Ryze Balanced?

His combo is scary when he can do it with you permanently snared

Ryze is in a spot that he's not unfamiliar with which is he can never truly be "balanced" he's had 2 reworks now since his initial release at launch of the game in 2009 and still Riot cannot figure out what to do with him without totally stripping his identity as a low range mana scaling spell slinging Mage. Before this rework Ryze was balanced strictly on numbers, if he was too weak they'd tweak a spells damage and then he'd become too strong, they bring the numbers down and he becomes too weak and no one wants to play him unless they have relentless patience of playing super safe while waiting for 30 minute mark to grab a Void Staff and finally dominate the late game with right team. He had reliable damage due to all his spells being point & click and having a very high Mana damage scaling compared to his low AP scaling meant that in the current meta Mana items were mostly tacked onto defense items making him a tanky melt facing mage, you never want to be in his snare range or you'll be dead in seconds. His last tweak before the full rework actually made him a tiny bit balanced but Riot had bigger plans and gave him a small buff to keep him relevant.

Now here we are with this new Ryze which is now a low range AP reliant scaling spamming mage who still has to buy huge mana items because now you constantly have to spam spells to keep him in his happy zone which is his new passive that actually is a lot more frustrating and confusing to play with and play against for first couple of games. I find the new Ryze to be super strong when he's in the right position, has 60% mana available and his opponent has no way to harass him which is a lot of melee top laners especially ones with no gap closes that can keep you safe from Ryze's W snare. It's now a red light game where you wait for Ryze to be on 0 stacks to try and fight him and run far away when he's at 3 stacks as he can easily press Ult to get 4 then W to get his 5 passive pop and spam W-Q-E-Q repeat. I find Ryze's E to be VERY strong and highly underrated as to why Ryze can melt face with his combo because his E will reduce the targets magic resist to 8% at rank 1 that can stack 3 times (8x3=24) and can scale to 12% at Rank 5 (3 stacks = 36% reduced magic resist that can AOE with his ult to multiple targets) If you can learn how to position yourself and maintain your mana and passive stacks you can really hard carry games with Ryze. What makes Ryze easy to counter is his frustrating low range and hatred of CC, if Ryze gets stunned or hard slowed for a few seconds he's super vulnerable as he can't position himself well and will miss his stacks screwing up his combo. He relies on his team to jump in first so he can hide behind and spam targets.

Personally I really liked the old play style of Ryze and find it more balanced for the enemy and the player than this new one, I am hoping Riot Repetoir can come back to Ryze and change him again, I say keep trying! One day we will see a Ryze that can be balanced fairly and picked when needed not just to unfairly stomp games if you're more experienced with him. Also I find it really outrageous that Riot didn't make a Champion Spotlight for Ryze's rework and my guesses are it's rather they felt Ryze is way too complex to explain now (I don't blame them) or they are still waiting for his Visual Update to come.

Here's a video with more opinion about Ryze's balance issue. https://youtu.be/gUTLYItWrBg?t=5m31s

Ryze will literally never be balanced. The fact of life when you have a point and click root on a 1 1/2 second cooldown. But apparently Shen's old Q was "Too oppressive"

Fight him without his passive and you'll see how weak he really is early.

No he is not, he is oppressive and faceroll.

He has one of two modes:

Impossible to deal with if you're a melee champ who doesn't outburst him.

Or incredible mediocre against a ranged champ.

He has no middle ground and is in a sense functionally "broken" in terms of gameplay. Not broken as in overpowered but broken as in dysfunctional.