Talk:Syndra/@comment-4834593-20150120203011

One and half a year ago I thought of a hybrid penetration syndra build which I tried out a few times back then. I remember it working not too bad, but nothing exceptional either. However, it got back in my mind a few days ago, and I looked up the build (which I had posted in the comment section here, see post 22 July 2013, I believe currently page 5), and tried it again...

Man it works awesome. I dealt more damage than our AD carry Graves, and had a mix of a quarter physical and three quarter magical. Anyways, the full build (intended for top lane):

sorcerer's shoes

Muramana

Hextech Gunblade

Trinity Force

Rod of Ages

Black Cleaver

I know it's more or less the most expensive build in human history, but all the items got "minor" counterparts that you can build first:

Muramana - Tear

Hextech Gunblade - Bilgewater Cutlass

Trinity Force - sheen

Rod of Ages - Catalyst

Black Cleaver - Brutalizer

The idea of the build is to deal a huge amount of mixed damage and couple it up with high penetration of both kinds, from boots, Black Cleaver and hybrid penetration marks. Trinity Force grants only useful stats for this build (because you will be using that quite responsive autoattack as much as possible), Gunblade gives sustain from everything, Muramana gives extreme damage on ult (when I just played it ult alone (with like 5 spheres, no EQ hit or anything) took over half of Draven's health, though he was that fed that, because my team never initiated on him (WE HAD MALPH AND RIVEN DAMNIT!), he stole it back in two hits), Rod of Ages (together with TF and BC) grants you a nice health bar to make you hard enough to kill that people will prefer others, even though you barely have armor and mr AND grants a load of mana to add to Muramana's damage, and Black Cleaver then ensures every hit of that Muramana on your ult deals more damage.

Masteries: Basic hybrid masteries. Got CDR, not attack speed, no % ad or ap increase, got dangerous game and arcane blade, 21/9/0. Can go 30/0/0 or something related to one of these too if you want it differently. The CDR is pretty important though, as I'll explain in a moment.

Runes: I got a pretty unconventional rune page for this build. Glyphs and two quints with scaling cdr for a grand total of 25% at level 18. Together with masteries and brutalizer/black cleaver this means you cap out. That ult cd is nearly nonexistent with it's 48 seconds. Not to mention a Q every 2.4 seconds. Hybrid penetration marks, armor seals (because they're still mandatory) and the third quint is AP, though I think there are better options for that. 5 AP is never bad on a mage though, even with such an unconventional build.

It works well all game, as I already said, but I mostly noticed (may be due to skill level though, I only got a one game sample currently), that I bullied top lane really hard. I first laned against Nasus, bullied out his two health pots at level 3 already then killed him with flash + ignite + autoattack, then he and Zed swapped and I killed Zed 1v1 two or three times. A bit later on I did a 1v2 against Nasus and Zed (both 60-70% hp at the start), killing them both and surviving.

It's only logical that it happens, though. In the early game, armor and magic resist is pretty low. If you start the game with good base ability damage, the ability to spam, reliable 550 range autoattacks and 8 armor and 5 magic penetration (and 6% both), not bullying out your lane opponent is actually the hard thing to do, most of all if you're ranged vs melee. What's probably more surprising is that you damage stays good through all game, while you are tanky, have a bit of sustain and good dueling power.