On The Ryze Nerfs:

Warning: Long post ahead with a little bit of math, TL;DR at the bottom (without the math).

So I know not may people are QQing about Ryze nerfs, but this sort of over-nerfing and over-buffing is the sort of thing that makes me kinda frustrated with how Riot does things sometimes. In my opinion it's a way to ensure people are always buying new champions and skins for the new champs because they're FOTM, but that's beside the point. My point is that these Ryze nerfs were extremely poorly thought out and absolutely crippling to a mascot of the game.

Now, I do think putting a cap on his passive spells is a good start to bringing his power in line, but good god those numbers were just crushing. Don't believe me? Op.gg, lolking, and champion.gg all list him as having around a 41-44% win rate since the nerfs, which puts him in the category of Urgot and Yorick. 5 spells is nothing since the Ryze nerf before this one where they gutted his damage to compensate for his machine gunning of spells. Now his spells don't deal very much damage by themselves and they can't really be spammed. 5 spells is basically one spell rotation to Ryze. So since he gets one spell rotation to kill you now, he's expected to be an immobile burst mage (which is such a good niche to be in, right ??), yet his spells don't deal a whole lot of damage by themselves, so he can't burst any but the squishiest of targets, and he can only do that when he has his passive up so he's an even worse version of . The compensation buff on his ult doesn't really make a difference, because if they didn't do that his ult would have a longer CD by virtue of not being able to reduce its CD by spamming as many spells, so it's a net neutral change, it just prevented the intended nerf from indirectly nerfing him in ways they didn't intend to. Thanks for making sure the bandages aren't moldy, but he's still had his legs chopped off.

Ryze is really, really weak after those changes, to the point of being absolutely unplayable if you want to win or deal damage or be useful. (Also he was indirectly nerfed a little bit with the addition of Duskblade because slippery assassins are his natural weakness anyway (hard to perma root )) Ryze's identity was an immobile hyper-carry DPS mage. The only parts of that that weren't taken away by these changes were the "immobile" and "mage" parts. How are you expected to be a DPS mage if you can only cast 5 spells on a short CD, then the rest of your spells have insanely long cooldowns after that. Most other dps mages have incredibly short CDs or channeled abilities (Karthus, Swain, Vlad, Fiddle, Cassio, etc.). The only reason Ryze could compete with other modern champions is that one-third of the time you could put out Cassio level damage with Swain like sustain (in an ideal, level 16 world), the rest of the time you were a walking blue pop sickle. Now Ryze is a "dps mage" with really long cooldowns if not in his passive, and he only gets 5 mediocre spells on short cooldowns in his passive so he doesn't even benefit from the thing that's supposed to make him capable of DPSing very much. Not only that, but his scaling is really poor into MR now. If the enemy team builds any MR, how is someone who has a bunch of abilities with low base damages and poor scalings supposed to kill someone using only 5 spells. That would be like telling Swain he can only have his ult on for 4 seconds at a time then had to wait until the fight was over to turn it back on. Buy any MR item, and Ryze doesn't scale well at all because he just can't kill anyone.

Some of the issues with Ryze (and I'm not defending him, he was really strong in a team comp that gave him enough CC and protection to unload without having to move) were that he still perma-rooted people too early and his all-in at level 6 was pretty much impossible to beat. The way I suppose we could fix this is to make the amount of spells he can get reduced CDs for from his passive scale. I think 5 is a fine base number, but have each level in his ultimate (or something like that) scale up the number of passive spells he can cast. Maybe go 5/7/9, so that his level 6 cheese no longer exists, and he can only root you a maximum of three times even at level 16. (WQEQ WQEQ WQE would be his full combo at level 16). This would give him the "ammo" he needs to have an impact late game, where he is supposed to shine while keeping the nerf to his early game pressure that riot installed.

Also (rito plz this is important) I'd like to see his ult not contribute to the passive cap, as it isn't a damage spell or a root, so it's not really contributing to the problems. With the cap on his passive, you would need to start every passive by ulting otherwise if you need to ult you're down a spell mid-combo for casting something that does no damage and doesn't CC, and often you don't know if you need to ult until a fight is already underway and you're already in passive. Also with Ryze, ulting is a way to reset your combo if you mess up so if it contributes to the passive total it won't really do you any good to reset the combo because you'll just lose a spell of the combo and it will kind of bone you either way (so basically you can never mess up, which is a pretty high skill ceiling to put on a character that you want the average player to enjoy and be capable of playing). Making only his W, Q, and E apply to his passive cap would be a huge quality of life buff for him.

All that being said, I really don't think Riot playtested those changes very well. They felt not-well-thought-out and hurried. They went out on the PBE in one cycle and went live like 4 days afterwards or something like that. Like it was a surprise that he still dealt a million damage and they panicked and rushed a nerf out of the door before really thinking about the consequences to the champion's viability. Either that or it was intended to break his legs because they got tired of trying to balance him so they just grievously unbalanced him so that everyone would forget about him ( ). If you're gonna break his legs, at least put some thought into it :,(

Ryze is the only mage I've ever liked, and he is a bit of a mascot for League (he's been in like every cinematic trailer since S1 and always gives me chills with how cool he's portrayed). I'm not complaining because I like him, I'm complaining because it's a shame to see him get such a cool rework to bring him up to date and make him a complex champion to learn and master with depth and room for improvement and decision making, be portrayed so well by the cinematic team, given enough time for people like me who would normally never play a mage to learn him, and then be put down like Old Yeller.

TL;DR Ryze isn't really playable currently, he doesn't do enough damage per spell to kill anyone with any MR with only 5 spells, and not being able to ult mid combo or else lose a spell cast in your passive is a real quality of life bummer. I do think having a cap would be a good way to reign in his early game power, but currently he can't carry late game. Give his passive a scaling amount of spells (I suggest 5/7/9 for reasons I explained earlier) that can be cast so that you can actually carry late game team fights like Ryze is supposed to. These nerfs felt very rushed and under-tested, but could be good if actually thought out and put in a way that still allows him to maintain his identity and strategic niche as an immobile hyper carry DPS mage without making him unplayable.