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Pyke has insane base stats for an assassin

TheShréktEffect·8/3/2019, 1:46:13 AM·8 votes·2,311 views

Pyke is getting a lot of very deserved hate currently, but in all the posts about him I think I have yet to see anyone mention his ridiculous base stats, which is in my opinion a very good first step to nerfing him. Let's see:

Pyke has 600 base health at level 1; 8th highest, and tied with Gragas, Kayle and fricking TahmKench. Yes, I'm not kidding, Pyke has as much lvl 1 base health as TahmKench.

Not only that, Pyke has a huge 2300 base health at level 18; 3rd highest, and once again tied with TahmKench. So Pyke literally has as much health as a tank, and in fact he has more health than most if not all _actual_tanks, including champs like Ornn, Sejuani or Zac.

Pyke has 45 base armour at level 1; 2nd highest after Braum, Leona and TahmKench. Yes, he actually has more base armour than most tanks at level 1. Crazy right? Well...

Pyke has 130 armour at level 18. 130. Highest base armour in the entire game, and by a long shot. The 2nd highest is Braum with 115. And just to drive the point home: when you think of anti-AD, armour stacking champions, you think of Malphite or Rammus, right? Nope, Pyke has more base armour than both of them, and more health too.

Pyke has actually a fairly standard 32 base magic resist at level 1. However, at level 18 his base magic resist is 57.5; 3rd highest behind Talon and Akali. Yep, again Pyke has more base magic resist than your go-to anti-magic champions like Galio or even Kassadin.

So yes, I could go on, but most of his other stats are actually fairly reasonable. Have a look for yourself.

Anyway, back to my point: Pyke has absolutely insanely ridiculous base stats, for no clear reason. He's incredibly frustratingly hard to pin down and focus between his dash-stun and his invis-move-speed-boost-sustain. And even if you do manage to focus him, his insane base stats make it very difficult. An already slippery assassin is literally more tanky than actual tanks, who are pretty much just punching bags.

Pyke has everything you could want in an assassin: incredible sustain, superb mobility, very good damage, great CC, and a resettable AoE execute with extra gold generation for better snowballing. What can't he do?

And before you say "you're just jumping on the Pyke-hate bandwagon cuz he just got a skin", I've always hated him, right from release. He is literally just a champion made for support players who is actually capable of getting pentakills. A lazy, sloppy mess, only made for sick highlights YouTube channels and that's literally it. "Here, have some easy pentakills for your stream highlights".

So yeah, not like Riot is going to give a damn about this, but Pyke's stats are way too high and no one seems to notice.

23 Comments

Hotarµ8/3/2019, 2:06:21 AM7 votes

All of this is irrelevant because you're not mentioning the fact that he can't build any sort of health and realistically he'll never build armor/MR unless it's a 4th item or later.

An already slippery assassin is literally more tanky than actual tanks, who are pretty much just punching bags.

No, because Pyke isn't going to be building any armor or magic resist and cannot build health. He's got high base stats because that's all he gets for the overwhelming majority of the game. If you CC him and focus him he dies within a second.

Pyke has everything you could want in an assassin: incredible sustain, superb mobility, very good damage, great CC, and a resettable AoE execute with extra gold generation for better snowballing. What can't he do?

He can't heal his allies, he can't shield his allies, he can't reliably peel for his allies, he can't build tank.

Those are super important qualities, especially for a support.

Do I think Pyke is fine right now? No, absolutely not. Frankly I think the ult change he just got was stupid. He was in a bad state (46-48% WR across all ELOs) but this buff was just too much. They should have returned the % damage bonus on his tap-Q and slowly worked him up from there if that wasn't enough.

The Ecdysiast8/3/2019, 2:12:34 AM5 votes

So... you hate Pyke and are just listing off his stats while completely ignoring his passive, which makes all of them justified.

Great "discussion."

iiGazeii8/3/2019, 1:57:40 AM4 votes

The difference is that Pyke can't build any more health, and needs to build lethality and AD to scale properly. Tanks build additional defenses and their abilities often scale off of those defenses. Pyke stays hella squishy for the whole game.

Pyke has high base stats because he is a support, and supports tend to have good base stats because they aren't getting as much gold as their counterparts.

The right way to nerf Pyke is to make his sustain more dependent on skill. Right now, he can take all the poke in the world and end up almost at the same amount of health he started at without needing to do anything but take damage. There's no way to bully him out of lane or take a good trade against him. They should reduce the percentage of damage he converts to gray health, but let him gain gray health by landing autos and abilities on enemy champions. That way, he only heals up all the damage he takes if he commits cooldowns or gets into melee range, and if you can avoid his abilities and kite him out, he will actually lose the trade.

The Ecdysiast8/3/2019, 2:09:04 AM1 votes

Except most assassins fit Morello or Cleaver into their build nowadays, which he can't get health from.

Then there's the fact he was nerfed into the ground stat-wise, and is only seeing a rise in win rate because the gold advantage he brings to a team beats out even his old, better stats.

D357R0Y3R8/3/2019, 7:30:43 PM1 votes

I actually don't care about that

I just don't get why his fucking hook has 13 sec cd

13 SECONDS you literally dodge it it doesn't matter he can apply prerssure so fact,

meanwhile blitzcrank missing hook loses 1/2 of his mana and has to play like a bitch for 20 sec with no pressure

it's unfair

preternatural8/4/2019, 1:47:42 AM1 votes

7-7 it's a thrilling match this one.