Things Ryze needs
Since his rework Ryze has been very "MEH" in terms of potency. Now of course Riot are tweaking numbers but I think its more than just numbers that are the problem; well atleast more than damage numbers. His whole kit feels kinda sluggish in delivery, I have a hard time doing "tons of damage" with him because his E Spell Flux feels like it barely does any damage, and then at random it does absurd damage and I haven't a clue as to how it happened. His Q doesn't do enough damage, whether you go AP or Mana based it still feels wimpy. His W is ok, but unless you rank it up 1st, the root duration leaves much to be desired.
His passive has an unclear explanation of how it works:
Ryze's spells grants a stack of Arcane Mastery for 12 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. At 5 stacks, Ryze becomes supercharged for 3 + (1 × Desperate Power's rank) seconds, gaining a shield that blocks 「 20 + (5 × Ryze's level) 」(+ 8% of his max. mana) damage For the same duration, Ryze's spellcasts reduce his other spells' cooldowns by 「 Overload's cooldown 」, able to be brought to a minimum of 0.25 seconds.
To translate: Every 5 spellcasts, Ryze gains a shield of 25/30/35/40/45/50/60/65/70/75/80/85/90/95/100/105/110/115 (+8% of max mana) for 3 seconds (+1 second per rank in your ultimate) and gains arcane mastery buff. While Arcane mastery is active your spells' cooldowns are reduced by the cooldown of your Overload Spell.
the whole cooldown part only takes place while you have arcane mastery, in essence its a slower version of Ryze whose Q hits weaker than ever. Another oddity is that if you do the math, having cooldown reduction is actually bad with this passive, because the cooldown effect with the arcane mastery buff is diminished the more cooldown reduction you have, but you don't have a choice because his ultimate gives a free 10/20/30% cooldown reduction. Yipee! Our kit actually ends up screwing itself over and we don't have to build a thing... Its as if our ultimate and passive are working against each other without us there to do anything about it.
~~ Here is what I think his kit needs:
-The splash range on his E Spell Flux or missile speed needs to be increased so it either hits faster or its easier to hit multiple targets to do increased damage. Right now the mana cost of spell flux does not justify the hit or miss nature of it if your target happens to move away from other targets.
-His ultimate should only give 10/15/20% cooldown reduction because of the fact of item inefficiency
-His passive's cooldown reduction mechanic should only apply the base cooldown (unmodified by cooldown reduction) of his Q skill Overload. Riot has said before they don't like negative stats and this is basically without an actual negative sign there. With this change, all his skills would lose 4 seconds every spell cast and the text the passive mentions about no lower than 0.25 would have much more relevance as it would prevent the spaming of his Q. Also to avoid issues I would make it so his Q would only get 25% of the effect (1 second instead of 4) to prevent endless Q spamming. at 40% cdr his Q would have 2.4 second cooldown so it would take two spellcasts to finish it's cooldown enough and his other skills have much longer cooldowns already.
a proper rotation would be with 4 stacks of arcane mastery: R,Q,W,E,Q
) relies on spamming spells as much as possible, which triggers his passive pretty regularily.
