A hidden support power of Pyke's Passive (like Duskblade)

Velzard of Koz·May 14, 2018·18 votes·11,914 views

Just reminding one little detail that, as long as I understand it well, is something kinda OP and supportish (since some people may find there being lack of support things on proclaimed support assasin) about Pyke's Passive: Just like with Duskblade, you can easily see locations being warded or not based on whether it procs or not.

It's not a big deal, but some high elo folks already utilize this on Duskblade and it feels like the kind of hidden powers Riot would want to avoid, as with both Duskblade and Pyke, such power is not the point of the Passive, just accidental extra power. On the other hand it really feels supportish, as with Duskblade and Sweeping Lens (combination some folks already use on Assains) and ward-killing-focused Runes in Domination, he should have support-worth ward control.

31 Comments

Kitten of EvilMay 14, 201810 votes

It doesn't seem like it's quite as problematic as Duskblade, since his passive isn't always on. According to the ability description, his passive is active only a short time after he takes damage from an enemy champion, and it stops once he's recovered all the grey health.

I could see it being helpful in a few clutch cases, but for the most part it'll be inactive as he's running in for a gank.

GrReaper96May 14, 20181 votes

When Pyke is unseen by enemies, he rapidly regenerates some of the health recently lost to enemy champions.

Kitten of EvilMay 14, 201813 votes

Yes, I am aware. See also

recently lost to enemy champions.

Presumably this wears off after some amount of time, meaning he would either regenerate or lose the grey health. Depending on how long that time-frame is, it's less of an issue than Duskblade, since (presumably) he wouldn't have time to take damage from ADC bot, start healing once he steps into river, then run up to mid and still sense that there is a ward near mid.

EDIT: It's also ONLY active if a champion has damaged him recently, meaning he can't go scouting in your jungle looking for wards with it unless you fight him there. Again, less problematic than Duskblade since it's not always-on.

SpecterVonBarenMay 15, 20181 votes

Enemy bot laners ward the bush on his side of the lane, suddenly his passive is useless.

iPooUnicornsMay 15, 20181 votes

A ward in the lane brush is a ward that isn't in river/dragon

SpecterVonBarenMay 15, 20181 votes

Which we do already in bot lane. Whether me or the enemy support chooses to ward the lane bush or river is dependant on the match up. Completely nullifying the enemy supports ability to endure damage is well worth the ward.

TeCoolMageMay 15, 20181 votes

tbh though that should be done with the ADCs ward so they don't have to walk to tribushes

DeathBurstMay 15, 20183 votes

You seem to forget there are two bushes, or that he can just back off from your vision for 10 sec. Far from nullifying his passive, just making him work for it a little bit.

DeathBurstMay 15, 20183 votes

Don't know about Pyke's passive, but this is definitely intended power for Duskblade. What makes you think it isn't?

IHaveAShortJokeMay 14, 20182 votes

This isn't the part of his passive you're talking about, but am i correct in assuming the second part of his passive will let you build say, redemption, and get supportive items while gaining ad? This part BTW: "Pyke also converts his bonus health into bonus attack damage instead."

Velzard of KozMay 14, 20181 votes

Yeah, generally any Health item. It's more likely there not to support support builds but so that he is always squishy while not wasting gold on health.

when yourMay 15, 20181 votes

reave said that no health based items have any affect on the health regen passive, only base so that's out of the picture

DeathBurstMay 15, 20183 votes

No, what Reav3 said is that he doesn't get health from item due to the other passive that converts HP into AD. But Spirit Visage passive will totally works with his health regen passive. Now, is that good enough to build the item, I don't know, but still, it works.

TeCoolMageMay 15, 20183 votes

I don't know if his passive counts as regeneration or simply healing, but redemption, and spirit visage on this guy to make him a semi tanky bruiser...

DeathBurstMay 15, 20181 votes

No.

He converts HP into AD. Meaning he doesn't get the HP at all. It's like Jhin, not like Vlad. Pike'll never get tanky.

As for passive effects, yes Spirit Visage will work. Not sure about Redemption, but I doubt it.

TeCoolMageMay 15, 20181 votes

{quoted}

No.

He converts HP into AD. Meaning he doesn't get the HP at all. It's like Jhin, not like Vlad. Pike'll never get tanky.

As for passive effects, yes Spirit Visage will work. Not sure about Redemption, but I doubt it.

He will DEFINITELY have higher base health to compensate, then on top of that he will get a bruiser like health pool if he does hit and run with his passive. From there the resistances on bruiser items will help him become a bruiser.

Redemption is actually surprisingly good on champions that only have self heals/shields, sadly Mundo and Vlad don't use mana but they otherwise would've gotten a lot out of redemption. Also Mundo's healing counts as regeneration sadly (but if his regeneration is increased by spirit visage, that bonus is just generic healing and can be affected by revitalize and %heal items).

DeathBurstMay 15, 20183 votes

Most of what I consider "bruiser items" are AD+HP, no resistance, so I'm not sure what you're referring too. And I'm highly doubtful that Pyke will be able to be non-squishy, whatever his build, but we'll see when he's actually playable, at least on PBE.

(Also, your phrasing is a bit unclear, so just in case: Spirit Visage does work for simple regeneration, not just heals.)

TeCoolMageMay 15, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Most of what I consider "bruiser items" are AD+HP, no resistance, so I'm not sure what you're referring too. And I'm highly doubtful that Pyke will be able to be non-squishy, whatever his build, but we'll see when he's actually playable, at least on PBE.

(Also, your phrasing is a bit unclear, so just in case: Spirit Visage does work for simple regeneration, not just heals.)

when I said bruiser items I meant that bruisers can build resistance tank items, but even then Maw, GA, deadman's are probably more priority than frozen mallet and sterak's assuming he went lethality first

Yeah spirit visage works with regeneration, what I was trying to say is that regeneration doesn't work with heal-shield power, but all bonuses from spirit visage are increased by heal-shield power

(So if you regen 100 HP, this is not affected by revitalize, forbidden idol or ardent, but you gain 35 more HP from spirit visage, which IS affected, so you gain 3.5 hp if you have forbidden idol)

MuffledGarbageMay 15, 20181 votes

Spirit Visage + Death's Dance = Pyke is living for a very, very long time and gets pretty tanky alongside his damage thanks to the two items having a lot of synergy with him

DeathBurstMay 15, 20181 votes

Heeh, you're starting to convince me. Bloodthirster works too, it's a shield, not HP directly. Same with Sterak, but I'm not sure what value of shield you'd actually get. Phantom Dancer also works, but the stats aren't so good for him, so I don't know.

MuffledGarbageMay 15, 20181 votes

I didn't think about Bloodthirster cause PBE pyke's attack speed is kinda low tbh but the shield would be insanely helpful for sure

If Pyke's passive gives him base AD for buying HP then sterak's is gonna be AWESOME(when also used with Trinity but idk if his gold gain would be enough)

Ik I'm taking Pyke in the toplane so Phantom Dancer would probably be a first-buy just so that I can safely delay buying Death's dance and/or spirit visage

I think Pyke is gonna have a full build looking something like item 3046 ( item 3111 OR item 3047 depending on matchup) item 3812 item 3065 item 3033 ( item 3147 Or Stormrazor depending on matchup)

Overall fairly damage-related with some high-cost stuff BUT once Pyke has all these items he'll tear through a LOT of enemies

He can deal the damage of most assassins with duskblade(or stormrazor) and then heal through most of the damage that any Fighter can deal giving him splitpushing opportunity

His teamfighting will be similar to Katarina where he aims to jump in and delete a target to snowball a teamfight in his team's favor. Probably through a low-health enemy ADC

Idk tho. I know for sure that I'm saving up to get him with BE rn

DeathBurstMay 15, 20181 votes

No, the AD through the passive is most likely Bonus AD, unless they specifically coded it as Base, and I can't see a compelling reason why they'd bother doing that.

Problem with Sterak is that the shield is "75% of your bonus HP" without base value. The "base" value coming from the fact that Sterak itself gives bonus HP, so you can be sure that the shield will never be 0. But with Pyke's HP conversion, can Sterak's shield still "see" the bonus HP he bought?

Regarding your build, at that point, why bother with Spirit Visage at all, and why not build him full offense like a Zed or a Talon?

MuffledGarbageMay 15, 20181 votes

The spirit visage is so his passive heals him for more health and to increase the Death's dance healing

The reason why I wouldn't take him full offense would be to make him more usable in splitpushing and in 1v1's

Zed and Talon can't really deal with any of the Fighter class(maybe Darius if they poke him down a bunch) due to their lower defenses

With Pyke, his lower defenses mean that he has to compensate by using %damage reduction from items

Death's dance + Phantom dancer give him 30% damage reduction and then effectively 30% damage reduction(even though the damage is turned into a bleed, Pyke's large damage output after Death's dance would allow him to heal most of the bleed damage back fast

So Pyke would effectively have 60% reduced damage after phantom dancer + Death's dance, BUT in order to increase the combo effectiveness, Pyke needs to heal more in order to make that 60% an ACTUAL 60%(instead of the bootleg damage reduction)

So increasing Pyke's healing-power(from both his passive and Death's dance) gives him the ability to negate one of his weaknesses(his low defense)

So toplane Pyke would have a 2 item power spike before being able to deal with most toplaners. After 3(non=boot) items Pyke would scale up tremendously thanks to the 60% damage reduction + Spirit visage heal passive

VoraciousXMay 15, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Velzard of Koz,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=BdNBn2dz,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2018-05-14T22:15:51.634+0000)

Yeah, generally any Health item. It's more likely there not to support support builds but so that he is always squishy while not wasting gold on health.

Most support items don't offer that much health. Redemption for example gives 250. Assuming he got 10 AD for every 100 health, that would be 25 AD. He also wouldn't gain much from building heal or shield power, because he has no heal or shields. Knight's Vow might be good, but it seems like an item that Riot would want him to build. If they're giving him the option to buy health as AD, they'd be wanting him to experiment with tanky items and using them for his benefit.

As for the health regeneration part of his passive, from what it looks like, it's sort of like Rengar's heal. It's only gonna heal some of what he lost.

Who Fed RuMay 14, 20181 votes

it's not hidden power thought.

both for duskblade and his kit this ability is part of the power budged.

TeCoolMageMay 15, 20181 votes

Hidden is partly based on player perspective as well as the creator

IfnethMay 15, 20181 votes

What could be really annoying in higher elo is Pyke forcing the enemy team to ward the bot-lane side bushes and his jungler taking advantage of that. If they don’t ward the side-bush, then Pyke could pop his camo and set up a play from stealth or just keep walking out, trading to waste enemy health and mana, and walking back in to regenerate.

Meanwhile, Pyke and his marksman can still use their wards to cover the river, letting them push the wave to control the brush and let Pyke heal. But this works only if they coordinate to exploit it, which would leave Pyke very dependent on his marksman knowing his kit to do well. I foresee balance problems regarding skill ceiling and skill floor.

DemainaNyxMay 16, 20181 votes

Pyke can just pop W and now he's full health regardless. Or he can stand 5 feet behind his ADC, still in EXP range, and heal. It's not like that one ward in a bush is going to stop him from healing if he really wants to heal.

Z3SleeperMay 15, 20181 votes

Fits the support vision control theme. I don't mind.

Pika FoxMay 15, 20181 votes

He has to have taken damage from champions recently, so its not that big a deal. If you wanted to intentionally abuse this youd need to take free damage, and theyd still be nearby.