Hey guys, my name is Dez. I'm a trash-tier jungler and I now call myself a Sylas main.

Sylas is still quite new to the game. But he is without a doubt one of the most fun and unpredictable champions in all of League. And this is my guide to being amazing with him. Though guides aren't everything, you need practice and not only go by what I tell you here, but to find what WORKS BEST FOR YOU!

This is just a step in the right direction. And to understand Sylas the Unshackled.

Sylas was a shackled prisoner in Demacia because he's a mage and for some reason Demacia is all racist against mages.. yadda yadda Lux comes by his chamber and gives him a book.. yadda yadda Lux later came back and with Sylas' new found powers from the book she gave him, she snatched up her ult without her knowing and blasted a hole in the wall and escaped...

That's pretty much his story. He's a straight up gangster mage.

ANYWAY

Here is where the guide gets going.

Sylas' 3 basic abilities all deal damage in some way, and all have a separate effect that can be used defensively. You can read these abilities by hovering your cursor over them, but in here I will just give a brief rundown of them.

[*] His passive is Petricite Burst, which is what I call a "Sheen-like passive" meaning after you use an ability, your next basic attack is empowered in some way. And that's exactly what Petricite burst does: It causes your next attack (after casting any ability, including stolen ults and even the stealing portion of your ult) to deal AOE damage around you equal to 100% of your AD, + a flat number based on level, + some AP scaling.
Now this is your BREAD AND BUTTER of Sylas. You should never use any ability back-to-back without using this empowered attack. And if you're new to Sylas you'll quickly learn that you can weave these attacks in between abilities about as fast as you can even cast said abilities back-to-back. You only have to get used to the timing and fast combos.

[*] Sylas' first (Q) ability is Chain Lash, which lashes out his arm chains that slam on the ground, dealing damage to all enemies hit. You can aim the ability to determine where the apex will be. Enemies hit at the apex of this ability are slowed by a fair amount and shortly after, the apex explodes and causes extra damage.
This is the LEAST useful ability in my personal opinion, just a generic damage/slow with a slight AOE in one direction. Now even though I call this the LEAST USEFUL, does not mean it IS USELESS. The slow on this ability is invaluable when chasing down enemies while your E is on cooldown and those that are just out of reach from your W. The damage is also fairly good, especially for clearing your camps throughout the game. I take this ability Lv2 but max it last.

[*] Sylas' second (W) ability is Kingslayer. This ability is amazing. Sylas VERY QUICKLY dashes a short distance to a locked on target, dealing damage and healing Sylas if said target is an enemy champion. This ability does major bonus damage if the target is under 40% health. Also this ability does major bonus healing when SYLAS is below 40% health and uses it on an enemy champion.
Now, lets talk about this ability. There are 3 main points in time where you will use this ability: To heal yourself on an enemy champion, to execute an enemy champion, or to do both at the same time. I can't tell you how many duels I've gotten into with the enemy jungler in river, gave him that big hope that he's going to get first blood, then just W when he has less than 40% health and I am about to die, IMMEDIATELY your health is way above his now and it often causes a flash, unless you wittingly baited out his flash before healing. I take this ability at Lv3 and max it second

[*] Sylas' third (E) ability is Abscond and Abduct, this is by far my favorite basic ability on Sylas. Sylas' E has two uses, on first use you dash in a direction and gain a short-lived shield that scales heavily with your AP, on second use Sylas throws his chains out in a direction, if they connect with an enemy, they take damage and Sylas dashes to them, knocking them up.
This ability used to have a much shorter cooldown when Sylas was first released, but I always maxed it first anyway. Maxing it first gives you additional survivability and mobility. This is your main initiative ability aside from any other initiation abilities you can steal from your ultimate. I take this ability Lv1 so that I can soak up 1 attack from the buff camp, cc the camp to avoid a second attack, and get 2 procs of my passive on top of the E2 damage.

[*] Sylas' Ultimate ability (R) is Hijack. This ability is what ultimately made me fall in love with this champion. (see what I did there). So this ability doesn't need much explanation, you steal the target enemy's ultimate ability, whether they are level 6 or not. The level of the ability scales with what level your ultimate is, ie if you're Lv11 with 2 points in your ultimate and you steal a lv9 Lux ultimate when she only has 1 point in her R, then you gain a Lv2 Lux ultimate. "Well that's cool but wouldn't it be useless to take the ult of say, a Caitlyn or a Pyke?" -- The answer to that is absolutely not, because if you take an ultimate that scales only with AD, you gain scaling for said ultimate from your AP at a rate of 0.7:1 AP:AD ratio. So you gain mad use of MF ult, Yasuo ult, etc. At first rank, this ultimate has a decent cooldown time, but as you rank it up, it can get as low as 6 seconds! Which means you can even use multiple stolen ultimates in a singly teamfight. The only real drawback to this is that the stolen ultimate only stays in your possession for a limited time if you don't use it, and after you steal one champs ultimate, you can only take it from them again after an enemy-specific cooldown which depends on how long said champions ultimate's cooldown time IS... Make sense? Probably not, it's hard to word.

Here's a simple and great way to get successful ganks early and stay at about the same level as your mid/top laners.

So what I typically do is I start at Red Buff, every game. Because the 'red jungle' yields the most experience. So do Red with a leash from either your bot lane (on blue side) or top lane (on red side), start your E first so that you can get 2 procs of your passive off and nullify 2 hits from the buff. Then you'll take your Q ability second, go to Raptors and Q first in an area that is going to hit all of them, passive attack, E, passive attack, E2, passive attack. By this time all the small Raptors will be dead or will die off from your Talisman DOT. Then you're just smacking your big red chicken until it dies. NEXT go to Krugs.
After I do Krugs I take my W and go immediately to bot lane if there is an opening for a gank, in lower elos the enemy bot lane doesn't ward so early in the game, so take advantage of this and communicate with your team before even clearing your first camp, tell them to sit back and you'll gank Lv3. This is a guarenteed way to get at least one flash, possible heal, and possibly kill.