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Pyke is.. awfully designed.

Håppy··7 votes·3,976 views

And I don't say this in terms of his kit (but his ult being a must-use or else he will always fall behind is admittedly pretty obnoxious.)

No, I'm talking about how he is forced in to one playstyle. Literally, you can only play him the way Riot designed. You can take him elsewhere, you can take him jungle, top, mid, hell some people even play him ADC so he has a support! But he can't do anything other than assassinate. He cannot try anything new. He has no AP ratios, so AP Pyke isn't possible. His passive takes all bonus health he might get, and crams it in to AD without giving him the bonus health. Without the ability to build bonus HP, tank Pyke is.. pretty worthless, and so defensive purchases are wasted. He's stuck. He's actually just stuck. He's the first champion Riot's released that can ONLY DO ONE THING with no chance of doing anything else effectively, and when you add this to Riot's design choices this year (Like how they're making Preseason-level changes to everything in the middle of the god damn season?) you realize..

Something needs fucking fixing.

35 Comments

Warlord Scrap6 votes

thank you everyone is like stfu. I really truly believe pyke is riots worst champ yet.

webstar11081 votes

Not even close to the worst champ made. Aatrox Kled Mordekaiser or old Urgot Evelynn Warwick Yorick XinZhao

Warlord Scrap1 votes

at the time none were that bad though. Kled still has his meta moments to this day. And most of them had multiple viable build paths and roles. Pyke is literally a support assassin and thats it. He cant really jg or mid.

webstar11081 votes

He is still new maybe something will come through. I played him is an ARAM. He is BROKEN is ARAM lol. I would like to play him top lane against a non tank top laner or i think he would be good against certain mids like Akali, Dianna, or Kass

Warlord Scrap1 votes

Its more the level of there is no alt builds though. He cant buy health. Cant play ap. Maybe you can build tanky and have high damage and resistances but no health. But still. For riot to say they dont want to enforce a meta and then force a champ into one build path is hypocritical. Cand your still a support so your gold is going to be low to have to buy mostly assassin items.

TheWizardM4 votes

Though I absolutely love the playstyle that Pyke does provide, I must agree. Pyke isn't the only champion that has this problem though. Almost all of the recent reworks have had the same effect (just look at evelynn, who lost all but her ap build, Galio, who lost his support build, etc).

webstar11082 votes

I really do not mind it. It keeps champions in the place. There are 141 champs now i think. It is ok to only have about 70 champs that play in 2-3 positions

TheWizardM1 votes

Having flexible champions has one advtantage and one disadvantage:

  • they allow people to think more creatively about the game, rather than champ select being rock paper scissors and the actual game being a ping test (exaggeration)
  • they make champ select less strategic, as you really can't know how to counter an enemy champion if their different builds are countered differently.
Håppy3 votes

Part of League's initial appeal, and part of what got it so popular, was your ability to play any champion in any way you wanted. That's what made it better than every other MOBA. That's what made it unique. Riot looks like they're slowly phasing that out, and it's depressing.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

It was also a balance nightmare then, though no one knew it because we didn't have stats sites and no one knew what the hell they were doing.

League has to evolve in this way, simply because it's gotten popular and been around for awhile. I see this complaint a lot, but it isn't Riot's fault that this happened. This is the natural progression of a popular game.

I don't see a way to make League "fresh" like that again without destroying it. If you want fresh experiences, you have to find fresh games.

Regulas1 votes

Galio is a bit weak right now overall, but he still does fantastic as a support role after the re-work as a multi-cc tank with a dash and percentile dmg.

TheWizardM1 votes

not even comparable to prerework though.

Regulas1 votes

I should also have added that pre-work was a terrible terrible terrible support. One minor CC. Some low damage. And and a good ult. He was played as support not because he was any decent at it but because it was often the only place he didn't totally suck as a pick.

I genuinely don't get how you could consider that horrible no cc no dmg no tankness thing as a decent support.

TheWizardM1 votes

"hottible cc no tankness thing" His w made him hella tanky, and a great counter to morgana (and his passive was good vs most supprots in general). As for his cc, his current kit only allows him to engage - not to save his adc. Bith of his cc spells have too long of a windup, allowing assassins to easily kill your adc, and neither of them can be used to disengage. The old Galio, on the other hand, had both a good engage and disengage, and an ult that could save his adc from anything.

Regulas1 votes

um just what, his cc is excellent for saving the adc and disengaging....

The old one had a slow and a minor speed buff neither of which were hard cc able to actually stop anything.

Honestly I'm flabergasted as much as anything because the current version ahs such radically superior cc and mobility. The only good thing the old one had was his ult, but it had the problem of being so overwhelmingly strong that it was half the reason the rest of his kit was bad.

TheWizardM1 votes

Have you even played the old galio? Like I said in the comment you responded to, his ult could save your ad from anything. His "minor speed buff" (which was more than double the movespeed you get from youmuus btw) could then allow your adc to disengage while you are taunting the enemies, who then likely die due to the burst from r and q. Not to mention being able to give his adc 90 mr and armor, making it basically impossible to kill them.

As for the current one. He has a 1.5 second taunt (that is if you let your adc die before recasting, if you want to actually interrupt an assassin, don't count on more than 0.8 sec), compared to the old one, whichhas a taunt of 2 seconds, followed by enough burst to take down any assassin. Then for the damage reduction, the new one gives damage reduction to an allie when ulting, and the old one had bonus resitances on his w. When you take into account that an adc has about 30-40 mr in the mid-game, the 30-40% dmg reduction the new galio gives is exactly the same as the old galio w. as for his knockups, if you actually manage to land both (almost noone ever gets hit by his r) before your adc dying (he has a huge windup time) that adds another 1.5 seconds of cc, bringing it to about 2.3 seconds, which is only about half a second to a second longer than the old galio on average, and that is if you take into account that the old galio's ult could be interrupted. The new galio doesn't have any slows/movespeed buffs.

Considering the long windup on the new Galio's cc, he's just not viable as a support, especially when compared to the old Galio.

Dokueki Kenshin2 votes

I mean, I’m not disagreeing with you, but I also feel like we just haven’t had enough people testing out stuff with him. I literally just got his shard and redeemed it, so I’m gonna be testing some crazy stuff top lane with him. And remember as well that both the viable builds on the champion and the positions they can be played in are important. Yeah, it sucks that he has no inherent AP ratios and stuff, but at least his kit is versatile enough to be in more than one position. That alone is a victory in my book.

webstar11081 votes

There are plenty of champs that have ONE playstyle, and if you play them in another way you are trolling. Ahri Amumu Anivia Annie Ashe Blitzcrank Braum Evelynn Illaoi Ivern Jinx Kalista Karthus Kassadin Khazix Kindred Kled Lissandra Lucian Rengar not gunna keep going but you get the point

Håppy4 votes

Because AD Ahri, full AP Amumu, AD Anivia, AD Annie, AP Ashe, AD/AP Blitz (instead of manatank), AD/On-Hit Braum, AD Evelynn, full crit Illaoi, full AP Ivern (instead of enchanter), so on and so forth.. Those don't exist, right? Those weren't youtube hits and things like AP Rengar didn't have a cult following, right? I'm not saying "If you play Pyke this way you're trolling."

I'm saying you literally cannot play him any other way because his design doesn't allow for it. No bonus HP = No tank-oriented builds are possible. No AP ratios = No AP playstyle is possible. You can do one thing, and literally only one thing, because Riot doesn't allow for anything else.

TheWizardM3 votes

they kind of removed ad evelynn with her rework...

Håppy2 votes

They did? That's a shame. Tank Evelynn is still a possibility, though.

TheWizardM3 votes

again, got removed. They removed her double onhit proc, as buff and ad scalings, pretty much obliterating ad evelynn, and they removed her shield and replaced it with health regen that goes up to a cap that scales with ap, not hp, making it near useless on tank evelynn.

webstar11081 votes

Literally the only way to build her is AP. "tank" items she builds are Proto, Liandry, Rylies (but its not good), spirit visage (last)

TheWizardM3 votes

ap amumu, tank annie, ad/ap blitz, attack speed ivern, lethality jinx, and ap rengar are some of the strongest offmeta builds lmao

webstar11081 votes

AP mumu does not work unless you have tanks. but then why would you go ap mumu when you can play eve or elise Tank annie?! LOL dont make me laugh. why would you go tank annie!? Tank veig is way better or you knw...regular Ap annie AD blitz is trash. AP blitz is fun but not good. Att speed ivern? you are pushing it LOL Jinx i have seen work building lethal but now with the item updates she is 100x better building correctly AP rengar is back now that its old rengar but only a select few know how to play it correctly.

TheWizardM1 votes

There's actually two build for ap amumu. One is antitank, the other is burst. Tank annie works because of her e.... Ad blitz deals the same amount of damage as ap (you build lethality and trinity to proc on e) Ivern has the strongest on-hit effect in-game.

Keep in mind these are off-mete, which by definition means they're not optimal. They're not bad either.

meta = most effective tactic available. By definition offmeta is not the most effective.

webstar11081 votes

Yes but we are not talking about "offmeta" It was stated that there is only one META build for pyke......just like many other champs

TheWizardM1 votes

By definiotion, there's only one meta build for every champ

webstar11081 votes

Which changes depending on matchups and position

OurLestrade1 votes

It's all ways of gating him to try and make an AD support assassin work, which is something that's never been done before and for good reason. It's entirely understandable why Pyke in particular is pigeon holed build wise.

webstar11081 votes

did you forget his ult gives adc 300 gold for assists? also heres a build. item 3071 item 3156 item 3814 item 3047 item 3147 item 3026 pretty tanky. lots of damage. spellshield. hp. mr. armor. 2nd life. maw shield. OH and 40% cd

Pika Fox1 votes

You can take him anywhere.... As long as you take him support. Anywhere else? Youll feed your ass off. And i will laugh.

CloakAndGrenade1 votes

Especially when you consider Pyke is awful from a compositional standpoint. The amount of solo que games that i have lost because nobody wants to play a tank or frontliner is staggering. All he has done is allow a litteral full assassin team composition without some kind of cheese leblanc support. Pyke is feast or famine which is never good for a support. The lack of options make him a glorified super minion by mid game in most games. Even if you snowball, being so squishy and your only mobility being your engage, you die so quickly. Successful assassins have an escape after their combo (zed shadow, lb distort, talon parkour). The lack of a hard escape yet the presence of hard cc pushes him more towards the diver playstyle, but he cant build defensive or even bruiser items.

Lutein1 votes

ARGHT!

I hate this champion, 1 hit Penta kill in 99% of all games in the new blitz mode. WTF RIOT, BALANCE HIM, it's OUT OF CONTROL!

MissMikasa1 votes

It would be best for the game to just delete him, just like Neeko.

You can disagree, that's fine but I personally would love to see these two GONE!

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