Syndra, the Dark Sovereign

League of Legend's latest champion is Syndra, an AP (Ability Power) mage who looks like she would crush you with her big black balls and drop down from her effortless levitating to tap dance on your lifeless body. And she could, assuming she could land all her abilities. This, however, is not easy.

Transcendent (Innate): This passive is a joke. All it does is make her spells match the utility/damage of other champions' spells at rank 5. So prior to maxing out a skill, you'll be fighting an uphill battle.

Dark Sphere (Q): This skill discharges a small magical burst at the targeted area after a brief delay, much like Zyra's Deadly Bloom. It leaves behind a dark sphere for a short while, which you will need to utilize with her other spells. Though a decent farming spell, these types of spells are dicey to use on players because they can predict where you'll use it based on the simple fact that it has a brief delay.

So in order to increase your chances of landing this ability, you'd need to slow or stun your target beforehand. That or out-guess the direction the enemy player will move to after they attempt to bait you into using it first. Well, the good news is she has a slow AND and stun to do just that. The bad news is they're also both skillshots.

Force of Will (W): This skill grabs an NPC unit or a dark sphere for the first cast and throws it towards the targeted area for damage and slow on the second cast. This is also a decent farming spell but it suffers from the same problem as Dark Sphere in terms of reliable damage. As a matter of fact, it's worse than Dark Sphere because not only is the actual toss animation a built-in delay but the enemy will be alerted to your aggression as soon as you grab a unit/sphere. Oh, and did I mention that the grabbed unit/sphere has to be dragged towards Syndra to within a certain range before it can even be thrown, adding even further delay? This means you won't be able to grab and immediately throw right after. You have to grab, wait for it to get close, and THEN throw.

This makes Force of Will feel very clunky and quite difficult to land on a competent opponent. Also, your grab duration isn't that long so you have a short window of opportunity to pull off your combo. If not, you use up your mana for nothing. That's right; the mana cost is applied on the grab, not the throw. Whether you throw or not, mana is spent regardless...

Scatter the Weak (E): Now, this spell is pretty easy to use because it's an instant, cone-shaped AoE spell... except the range is relatively short compared to her other two spells. But that's okay because the real range of the spell is the distance of a propelled dark sphere, which is pretty far. No spell of Syndra's, however, exist without a prerequisite.

In order to land the stun component of the spell, you need to A.) make sure the dark sphere will travel far enough to reach your target and B.) ensure that a dark sphere exists directly between yourself and the target.

Now think about that. In the scenario where you're actually trying to land your Q, there's a HIGH chance you won't get to land your stun because the dark sphere will spawn ON or in very close proximity to your target. At that point, if they move in between or perpendicular to the alignment of Syndra and the sphere, you can kiss that stun goodbye. And if you decide to forgo the damage of your initial Q and cast it in front of your E just to initiate with the stun, you still have to be extremely accurate with the direction and timing of her abilities in that you're lining up two skillshots, both of which has a built-in delay (Q's obvious delayed blast and the dark sphere's travel speed on E), AND you're using significant mana just for an attempt at landing your combo.

Unleashed Power (R): This is the easiest and most devastating spell she has, being that it's your ultimate and all. If you have even one extra sphere out in the field and decent AP, you can easily half-shot anyone that isn't a tank with her R alone. With your full combo, I'm pretty sure her burst damage could rival Veigar's. Of course, executing her full combo is not at all an easy feat to accomplish.

I'm starting to think Syndra is a champ that has to start the fight with her ultimate, after getting two or three spheres out first. Once she casts your R, all the spheres converge onto the target, dispersing around that area's proximity. This makes landing her E's stun much easier as there are so many spheres to propel in multiple directions. Once your R and E has landed, there's a high probability that your target is near death and stunned, which you could follow through easily with a W and Q for the kill.

As of this writing, they just announced a few buffs to Syndra, some of which will definitely increase the viability of her CC skillshots. Hopefully these buffs are enough to offset the incredibly high skill-cap of this champion.

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You Only Have One In Real Life

Life, that is. And you should care about preserving it to the best of your abilities because chances are, you're already fighting a losing battle.

Unfortunately, there's many things outside our control which effect our health negatively. We can't control what our supermarkets stock up on the shelves. We can't control the ingredients companies use in their processed foods. We can't control the sedentary work most of us do 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week. But the two things we maintain complete control over is exactly what we put in our mouths and how much exercise we do.

The following video is about 1.5 hours long. Yes, that is very long for a YouTube video but considering how much information is packed in that 1.5 hours, it's incredibly well composed and could very well change the way you look at a lot of the food we eat. Props to Dr. Robert Lustig and all his associates.

You should also take an hour of your day to watch this series on obesity. Most of it is reiterated information from the above video but with some new research added in. Still worth watching the whole series, just to thoroughly understand how dire the consequences can be. If nothing else, at least watch episode 3.

But if you want me to paraphrase...

Too much fat is bad, too much sugar is worse

Though we've reduced our total fat intake from 40% to 30% at the behest of the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, and the U. S. Department of Agriculture over the last 30 years, the prevalence of obesity and metabolic syndrome rose dramatically. After breaking down the types of calories consumed, the item that correlates most with this rise is sugar.

Sugar is addictive

Much in the same way crack is addictive. The reward center of your brain (nucleus accumbens) is where the interaction of dopamine occurs. This neurotransmitter controls your feeling of pleasure. After prolonged exposure to dopamine, the receptors lose its sensitivity to the chemical. This is tolerance. So now you must eat more of it to feel the same effects. And when you take away the dopamine (stop the excessive sugar intake), you feel like shit. This is withdrawal. Tolerance and withdrawal is the basis of addiction.

Sugar Drives Insulin

And insulin drives fat production. Leptin is a hormone that comes from your fat cells and its job is to let your brain know that you're not hungry so you can burn energy. So why are obese people, who have plenty of fat therefore have plenty of leptin, still overeat? Because insulin prevents leptin from doing its job at the brain and with our current lifestyle, we have too much of it in our system.

Obviously, we all need insulin. If we didn't, diabetics would be perfectly fine. But why are we loaded with all this extra insulin and where is it coming from? Our body actually makes it because of the constant state of elevated blood sugar levels as a result of our poor diet. As long as insulin is present in your system, you will always be in fat storage mode instead of fat burning mode.

You're on your own

The U. S. Food and Drug Administration and the U. S. Department of Agriculture will not regulate your sugar intake. Why not? Because as bad as sugar is, it's only killing us because we eat too much of it. That's the bottom line. Eating ice cream once in a while isn't going to kill you. The main problem is that avoiding it is very difficult when a majority of the packaged foods in your local supermarket has sugar added in some way, shape, or form. This means that unless you're actually looking at the nutritional facts and ingredients list on everything you buy, you're probably eating too much of it.

Also, our food is sold all over the world for its convenience, taste, and affordability. Admitting now that the stuff will slowly kill you would be disastrous to trade. We are stuck with this food and no one is going to tell us to stop. We have to do this ourselves.

Make your move
So what can you do in a world where fast, palatable, and cheap food is easily accessible almost 24/7 against healthy food that isn't as tasty (at first), harder to find, requires more effort to prepare, and more expensive? Realistically, it's not as difficult as it seems. There's at least three things you can do that won't impact your budget at all and might even save you money in the long run.

1. Cut the sugary beverages. This includes 100% fruit juices, as they are loaded with fructose which is just as bad as sucrose (table sugar). Even though sugar-sweetened drinks are far from being the only perpetrator, it's one of the fastest ways to get an absurd amount of sugar into your system because it's in liquid form. Also, when you're really thirsty, you tend to disregard just how much of it you drink.

2. Exercise. At least 30 minutes a day, even if it's just walking. Working up a sweat is better and if you decide to partake in rigorous physical activity, make sure you're warming up prior to the exercise, following proper form throughout your routine, and eating right to fuel your body. You don't need a gym. There's plenty of exercises you can do that don't require any weights or equipment.

In fact, one of the best exercises you can do is called a burpee and the only thing you need is a little room to move. Another really good exercise you can do are mountain climbers. Even jumping jacks are a great form of exercise. Yeah, I said it: jumping jacks. For whatever reason, one of my friends thought I was joking when I mentioned that jumping jacks could be considered great cardio. Then I told him he probably couldn't even do 50 jumping jacks. You know, the ones where you actually move your feet beyond shoulder width and clap your hands above your head? He tried. He failed. There's a reason why they still do these in the military.

3. Eat fiber, lots of it. This is a vital nutrient that we don't eat enough of because there's virtually none of it in processed foods. Though our body doesn't extract nutrients from it per se, the effects fiber has on speeding up the digestive process, keeping your bowels clean, helping you feel full so you eat less, making sure you shit properly, and a host of other benefits make it an invaluable part of your diet.

The best way to get it, in my opinion, is leafy green vegetables. I eat about 1.5 cups worth of broccoli, spinach, and carrots 5 days a week. But if you don't like those, try other combinations of cruciferous vegetables. However way you get them, just get them. Whole fruits are an okay source of fiber as well, though if you really want to lean out, vegetables win by a long shot.

My reasoning
So why do I, a gamer, care so much about health? You would think that I just sit at home all day after work and play video games until I have to sleep, stopping only to eat and shower. That's kind of true. But in all seriousness, I have a firm belief that physical health and mental health are closely tied to each other. People who have positive outlooks on life tend to live healthier lives. On the flip side, I believe that the healthier you are physically, the better your mental capacity. This is imperative for someone like me who, not only likes playing video games but likes being good at them.

That's why I exercise vigorously 3 times a week, keep careful watch over my diet, and only eat junk food about two times a week. You have to splurge every now and then, otherwise you'll feel like you're punishing yourself. Now that my body is accustomed to a healthier lifestyle, I tend to crave the nasty stuff a lot less.

Do yourself a favor and start giving a crap about your health. Don't wait until you're diagnosed with some terrible disease that could make this already difficult life even more difficult. This doesn't just affect us on an individual level. It affects us as a society in more ways than you can imagine. Plus, don't you want to live long enough to see what the world will look like in 50 years? I dream of the day when flying cars will fill the skies and cities exist in multi-tiered levels. Assuming we don't blow ourselves up first, of course.

On a side note, I always thought vegetarians were crazy when they made those outlandish claims that their poop don't smell as bad as those who eat plenty of meat. But strangely enough, it's actually true. Not that I would ever become a vegetarian as I love meat entirely too much but ensuring that I have enough vegetables in my diet keeps my shit from utterly destroying my nostrils. I mean, shit is shit any way you look at it so it still smells bad but it doesn't seem nearly as obnoxious.

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