At the start of the game, you take Sylas E “Steal from/kidnap”: Sylas dashes to the target location and when reactivated, he flings his chains forward to throw a hit opponent into the air and pull himself towards him. This ability ensures that Sylas already has good skirmishing potential at level 1 and is suitable for Invades if his teammates are also early strong champs. With the E, Sylas can proc his passive “Petricite Vortex” twice, which makes up a not insignificant part of his damage. After using an ability, Sylas stores a charge of Petricite Vortex. The next time he performs a normal attack, he consumes it, swirls his chains around him and inflicts additional magical damage on enemies he hits. His attack speed is also increased as long as he has charges of Petrite Vortex. It’s best to use your E to dodge an enemy ability, then use the chains you hit to get to your opponent and burst them with your boosted autoattacks and other abilities. You max the E later on as the additional mobility is more important than the extra damage from maxing the Q, but at the same time the W benefits even more from additional ability points.

At level 2, you take the Q “Crossed Chains” as Sylas in the Jungle, as it gives you more damage for the clear of your second and third camps than the W. When activating the Q, Sylas strikes with his chains, which cross over at the clicked position, dealing damage and slowing down enemies hit. After a short delay, the spot hit by both chains explodes and deals additional damage. The slowdown is useful for keeping up with your opponents or making it easier to hit your E. With the E and Q, Sylas is also good for surprising enemy laners early on with a level 2 gank while they are still level 1. Your gank combo is then E->Q->E->AA->AA->AA. All in all, however, Q is Sylla’s least important ability and is therefore maximized last.

At level 3, you put the first point into your W “Kingslayer”, which is your most important ability and offers a lot of outplay potential. Sylas dashes at a clicked enemy, deals damage and heals himself. The damage increases the less life the opponent has and the healing increases the less life Sylas has. This ability can therefore turn close fights on their head in one fell swoop and is therefore the first to be maximized. Syla’s strength as a Skirmisher increases with each point in the ability and from level 9 he reaches his strongest phase of the game, making him a serious threat to his opponents from midgame onwards. You incorporate the W into your combos depending on whether you need it to cover additional distance or whether healing or execute damage is more important. A gank combo could look like this, for example: E->W->AA->Q->E->AA->AA->AA. Your W can also be combined with Flash if you press the W out of range on your opponent and then flash into W range.

Sylla’s ultimate is “Ultimate Takeover”, where he can steal an opponent’s ultimate and use it freely within a certain time window. Each enemy ultimate has a separate cooldown that is independent of Syla’s ultimate, so you can rarely use the same ultimate twice in a row. The best tactic is usually to steal the opponent’s most influential AoE ult (such as Hecarim or Yuumi) or an ult that buffs you during the fight (such as Aatrox or Swain) before big team fights for objectives. Ults that give you additional mobility in combination with damage can also be very useful (e.g. Akali or Yone). Depending on which ult you have for a fight, you can play as a Frontliner, Assassin, Engage/Disengage or AoE-Nuke. As you gain experience, you will learn when to use which ult.