Thoughts About New Ryze Update from a Former Ryze Player

Ryze has always been one of my favorite champions. I just like the gameplay of being a tanky-bruiser mage with a high skill ceiling thanks to spammy spells. But ever since his last rework he's been feeling bad for me, to the point where I've decided to basically quit him. My decision came from a lot of frustration with his kit (possibly caused by lag which since then I've fixed, but that's not really the point) but more importantly, because Riot hates this champion. Every day when I read the patch notes and I see another Ryze nerf I think to myself, "Damn I really dodged a bullet by dropping this champion." because it feels like Ryze is only playable by the top 1%. I swear, you have to be either a pro player or a masochist if you want to play Ryze, it's that bad (No wonder why the mental health of r/Ryzemains is so low, maining that champion will make you go insane.)

Despite what the memes may tell you, Ryze is actually in desperate need of a rework. Luckily Riot has finally announced his yearly rework after skipping out on one last year. This update is smaller than the previous ones and is more of a powershift kind of like what Azir got last year IIRC. I'm going to breakdown everything that they posted and put my thoughts on them. All of these changes are being pulled from https://www.reddit.com/r/RyzeMains/comments/8c31do/request_for_thoughtsfeedback/?ref=share&ref_source=link If you are wondering.

#Goals

Goal: Ryze maintains similar, if not increased cast cadence as game advances.

Not sure what this means. I think they mean that Ryze's combos or the way he casts his spells should feel the same as the game goes on? Sure, we'll go with that.

Goal: Power down early, especially in a pve context. Power up later.

Agreed. Right now, Ryze's early game feels a bit too solid, especially his waveclear. While late game his power doesn't feel as good as it should be. One of the big reasons is because he can't really deal with tanks. While Ryze is usually known as the "Machine Gun Mage," honestly calling him a shotgun mage is more accurate. He has a big burst of spells at the beginning but after he blows his load all he really does is spam EQs. This makes him really good in dueling and skirmishes but makes him awful in teamfights, especially because his entire kit gets cockblocked by tanks. If he gets onto a squishy, he bursts really hard in 3 spells, but its really difficult to get spellflux on a squishy in a teamfight without flashing or flanking which are both really risky moves.

Goal: Ryze is more powerful in a solo queue environment; less so in pro

Difficult partly because Ryze's strength in pro-play comes from his ultimate which isn't going to be changed very much here. If you lower his safe earlygame and make him into a scaling champion, I think that'll work.

Overload (Q) has 5 ranks and Realm Warp (R) has 3. Hopefully less confusing to rank up his spells.

Ranking up his spells isn't really confusing per say, but it always felt awkward only having 2 points in ult and 6 points in Q. It felt a bit like a cop-out, like "We can't balance this ability properly so let's just build a solution out of wire and string." If the execution is well done, I'd support it.

I'll talk about the rest of the notes in the kit section because the rest of the goals are just outlining what the changes are.

#Changes

General

Improved spell queueing for Overload, Rune Prison, and Spell Flux

Not sure how this will effect him in game, we will have to see. Ryze already feels fairly smooth to combo with but anything that will make him feel smoother is good in my eyes.

Base Stats

Base Mana :: 400 >>> 300

This is going to be a common trend. Riot is reducing Ryze's overall mana pool and raising his overall manacosts for a gimmicky W change which we'll talk about later.

Overload (Q)

Spell Ranks :: 6 (1/3/5/7/9/11) >>> 5 (1/3/5/7/9) Damage :: 60/85/110/135/160/185 (+45%AP) (+3%BonusMana) >>> 70/90/110/130/150 (+40%AP) (+2%BonusMana) Cost :: 40 >>> 50 Movement Speed :: 25/28/31/34/37/40% >>> 20/25/30/35/40% Base Shielding :: 65-150 based on character level (+60%AP) (+3%BonusMana) >>> 70/90/110/130/150 (+40%AP) (+2%BonusMana) Rune Duration :: 4 >>> 5, renewing on taking or dealing damage

This is overall a big nerf. Less spell ranks but in turn Riot is hitting the base, scaling, mana cost, movement speed, and shielding on this spell. Even the change from shielding based on character level to shielding based on ability level is a nerf thanks to the E changes which we'll talk about later.

I believe that the rune duration change is supposed to have something to do with the E changes which we'll talk about later. Honestly I don't really get this change because Ryze usually discharges his runes as soon as he gets them. And even then if you want to refresh the rune you have to take damage which is not optimal. Weird change.

Rune Prison (W)

Damage :: 80/100/120/140/160 (+60%AP) (1%BonusMana) >>> 70/90/110/130/150 (+40%AP) (+2%BonusMana) Cooldown :: 13/12/11/10/9 >>> 15/13/11/9/7 CC type :: roots for 0.75 seconds >>> applies a 50% slow that decays over 1.5 seconds REMOVED :: Mana Cost NEW :: Casting Rune Prison restores 8/9/10/11/12% of Ryze's maximum Mana

This is the biggest change in the kit. Changing the spell from a snare to a slow is going to be really controversial, especially for Ryze mains who loved the point and click snare, but honestly I think it's necessary. The 0.75 second snare we have now feels awful to use because its barely there. I also want to note that the EMP version of this spell is still a snare, however the duration was nerfed from 2 seconds to 1.5. I also want to point out that the base damage and scaling on this spell was nerfed as well. I also want to note the 7 second cooldown at max rank. With 45% cdr, that goes down to about 3.5 second cooldown which is extremely low. I think Riot wants to push Ryze towards being an actual machine gun mage late game and being able to full combo a lot more often than before is going to help with that a lot.

The biggest thing here might actually be the mana changes. With the nerfs to the rest of his kit, and the E changes, Ryze is going to be more mana hungry than ever. Honestly, my first impression is negative. Riot wants to push Ryze towards being weaker early game, but this W change forces Ryze to either use his W on minions or try to trade more with his opponent in lane which is weird. But honestly I need to play this in game to see if it actually works to solve Ryze's mana problems early on, or if its just a weird gimmick.

Now here comes the heavy hitting content

Spell Flux (E)

Damage :: 70/90/110/130/150 (+30%AP) (+2%BonusMana) >>> 70/90/110/130/150 (+40%AP) (+2%BonusMana) Cooldown :: 3.25/3.00/2.75/2.50/2.25 >>> 9/5/3/2/1.5 Cost :: 40/55/70/85/100 >>> 50/75/100/125/150 Overload Bonus Damage :: 40/50/60/70/80% >>> 15-100% based on Ryze's level W Bonus :: Increased Root Duration >>> Roots instead of slowing Spread Damage :: 50% >>> 100% Bounce Radius (also applies to Q) :: 350 >>> 275 Bounce Rules (also applies to Q) :: Center to center >>> edge to edge REMOVED :: Killing an enemy with Flux with one of Ryze's spells spreads flux to nearby enemies (still spreads when the Spell Flux cast kills its target)

WHAT? 9 SECOND COOLDOWN AT LEVEL 1? EXCUSE ME? Are you trying to kill Ryze? Because these are changes that you put out to kill Ryze. First of all, the E change means that if you actually want to combo with this champion, you need to put in at least 2 levels early so that you can get the cooldown down to 3 seconds. Which is convient because Riot made sure to change every aspect of this spell so that maxing it early sucks really fucking hard. First of all, the mana costs spikes massively hard with level. 100 mana at level 3 feels like shit and I don't think the W changes are enough to make up for Riot nerfing literally every other source of mana in his entire kit. Also Riot decided to remove the bonus overload damage from maxing E so that he feels even worse about maxing this spell since its granting him basically no damage. Also the damage per level here looks awful. 15% bonus at level 1? are you shitting me? It's going to take so much time to ramp up to the same amount of damage you would get on live just for the ability to oneshot once you hit level 18. While yes, it does look like a buff late game, especially with the CD nerfs, the nerfs to the early game feel crippling. The easiest comparison I can make is to Shaco. With the rework, Shaco was basically forced to max Q or at least put a few levels into Q. This felt awful for Shaco because putting points into Q didn't give any damage, but the alternative was not having a stealth. But hey, at least Shaco's stealth is longer late game! Right guys?

Realm Warp (R)

Ranks :: 2 (6/11) >>> 3 (6/11/16) Range :: 1750/3000 >>> 4000 all ranks Cooldown :: 180 >>> 300/240/180

Just for comparison sake, Twisted Fate's ultimate is 5500 while Taliyah's ultimate is 3000 at level 1 but scales up to 4500 and eventually 6000. I can't really tell if these changes are good or bad. On one hand, it is going to be easier to use this as a low elo player. Part of the reason why the ult was so bad for solo queue was because it was really difficult for someone to know what the fuck they are supposed to use it for. My teammates don't take it, and the range is awful. What do I do? Good Ryze players have to get creative with this spell. Use it to outplay, or to fuck with minion waves, or to escape. RIP ZHONYAS ULT. Now you can actually use it like a TF ultimate which makes it a lot more logical. However, Ryze is supposed to be a late game champion, but giving him the ability to roam like TF is a lot more of an early-mid game buff, and I'm afraid that Ryze and TF might compete with a niche too hard, with them both having the ability to do the same thing (global roams, solid waveclear, good burst.) If Ryze is actually able to use this properly, then he'll become a better TF. But because of the waveclear nerfs he really won't be able to which leads me to question what the point of this ability really is other than being something that is abused in pro-play and causes Ryze to be nerfed. BTW this doesn't nerf him in pro-play. If anything I would say that this is a neutral change to him. Being able to teleport people really far is really strong.

Conclusion

All in all, I like the idea behind these changes but I feel like the execution falls short. The mana changes feel weird, his early looks awful, his skill order conflicts with itself and all in all more work needs to be done here. I feel like Ryze is going to be WAAAY too level dependent with these changes. Almost every champion has some kind of one point wonder spell. A spell which is strong regardless of what level it is. But Ryze really needs all of his spells maxed to be good because of his reliance on everything being low CD. Maxing E somehow feels more important but also worse. The attempt to shift Ryze lategame into a true machine gun mages sounds good but you literally need to be level 18 to get to that point which feels ridiculous. Also the base damage nerfs to his Q and W just baffles me. What is the point?

Personally if I was behind these changes, I would revert the mana nerfs to his E, and bring the overload scaling back to be on E level as opposed to base level to make it so you can put some points into this without feeling too bad about yourself. I would also bring down the CD on his W a bit more with level so that you can get it to that sweet spot without having to max out this spell. All in all, Ryze's level 1-3 would still be weak as shit, but he would spike a little earlier and so he wouldn't have such an awkward skill curve and could possibly make a bit more use out of his newly buffed ultimate. I would probably also revert the scaling nerfs on his spells since I don't really see the point of them.

There is a chance that the changes that I put up would make him too strong, and also that we can't really tell the strength level of Ryze without getting our hands on him on PBE, but I believe if these changes hit live as is, Ryze is going to be mega-nerfed and is going to feel like absolute shit. I really like the direction of moving Ryze towards a real dps mage as opposed to the weird semi-burst kind of dps mage that we have now, but his early game has been hit way too hard.