Talk:Syndra/@comment-7940208-20131022021843/@comment-9533487-20131101152242

I've been playing Syndra a long time, and here's how I view things based off that.

You must have mana regen as soon as possible, and a bigger mana pool is just about as important for Syndra. Chalice gives you a good mana regen passive (the Mana Font passive), but you will still run out of mana very quickly if you are using too many spells, and it takes too long for you to regen enough mana to use even a single combo. Catalyst only gives mana regen when you level up, and only gives you 300 extra mana in your mana pool but it costs even more than Chalice. Tear gives you the same amount of mana regen (+7mp5) as Chalice, it gives you almost the same amount of extra mana pool as Catalyst (250 for Tear), it's the cheapest one, and although you miss out on the Mana Font passive Chalice gives, you regen +4 mana on almost all your spell castings. I think Tear works the best because of all this.

The only reason I would build Chalice, currently, is if the enemy team has mostly AP damage. With Tear and two Doran's, you would have +13mp5, and (for example) when you W-Q the caster minions, you get 32 mana back instantly from the item passives. One big reason to build Deathfire Grasp is if you aren't building Athene's or Morellonomicon. Syndra's ability kit is so strong with CDR, it feels like her damage goes up when she just gets blue buff! With Deathfire Grasp and a blue cooldown potion, you can get maximum CDR with a blue buff, which makes sure you can get more spells off in teamfights.

As for Syndra's role in teamfights, it's very hard to play it correctly against certain team compositions. If the enemy team has damage that's hard to avoid like Kennen's Slicing Maelstrom, you need some extra hp or Zhonyas Hourglass to be next to your teammates for the entire fight. If you don't have enough hp or Zhonyas, you need to try and "flank" the enemy team. Basically, position where they can't catch you before you can stun them and run, and if they keep trying then your team might be able to kill either the person chasing you or the enemy team. Best case scenario when you're trying to "flank" them, is their ranged ad carry comes over to try and 1v1 you, or really just anyone squishy enough for you to ult for most of their HP bar. This helps ensure you can kill them and get back to the teamfight before you lose much hp yourself. One of the better scenarios is for their team to get really close together while you're flanking them, because then you can just stun them in place, hit more than 1 person with your Q-W-Q combo, then probably ult to finish someone off. This pretty much automatically wins any teamfight.

If your team is winning a lot of fights so you're able to buy a lot of damage items like Deathcap, Zhonyas, and Deathfire Grasp; you should buy Void Staff for sure. If your team is having a hard time, or losing, you should most likely buy Liandry's Torment. The current HP passive on Liandry's means you get to use however fed their tanks or bruisers are against them, but Void Staff scales better off of how much damage you will be doing because of your Ability Power.

I hope I could help!