they are not alike. syndra is an assassin herself in the same way someone like veigar is. their single target burst is extremely high. vel'koz is an aoe heavy champ that has raw single target damage mitigated by the fact that most of his kit is based around burning an entire team.
man I should make a habit of pointing out that I'm talking about one specific point about a character's kit or something :I
The only way I could imagine a Syndra pick in a pro circuit is with a Kassadin and Leblanc ban.
Jumps and silences ruin her. I do believe Link and Bjergson picked her last LCS though so its still possible.
well, kassadin is permabanned so that's not really an issue, but syndra can easily outplay leblanc (and viceversa). I mean half the mid roster is ruined by silences, but if your champion is strong enough to fight through it then it doesn't matter.
and like the mid laner for omg played her too (forgot his name... cool was it?) and so did faker and ryu, it's not a weird pick, it's just that there are much safer and easier to play which after all is what pro gaming is about.
A self-peel is quite relevant when you also have a slow and a longer duration stun. And spells that let you use them while moving and her burst is a fire-and-forget sort of effect. Vel'koz is a bit less mobile than that with no way to create space and his tool to keep himself alive is a short-duration (.75s) knockup.
I'm not saying he won't ever see play in yolo queue (or maybe even LCS) or anything like that. Like you're saying, Syndra has no actual mobility spell either and tends to do fine. I'm just saying that Vel'koz has less tools than that, though he has better HP and MSPD than her. Or, put another way, "he's just like most other mages anyway."
On the other hand, he has a relatively good harassment tool and his follow-up to a gank is pretty good / melts their faces off. There's also a good possibility he can just turn when ganked and maybe get the kill if he's allowed to land an EQWR+Ignite.
ah didn't know his knockup was so short. yeah that makes his big cc pretty shitty but I guess he makes up for it by having his nuke be a spammable slow. even if it decays 70% right away is pretty cool.
so I guess he falls into the brand, malzahar, veigar, etc. category then. trying to think of a literally 0 mobility mid (like cassiopeia or ori or even syndra don't count) that's played competitively but all I can think of are these guys. I guess new xerath might see some play but I can't imagine xerath's q going untouched next patch.
well played him just one game, maybe jumping too conclusions much
Does everyone finish sightstone before getting a gold item?
no, I rarely do, specially if I started doran's
I usually upgrade gp10 to lvl 2 before starting with the sightstone, mostly because you can cover a lot of your needs with trinkets and spending 475 on just the free wards feels kind of wasteful.
I'll only buy it early (and often not get the gp10 at all until much later) if lane ended early (so I'm left with no lane to leech gold off) or I'm getting camped (so I'd rather have vision+tank stats than gp10 since we're always fighting)
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