My Problems With The Direction Of The Pyke Changes @ The Rito Team
When Rito released first teased the idea of a darker themed support I was on the edge of my seat. I am a hardcore Top Main, thriving in the isolation it provides, but when my occasional and rare need for companionship arrives I will change up the roles I queue for to the opposite side of the map. Now with the release of the thematic masterpiece known as Jhin, the Champion team showed that they could definitely handle dark champions really well. All this being said when Pyke was revealed I fell in love. A Darius Main for the majority of my LoL career, a resetting ult got my attention. Sure enough on the PBE I immediately took him down bot to try and "secure some kills" in a now socially appropriate way, but after a few games having to lane with another person made me feel claustrophobic so to the isolation of Top Lane I took him.
Boy did I have fun! Pyke top was live my answer from God to all the laners that Darius didn't stomp. Renekton? Pick Pyke. Jax? Have fun trying to stun me now. Ban Darius? You asked for it. Great sustain, high base health because of his passive, nice poke on his tap Q, not a very good sustain fighter till I got a Hydra or a Deaths dance, but you could slip out of a gank like the little fish you are. I should have known that I wouldn't last forever.
Now in all defense, I still play Pyke top, still love it too, but I feel the changes that are being made will negatively impact the game far more than what Pyke was at release.
Going back to where it all began, if y'all remember, Pyke's Tap-Q would hit all enemies and did 115% of the base damage, which made sense since you would have to get in relatively close and there was no pull so it was just a good trade machine that mixed in a little wave clear. What was perfectly fair about it was it did reduced damage to minions beyond the first (50% reduced and then eventually 30% of the total damage to minions beyond the first) (Patch 8.24). Now this change was quite valid, reduced his wave clear quite a bit, but when addressing Pyke's wave clear it needs to be noted that Pyke then and now built a Hydra and with 400+ AD his wave clear will be so as I will address later that unless you completely dumpster his kit, he will buy the item that was designed to give waveclear lacking champions waveclear. Pyke's E also got hit for the reasons of wave clear and given a new lethality stun scaling which I believe is a whole new problem. Not to mention his lethality scaling on his W and R.
Now it seems that the tw0 main things that Pyke is being targeted for with his changes are the following...
- To address his unwanted tankiness
- Remove solo lane viability
And to keep his niche as a clean up Support / Champion that makes high risk / high reward plays
Now we see this theme of high risk / high reward given by his passive
Pyke's maximum health cannot increase except through growth (per level), instead he gains「 1 bonus attack damage per 14 bonus health 」
Now what this means is that Pyke cannot itemize out of burst as effectively as other champs. It makes him the epitome of a "Glass Cannon" and he is supposed to do damage, or as Rito would say, Lots of Damage. So to help this Riot brilliantly allowed his bonus HP to convert into Bonus AD. Now by consequence, and to no one's surprise people started to build Pyke with tankier items. Now personally I never built frozen heart, apparently people did according to patch 8.22
" We put abundant utility into Pyke's kit to support a high-risk, high-reward playstyle, but with his builds frequently leaning on tanky pickups, there's not much of a dangerous line to walk. The changes below tie his utility to offensive scaling rather than baseline values so safer builds won't get the same explosive payoffs that aggro Pyke delivers. A few mana cost reductions should ease that transition away from Ancient Coin and Frozen Heart back into riskier pickups."
Now in this patch Riot made their first of two bad moves in my opinion. In order to move Pyke's build away from Frozen Heart, they gave Pyke lethality scaling on his W, E, and R.
Now previously when a champion became too tanky for Riots liking or the health of the game (See tank Ekko) they reduced base damage and increased scaling, which would have been the best move at this time in my opinion. Increasing the AD ratio on his Q and E, possibly on his W as well would have better moved Pyke away from non-HP giving tank items to either HP damage item like Frozen Mallet and Damage items in general. Instead this decision to give scaling based on Lethality is bad for the game in two main regards...
- Limits potential Lethality items
- Extremely limits Pyke's build options
To address this first point, since it has a lot of relevance in the upcoming preseason, the addition of new Lethality items will uniquely impact Pyke more than any other Champion in the game, meaning it limits the addition of items into the game. Riot will either have to limit Lethality to keep Pyke in check, or change and Balance him every time they add one. Right now you can Have 3 full Lethality items (and a dirk if you really wanted to max that scaling potential out) That means that his W, E, and R all have Max benefits they can receive. Every new item added will be another Lethality item that can increase W stun duration, W MS, and R damage.
Now as far as his build options, it seems incredibly silly to me that when you make a champion that gives AD based off Bonus HP, you then restrict him to getting items that don't give HP with the exception of Edge of Night. I love getting Black Cleaver, Frozen Mallet, a Spirit Visage and gaining 500 AD off a full build, but then not gain the Lethality benefits. Having these two scaling which can't work together just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Now for Rito's 2nd big mistake, was removing his wave clear and replacing it with double ult gold. As much as I like to be Ebenezer Scrooge with my inventory full of money, I think that it is not very healthy for the game. It makes him snowball super hard, gaining from 1000-4000 bonus gold just for himself. Honestly it doesn't make a lot of sense why he would pay himself? He isn't the Government? (Sorry for my poor joke) He should only get it if an enemy dies in his X while he is ulting, which was the original functionality.
Riot has always embraced off builds and taking champions into lanes that they weren't designed to play, I mean AP Susan in ARAM became such a meme it is a recommended build path now. All of this is being brought up since it seems that Riot is trying very hard to banish Pyke to the bot lane.
Now for the conclusion to this massive post, what I would do to fix this situation. First, remove all Lethality scaling, people will still build these items, but it frees up future items to be brought into the game and allows some other build paths to also spring up. Lower his base damages and buff his scaling so that people won't buy only Armor or MR items that don't increase his HP (AKA his AD). Finally, remove his self-gold generation cause it causes him to snowball too hard and give him his Tap-Q ability to hit multiple targets back and give him his E damage to minions back but make it deal 30% damage to minions or something because many of us Pyke mains love him in a solo lane.
I hope that I made some valid points here and that you enjoyed reading my point of view.