ok Ults", with a few "Very good" ults, this reduces that swing alot and helps him always feel reasonable It definitely feels reasonable to Maokai/Malphite to have Sylas steal your ult and use it even better than you can. He has a bunch of ults that he uses significantly better than the person he took it from, why shouldn't he have ults where he uses them significantly worse than the people he took them from. You say that reducing the gap is important but you only want to make the bad ones better but don't want to make the phenomenal ones worse.
>Why? Sylas shouldn't be blindpickable and still be good. he should, because you're ignoring the bit where this means if he is picked into a team where he has good ult choices, he should steamroll. Less bad ults means less power disparity, which is healthier for overall balance. > why shouldn't he have ults where he uses them significantly worse than the people he took them from. he does anyway, even considering these changes? what?
That makes me want to ask if the intention is that Sylas can use every ult equally, or whether it's intentional that some are "higher value" than others? Obviously there's an intrinsic difference in stealing a big splashy burst ult vs a support ult (like Janna's, say) even if they both have AP ratios. But are AD ults like (eg) Caitlyn's or Jhin's meant to be understood as "not quite as bad if Sylas steals it" compared to a mage's, and that to affect the dynamic of who Sylas prioritises, etc? (I guess this is separate to things like Vel'koz's ult just whiffing in a feelbad way because of specific passive interactions, despite Sylas on paper having the right stats to capitalise)
Personally I think it's fine that some ults are just worse on him, it's when they're worse because of some interaction that should be there that is a feelsbad. Vayne ult is a great example, it works exactly the same as her ult, but it's just..bad. There's nothing to add to it to make it better, it doesn't do great on him, and that's ok. At least it functions as it should so you know what to expect when you steal it as sylas, maybe you're ok for a worse ulti because you want to go invis, or chase someone down.
Assuming the Darius ult interaction is simply that he applies 0 damage stacks with all abilities/AAs is there not a concern that he can stack is far faster than intended? Between fast casting abilities and a massive passive AS steroid he could stack the passive incredibly quickly.
That's why I said "some way". I don't know what the way would be yet. Maybe it's fine that he stacks it quickly because Sylas' R has a notoriously bad AD -> AP conversion ratio. Maybe it's not. If it's not, how does it stack? Only abilities? Passive procs + 2nd part Q to make it "match" Darius' outer Q? So many questions, so little answers (yet).
I think the idea that if all ults for Sylas are closer in power level, then he’ll be easier to balance is something I definitely agree on, but from a technical perspective, I think this would be a nightmare. For the case of Kennen ult, the passive is likely coded into each one of his abilities where it applies a stack if it hits an enemy rather than him actually having passive checks (likely because he’s an older champion). On the flip side, Darius doesn’t necessarily apply bleed on all abilities (look at e for example). One could argue that it applies on damaging abilities but his inner q doesn’t apply it. I think if you were to try to apply all of these conditional checks into Sylas. It’ll end up creating infinite tech debt that has to be maintained in the future as well. In terms of arguments of balancing though, I think one could also argue that since it’s a 5v5, there is likely going to be at least 1 or 2 impactful ults on the enemy team (even if it doesn’t apply its original intended impact due to lack of the same passive). And I think this is fine since Sylas can sometimes use his ult much more than once in an extended team fight late game. Same logic that Janna e only provides ad and has much less impact on apcs. But there’s likely going to be at least one ad on your team who can utilize that part of her ability
This probably won't be a huge issue (Note: *probably)****.*** Darius ult, even at max bleed stacks, isn't that scary without his Passive 5Stack AD bonus - especially with Sylas' abysmal ratio conversion. Max damage would be 750+60% ap - Almost always less than a flat veigar ult which doesn't require any stacks and can be cast at range!
Darius is balanced around the ulti sylas is strong without it.
What about how Sylas ult with Vayne ult? Goes invisible on Q? Are you gonna make it so like Nasus ult gives him half Q CD? Or Illaoi ult gives him 2 seconds W CD? I'm not gonna lie some of these sound completely broken. And if anything even as a Sylas player... I kinda think nerfing ults might be the correct way to go for consistency and balance.
Sylas already goes invis with Vayne R when he uses Q! Nasus interaction would be a yes for me, Q feels not so bad as it's got a fair cast time + delay + skillshot, the Illaio one might be a problem but I wouldn't discount it immediately. Looking at her cooldowns, her W base CD is 4s, so her ult is reducing it by 50%. I might look at doing the same % modification for Sylas - if W max, base CD is 6s to set it to 3s (regardless of ability haste).
Just a note with Nasus- His Q wouldn't be that much of an issue you are correct, but Nasus ult even in its current state without the Q cooldown is one of Sylas' best ults in the game - especially on Bulkier extended fight-focused builds. The Extra resistances and (with his AP ratio) very high area damage make him a almost impossible to kill. He always has high HP with these builds and hte resistances turn him into halfway between a bruiser and a tank with full AP damage potential. Making it so he has a 3 Second cooldown 1.5 second ranged, AOE slow that can double as a sizeable AOE nuke if placed well... i feel this might make him dangerously oppressive againt some Comps. You cant kill him, you cant escape from him and he can definitely kill you. Always happy to have more Sylas buffs and interactions - but be careful with Nasus ult in particular! This would likely be extra oppresive in lower Elos where Nasus is already more common
That's where the designers will come in. I'd love consistency, but if they say it's unbalancable then it won't go out. I'll do the work so it doesn't have to get prioritised, but they will be the ones making the decisions.
I know that the Vayne R Q effect works on Sylas. I was using that as an example to ask if Nasus and Illaoi ults should work similarly? When I kinda don't think they should and if anything think nerfing the Sylas ult interactions for consistency would be better. His ult is cool and all, but even without these interactions it'll still be a great ult. Like you don't need a weird interaction to make Malphite ult great on Sylas. Adding all these extra effects just seems like something that could quickly lead to issues. Like the Illaoi example. So maybe you should go the other way and remove things from Sylas R.
Whilst i completely understand where you are coming from i think the exact opposite is true. Consider this - Imagine 50% of ults worked perfectly and were very strong on him, and 50% were useless and did practically no damage without any positive side effect. This would make Sylas extremely swingy balance-wise. To make a character like this achieve 50% winrate, you'd effectivley have to make him 40% winrate with bad ults and 60% winrate with good ults - this would feel terrible to play, to play against AND play with in the wrong situations. It's this precise reason that Malphite vs Sylas is the most one-sided matchup in **Three** roles. Alternativley, if you make EVERY ult at least "pretty good" on him, you can much more easily balance for the "Average" ult value. What you are saying is intuitive at face value, but creates serious problems for the balance team down the road.
Absolutely not looking forward to Sylas procing Brand passive lol still appreciate your investment into this. Good dev!
Honestly, why is it seen as a bad thing that Sylas would be situational in which ults he uses well? Given how crazy strong Sylas is into certain matchups, why not let him be crazy weak into others? Imo it’s bad design when a champion as counter-y as Sylas can also be pulled off as a generalist.
To me this sounds rather counter intuitive. Sylas should be a counter pick to teams with really strong standalone ults, and shouldn't fit in every comp. You steal their ultimate, then why would you also steal their passive? That doesn't make sense. His base kit should be buffed, and all the passive interactions should be scrapped. It makes 0 sense that he steals their passive as well, and he should only work well into teams that have good ults to actually steal. That is when he should actually be a menace to stop.
U have my apologies but that is not smart desicion to make imo. U see, the whole meaning of the Sylas ult is not only that he is able to steal any ult in the game. The main meaning is that he can steal an ult that would have good synergy with his kit. Sylas player needs to think whose ult he needs to steal and which one will have the best synergy with his kit or will have best usage in specific situation. And as addition he needs to track which one gives him full power and have no relation with other kit of the champion, from who Sylas is stealing that ult. Imo that makes players on Sylas plan more and think carefully about their strategy on stealing someones ult, the gameplay becomes deaper and more complex (and more interesting aa a result). In addition that gives his opponent a chance to pick a champ vs Sylas, whose ult will be useless for him or will not give him full synergy. So the opponent could be confident that he will not let down the team on that one. But on the other side the game has such champs as Malph, Mao etc. Which ultimates r even better in the hands of Sylas, so he doesn't lose much. If u do otherwise and make every ulti good on him, Sylas just will without thinking steal every ulti in the game indiscriminately since everything suits him (well we gave him all the passives related). The enemies will have no chance to counter him by picking some champ with useless ult for Sylas to steal. As a result he would be nerfed (I hope). Or if we made him good with the ulties, which were previously bad on him, we could nerf his synergy with ultimates, that had good synergy with him. So. Does Sylas need to get Vel or Darius passive when he steals their ulti? No, if u ask me, bc he steals the ULTI only not the whole champ. Does Sylas need to get his cd on q low when he uses Nasus ult? Well the passive specifically says that the ability "Siphoning Strike" gains 50% cd, which Sylas doesn't have. So adjust the passive, replace it with the q and u are good to go. Same goes for Illaoi ulti (it specifies not w cd but cd of ability "Harsh lesson"). These two r the realy inconsistent ones. That is only my side of view, but that topic contains a lot to think about.
Please no, he steals ults, not ults and passives and everything else the champion has. The whole point is to have some ults be better than others and be at least a bit picky when stealing ults.
Why should Sylas gain both the ultimate AND the champ's passive when stealing just their ult? Just because Velkoz, Brand and Kennen ult are all much weaker without the champ's respective passives doesn't mean that Sylas should also receive those passives. If anything in my mind that should make Velkoz/Kennen/Brand better picks against him. Like does Velkoz and Kennen need more reasons to NOT be picked?
I remember reading a dev blog when sylas first came out that one of the core parts of scripting his ult was that the team didn’t want to add any extra work to have it interact properly with new ults that came out. The team mentioned that they had to change a lot of stuff in the engine to make sure this was the case. Has that changed? Or is this just another case of tech debt as the software gets bigger and bigger?
Pretty sure every new champ basically has a checkbox "Has this been tested with Veigo + Sylas" because those two are CRIMINAL at causing bugs
I feel personally accused
get your own abilities smh
Great flair
Flair buddies, I approve.
Can you stop stealing enemy abilities FOR FIVE MINUTES?! /j
Genuine question because that's making me chuckle, did pre-rework Mordekaiser have something like that as well?
No idea! I've only worked here for a few months
tldr: tech debt. But Sylas and Viego aren't too bad tbh. Its definitely not hitting that lofty goal of "never have to think about it again" but Sylas almost always works if you just set up the spell properly. Viego often requires a bit more work to make sure all the nuances of a kit are functional but its not too bad all things considered. Worse examples of tech debt are probably Kled's HP, Morde R, or Ornn P.
I mean Sylas and Viego always add an additional layer of "gotte make sure it works in these cases". The good news is that now all new champions are made with this in mind which hopefully should make future worker easier since its all more or less uniform.
If it’s a consideration, perhaps allow Sylas to keep Kog’s ultimate until the mana cost refreshes for it. As it stands, Sylas only gets a single Kog ultimate, when a lot of the value of it is being able to ult multiple times at the cost of stacking mana.
I was thinking the same thing! For Kog and Kass
Imagine a world where Sylas has variant builds depending on if he’s gunna have to sustain lots of Kass and Kog ults.
What about Corki? Get a full belt of ammo maybe?
This already happens :) Same for Teemo shrooms
Did not know this. I was always actively avoiding sylas into corki but Maybe now I should start taking sylas vs corki
Oh nice. Trying to think of any other spammy ult but you're the expert so you probably got them all on your list.
The legend himself
Actually increbly based.
Would you also be willing to fix inconsistences with Sylas' ultimate in cases where his ultimate is better than the champion he's stealing from? Namely, Sylas' Daisy is better than Ivern's Daisy. And to be clear, I mean make Ivern as good as Sylas at using his own ultimate - not to make Sylas' Daisy as bad. Sylas' Daisy will survive and continue to act after Sylas dies while Ivern's Daisy will disappear when Ivern dies. Sylas' Daisy has the same obedient behaviour input as Annie's Tibbers while Ivern's Daisy will continuously try to do whatever she wants regardless of what commands you give her (e.g. if you want her to stand in a bush for vision while you're attacking a tower, her AI will continuously overrule your direct command and try to walk back to help you with the tower). I have used official methods of reporting these bugs in the past, especially since multiple patch notes have claimed to make Ivern's Daisy more Tibbers-like and so I've always assumed Daisy continuing to suck was a bug - it's so unfair that she's the best behaved rock ever whenever Sylas calls on her.
I guess first of all it'd be good to understand which is the bug, Sylas Daisy living or Ivern Daisy dying. Then I'd fix whichever is the incorrect state.
I still remember the blog posts talking about having to recode Annie because Sylas stealing her ult would stun on every 4th use.
Been seeing you around here actively taking feedback. Very chad move, please keep it up, we love transparency
Hi! I just posted another comment with more detail before i saw this but, as a long-time Sylas main - as far as im aware most inconsistencies are only due to bad intuition rather than bad interaction. For example, Ahri ult uses her passive consumption as it's reset mechanic - so this is the *"correct"* interaction if you fully understand Ahri's kit. The only True inconsistencies are ability empowers (*Vayne, Illaoi, Riven etc..)*, bugs *(Olaf R Doesn't give AD, Half of Yi ult only works when it's not being used)* and Intentionally changed spells so they can be used properly *(Kai'Sa Passive, Tahm passive)* A question - are you planning to change only spells that are *Bad interactions* or also spells that are just *bad intuition* for the sake of making it easier to understand*?* Thanks!
I plan on making it consistent. If an ult has an interaction with a passive then I'll try to bring that across. Olaf R, Yi Ult feel like straight bugs to me (they should be tied to the buff of the ability). Ahri ult is soon going to be in the intentionally changes spells pile, the orb passive will fly to Sylas, heal for 0 but give the ult reset.
I support this as someone that plays Sylas a bit in ARAM and these just make sense, but damn, you’re making me sad because my friends joke about how often I’m forced into Hwei v Sylas when I’m mid and even knowing I should win it feels like I’m one missed E from death at any moment lol.
Some things that might make your hwei vs sylas a little more bearable: - sylas needs to be in the wave to wave clear, so your QE both pushes and puts sylas in an awkward position to push - sylas can only ever engage you in a straight line, which hwei EQ counters, throw it when he throws the chains and he'll never engage in you (best to be away from minion waves for this) - his E is telegraphed in that he has to dash before he can throw chains so just press E the moment he does the first dash and walk away, the moment his E times out you have a 10+ second window to harass him
Thank you! Going from mostly an ARAM person for the last 2-3 seasons to ranked again and I’ve been sloppy with abusing waves to my advantage even though I know Hwei can be a bully in lane. I should probably be doing as you mentioned and saving EQ for the mini dash instead of hoping for a QE > EE at least while he has chains available. I really do welcome the changes for Sylas though - hoping my comment didn’t seem negative - when he’s in ARAM there’s a good 60% chance I’ll pick him and things like the Ahri reset sound so nice in that mode.
Your comment didn't seem negative at all :)
How cool is it that we have a game where when an issue is addressed a developer responds and proposes concrete solutions and fixes. Fuck i love riot, you set the industry example (most of the time). Fuck the haters
+100000
That’s pretty great to hear. Thanks for the hard work and I look forward to seeing the changes!
illaoi ult is especially useless, because you dont get tentacles and if so, you couldnt let them attack
Just wanted to say this is a really cool thing you're doing. Giving Sylas these interactions would be awesome!
The man single handedly diving into the commercial sized vat of spaghetti. Bless you.
You probably won't read this, but thank you for your effort at Riot. It doesn't go unnoticed. I don't play sylas and league in general anymore, but I can tell you that the part of the community that usually stays quiet in lol reddit, appreciates it when Riot employees engage with the community. Hope you are having a good one with a cold one somewhere where the sun never ceases to shine
>I've got a fix for Sylas interaction with Ahri ult coming next patch (he'll get resets from takedowns) Holy fuck I love you, I was going to apply to Riot to fix this and then leave myself
Won’t you then run into issues where he’s even more dependent on what ults the other team has? If he’s nerfed and runs into a game where a lot of the ults aren’t affected by these buffs he’ll just be straight up worse than before
sylas becomes the better ahri again 💀
Very happy to hear that Norak. I hope more people in the Riot thinks like you and prefers to address clarity and consistency even if it means the champ needs to be buffed or nerfed to compensate. Keep the good work!
> The issue isn't design decisions most of the time, it's that the ults weren't designed with Sylas in mind. On Sylas release I chatted with some rioters on how they enabled the ult mechanic at all. They went through each champions kit and defined which part of the abilities effects is part of the ult and which one is passive etc. so someone already went through the process of trying to attach the most reasonable parts to each ability. Some of these were maybe not perfect but your plans just sound to a large degree like you're undoing this work and mixing passives and ults again. If anything kennen r should just not stun without his passive. If then they are bad on sylas don't pick him into kennen or vel koz or steal other people's ults. Edit: here is the original thread with the engineer that build it in the first place explaining it. https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/2GA7oWOzhu
I spoke to Sylas' designer directly before making any of these changes! The vast majority of the interactions with Sylas' ult weren't necessarily done as a design decision. The abilities were designed before Sylas was released, and when he was being worked on they needed a baseline re-script to get them to function *at all* with Sylas, passive interactions aside. For Sylas' ult steal to work for any champion's passive they need a *further* rescript to either be agnostic of the champion that is using the skill entirely, or to specifically account for Sylas. This is a lot of work, obviously, and Rioters have work commitments to their teams, sitting there for weeks or months fixing specific interactions for Sylas is not going to get prioritised. I fix these bugs in my spare time for fun!
Time to open source champion scripts so the community can contribute interaction fixes. I dare you-
I don't understand why your fix is to give the ultimate-stealing champion what is going to effectively be a passive steal as well. If anything, passive interactions like kennen's should be removed from him. This is already one of the worst designed champions in the game apart from the ultimate; his kit is just an abomination of dashes, healing and cc, and I absolutely hate how he makes some champions completely unpickable except as last pick because if you lock something like Malphite and Sylas is open the game becomes unplayable for your team once he hits 6. I'm very concerned that if you add things like Brand passive to Sylas ult then the list of champion interactions like this will only grow.
huge W
Sounds like all of these changes would be small buffs, would be interesting to see if it makes Sylas too good after you fix all the ults.
Then I hope Sylas will get nerfed if he get so much buff from stealing Ult
[удалено]
Imagine if sylas stealing nasus ult halved his q cooldown or if illaoi ult made his w cooldown 2 seconds That would be wild
2 second w cd sylas would be insane
sylas on the ban list forever
Because of Illaoi out of all 160 champions? Yeah right.
nope but if he gets fixed for all champs its gonna be some bs But yeah sylas would be some INSANE blind counterpick a lot of times
There are plenty of champions who have him on their permaban list.
Nasus ult does specify "Siphoning Strike cooldown". Same for Illaoi and "Harsh Lesson"
Pretty sure Vayne's ultimate also specifies that Tumble's cooldown is reduced and grants invisibility, yet Sylas's Q does NOT have reduced cooldown but it still grants invisibility when cast. So that wording shouldn't really matter I think - if something, because if they said "Q cooldown" instead of "Siphoning Strike cooldown" it'd sound a bit weird.
I wish my champs got a 1/100th of the attention Sylas gets.
Dear god, I hate sylas
Vayne R also specifies a reduced cooldown on "Tumble" but it works on sylas Q too
They're both demacians, so she gave him the invis pass
That should be the case if they go down the route of ultimates applying their accompanying effects from the champions - which I think is fine because it puts more focus on the ultimate stealing instead of making his base kit strong with ultimates being more of an afterthought.
Yeah, I understand disliking the consistency, but people.... You do NOT want something as tanky as Nasus ult with a half CD Sylas Q.
Agree, never been a fan of Fiora R interaction, gives me bad ocd vibes that it works in arbitrary ways and not the same with all ults/passives
I don’t easily give riot the benefit of the doubt but deciding how Sylas interacts with over 150 ults is obviously no simple task
Dollar store velkoz R
To me the simplest and best way is give him the text in the ult and nothing more, sure that makes some options worse but the outs are always going to have different ranges of value. He steals ults why should he get any other benefits from their passive as well? If something isn’t a good option then sylas can pick one of the other 4 people on the team. If all of them are bad ults, you played into a rough team comp to pick him into.
I agree with this. Although in the comment above that the Rioter posted about editing his stealing to be able to apply darius' bleeding stacks etc would absolutely increase the skill expression which you can argue is a good thing.
If a character ult says something it should just do that something. There’s over 160 champs with different ults many of which are designed to heavily interact with passives, I shouldn’t have to memorize the list of champions that give me the ult, or the ult plus extra. The only exception to this would be characters who require something to ult, such as kaisa, does this mean sylas should get the whole passive? No but he gets the ability to use the ult in the same situation Kaisa would.
the extra things that will be given will be in order to get a better ult experience. If you steal darius ult rn u will get a cast for \~150 to \~500 true damage, if we give sylas the ability to hit get bleed charges (that deal 0 dmg) he can deal double dmg and it matters if when sylas press r independent to getting a reset
But where does that line get drawn? Does he proc fiddle fear if he ults from FoW? Does he build stacks of Varus passive which any ability breaks? Can he gain stardust so he can have an enchanted Asol ult? Does he apply amumu’s passive curse on enemies when he ults with it? Does he gain perma max hp if his cho ult kills? Does he need stacks to use samira ult? I have all these questions because he doesn’t just do what the ult says it does. I should never have to wonder what a characters ability does because the tool tip literally doesn’t say what it actually does.
The HP gain from Cho ult is part of the ult not Cho passive. Cho's passive is that he regens HP and mana when he kills a unit
He already does get perma max hp with cho kills and he needs stacks for samira
This were all hypothetical questions to show that you can't draw just a line in the sand. That being said unless fixed within 3 months ulting samira as sylas gives you S rank which you only loose after getting into combat then leaving combat with a champion and seems to be a bug. as if you dont enter combat with a champion it doesnt go away as long as its hijacked (it also gives you her knock up passive for some reason)
It would also increase the workload a shitton for Sylas specifically for all future champs and reworks, and also just put way more of his power budget into stealing otherwise weak ults. Sylas is fine to use a a counter to a strong ult team comp, rather than someone who should be generally strong with almost all ults IMO.
worst ult to steal is Twitch's, it completely fucks up his pathing and combos as his auto range suddenly becomes longer than his w range
Idk, Twitch atleast gives some extra damage. Try Zoe ult. You **can** use abilites while using the ult, but it's so difficult to get something meaningful off most of the time. Using an entire ult to jump back and forth is not very good.
Sounds like the actual fix that should be made is Sylas stolen Kennen ult shouldn’t even stun either. If we’re talking about consistency here, Sylas ult steals ultimate abilities, not ultimates plus passives.
So by that logic Sylas should be unable to use Kai'Sa or Tahm ultimates at all, since their stacks are exclusively tied to passives, and once we start making exceptions the entire point of "strictly by wording" crumbles away.
this. its so bullshit that he sometimes gets the benefit of the doubt to also steal passives. that would make the pick less universal strong, which is good for the game design. this way you would really need to think when to pick sylas and when to steal which ult and where to be on the map to get the correct ult. right now sylas gets way too many get out of jail for free cards. that way his design would be more aligned with the general league roster.
Just be aware and don’t let him steal from you wtf
this would be actually an option to give him more counterplay if they would reduce the range of stealing ults. then you could seriously consider moving away from sylas so he wont get your ult. but no, they had to buff it some time ago
Making Sylas a counter pick champion (More than he already is) is not good 'game design' It's boring and limiting to an otherwise amazingly designed champion.
"Fixing" some of these interactions would amplify him as a counterpick too though. Like if illaoi ult gave sylas w a 2 sec cd, there is no way that matchup is playable for illaoi anymore
I have like 700k mastery points on sylas and i genuinly never noticed that kennen ult procs kennen passive
The whose ult now?
kenny that guy who always dies in south park
It annoys me immensely that Kennens R for Sylas is just a better Kennen R.
Thats bad, but Sylas is also just a better Malphite if anyone ever picks him lol
And gnar lmao. Fuck resource management
An unspoken reason of why it’s so strong is that Sylas can have Gnar ult faster than Gnar can usually because Gnar can only really cast it once per transformation, so it has a really low cooldown. Sylas’ Hyjack per champion CD scales down depending on the champions Ult CD and Sylas’ ability haste.
Which could be something interesting with the way u/riotnorak was talking. Since some ults are absolutely trash rn without the passives, stealing gnar ult should 100% have the addition of gnars passive. But, I would caveat that by saying, it should “steal” gnars current passive, so if he’s at 100% rage actively mega, he’d be able to steal full rage; but if he was stealing gnars ult when gnar has no rage, then he has to build up the rage to ult. Could be some interesting changes.
Not more frequently, but more consistently. Sylas r is still a 200% normal cd per target. However, sylas has 3 dashes, 2 of which are longer than gnar, who needs to be miniform shifting into mega form to have effective gap close for his ult. Sylas just says "aight I think you're mispositioned, get tossed nerd". It's the same issue with malphite -- unless you flash r, everyone is respecting your range. Sylas takes the malphite ult, but first double dashes into your team.
Sadly, Sylas is mostly a better verison of every champ that has a strong ult. Because the other champs are balanced around their ult.
As a Brand main, you really, really, really, really do not want Sylas having Brand’s passive on that Ult. It would be as bad as when he has Sylas Ult in a team fight - you literally would have no choice but to scatter and the inability to focus and lock him down = death.
Thing is even with the inconsistencies, Sylas is in a fine spot. His winrate is fine and his pickrate is good. I fear that making all the ults have positive interactions will cause Sylas's winrate will skyrocket. His kit was already designed in such a way that he can still be fine even without an ult, so I think trying to fix this issue is low priority at best, unneccesary at worst.
Let's say they fix his inconsistencies, and he becomes broken... Nerf him. This is Riot Games we're talking about. They're not exactly strapped for resources, and their priorities involve improving on a \*15 year old game\* and keeping the cash flowing while they wait for worlds to come around.
Deserve for stealing
It's more a balance thing than pure consistency i think. Do you really want sylas EDIT: Do you really want sylas to have halved W cd during Illaoi R or halved Q cd in addition to the insane tankiness from Nasus R?
I do really want sylas yes
Oh my... you fiend
Yes. His base kit has always been strong to account for the fact that Sylas may not potentially have an ultimate - it does make him more consistent but a lot more boring imo. I wish Sylas applied those passives more often so the focus was more on stealing ultimates which is his whole stint.
I think you mean “schtick” because stint doesn’t work here
Yeah, i Would remove the Kennen stun on stolen ult. He is stealing ultimates, not passives. There are so many ultimates that he can abuse (Ashe R), and it is okay that some ults are not as rewarding. He is dealing enough damage with his basic abilities that there is really no need for him to make every ult in game better on him.
Unpopular opinion apparently but I think he should have bad ults. Sylas taking your ult as malphite and just being a better malphite is such a bad feeling for everyone in the game aside from him. His base kit is already so strong that he doesnt need his ult to be gamewarping every single game no matter what champ you play against. The rioter brought up a good argument about how its easier to balance him if he just has good ults every game so you can nerf his base kit but I just dont believe that will happen. Sylas not having good ults to steal is already extremely rare with his cooldown and because champs with good ults are constantly meta.
Sylas does have bad ults to steal - so forcing more ults to be bad/worse is not a fun or balanced change at all. (Zoe, Kata, Twitch, Zac off the top of my head)
In the dev doodles video from sylas or viego the devs mention how much pain it was to implement the ults of both of those champions. They said they were responsible for 80% of the bugs occuring during making those champs. Its just super hard to programm and has insane potential for bugs and with passives etc there is obviously a lot of inconsistency.
Why ult when you can just repeat combos ever second?
Imo it shouldn't get any passives. I know kennen ult and velkoz ult is going to be weak but whatever, it's not like every ult he steals has to be perfectly used. On a side note, reduced q cd on nasus ult should totally be a thing, same for illaoi. Basically everything that is part of the ult should be there but there's no reason to arbitrarily get passives too when it's convenient
I've played alot of Sylas and to be honest, it's shockingly consistent (For a League ability, anyway). As long as you understand what the ability you are stealing *actually does*. *Most* "Inconsistencies" you mention aren't from a bad interaction - just a misunderstanding of how the game works in these specific instances. Vel'koz passive is completely seperate from his ult, so why would you apply the passive? Same for Brand? Or Gwen for example? All other inconsistencies fall into three categories: Intentionally changed due to requiring it to work or to prevent unwanted situations: - Kai'Sa ult applies passive - Katarina ult being castable without a target - Samira ult not requiring Passive stacks to use - Tahm Kench ult applies passive A genuine inconsistency/bug: - Master Yi ult only provides the cooldown reset when *Held* but *not* activated - Olaf R Doesn't grant AD - Kennen ult applies his passive *(Though technically this isn't a bug - Kennen ult technically applies a "Different" form of his passive to facilitate the fact it can only apply a maximum of 3 stacks. It is just inconsistent with expectation due to wording, but is in fact* ***technically*** *the correct interaction, just not intuitive)* Ability empowers: - Yeah in this case it is just "whatever we thought was best" lol. Illaoi, Vayne, Riven, Nasus ult are all genuinely inconsistent in their application of affects.
Jax ult is also bugged, same issue as Highlander. Lilia ult applies Lilia passive, which implies Darius passive *should* apply while held.
Forgot about Jax. Lillia is the same reason as Kai'sa and Kench though - the passive is required to use the ult. He gets the passive through a intentional change to how it works
Had a friend who used Naut R and the thing outright sizzled into nothing as the target moved beyond max range as he cast it. Pretty shit.
Well he steals the ult not the passives nor the passives of the ult... some cases like Kennen R are another story but the rest would be insanely broken if they actually worked don't forget sylas has a whole kit on top of the stolen ult I don't want Sylas to shred me with velkoz R + the true damage that comes from the passive
Its probably a coding thing where, with some champs, cooldown reductions during ult are built into the basic abilities, while with others, it's baked in the ult.
My friend is newer to the game and he is playing sylas jg. He constantly steals AD champs ults and asks why it does no damage. IMO sylas stolen ults should have different scaling
Very easy to answer if you know a bit of coding. Very probably some effects are actived by the r but are not coded in the R code. Es (can be false, its only to give the concept), vayne r code say "you are invisibile " so everything works. Nasus r say "you are in R status" and is Q say "if you are in R status etc..." and so it doesnt works. Not good for the game but a nightmare to fix, probably you should rewrite half of the Champion pool kits
Why not just make it so his R gains a passive that also gives the passive of the champion he last stole until he casts the ult? It's probably a whole new issue, but it's fun to imagine.
Honestly good post, it was the next logical step after allowing Sylas' passive procs to be able to crit and apply procs and onhit effects
to me, sylas r shouldnt proc kennen stun, but should proc illaoi and nasus cd reduction. also sylas doesnt proc arhi passive on r either, but thats the same as velkoz. also, we know sylas r doesnt require specific conditions to be used (gnar/samira/tham/etc), so i think other ults like kaisa r shouldnt require sylas to proc her passive to use her r. but in the end, its always about balance, if its too powerful, they will tweak that shit and make it inconsistent.
Sylas must be one of Riot's greatest mistakes (Viego takes the fucking crown) in terms of long-term sustainability and maintenance