Pyke Idea: Convert Armor to Lethality
Couple of possible 8.20 changes
- Pyke - We'll be looking at Pyke in 8.20, specifically reducing his effectiveness with tank builds. They're outperforming AD builds by a pretty decent margin, and Pyke keeps his strengths generally while muting his weaknesses a lot when building tank. Not sure yet what exact direction we'll be going, shifting damage from base to ratios is one option, though does also increase how snowbally he is.
Pyke is a controversial champion. People don't like playing against a support that can also get kills, get fed, and win games. "Support by the way" is a meme surrounding Pyke because of just how much of a threat he is. The devs agree that Pyke needs some changes.
The idea of Pyke is that he forces the game to be played around him. His ult essentially reduces every enemy's ult by a huge chunk if he can land his skillshot, and he has all the tools needed to set up those plays. The counterplay to Pyke is supposed to be to kill him before the midfight. If you can take him out before your allies reach that threshold, then he doesn't provide that advantage to his team.
This is why Pyke can't build health. If he could just go tanky, he could survive to the midfight every single time and get those ults off. The counterplay is gone. However, Pyke can still build armor and magic resist, and this is the problem the devs are worried about. Pyke can still build tanky and survive quite a bit of punishment. Between runes and items, he can stack quite a bit of defenses.
Here's my idea for a solution: Have Pyke's passive also convert bonus armor/magic resist to lethality.
This would ensure that Pyke cannot build tanky, ever. He would always be squishy regardless of what items he builds, forcing him to depend on his abilities to get out and heal up rather than taking damage to the face. Similar to his passive converting health to AD, converting armor/MR to lethality gives him more damage as well, but instead of scaling his abilities up, it scales up his lategame power. This would diversify the build paths: build AD and health items for early game strength, and pick up lethality and tank items for late game damage.
Enemies would have a much easier time focusing down Pyke to control him during teamfights. This would also create fun rune interactions, like Aftershock granting a big burst of lethality right after you CC an enemy could be really cool.
A gold-efficient ratio would be for every 2 armor/magic resist Pyke gets from any source, he gets 1 lethality instead. This could easily be lower.
, don't sit at low health or make sure you have reliable shields and heals on hand. When I see
, build armor and don't let her get a massive ult off. Every champion forces you to play around them so I'm not really sure what you're getting at here.
all have a very easy time dodging his predictable ult, and they're all popular champions.

