I can usually tell I'm going to lose because if she is bot then my team will need to send someone down their constantly to keep her from losing point. If she is top she dies to quickly and ends up being useless. At her best she is a weak support on Dom. My two cents.

lol, she may not be the best but her kit has enough utility for her to be viable at top lane. *steals two cents*.

Free week. It's gonna happen. She's definitely more of a challenge than some AP mages, but I'm guessing you're just getting a bad case of first-time-free-week-syndra-itis.

I played her. Got destroyed with her. I was like hmm...lets try that again. Destroyed again. Ughh, let me try a different build. Destroyed again!

I gave up. She just doesn't seem viable on dominion. Clearly she has 2 nice utility skills with a slow and stun. Her Q is great for harassing and her R is a great source of damage.

But she doesn't have enough burst without her ult up to go glass cannon. If you go tanky she doesn't seem to have enough damage to kill. And if you go tanky/ap, it just seems to prolong your death and you still don't do enough damage. And there are so many other champs that make use of slows/stuns a lot better.

Of course, this is also going up against OP Bruisers. :P

There's a reason why she's getting a big buff next patch. I've never seen riot buff all four Q-W-E-R skills all at once in one patch. Usually they slowly buff over time.

She's not too bad top.

She looks more like a middling champ than a low(est) tier champ to me. I've seen a few syndra's who've done well (usually those who don't go tanky), but team composition is important for her success. She definitely needs someone with FH and randiuns for teamfights cause she'll be a target due to her kit, much like other AP champs who don't have many escape options and get prioritized from bruisers. She can definitely dish out the damage though

Her buffs were good. I tried her at release and didn't play her after 3 games or so because she was feeling subpar. After these buffs, I'll probably be playing her quite a bit over the next few days. The mana reduc on her Q keeps her from going totally OOM, the range increase on her W makes it so that you're not in gap-close range to use it, the range increase on her E makes it useful, and her ult still wrecks people.

As far as building her, to me, it still feels like she does better with tanky MPen CDR. I build:
Chalice+Boots
Sorc Shoes
Athene's Grail
Frozen Heart
Giant's Belt
Negatron
From here, I complete Abyssal or Rylai's, depending on whether I need O or D. I should also work a Haunting Guise in here somewhere, as that is also tanky+MPen

TL;DR - Buffs made Syndra pretty good, build Tanky MPen CDR

i saw your thread, then went into a game with syndra

turns out that guy was awesome