Play Sylas like Zeka – Sylas mid guide

Here is the full guide on how to play Sylas in League of Legends season 13 like the current world champion mid laner Zeka.

Zeka Sylas mid Guide – Everything you need to know

Sylas was a game-changer for League of Legends. Together with Zoe, they were some of the first champions to bring the concept of “stealing” an ability or effect from an enemy to take advantage of it themselves.

What Sylas offers, aside from this unique characteristic, is the ability to turn around fights and skirmishes thanks to his close-combat kit and great damage burst damage. Paired with some built-in sustain on his W, he can be a great carry in the right hands.

That said, the champ is quite complex and needs proficient mechanics to master him. While that takes practice, we’ve compiled the best current builds and runes setups, taken from one of the strongest Sylas players in the world: Zeka, who is the most recent world champion.

Sylas mid Build by Zeka

Sylas’ build underwent some changes during the offseason. Given the reintroduction of Rod of Ages, the champion swapped out Everfrost as its Mythic item. In the new season, Rod of Ages performs much better, given that Sylas benefits greatly from the additional health and ability power that the item gets.

That said, Rod of Ages pushes Sylas’ item spike back by a bit during the games, making him spike once the item is fully stacked (10 minutes after completing the purchase). This usually coincides with the second item completion, which is still Zhonya’s Hourglass. Given his melee nature, and the fact that he wants to skirmish a lot, having extra resistances is essential.

After closing out his two core items, Sylas is looking to maintain his power spike as much as possible by dealing damage in the mid game. Therefore, building magic penetration and more ability power is the main goal for the rest of the build: choose two between Shadowflame, Rabadon’s Deathcap and Void Staff. If you’re well ahead, you can consider building all three. Otherwise, get a banshee’s veil to increase your magic resistance and avoid getting one shotted by the enemies’ magic damage sources.

Overall, this is the usual build seen in most of Zeka’s Sylas games:

1. Rod of Ages
2. Sorcerer’s Shoes
3. Zhonya’s Hourglass
4. Shadowflame
5. Radadon’s Deathcap/Void staff
6. Banshee’s Veil

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Zeka’s Sylas Runes

Sylas, just like most skirmishers, is a heavy Conqueror user. Given that he wants to consistently fight, he can keep the Conqueror stacked and deal rising damage the longer the fight. This, in turn, also fuels his sustain on both W as well as the 8% healing on the rune, making it the perfect rune for him.

By going Precision as the primary tree, Zeka usually picks the following minor runes:

• Presence of Mind for the extra mana regeneration and refund upon takedowns;
• Legend: Tenacity for additional tenacity against crowd controls;
• Last Stand to deal more damage when on low health.

The secondary rune tree is Resolve, with Second Wind and Overgrowth as his two choices. While Second Wind is a common rune to survive early game harass from the enemy mid laner, Overgrowth is now built to synergize with Rod of Ages, making him harder to one-shot. By doing so, he can take advantage of the Mythic item’s passive to heal up the damage taken.

If you want to play Sylas like Zeka, sticking to this guide will allow you to get the most out of the Unshackled.

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