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How to nerf Ryze in competitive play while buffing him in solo queue from a 900k mastery 5 OTP

Danjeng·2/18/2018, 7:14:48 PM·52 votes·4,449 views

I've been critical of Ryze's ultimate since mid-season 6, when his rework came out. There are upcoming nerfs to Ryze, so here are some points. His lore states he is a 1000 year old archmage, as he's already seen whole empires rise and fall and loved ones lost. So he feels little attachment to those around him. He says: https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/leagueoflegends/images/a/a4/Ryze.move04.ogg/revision/latest?cb=20160709140908

Yet his ultimate teleports his allies with him, which contradicts that. Furthermore, his ultimate has no synergy whatsoever in his kit, and could have been utilized on any champion. It's about as complementary to Ryze as it would if Soraka were to have a single target nuke as an ultimate.

There is a discrepancy between pro play and solo queue. A major factor of this gap is due to his ultimate that works very well in organized teams but quite useless elsewhere. For instance, a year ago Bjergsen used it to help his team rush Baron, while the enemy team simply could not contest it. He also used it to take an extra turret. In solo queue, such things are not possible to do.

So, to have Ryze have less presence in competitive, his ultimate should be nerfed. The ability to take along allies removed, along with a reduced range. This lowers his map presence. However, have his ultimate count as a basic ability for the purposes of overload. For those who aren't familiar, Ryze's overload is a fairly basic skill on its own, but synergizes well with his other basic spells. For some reason, it never interacted with the ultimate, which was quite odd and made it seem more out of place than it was already. Having his ultimate count as one would make his kit much more cohesive.

In conclusion, Ryze would have an ultimate that fits in with his lore and gameplay, along with being less of a dominant pick in competitive, while being much more fun to play and about the same power level he already is in solo queue.

Thank you for your comments. I will address some concerns. What sets apart Ryze's teleport from Twisted Fate's, is that Twisted Fate cannot issue commands during his ultimate channel, while Ryze can. This allows Ryze to use it in a fight, while TF uses it for picks/vision. I think this change would further distinguish the two ultimates.

In the Ryze champion spotlight, they suggested using Ryze's ultimate in the midst of a team fight. With his current ultimate, it is a very bad idea, or at least in my experience, to do so. Especially in solo queue. It may even end up costing the game by mis-positioning the team.

If Ryze's ult interacted with Q, it would make for a better tool to actually deliver on what the spotlight promised (an ultimate to reposition during a battle). Perhaps with the range greatly reduced, the cooldown may be lowered as well, to compensate for its inability to no longer make picks/take objectives/take allies. Mainly it would lower his constant appearance in the pro scene, because it is such a powerful ability there. Ryze will still be picked, just not nearly to the extent he is now.

Also, would make playing against Ryze much better! Isn't it annoying when Ryze splitpushes and ults away with little consequences? Not a fun ultimate at all. But it's more interesting playing around his ult during a fight. Example is preemptively placing abilities with delays (like Zilean Q) over the portal or the landing zone to discourage Ryze from going into the ult. But then Ryze can use the ult to bait out Zilean Q, etc.

_For those who play Ryze, imagine the great amount of possibilities you can do with a extra rune stack/Q reset with his ultimate. My suggested changes may even weaken him in solo queue too, but would make his ult way more fun with what new combos you can do, like teleports behind you. _

119 Comments

Jinx Hunter2/18/2018, 10:50:24 PM26 votes

Just rework him, we know its coming again. Its like a tradition at this point.

HaIlMonitor2/18/2018, 10:57:50 PM14 votes

If it has a shorter range then Twisted fate why play ryze over him? And if its the same then you make one champ worst kind of rotating based on meta and buffs/nerfs. I like the idea but it kind of overlaps another champ.

koshkyra2/18/2018, 11:31:22 PM8 votes

I would actually like a single target nuke on raka tbh

Teridax682/19/2018, 2:10:35 AM4 votes

If I remember correctly, the designer who worked on Ryze just plainly said they wanted a competitive playmaking ult, and so just plopped in semi-global mobility with a twist just for that purpose. I agree that it doesn't really relate to Ryze on a thematic or gameplay level, and so should likely be replaced by something that doesn't contribute to such a wide discrepancy between his solo queue and pro play performance.

With that said, I also think Ryze could probably do with some other changes to his kit: I think we're finally getting there, but Ryze still has some mechanical awkwardness to his kit that makes him very difficult to learn, along with stuff he just shouldn't have at all (i.e. burst with his EQ). Additionally, his ties to mana I'd say have become as thematically irrelevant as his portal ult, so it might also be better to cut out his current stats-for-stats passive and mana ratios, and instead make him manaless (mana is fundamentally inappropriate for a super-spammy caster playstyle anyways).