Reign of Gaming

You obviously haven't even read the article. You counterbuild against EVERY champ, but against Jarvan, you can dodge/juke his E -> Q combo and therefore outplay him. What do you do against Talon? Dodge his E? Some champs are "stupid" because you need no skill to play them and you can't counterplay them, which is why Riot keeps nerfing such champs. 

What Jacimovski (glad I don't have to pronounce that) said. There are so many people aboard the "hate Hash" train that they don't even turn on their brain any time they come near an article of his.

Point being: Champions that don't have good counterplay are hard to balance. Thus they usually end up being not viable at high lvls of play (after being nerfed from OP) because the only way to balance them effectively would be to rework their mechanics.

Worrying about what characters take more skill is, again, not a competitive thing. Play what works, play to optimize the game. Worrying about how much "skill" something takes is irrelevant to the goal: winning. The role of the player is NOT to decide what the game SHOULD be, but to play the game as is. 

Talking about design has no place on a competitive site or in the hands of the player. 

Actually, it is a competitive "thing." You ever wonder why in tournaments some champions are banned or picked and why some are not played at all? Because professional gamers (and this goes for anyone wanting to win) tend to pick champions that are considered "strong" and/or with an ability skillset that is hard to mess up.

Skill is completely relevant and when you make such an ignorant comment, it's really quite saddening.

Imagine two champions: Both have the same abilities and damage ratios with the exception of one thing; champion A has all skillshots and champion B doesn't have any. A champion that takes more skill to play (has a higher risk of not hitting abilities) is less competitive than one who has no risk at all. Give me the name of a player who purposefully chooses the disadvantage when playing a tournament game and I'll give you the name of someone who is ill-informed.

I like this article, but Hashinshin, shhhhhhhh. Don't reveal to people how strong Syndra is, I want to continue doing muramana Syndra.

I think, that by now pretty much everyone at least has heard of Muramana Syndra. It's not a good build and certainly not overpowered.

Were Tiamat Fiora/Shyvana overpowered in season 2? Creating builds that focus on your ultimate is not a new idea.

If you want to contribute to a kill once a minute and be useless the rest of the time, you are playing Syndra wrong. Syndra is not a pure burst champion, she just happens to have a burst ultimate. All her other abilities have rather short cooldowns and neither of them benefit from Muramana at all.

Also Muramana drains mana like crazy and its damage is mana inefficient as well. On a caster that is already mana hungry by herself, that's pretty much a no-no.

I don't think you really understand exactly how muramana syndra works. First off, if you're actually using muramana active the entire time in a battle then you're pointlessly wasting mana, you toggle it on before you ult to maximize the damage. Also, muramana has two key strengths to it: the ease of how fast you can stack manamune, and the extreme damage increased that it gives the ult. Emeraldw (I think that was the person who wrote the article on it) calculated that a full stacked muramana (built initially from a fully stacked tear), combined with at least 3 dark cores on the field, dealt raw magic damage by itself equivilant to somewhere above 550+ AP. This is on muramana alone, an item that is formed from a manamune, which only costs a total of 2100 gold. In others words, for 2100 gold, you have an item that equals a 5-6 item core from your average ap caster, and you're not even including the rest of your items yet (typically involves a void staff with an ap item granting CD reduction, DFG is a popular choice). Recall also that around the times you can do the muramana blast that ADC's usually take over in terms of carrying, meaning Syndra usually acts as artillery fire considering her long range, so it's really not that difficult to execute someone with ult while dealing respectable yet constant damage. Also, while sitting on the manamune, you would normally have another ap item up by then, and void staff is cheap, meaning you don't deny yourself damage around the midgame scheme (and tbh, Syndra is a late game champ to begin with). And, if you're still really worried about the mana problem, a good item to build early alonside the tear is a ROA, which is now even more cost efficient than it was in the past.

So, to recap, muramana syndra has extreme gold efficiency and a passive that turns your already bursty ult into a nuke. Seraph's staff is nice too, but mana shield is still a pretty controversial passive (drains mana very quickly and doesn't guarentee that your squishy mage will survive), yet it's also a very viable item too. In effect, both muramana and seraph's staff builds work equally well on Syndra, just that you adopt different play styles on these respective items.

Of course I know how it works. Of course I know to turn it off, when I don't need it. With less ap you need more mana to clear waves, which you need to do before fights. This in turn decreases your current mana obviously and leads to a way weaker ultimate than you estimate.

The next problem is, that this item slot is useless once your ultimate is on cooldown. If you are getting RoA as well, you have spent 3 item slots already (Boots+RoA+Muramana) and gained 80 ap in total. One Exhaust in a team fight (the ult animation is long enough) or a silence once you have some orbs out and you are a useless meat bag with no damage.

Did I already mention that you completely sacrifice your mid game if you go catalyst+tear?

You are being a liability to your team if you always wait for 3 orbs before you ult. I tested this item multiple times and I wanted to like it, but it sucks on Syndra. Syndra != her ult.

You obviously don't understand this game if you think getting a tear+catalyst wrecks your midgame. You can buy both of those by your 2nd back.

 IMHO a good article.

In case some people missed the point, this guy isnt complaining that some champs are OP or UP or whatever. He is complaining what is either simple annoying as hell, has no counter-play (every decision you do is the wrong one) and that some champs got simple "too much" in their kit (examples: Irelia; bruiser/tanky DPS with sustain, spammable gap closers, and no counter-play once she dived into your team unless you counter-picked her with Janna or Alistar, Taric/Sona: They can do same/similiar things like Leona/Soraka but are soooo alrounded. Taric has burst, heal, CC AND team buffs. Soraka: sustain. Even Akali doesnt have much counter play - stay out of range and drop a pinkie and hope that seeing her is enough because you are a tank/bruiser and not one of the three squishies in your team + her healing AND low CDs/sustained damage).

For Taric and Sona, in short; if you don't know which supp champ to take, take one of those two, you arent totally screwed anyways.

If you don't know which support to take, never take Sona. You'll end up dying way too much.

Good read. Watched the video later too, thanks for that also. And umm yeah, fk poppy

Poppy... I wonder why I don't see her mentioned very much. She is definitely in a bad spot from a design perspective.

Riot pretty much keeps 40-60 champions tournament viable at a time, and I am pretty sure they do it on purpose.  The fall of Rammus was followed very closely by the rise of Shen for example, because teams pro teams needed a viable tank to use when one got taken out of viability. (I am aware that rammus got some recent tournament play it just isn't on the level he used to)

I think that number is fine, but Riot needs to make sure that there is a turnover rate, and that champions do come in and out of tournament play, so it's not the same 40 champions at a tournament for 2 seasons in a row. New champions coming out is good, but they need to rework older champions as well and get them back to the tournament scene where they haven't been for a long time. I like that Nasus is starting to make a comeback I mean how long has it been since anyone has seen that guy do anything in high elo. Xin Xhao is really good right now as well, but if he is still good next year well that is gonna start to get a little boring.