Manamune is shit:

Basically
It's purely a damage increase
That gives you the highest possible dps in a basic combo
during the early mid game
The damage calculations people make aren't accurate
Firstly; every single damage calculation you see people make involves just the
basic rotation
No one factors in enemy ultimates, which will all scale with ap
Now if you're picking sylas, you should be doing it into games where there are good
ults to steal, so in those situations where sylas is most viable (and let's say
that we've got some pretty high ap ratios, 60%, 70%, 100%, 130% etc)
Ap is becoming a lot more important for your overall dps potential
Secondly;
Manamune is not a scaling build
If you want max late game sylas, you should be going gathering storm, trans, and a
full ap build
All of the AP amplifications from dcap and all that are going to be far stronger
than just the manamune
Again remember: Ults need to be factored into damage calculations
Thirdly;
Manamune's value is often looked at in isolation of its damage: "okay so mythic +
manamune does X damage, let's try mythic + cosmic/zhoyas/anything else.. look,
manamune does more damage in all of these situations"
Utility and champion enabling is completely overlooked; what do I mean by champion
enabling? Consider the other items you could, and should, buy second;
Zhonyas/banshees, cosmic drive, generally those are your best options tbh. Buying
zhonyas or banshees gives you a lot of defensive utility, especially zhonyas for
the statis letting you get a w up or whatever
Cosmic is fucking BONKERS for its utility, having all of the extra movement speed
is obviously valuable inside of fights, but also for splitting, getting map
pressure, etc etc etc etc. The stats are generally nice, just having some ap and
health and whatever, but that's not so important I'm just mentioning it as a
footnote. The other KILLER stat on this item is the 40 AH. You just get 40 AH. 40
AH. Depending on what runes you've taken this is 38-45% AH at second item
Considering most games are ending at 3-4 items, having this AH for the most
important part of the game: Mid game, is pretty huge. Being able to get all of
those extra W rotations off can be a lot more valuable than just having extra flat
dps
The problem with building manamune is that, whilst yes the damage is the highest
you can get at that point, it has NO utility. "oh but what about mana", you don't
fucking need it, you have a lost chapter mythic and manaflow, you're fine for mana,
you're purely building manamune for the damage, sure it has 15AH but that doesnt
compare to cosmic. The issue is that when you build manamune you have to forfit the
utility and enabling effects of an item like zhonyas or cosmic. If you grab cosmic
third for your ah then you have to give up defensive stats, if you grab zhonyas
third then you heavily stunt your snowball because of the nature of zhonyas. It's
so incredibly greedy and hard to pull off
Fourthly;
Returning somewhat to point 2, the nature of Manamune not being a scaling build
FORCES you to play extremely hard into the early to mid game, using the kinda op
damage on the item to brute force your way through fights
Especially noting point 3 here, building manamune heavily stuns your utility and
general value in the game as a champion, which really puts the pressure on you to
make use of that dps
Which brings us to the other big problem of manamune, which is the build path. The
build path fucking SUCKS. Tear is a good item sure, but it sucks to build because
it sets you behind 400 gold. you can argue that you're renting out a mana pool and
that it's good for that reason, but you already have manaflow (you ALWAYS go
manaflow with manamune build) and you're not building manamune first, you're
building a lost chapter mythic first so you're going to buy lost chapter
immediately after the tear. You're also not actually starting Tear because in most
matchups it's incredibly important to have the lane sustain and AP and pressure etc
from dorans ring (you're not buying corrupting, shit fuck baby piss item, like why
tf would u ever go biscuits timewarp when you can go manaflow , sylas doesnt need
biscuits), so in terms of sustain you actually get fucked over by buying tear since
you probably want to buy it on first back, so you offset lost chapter by 400 gold,
and lost chapter is infinitely better for mana sustain inside of lane than tear is
Moving on from tear, the fucking ad items?
The warhammer and shit?
The damage from manamune isnt coming from component stats, it comes from the
muramana ability ad proc thing, and the ad increase from mana pool, so the
components are pretty worthless when you're buying them to build towards the item
The reason this is such an issue is because of point 2: YOU DONT SCALE, YOU NEED TO
GET AHEAD
And bear in mind gold income is lower in the early mid game, so the gold matters a
lot more here
Long sword + warhammer is 1450 gold, tear is 400 gold, then you have to sit on 1050
gold to be able to upgrade it
tear has already been established to not be great, buying long sword and warhammer
SUCKS; compare that to buying kindle gem amp, or codex ruby. You get so much more
value out of those components, and in the early game the strength of components
really matters, especially in this meta and everything
So that again makes building manamune incredibly greedy and pretty risky; in order
to be able to safely get these components and not potentially throw your early mid
impact, you have to be quite grossly ahead
And if you're grossly ahead and snowballing? Why didn't you just buy dark seal?
into mejas?
And then at that point you may as well just start stacking ap or buy fucking dcap
or something because you can just roll over the game with your obnoxious stats
so then assuming you do get to buy it
It's only really good in that brief period between: Post second item -> pre fourth
item completion
which is the period of the game you absolutely need to win in if you're playing
manamune because it's not a fucking scaling build
which then emphasises the aforementioned problems in point 4