The Ryze rework seems hard or near impossible to balance

TheGrot··8 votes·1,735 views

I'm solely looking at his ultimate right now. Ryze's new ultimate, as I see it, will be near impossible to balance. Here's why.

Here's the general scenario. We get to mid/late game and let's say Ryze's team goes to siege top turret (either inner or inhib). As always, you prep the waves before beginning your siege top. So let's say you're grouped as a 5 man, sieging the enemy top turret, and the enemy team is also grouped as a 5 man under top tower. You don't have to go for any risky plays, you're planning on waiting for the mid wave to hit the enemy turret. Standard stuff so far. As soon as that wave hits turret, Ryze ults, and your entire team is instantly on mid lane turret, while the enemy team is sitting top lane. If this is inner turret, you get an inner and maybe some damage on inhibitor turret. If this is inhibitor turret, you probably get inhibitor turret plus inhibitor.

"But I can send my top laner with teleport to go clear the waves, so the minions won't auto push to my turret."

Okay, sure. Let's send both of the top laners to split push. Looking at the range on Ryze ultimate, the only restriction is it would have to be one lane over. In other words, you can't be pushing top and bot, but mid and either top or bot is fine. So now I have my two top laners split pushing against each other. As soon as my top laner gets waves to the enemy turret, I can do the same thing. I can press R, and we probably get a pick on the enemy top laner on top of the turrets.

"But what if my top laner is a superior split pusher, and the minions waves never come close to my towers?"

It's the same situation as long as the two lanes being pushed are adjacent to each other. Ryze ults the team over to the enemy top laner and gets free pick off of it. Now, you can make pretty much any play you want since the top laner is dead for 30-40+ seconds. There isn't a top laner in the game I can think of that isn't susceptible to a 4 man teleport gank behind them.

The rotational advantage that this Ryze ultimate offers to a team has little to no counter play. "But you can't know that it will be overpowered yet. If it is, you can just nerf the ability." My response to this is, "How?" How do you nerf this ability? The way I see it, Ryze is either underwhelming or overpowered. The ability either remains overpowered, or it is nerfed to the point that it has no significant use. I don't see how you would nerf this ability to be an in between, but maybe it's possible. Honestly, I think giving Ryze this ability for an ultimate is just a mistake.

11 Comments

Vicarious1175 votes

I think it'll be fine, there are just far too many ways for the Ryze to fuck his team using that ultimate for it to be considered OP.

In competitive LCS level of play it might be, but put him behind or his team behind and splitting their ranks up for a flank will more often then not be a mistake in and of itself.

It might be difficult to properly balance, I won't deny that, but it's currently impossible to balance the current Ryze in a much worse way, so I'm willing to take the chance.

TheGrot3 votes

I'm not saying the rework as a whole is bad. I think the ultimate ability is bad. If you ask me, Riot should just give him a different ultimate.

rtbf697746144 votes

I agree completely.

Flaherty3 votes

Idk if hard CC stops his ult but if it doesn't then you make it. Increase the channel time so the enemy has more time to CC him to stop the ult. There balanced.

Vaydrin2 votes

This guy, has a brain

TheGrot1 votes

This goes back to my point. If it's too easy to stop the ultimate, then it just won't be good. It's really hard for me to see this ultimate having a middle ground. You could also say "Limit the number of champions that can teleport." But if using the ability requires that you abandon a teammate to die, then I'm not sure how good it would be.

Flaherty2 votes

Lot's of champions have a channeled ult that is stopped by cc and they aren't in a bad spot, why is this case different?

redfeenix2 votes

I think its cool they're willing to experiment and add cool new abilities.

I'm bored of the same old "Do tons of damage" ultimates for most mages. Having utlilty in his kit instead of just straight up damage will definatly open up some interesting game play.

Agree with most of your points though.

Arakadia1 votes

I think that if it is OP, it should be reworked into a flank ability. Give it a much shorter cd but much shorter range.

Ryzing2Diamond1 votes

First, even at rank 2, the range is faaar too low to do any of the stuff you're suggesting unless pushed far up into the lane (You can transfer creeps from one inhib turret to another.) You can ult from Mid tower to just off dragon. You can't ult from mid to bot, or top to mid. It's not TF/Nocts ult, it's similar in the fact that it's a teleport but it's not that high in range.

Now, to the bad parts that you're correct to be worried about. Second, you don't just teleport teammates, you also teleport minions. So, if it ever were able to teleport a whole lane over, you could transfer minions ONTO a tower, making a dive basically punishless.

Personally, I see myself using the ultimate more to teleport my minions directly onto the enemy tower while he's not there, making him lose CS and force-pushing my lane.

Friday951 votes

Well what you are suggesting isnt very possible as some are exaggerating the actual range the ult has, its not crazy far. I will say, In competitive it will be probably too strong, and from personal experience using it, in Soloq/partial premadeq especially below plat theres few situations where its going to be coordinated enough to be used effectively, and I have seldom used it as Ryze, other than to help my own splitpushing.

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