Talk:Brand/@comment-5077844-20141029230434/@comment-15244341-20141030204039

Xerath is just safer than he looks. Both his stun, slow and range make him deceptively hard to gank if the Xerath player is playing safe. It's something you can only really appreciate from playing with him.

Syndra is actually really easy to gank. The issue is that you should be ganking for a half health laner taking into account how much of a lane bully she is. So when/if you gank Syndra has two options: stun/slow the ganker and walk away or just murder your laner if she is too overextended/she can kill him and walk away (most notably at 6).

Brand is not that bad of a pick, honestly. I believe he isn't that great in organized fives (he is really easy to camp and make useless, since his CC isn't exactly safe to do or reliable) but he is pretty beastly in solo queue. He beats most other medium/short range mages really hard with his huge damage potential and his AoE burst is superb. The Rilay's buffs also benefited Brand enormously (Q is an awesome spell when it comes to that item, and gives you so much pick potential). He'd be better in a meta that favors tanks, but he is fine either way.

He suffers of the Lux Syndrome (high damage basic spells on not so short cooldowns) so he doesn't have that great of a DPS, but when it comes to straight burst he is really strong.

He's a bit like Swain. People just can't see how much damage potential he has (that passive is great) since he is rarely seen and he has some issues against champions with better range in lane. But if picked properly (read: not against Ori, Xerath or any other long range mage) he can do a great job at winning the game.