So how come they gave Ryze a random teleportation ultimate?

5G8Nri0B54·7/24/2016, 1:16:40 AM·24 votes·39,771 views

He's always been a rapidfire throw energy at people mage.

And all of a sudden........................................."hey guise letz teleport!"

I mean, I'm not saying it's bad or anything. But as far as cohesizeness goes, it's like giving Fiora an ultimate that heals her teammates.

101 Comments

DoctorInju7/24/2016, 4:57:01 AM32 votes

{quoted} But as far as cohesizeness goes, it's like giving Fiora an ultimate that heals her teammates.

Some friends and I were in a terrible car accident a few years back and one guy had lost consciousness from blood loss. It was in the country, so the ambulance was about 30 minutes away. Luckily, one of my buddies was into fencing. He challenged the other driver to a duel, easily bested him, and was able to save our friend's life thanks to the resultant AoE heal. It's like you don't know the slightest thing about fencing OR emergency medicine. The next time you visit an ER, I dare you to find a doctor without a rapier on his belt.

RiotMeddler7/24/2016, 3:09:26 AM17 votes

Gameplay rationale:

  • Part of the reason Ryze has been hard to balance in the past is because he's mainly just brought damage. Giving him some more utility, and in a team focused way, allows us to give him power without him being as effective in a straight head to head fight.
  • A group teleport is an ability we've wanted to do for quite a while. First time we tried it, at least while I've been at Riot, was on Lulu. It showed promise, but we concluded it would work better on someone who could do well even if no allies went with them (we were still assuming Lulu would just get support play and not outduel a huge number of champs if solo, whoops).

Thematic rationale:

  • Ryze is a ancient archmage who roams Runeterra searching for World Runes. He's been doing so for an extremely long time (centuries?). Some form of transportation magic seemed like a really strong fit for an eternal traveler as a result.
  • Unlike many of the other mages in LoL Ryze has time to master his craft. Annie or Syndra for example have a lot of innate power and raw talent. They're not yet very refined about it though, so tend to do one or two things really hard (burn stuff and smash things into other things respectively). Ryze however's got enough practice to have a broader mastery over his magical talent, so he's adept at doing a range of different things with the power he's got.
lilpokfluf7/24/2016, 1:22:54 AM9 votes

Runemaster roughly translates to teleport queen in Portuguese