I kind of like new Ryze.

Remember the previous one? The one where he had to charge up like 4 spells and only THEN he could sling spells? Yeah, that sucked. Not only that but apparently the "good" players could root you forever. Not only that but the way he had his Q made it so that upgrading that first actually worked a bit against you since it reduced the cooldown of his E and W by its own cooldown, meaning that actually the lower the Q cooldown, the less it would help his W and E cooldown. Not to mention the massive CDR he got absolutely free from his ult that felt like getting items like Frozen Heart that were so iconic to him being a tanky mage before feel obsolete. Remember the Ryze before that one? the real spell machinegun Ryze? That Ryze was kinda fun because he was a REAL spell machinegun and has combos that did't require you yo activate that passive to have his cooldown mechanism active. Though I agree that his kit with spellvamp and all 3 point-and-click abilities was pretty strong and slightly oppressive at times.

We'll be addressing the above as #1 and #2 respectively for reference.

The new one keeps the shield mechanism and skillshit of #1 above, keeping his Q as a skillshot to not give him the super synergetic target point-and-cast facemelting burst down, and also goes back to the #2 mentioned above in terms of actual combos and spell order with his reset/cooldown mechanism being up at all times while also interweaving the shield mechanism into it AND changing a very important part of his combos: mainly his Q and E cooldowns.

The change in Q and E cooldowns is actually what seems like a very defining and important change in the new Ryze and what defines his new combos. Ryze was always reliant on his Q as his trademark setup for his combos, probably as Q is usually a very basic and strong starting skill for most champs with a few variations and circumstances depending on matchups. This new Ryze, however, has his Q on a longer cooldown, and his E on the short cooldown. Why? While keeping his Q as a main damage source, his E now sets up the combos by having interactions with his spells on marked targets and starts the actual setup. Having it this way also reverses his old his cooldown whre previously using his Q helped bring his other abilities up faster by reducing their cooldown time. Now with this reversed setup on his Q and E, it's not his W and E that help refresh his Q, which is his damage ability and is a skillshot, thereby keeping his combos and rewarding their use and setup, but raising his difficulty just a bit so that you're not just using his Q skillshot to get his other abilities more spammable, but instead using his targeted abilities to get his linear skillshot back up faster for his damage, meaning that now landing his Q skillshot is a bit more meaningful.

Now that his abilities also have special interactions with E/Flux marked targets, you have a slight variance in combos on top of the addition of considering getting his shield/move speed buff as a combo itself. A marked W will net you a longer root and a marked Q will net you a stronger damage burst. Plus having two runes and then launching a Q will net you the shield/move spd buff. An average Ryze player will try to probably try to land an E and try something from there. The better Ryze players will know what route they want to go for depending on the situation, whether they want damage, they want more CC or they want to move faster whether for a chase, positioning in a fight, or to run away.

He can also now bring back the Iconic spell machinegun item build with items like Frozen Heart, and on top of that the new changes that add CDR to abyssal scepter and Zhonyas Hourglass give him good support for tankiness and his desire for CDR all into one. I'm not sure how to comment on his ult. The potential is most certainly there and I've gotten some good use of it, but there have been times where I would have gotten better results from his old movespeed and spellvamp ult, especially with the lack of WOTA now. However in actual coordinated teams I could see his new ult have massive utility, which I like. Sadly I'm lacking in the teamwork department.

All in all, I like throwing spells and I like combos, and Ryze is throwing out Hadoukens like we're back in Street Fighter. Feels good.