Ryze is actually really strong. *build and spell combos included*

After about ~20 games as the new and improved Ryze, I've come to the conclusion that Ryze is currently the strongest champion on the rift, by far. Ryze is very tanky, has large amounts of damage, both sustained and burst, and has a reliable and powerful instantaneous snare to ensure opponents get very little counterplay against him.

Laning

Laning is different from pre-buff Ryze, but is only weaker in levels 1-3 where the old strategy of Q 'em until they die no longer works. Now, thanks to his passive, Ryze has extremely potent burst potential, even with only a tear. Squishy targets are snared with extreme prejudice, and given little chance for counterplay. Tanks are shredded into pieces with optimal damage combos as they are helpless to trade back through Ryze's shield. Bruisers are quickly outscaled and outclassed, whether they build damage or defense. The best option against a Ryze in lane is to have challenging smite, Cinderhulk, and some MR, but since this path was just nerfed, it will likely no longer work.

_In a strict 1v1 scenerio, Ryze, played well, will simply not lose. _ For a champion that scales into a late game monster, this is a very bad position to be in.

Late Game Power Spike

Even though Ryze's lane is quite strong and suffocating, it isn't his strongest feature. Ryze's strongest point is achieved once he finishes Tear, Mercury Treads (or Sorc Shoes if there is very little cc) and Rod of Ages. At this point in the game, Ryze can simply walk up to people, snare them, and kill them with his team. There isn't much they can do in response. If they try to fight back, Ryze will simply get off a second snare, and thanks to his high defense, he'll probably survive. Once Ryze finishes further items, such as Seraph's Embrace, Abyssal Scepter, Frozen Heart, and Guardian Angel, he becomes a true force of nature, and will readily slaughter anyone with his combination of high burst, sustained MR shred, multiple snares, high defense and good spell vamp. Oh, and AoE.

Spell Combos The stacks of passive required for the combo is listed in (parenthesis), passive activation denoted with !exclamation point!.

Double Snare (4): W!>R>Q>E>Q>W This is my bread and butter playmaking combo, generally started with Flash or Homeguard Teleport. It allows you to snare a single target twice in rapid succession, with only the smallest window available for escape.

Tank Shredding (4): E!>Q>W>R>(1 Teemo range)E>Q>W>Q The main idea is to get your 3 stacks of MR shred with two casts of E, as well as getting as many Q casts as possible. If the enemy is standing near a single minion, it will bounce with the first cast, otherwise you have to close into melee range during the first snare. Use your ulti to close the gap quickly and bounce E off yourself.

Minions blocking? (3): E>R!>Q>W>Q>E>Q>W It's pointless to try to hide behind minions... Using R while a projectile is in the air gives the cast projectile aoe, so cast E first, before R. Also good for wave clearing.

Entering Teamfight (1): R>E>Q>W!>Q>E>Q>W Entering Teamfight (2): R>E>W!>Q>E>Q>W Entering Teamfight (3): R>W!>Q>E>Q>W Ryze's W is generally his most powerful tool when entering a teamfight. Use your ultimate to get into position, and proc your passive with W so that you can get two snares off quickly. In general, if you have 0 stacks, it's better to use an empty Q and wait for it to come off cooldown than to use your snare without passive resets.

Let's start a teamfight, I'm OP (w/e): Faceroll keyboard>win game Ryze's most powerful combo, only works if you're really skilled with him, like me.

Avoid stalling: R!>Q>W>E>Q Ryze's Q takes one spell to reset, E takes two, and W takes 4, or 3 and a second. If you use your Ultimate to close distance, then Q>W>E>Q, you "stall" and waste precious seconds of passive.

I wanna be good at Ryze but only wanna learn one combo (3): R>W!>Q>E>Q>W>Q>E>Q>W In case you missed it, the combo is W>Q>E>Q>W, repeat until passive is worn off.

Build Trade Mercs for Sorcs if the enemy has no cc

Use 21/9 as Masteries, taking the right side of the offense tree, and the %bonus health from defense. Anything other than 21 offense lowers damage output too dramatically, without upside. Dont worry about the 53% CDR, you lose about 500 gold of CDR value at level 16... Frozen Heart/Abyssal is still better than Spirit Visage/Void Staff. It's generally not worth skipping FH, since there's a small chance you can make mistakes and get killed by the enemy ADC without it.

For Runes, I use a standard AP page with magic pen reds, Health/lvl yellows, mr/level blues, and AP quints. I think spell vamp, mpen, or movespeed quints will also work.

tl;dr Ryze is a tanky, bursty initiator with high aoe sustained damage and sustained crowd control. He's stronger than the >50% winrate gives him credit, and probably deserves a nerf, but I'll enjoy my 85% winrate with him in the meantime (even though I never played Ryze before his rework)