Where did Sylvanus go? Once widely regarded as the best guardian in SMITE, he has seemingly dropped off the face of the game, save for the occasional pick up in a casual match. The answer boils down to his kit. While it has many components, it is incredible lackluster in every respect to other guardians, save for perhaps his ultimate. To see why his kit just falls short of every other guardian, let’s take a closer look at his abilities and why they don’t shine like they once did.

First off, his passive is very odd as it’s entirely reliant on a percent based chance that only works on melee attacks. It once worked on ranged attacks as well, but even then it was average when you compare it something like Bacchus’, which can give up to 14% damage mitigation and 30 magical power, or Geb’s, which reduces the damage of critical hits from 200% to 125% of a normal attack. And you can say “Well, it is free Crowd Control”, that may be true, but it’s only a 1 second root that has a 12 second cooldown with a 25% chance that only works on melee gods.

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His first ability, Verdant Growth, does two things, one for allies and the other against enemies, but it does neither very well. When Sylvanus uses this ability and it doesn’t hit an enemy, in 10 seconds the seed he throws will sprout and will give increased mana regen, starting a 6 mana per 5 seconds going up to 20 mana per 5 seconds. This pitiful increase in mana regen is barely worth the time it takes to wait for the ability to be of use, considering how long it would take to refund the mana you used to cast the ability in the first place or the mana your hunter used to clear the wave. While the ability does have a protection reduction that applies when a god destroys a seed, this will usually happen when nothing else is going on so you have no real chance to engage. When Sylvanus uses the ability aggressively, it roots any enemy hit for 1.25 seconds. The only problem is that at an incredibly small radius of 10 feet, the ability can hit at most 2 gods in a real match (you might be able to get 4 or maybe even 5 if everyone was packed shoulder to shoulder, but this rarely, if ever, happens in a real game) and this is his only source of Area of Effect Crowd Control outside of his ultimate.

Sylvanus’s second ability, Wisps, is easily his best basic ability, acting as a heal and protection buff for anyone affected by the ability. While he is the only guardian that can heal, even then it’s outclassed by Guan Yu, as Guan Yu has an instant heal and heals for up to 115 more health if Guan Yu’s passive is fully stacked. Guan Yu also has a lower cooldown on his heal, at 12 seconds compared to Sylvanus’s 18 seconds, that is made 2 seconds lower if he heals an allied god, so he can heal nearly twice as quickly as a Sylvanus can. Sylvanus’s protection buff also falls short, Ares not only gives 15 more protections with his Bolster Defenses, but it also lasts 3 seconds longer and provides 30% Crowd Control reduction to all teammates in the radius.

His third ability, Nature’s Grasp, is a straight line pull that can go through walls and stops at the first enemy hit and is his only hard Crowd Control ability besides his ultimate, which makes it all the more disappointing. First of all, it can only affect a single enemy, has a huge post-hit delay (the amount of time between casting an ability and being able to make another action), and has a very long cooldown starting at 22 seconds that scales down to 18 seconds at max rank. This means that, when combined with the number of people his 1 can hit, he has the ability to affect a max of 3 people with Crowd Control without his ultimate. This also makes him the only guardian who's only hard Crowd Control can be guaranteed to hit only a single god.

The only area where Sylvanus excels is his ultimate because it would require Purification to be used early, as knock-ups are the only Crowd Control to ignore Crowd Control immunity after a player is affected by it, and has moderately high damage. But, again, it is his only ability that can affect an entire enemy team. You may have noticed that within his entire kit, he also has no mobility, such as a speed increase or leap, or a way to self-peel, such Ymir walling himself while he escapes. This makes Sylvanus an incredibly easy target to run down and pick off, even for a guardian who is normally very tanky. Sylvanus does many things, but he does none of them very well, much like a jack of all trades…except that concept doesn’t work very well when it’s his job to protect your team effectively. Some easy ways to increase his viability would be lowing his cooldown on his heal or letting it affect friendly minions again like it did long ago, increasing the radius on his 1 so he can hit more people with it, and/or decrease the cooldown on his 3 so he can pull people more often, as well as increasing the speed at which the ability travels to make it less reliant on set-up or luck. As it stands right now though, people would do well to just avoid Sylvanus if they are playing support and pick a far better guardian such as Athena or Ymir.

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