An evaluation of New Ryze

Since Ryze came out, I started playing as him, trying to get a good understanding of his kit, how he functions, and his strengths and weaknesses, all the while everyone else cries how he's ruined forever and League is ruined forever and blah blah blah.

..........

New Ryze is good. Very good. Mechanically, he's very similar to his old form, even if his spells are vastly different. His gameplay, though, is now HEAVILY dependent on his ability to combo, and unlike his previous form where he just mashes the keyboard in whatever order his cooldowns will allow, there are very clearly defined combo paths that were outlined in his champion spotlight.

Ryze's biggest hurdle is in the early game. Not only is spell flux extremely weak this early on, but he's also a mana hungry monster, and he burns his entire supply of initial mana in less than a minute if you aren't careful. Mana doesn't really become a nonissue for him until level 7 or 8, by which time you have at least three mana items and you're basically drowning in it, but it might be alleviated earlier if he buys an Unholy Grail, though in the long run it's quite unnecessary.

While his ult is extremely useful, I find that rank 1 is not very useful at all unless you are beaming in an entire team, which almost never happens. I end up skipping his ult entirely until level 10, when I can immediately level it to rank 2 at 11.

As the game goes on, Ryze gets more and more capable of defending lanes. Combined with his high strategic mobility due to his ult, he can push and defend like no one's business. He's also very good at soloing the dragon and stealing clearing STEALING jungle camps because of the consistent critical magic damage he can dish out.

Aside from his mana issues, though, Ryze's biggest downside is that he's dependent on the combos. If you can't combo right, his menace falls off tremendously, and he loses the advantage of his shield and movement speed bonus.

Ryze isn't bad, but he has a very steep learning curve now, especially for a 450 IP champion.