What can be done with Ryze?

Ryze is a champion that saw a very significant nerf as of patch 6.3. Reason being: "To put it lightly, the discrepancy between a new Ryze player and a Ryze veteran is staggering" (Riot). Some players in the community backlashed at this, saying veteran players should be much better than new players with a champion, but I feel they are missing the true intention of the nerf. Ryze, played to his full potential, honestly feels unfair. He has one of the highest damage outputs in a team fight, quite possibly the highest, while building as a fighter. This, when paired with the spellvamp of his ult, makes him an incredible threat and a very hard target to kill. His kit gives him the ability to permanently snare a champion, completely negating all damage from melee champions (commonly seen in top lane).

To recap, Ryze's incredibly high damage output while also remaining tanky and his ability to permasnare makes playing against him feel unfair to players.

6.3 addressed this issue by capping the number of spells he can throw out due to his passive to 5. Looking back at footage, Ryze, throwing spells at full speed, can reach above 10 spellcasts. This nerf gutted his damage output, reducing it to half. The window to cast while his passive is active was also reduced to 2.5 seconds at level one, scaling back to 5 seconds later in the game. This means that stuns early in the game drastically reduce the time that Ryze can cast spells with his passive. The reduction of his late game damage output by roughly half on top of giving him a weaker kill pressure early game have given Ryze players a much harder time playing well.

Before 6.3, I will admit, Ryze, if played correctly, was broken. If engages were timed in favor of his passive, there was a very strong probability that the fight would be won. After 6.3, while Ryze still can be played well and dominate games, he has fallen off as a strong champion.

https://gyazo.com/a30a2f2d1df7c93c3185e82d8c4e3901.png

Post-6.3, Ryze's win rate tanked to 43%. In my opinion, the 6.3 nerf was too large of a nerf and has put Ryze in a spot that is too weak.

TL;DR above, Ryze before 6.3 was too strong. Ryze after 6.3 is too weak.

That gets me to my question now: "What can be done with Ryze?" In my eyes, the problem stems from his high raw damage, permasnare, and ult giving him incredibly high survivability in fights. These can lead to players playing against him to feel like the fight was unfair, which is never healthy for any champion.

The problem I have with the way Ryze was nerfed as of 6.3 is that players who can combo with Ryze and understand how his kit worked are having their reward of knowing how to play him reduced in that his fundamental mechanic of comboing with his passive has been reduced. It's a frustrating nerf as the work put in to understanding Ryze mechanically is being somewhat taken away.

The best way to balance Ryze would be to reduce his damage output and his permasnare. To reduce his damage output, I think it would be appropriate to reduce the base damage (not the ability power and mana scalings) on his w and e by about 15-20%. Considering his damage output is from all of spells working in conjunction, a slight decrease in base power on two of his damage dealing spells will help prevent his early output from being too atrocious without completely gutting him as 6.3 did. The reason I don't think Q should be changed is to give new players more of a chance to do well by just landing skillshots. It's simple and rewarding and will keep new Ryze players engaged. To counteract the permasnare while keeping Runic Prison's identity, Runic Prison's snare should be reduced from 1 / 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.4 seconds to .8 / .9 / 1 / 1.1 / 1.2 seconds. Runic Prison should also have a slight slow (20-25%?) for 1 / 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3 / 1.4 seconds. Reducing the snare time will still hold the target in place to land a follow up Q but it won't last long enough for the target to feel completely immobilized, allowing for more counterplay. The slow addition to Runic Prison will keep the identity of "perma-crowd control" without feeling too powerful or too weak.

There are probably a few ways of bringing Ryze into a healthy state without losing his identity. If you have ideas, please share.