Ryze Muramana build analysis

So, after reading on Reddit that Muramana works great on Ryze, despite not being an ad scaling champ, due to his spamming of single target spells, I decided to try playing it. On ARAM. I'm not so good at him on SR, but I already loved him on ARAM, and playing with Muramana just made it even more fun.

One game, somebody informed me there was actually a specific guy who came up with this build. I dunno who it is, but if anyone can enlighten me, please do.

Another game, somebody kept spam pinging my gear choices. Now, that game was going poorly, and I wasn't doing well, but it wasn't because I built Muramana; no one was doing well. But it made me think... Intuitively, even immediately after finishing muramana, before full build, adding up to 180 physical damage to all your spells/attacks other than empowered E, and another 85 to auto-attacks, seems like it must be the best possible use of 2400 gold.

So, I did the math in a spreadsheet. For fun, really. But I feel like sharing the results.

I considered a "good" rotation where you're hitting empowered overloads and weaving in aa's, and a "me" rotation where you're not hitting either so much. Ultimately, the differences mostly cancelled each other out.

I considered a squishy "adc with just armor/MR runes" target, a semisquishy "caster with zhonya's and banshee's" target, a target that stacked armor vs your adc, and a target that stacked MR and even adaptive helm. It can be guessed how these changed the results.

And, I considered all the items with a combo of AP and mana, AP and CDR, the pure AP items, and Muramana. And assumed 10% CDR from runes (transcendance rune in the new system) and 5% from masteries (that insight rune if you use it?). And assumed that Morel keeps you around an average of 80% mana, for the Muramana passive. The list of items that can't be beat on Ryze: Muramana Seraph's Embrace Morellonomicon Lichbane Rabaddon's Deathcap Void Staff Rod of Ages Zhonya's and/or Banshee's (only when needed) Ionian or sorcerer's boots (but Ionian is always better even against the squishiesyt targets)

Now, top damage build against any target, ignoring utility and survivability, is the first 6 items on this list. And you'd build Ionian boots first, till you can replace them with Lichbane (which isn't so strong without the contribution to CDR).

But, even for a glass cannon, this is a little too much glass. Let's consider the non-damage utility of each item:

Rod of Ages gives 500 health (woo!) and heals you on every spellcast (and you cast a lot), I wouldn't want to leave it out of any build!

Zhonya's/Banshee's give their defense stats, and the stasis/spellshield; I've found Ryze is durable enough without these but you may need them sometimes

The boots give more movement speed than Lichbane, and summoner spell CDs

Void staff and deathcap are pure DPS, though any item which increases your AP also increases your mana, and increasing either of those make your Q shield stronger. Of course, deathcap does this better.

Lichbane is the movement speed, of course

Morellonomicon keeps you in mana forever (20% of Ryze's Max mana is a lot of mana), and applies GW

Seraph's Embrace has its massive mana based shield active, and also maintains your mana, but not as well as morel

What does Muramana give you? On its own... Nothing. But the synergy with your other items is staggering! It gives you more mana than any other item except seraph's itself, improving the seraph shield (and providing AP through the passive). It actually makes use of the Morel mana regen (Ryze wouldn't run out otherwise) which in turn keeps its passive doing high damage. It makes you want to aa, which helps ensure you use lichbane's spellblade. And, with Rod of Ages... it heals you for an additional 25hp on every AA and almost every spell! The only things it doesn't synergize well with are... Deathcap and void staff. Especially void staff.

So, let's say you want to add Rod of Ages, to get that 500hp and constant healing... what do you throw out?

Top damage item against any target is Morel. Exact same AP/mana as RoA, but that CDR is everything, not even considering its passives. Second against any target is Seraph's, and why lose that shield? 3rd is Lichbane, due again mostly to CDR. As long as you make use of spellblade at least once for every 3 Q's, it beats the remaining items. I must admit, considering this build is walking around with >5500 max mana, I was surprised muramana did not make it into the top 3, or at least solidly take #4.

That leaves deathcap, void staff, and Muramana. Muramana beats void staff against squishy targets, and matches it against semisquishy. Void staff, unsurprisingly, wins against armor stacking tanks, and also somewhat against tanks with both armor and MR stacked equally. Against stacked MR, muramana actually beats void staff by a little, and moreso with adaptive mask; this is the only situation where deathcap is at the bottom. So, while void staff is meant to deal with high MR, Muramana actually deals with it better, as long as armor isn't in the way!

Considering deathcap adds a ton to q shield and only loses very slightly in one situation, it's clearly not getting replaced. Considering that void staff gives no utility, while muramana improves a lot of things, and that squishies is where you want all the damage you can get (Ryze will eventually burn those tanks down), clearly void staff can be given the boot. Sorry VS, you have no place on Ryze... For reference (current rune system), this build gives you 6283 mana, 922 AP, 45% CDR of course, and 256 AD, with up to 377 extra physical damage on every AA and spell. I can't say it's not satisfying, that my preferred full build is the one with that gives Ryze highest max mana (out of those that are reasonable).

If you need to add zhonya's or banshee's on top of that, clearly they replace Lichbane (which isn't so strong once its CDR isn't necessary) but then you'd probably want to add boots in there... tabi or mercs (or sorcs), since you're set for CDR. The damage on Muramana is somewhat lower than deathcap, but if your opponents aren't stacking too much armor and you want that extra healing from RoA, it's still a choice you can make. You lose some q shield though, if you lose deathcap. Or, you can live with being slooow.

If you need both zhonya's and banshee's, you can make the choice to do away with morel and keep Lichbane (I forgot to do the math whether morel is still better when 10% of the CDR is wasted, due to its higher stats, but I believe spellblade wins out). This way you can still do away with boots, and with morel gone it is an easy choice to lose Muramana; it will be dealing a lot less damage without a way to regen that extra 3% current mana per attack/spell.

So, last thing to consider. Build path! Now, Muramana is the cheapest item in your build, at 2400. Not bad! However, it's replacing void staff, which was the previous cheapest at 2650, you're just moving the cheap anti-mr item up in your build path.

Also, you need to charge it! You were going to get a tear as soon as possible anyway, though, right? The only issue is, unlike archangel's staff, manamune is almost completely useless, so you can't turn that tear into something useful until it's stacked! I mean, you'll be working on RoA and morel anyway, which gives you time to stack, but this delays you getting the really strong archangel's staff. Bad right? Nope, did the math. At this point, without rabaddon's and lichbane (and void staff if you're going the as only path) increasing the value of your AP, Muramana+RoA+morel+boots is actually equal to Seraph's+RoA+morel+boots in damage output, and it's cheaper! It actually is the best possible use of 2400 gold at this point, like it feels. It's just providing extra RoA healing, instead of mana shield.

The last issue, you need to charge a second tear before your AA becomes a Seraph's. Well, that's no biggie. AA is still great at this point, providing you a ton of AP from your other 3 Mana items, and as it stacks it will just be boosting your AP and your mana-scaling spells and Muramana damage more and more; you'll just have a strong stream of healing from RoA instead of a shield for a while, until it's fully charged and you have both! And deathcap will be delayed a little, but you've already finished your replacement for void staff's anti-mr niche.

Note, in ARAM, you're already done stacking your first tear before you can more than start morel. I'm not sure this would happen on SR, but I believe it would. It gives you the choice of starting morel, or building a tear first to get the stacking going then building morel, or finishing AA before morel. Building tear and then morel is probably the best choice in this case. And, of course, the Mana from the tear isn't giving you AP yet, but it's already boosting your spells, and your Muramana damage.

Anyway, I wrote all this out for fun, but if anyone actually reads it and wants to opine, great. I find this build very enjoyable, and it was especially so in my ARAM game with karthus and ezreal. Karthus built Seraph's, ez buult Muramana, and there I am with both :p