Mastering Sylas Mid Guide with DIG Palafox
Learn how to play Sylas like DIG Palafox!
A Champion with multiple viable roles, one of the most draft-warping ultimates in the ability to copy any of your opponent’s ultimates, as well as having some of the highest base damages with good AP ratios to boot. It’s hard to say bad things about Sylas. Well, maybe that he has yet to be able to play in the bot lane (please let’s not), but Sylas is one of the many staples of both solo queue and professional play across all levels of play. He’s fun, he’s flashy, and has a lot of room for mastery with having gimmicks with both his kit and with all the ultimates he can steal.
With Cristian “Palafox” Palafox, we’ll go into understanding Sylas’ itemization, runes, as well as navigating difficult matchups and tricks you can do with his kit.
Skill Rank Optimization
Sylas is an interesting one. Honestly, I don't have a great grasp on Sylas right now, but honestly he's a super strong Champion when he's fed, or when he has good games for him. I think I would go three or four points in Q, I wouldn't really max it, but whatever you need to just farm from range without getting boned, or when you don't have too many W angles, so like ranged matchups, because it's just nice to have the option to farm safely. Plus if they have CC in their kits and you can steal their ult that has CC in it, and you land your Q on it, that Champion just does so much damage.”
Rather than directly maxing the ability, Palafox opts to place points into Q primarily for farming safely. It’s a more common max, especially in the mid lane with the plethora of ranged Champions that can harass Sylas and zone him off, which makes him rather vulnerable in the early game. You’re generally building towards the mid game where skirmishes and teamfights are more abundant, so any farm you can safely get is important.
On the flip side, the Q max also has synergy with what Palafox suggests in comboing it with any crowd control options you may have, whether through your E or by stealing an ultimate with crowd control. For reference, Sylas’ Q is his highest damaging ability assuming you hit both parts of the skill, with really high base scalings and a 120% AP ratio.
“W is more like, you're going to be playing to trade a lot more, you're going to be running a bit more wild, but Q has more kill pressure.”
It’s straightforward, because W is consistent in melee range especially where you’re more likely to be in scrappy brawls in the early laning phase, as well as giving you a source of sustain. It is the weakest ability to max damage wise, but has large value from lowering the cooldown and increasing the healing, which often makes up for the lack of burst.
An example game of Palafox’s skill maxing order in a ranged matchup (Orianna). Notably he puts a few points into Q to help him clear the wave, but commits to W/E afterwards. Image source: pros.lol
Runes
I think Conqueror is better most of the time. If you're playing against a Mage in solo queue like Orianna or Syndra, you can go Electrocute, but most times Conqueror ends up being a better rune in general.
In a nutshell, you want Electrocute for burst in assassinations and short trades, and Conqueror in most other situations where Sylas likes the extra stats, slight healing, and power in extended trades. You may also consider it depending on your opponent’s team composition, where multiple squishy ranged Champions will warrant Electrocute because you need to burst them before they burst you down, but Conqueror will outvalue it against multiple bulkier melee Champions. Electrocute in general is more leaning towards one-shotting targets, which if you think you can do and it’s important to snipe key targets in fights, then you’ll find it more effective, but otherwise go Conqueror.
Palafox itemizes more AP Bruiser against an Orianna because her team has multiple melee enemy Champions (Ambessa, Kha’Zix). Item Builder Source: shyv.net
When to Pick Sylas?
Honestly Sylas can be picked at any time. The Champion without [good ultimates to steal] is not insane, but it's fine. You don't want to pick it into like Cassiopeia or Taliyah, but if you're a good Sylas, you'll always find an angle to make it work out. I think he's blind pickable. If you're a good Sylas, nothing matters. Especially in Solo Queue, you'll always find an angle. You'll always find an angle if you're good enough. It was honestly my blind pick for a while, in like, Season 9, I would just blind pick him no matter what, it was super fun to play, so I didn't really care. Season 8, maybe? It's been a minute.
We might consider Sylas more as a counterpick due to the nature of his ultimate. After all, a dream scenario of stealing powerful ultimates like Malphite or high value ones like Alistar are often what can make or break teamfights. However, Sylas has a lot of power in his kit outside of his ultimate stealing that good Sylas’ players can take advantage of. The value of Sylas in blind pick is that he can potentially fit into three roles, he can farm safely and scale effectively, and has a lot of build variety that lets him play more AP bruiser style or more assassin-like.
Oh, and I suppose that it probably is virtually impossible to draft the worst ultimates on all five Champions for Sylas on the enemy team, because for one, the enemy team isn’t going to be that coordinated especially in solo queue, and for two, what would that even look like without completely griefing the team composition? Sylas will always have at least one good target to steal from.
(Hypothetically, Darius Top, Udyr Jungle, Zoe Mid, Twitch ADC, and I guess Bard if used poorly? It’s a fun conversation for outside of a guide on drafting the worst possible ultimates to make Sylas have nothing good to steal.)
Navigating a Difficult Matchup: Cassiopeia
With Cassiopeia, how I'd navigate it is don't really be aggressive until Cassio uses something. You kind of have to have a reason for why you're going forward.
Basic fundamentals for lane matching is usually punishing your opponent for missing a key ability. In this case, it often is Cassiopeia’s Q, which grants her the ability to deal extra damage with her E and give movement speed to help her kite and chase you down. Palafox breaks it down on the exact moments where you can punish Cassiopeia.
I guess what that'll look like most of the time is when Cass uses Q poorly, or she'll go OOM. Otherwise, it's not good to go forward against that Champ. I think just like not only going forward after she uses Q, but make sure you dodge her abilities when you R or go forward. Because if you dodge nothing and you go forward with no remorse, you'll probably just die.
Especially in lane, Cassiopeia has severe mana issues until she gets her first back, which even then can be a struggle. She’ll often use her abilities to farm if pressured (i.e, shoved in or the wave is in an unfavourable state), while using her Q to poke otherwise to try to fish out chances to spam E on her opponent. Generally, as long as you can avoid her Q, a lot of her power goes down.
Now, there may be a specific, “But wait, what about her W that grounds and shuts down 2/3 of Sylas’ kit?”, but you also have to keep in mind that the cooldown is insanely long for that ability, and often isn’t maxed until the very end. At rank 1, it’s 24 seconds of downtime, which if you can successfully bait out (or if she gets forced to use it on the wave), she’ll have no way of shutting out your mobility and damage.
Also, try to use your Q on the back-end of the trade when you're trying to go forward. It'll be the easiest time to hit it. If you use Q while you're trying to go forward, she will just try to dodge it while hitting you. But if you hit it on the back end of the trade, she'll oftentimes try to keep running after you, and your Q will block her path in a sense. You want to block her from continuing to chase.
You know that little dance people do on nearly every Champion where they both go back and forth in the lane, throwing abilities while trying to maintain a certain distance (or close said distance) that looks like your Champions are turning back and forth repeatedly? Spacing, tethering, whatever you want to call it, during this time, the back end of the trade is basically the window where the other player tries to move forward and cast abilities. Cassiopeia is fairly predictable in that sense, she’ll oftentimes run forward to throw Q and spam E immediately after if she hits. Sylas’ Q range is just ever so narrowly longer than the range of Cassiopeia’s E, which especially if you get hit by her Q, you can throw a Sylas’ Q as a way of zoning her off from continuing the chase and winning the trade if you can get away. The slow from Sylas’ Q may be enough to escape if done correctly.
The extra bonus is that sidestepping Sylas’ Q as Cassiopeia oftentimes will just be enough to give you time to escape, which you can use to your advantage. The trade does change a bit when both players have all three basic abilities, but generally you want to try to do a one-for-one trade with Q for her Q while avoiding Cassiopeia E, because as long as Cassiopeia is holding her W, she’ll be able to shut down any all-in and trap you in a really bad spot.
Tips/Tricks with Sylas
I think the most common one is like you E, then you E ult at the same time and grab someone's ult, and you can ult then from a ranged Champ. Say you're using E onto an Orianna - you can E, and then E again, then grab her ult, and Ori ult, and you can get a one-shot combo on her that way. There's a lot of random abilities you can do that with.
One way to take this advice is to consider what your opponent’s ultimate can do for your own trading pattern. A good CC option with burst like Orianna will give you a nasty combo with high burst and little counterplay if you can land your E into them. Blink abilities can give you a larger engage range. Even stealing mobility ultimates like Quinn or Pantheon can give unexpected ganking options where your opponent least expects a Sylas to show up out of nowhere.
There's also some weird interactions with your E. There's some E interactions you'll learn to do. When you're trading, you can E past the wave if they're giving you enough space, and keep going forward and then E backwards to make distance from them and auto attack, W, and your E will pull you to safety onto a creep. I usually think that's a pretty important trading combo, especially for melees.
What Palafox describes is kind of what you might recognize from a common trading pattern most easily seen with Renekton, whose basic laning combo is he dashes in with E, auto-W-auto-Q, and presses E away to do this sort of “untradable” trading pattern that gives your opponent a low window of time to punish. Or perhaps Phase Rush Gragas trades could be a similar albeit different example.
With Sylas, it comes from using his E to close the gap and doing a shorter trade with his Q/W, but saving his E to pull himself to a minion farther away to escape from danger. It’s a really good trading pattern against melee Champions who might struggle to follow Sylas after he uses his 2nd cast of E to run away to safety.
Conclusion
Sylas is really fun and you should learn him even if you might find it a little overwhelming to think about all of his trading combos and how every ultimate interacts with his kit. It kind of comes second nature, because you’ll just see ultimates that you know are good in X scenario and use them without needing to think too hard about it.
We thank Palafox for discussing Sylas with us, if you would like to check out his socials, click on the following.
