VLL Finals (4)
There was a simple reason Sylas showed up so often into AP mage matchups despite unremarkable base stats.
Among every champion in the game, he boasted the highest magic resist growth in League — and the fourth-highest health growth out of more than a hundred and fifty champions on top of that.
In the mid game, before both sides were flinging full-build death cannons at each other, he could simply eat a mage's damage with his body and walk away.
So what happened if you took that high-scaling Sylas and stacked First Strike on him to push his mid-to-late potential even higher?
First Strike into Overgrowth… is that too arrogant?
The thought flickered through my mind and vanished just as fast.
Arrogant?
Arrogant was what you called the enemy team locking a three-AP comp.
They knew full well that Shinsaeng only played tanks in the top lane, and they still drafted that. It was a pick that said they didn't respect us at all.
We're blowing up top anyway, right? We're ending this before Ornn's items come online, right? That was the energy rolling off their draft.
"What are we doing about bot?"
"They probably won't take the fight. We're gonna have to walk at them and force it."
"So we split the wave?"
"I'll handle top on my own. Just play safe."
"Giving up plates is fine — keep top shoved in. Best timing for a fight is when you and Sylas both hit six."
The second the game loaded, the whole team launched into a frantic briefing.
"Ward down over here on their side."
"Looks like we took the bot-side brush."
"Gwen showed here."
"Don't let the bot wave crash under tower."
Minutes ticked by. Both waves hit the lane, and laning phase began.
As expected, their mid started leaning on me from the first moments, exploiting the range gap between a ranged champion and a melee one. The rune they'd brought was Summon Aery — light on single-burst nuke damage, but perfect for sustained early poke.
I ate it and endured for several minutes.
Around mid, nothing major broke out. More precisely, our side gave what we had to give, and both of us recalled.
Mercury's Treads are mandatory this game.
Three AP champions and a pile of crowd control — magic resist and tenacity from Mercury's were non-negotiable.
I bought the boots, hit the teleport, and landed mid.
Called it.
Their Ahri had come back with a Tear of the Goddess for mana sustain and early laning. Which meant she hadn't bought a healing-reduction item.
I understood the logic. I'd taken First Strike and maxed Q to three ranks, so she'd decided grievous wounds weren't necessary.
"Looking for a mid fight."
But skills and itemization always had to stay flexible.
We were both level nine — normally the point where you'd have a skill fully maxed. Sylas, though, was sitting on a three-rank Q and a four-rank W.
The instant every one of Ahri's skills was burned on tower poke, I ulted, stole hers, and sprinted forward.
She tried to ult away herself — but Ahri's only mobility spell was her ultimate. With Sylas's W and E, I could close the gap up to three separate times.
Ahri's Charm cooldown is a flat twelve seconds. Factor in the CDR from runes and items and you're looking at around ten.
Charm was about to come back up, so I burned my remaining stolen ultimate toward her tower as a fake. She took the bait and threw the Charm — and of course it missed.
Ahri falls to a refreshed Q.
"Whoa! Solo kill!"
"Nearly ten full minutes of tanking it out under tower — and the second that one opening appeared, she turned it into a kill!"
"A lot of you at home might be wondering: no grievous wounds into Sylas? But take a look at her skill order and it makes sense."
"Observer's got it on screen now. See that? Three points in Q, then she finished out W."
"Exactly. From the opponent's seat, you think, 'Oh, it's a Q-poke Sylas,' and you skip the anti-heal more often than you'd expect."
"So is it fair to say she deliberately just ate pressure until the ten-minute mark?"
"She barely traded after six. You could probably read the W damage and the healing off that alone."
"What a player. It's not just the mechanics."
"Ah — we've got some good news for everyone watching. We mentioned this tournament is running in partnership with the LCK."
"That's why Caster Kim Dong-jin and I are on the desk today. The observers and camera directors came along too, of course."
"And thanks to that, for the finals, we actually get to show you individual player POVs."
"That solo kill we just saw — let's watch it from her personal camera!"
"The same calculated play she always shows, turning it into a result. Isn't that exactly what veteran players do?"
"Truly an incredible player. Controlled, disciplined — and when it's time to make something happen, she delivers. That's S-tier play right there."
"Still — Arts & Athletics, this is not the time to relax."
"Right. Mid just barely seized priority, and top and jungle are collapsing pretty hard."
"Factoring in the skill gap and the champions, you can say they're holding on — but when the balance tips somewhere, it's never a good look."
"How they break this open, how they close it out — let's keep watching."
"We fighting this dragon?"
The game clock had pushed past twenty-five minutes. The silver lining was that bot had won early, so the dragon tempo hadn't gotten completely out of hand. The enemy was sitting on two dragons; we had one.
"It's the third — giving one up should be fine."
In League, you took dragons partly for the permanent buff on each kill — but ultimately, it was about securing four and completing the soul. Dragon Soul: four dragons of any type, and you locked in a massive permanent buff. Strong enough to swing a game on its own, which made hunting that fourth dragon genuinely meaningful.
Flip side — giving up three is acceptable.
Of course, handing over three dragons meant the next one spawned with only one option left: you had to take the fight. But if you could win the fourth-dragon timing, giving the third was treated as a legitimate strategy in its own right.
"So what's the call, everyone?"
Decision time. Pressure put it to the team.
"If we leave top empty, Gwen's gonna pave a highway through us — but if we soft-shove and burn her TP, fighting isn't bad."
"I think we have to fight before Ziggs gets more items."
"Yeah, if I pop W right now, they can't break through."
"I can snag Ahri's or Maokai's ult too, so I'm fine taking the fight."
Most of us, myself included, landed on the same side: fighting wasn't a bad look. Ornn was behind Gwen in raw growth, but he had a decent stack of magic resist items. Add a well-fed Sylas on top of that, and it was about time to force something.
.
.
.
"Engage before we eat another Ahri Charm or more Ziggs poke!"
"Blow up Viego first, no question."
"Ult going down?"
A deep horn blast rolled across the Rift.
Clang!
Shinsaeng's ultimate-into-Flash engage lit the fuse, and both teams unloaded every spell they had without waiting for anyone else. In the middle of that chaos, my job was clear.
"Viego's down. Ziggs next. Gwen TP landing behind us!"
It had turned into a brawl, so I used the stolen Ahri ult to tear through their backline.
"Can Leona lock Gwen down? Just hold her a second and die if you have to!"
"Why does Gwen have three items already?!"
"I've still got Flash — give me space to deal!"
The second Viego went down under crowd control, I locked onto Ziggs, who kept lobbing bombs from the back, and hunted him relentlessly. He burned Flash and W to kite backward — but there was no escaping a Sylas holding Ahri's ultimate.
Ziggs died in the enemy jungle camp spawn.
And with that—
The winner of the first set was sealed.