Pyke Idea: Convert Armor to Lethality

iiGazeii··1 votes·1,195 views

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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 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.

16 Comments

Moody P4 votes

then he would just be ultra abusive at stomping low elo and suck the higher up you go

Alzon3 votes

Ah, the Frozen Heart Rush Pyke gets 50 Lethality and 20% CDR. Ahahaha. No.

iiGazeii1 votes

The numbers aren't set in stone. It could easily be lower.

The general idea is that even though Pyke would be building tank items, he wouldn't get any harder to kill.

Doge20201 votes

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The numbers aren't set in stone. It could easily be lower.

The general idea is that even though Pyke would be building tank items, he wouldn't get any harder to kill.

Or maybe like a percent of his bonus armor/mr is converted, that way he won’t get immediately blown up in a fight but is also easier to kill than a full tank build pyke on live servers. maybe something like every 10 or twenty armor/MR is converted to 0.1 or 0.2 lethality. And the percentage that has this conversion is like 70 or 60% of his armor/mr.

Oleandervine2 votes

HELL TO THE FUCKING NO. Pyke doesn't need to get access to ANY more damage. He's severely underrated as it is, and incredibly strong with very high damage. He doesn't need to be shredding your defenses now by building tank items.

Pika Fox1 votes

He is literally bottom tier damage. He is a support first, and while he might have slightly more damage than some supports, its not even close to other damage picks.

Oleandervine1 votes

But as a support, his damage is incredibly high, which combined with his inability to have damage stick to him in lane, makes him strong. Plus, if he was given easier access to lethality, he would become a huge damage problem, especially with his hook pattern.

Pika Fox1 votes

Even among supports its nothing amazing. Lux, lulu, brand, zyra, hell even leona can deal similar damage. Pyke is picked for cleanup and snowball potential. His damage isnt amazing, but it doesnt need to be, as he can clean up easily and generates more team gold while still providing CC.

iiGazeii1 votes

I think it's worth mentioning that Lethality is not the same thing as armor penetration. Lethality's effectiveness scales with your level. Getting it early gives you only a very small increase in damage.

Depending on the ratio (going through other items, a 6:1 ratio of armor to lethality would be appropriate), Pyke would be better off building AD/health for damage anyway.

Magi Mayvin2 votes

How about banning any armor/mr item from pyke without giving anything else to that cancer as a bonus.

Pika Fox1 votes

He has no damage in his kit outside of R, and has no escape tools if he wants to try to kill someone. He literally has to be tanky in order to function (and he is still squishy when built full tank).

If we do do something like this, he would need, at the very least, a small dash on W or a 2nd E press thats just movement.

Hotarµ1 votes

As a Pyke main: God no. This is a horrible idea. Pyke just needs better AD scalings to force him to build AD. Obviously he would need to get hit with some nerfs as a result, but as long as it gets rid of the tank item abuse, then it's fine.

Another easy/quick fix would be to just make it so Pyke gains less stats from tank items. Something like 65% of base resistances from items. Buying Frozen Heart for CDR/Aura would still be possible but wouldn't be so overbearing on him. Would it ever happen? No, most likely not.


Pyke is a controversial champion. People don't like playing against a support that can also get kills, get fed, and win games. The devs agree that Pyke needs some changes.

No, he's not. The boards don't like Pyke. High elo players/pretty much everyone above gold knows how to fight him, which is why he's consistently at a 48-50% win rate according to multiple sites.

Rioters agree that Pyke's abuse of tank items need changes because it takes him from an assassin who needs to think about his actions to "Hey, I built Frozen Heart and 4 other tank items while not sacrificing any of my ult power."

The idea of Pyke is that he forces the game to be played around him.

What champion doesn't force the game to be played around them? When I see a Karthus, don't sit at low health or make sure you have reliable shields and heals on hand. When I see Illaoi, 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.

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.

The counterplay to Pyke (like every assassin in the game) is to burst him down and take him out of the fight (even if it's only temporary) and to not let him land his ult. It's incredibly easy to stop Pyke from chain ulting. See: Thresh Lucian Yasuo LeeSin Irelia all have a very easy time dodging his predictable ult, and they're all popular champions.

AggressiveWolf1 votes

Like what?

What human actually types 5 paragraphs without realizing his entire concept is bullshit.

iiGazeii1 votes

The devs think tank Pyke builds are too good.

The only way Pyke can build tank is by building armor because his passive turns health into AD.

The reason why he was given this passive is to make it hard for him to build tanky.

Therefore, a possible solution would be to have his tankiness-gating passive also affect the other tanky stats he can build. The reasoning is pretty sound.

xDelightify1 votes

are u seriously complaining about a champion that can solokill botlane (1 vs 2) at level 6, because he literally oneshots ppl if they have less than half life?

Ranmaru1 votes

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