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Why Pyke is having trouble as support (spoiler: he has a big size Relic Shield)

Fefnil·6/4/2018, 10:45:22 AM·20 votes·12,511 views

Besides the fact that he's new and that people obviously need to get acquainted with his playstyle, there is something else that particularly characterizes him and that I want you to realize, and that is one of the main things that are making him somewhat underwhelming. Again, it's not the fact that he's an aggressive melee squishy support, because we already had Rakan who had the same issues at the beginning, before people realized how to play him. The problem is that Pyke has a big size Relic Shield as his ultimate. As a Relic Shield user, have you ever tried going into mid-late game without proccing it even once? You will definitely feel the difference in gold. That's why Pyke is particularly hard. Since this built-in Relic Shield supposedly covers a significant part of his kit budget, he works with the idea of the gold lead: this means he is a snowball-reliant support that not only needs takedowns in early game to stay relevant, but he actually needs to execute with his ultimate to proc his "Relic Shield" as well. Since, again, as we already know with champions who have stacking or similar mechanics, these are not actually bonuses: at the beginning of the game champions are bound to fulfill the special conditions of their kits, otherwise they end up being much weaker versions of themselves. After a certain number of executions the bonus pays off for its budget cost, and after that point it becomes a full extra bonus. But before that, they are reliant on fulfilling these conditions. An easy example is Sion: a Sion that hasn't killed any unit at all and hasn't stacked his passive will have one of the lowest amount of health for a tank. It's only after he has stacked enough hp that he starts seeing an actual bonus. Pyke is the same: Pyke is reliant on proccing his ultimate's gold bonus a couple of times at the start to become even. After that it starts becoming an actual bonus. And since this condition is not actually that easy to fulfill and it depends on players' confidence with Pyke's kit itself (which, at this time, hasn't been built yet), Pyke is bound to have such a low impact as a support, much lower than expected for a new champion.

49 Comments

nyakasgoods6/4/2018, 2:38:17 PM9 votes

He doesn't even have to do damage to an enemy to get his ult reset. If anyone dies in the X, even if he hasn't done damage, the ult acts as if he'd executed, and he even gets the "Your Cut" consumable like his ally would.

Bern6/4/2018, 11:39:40 AM6 votes

tbh, the problem is people are building lethality on a support

build tankier items like ga/hexdrinker/currently busted banner so you can actually cc people in fights and use your kit, and you'll be k

even if he can't build health, the hp regen he gets while unseen means resists still get a lot of value on him

SIayton6/4/2018, 4:48:10 PM3 votes

Honestly I think his low win rate is because he's awful at peel. All of his CC has a 1 second daily, which in league time is like 3 ADC lifetimes. Assassins can dumpster your ADC before you can CC them, even if you react in time.

On top of that, even when ahead, he still has issues killing people with any amount of defensive stats mid to late game.

IMO his uncharged Q needs to have a reduced cooldown to at least help with his sustained damage in team fights. It seems kind of odd that the cooldown is SO long on a move without much impact other than being a glorified yasuo Q.

The other thing is that teams haven't adjusted to what he brings to a team. If you have pyke, you NEED someone to guard the ADC and it's definitely not something Pyke can do. ADC deaths are a lot higher in Pyke games, I've noticed.

Mcducky6/4/2018, 10:20:32 PM2 votes

His kit is flawed. He has an engage kit, like many assassins, but he has no way out after the engage. Since his Q and E are both essentially skill shots, miss them and your boned. 0 good disengage.

The question I ask myself is this, why not just play Rakan?

Acheron166/4/2018, 7:59:15 PM2 votes

I think Pyke is a champion that, while he CAN be played as a support (as nearly every champion can), really doesn't work as one.

He's too reliant on kills and snowball to get money, in order to get the items he desperately needs.

I found it incredible how high his Q base damage is compared to the low scalling, his kit is weak for a support style of gameplay.

Ztoka6/4/2018, 6:13:33 PM1 votes

I have seen a few Pyke supports start building ghostblade or duskblade first, before relic. Relic shield is such a key starting item to help generate gold, w/o needing to steal cs from the adc..

ºFerrAhriº6/4/2018, 6:49:58 PM1 votes

can't relate. too many times i have seen him hunt people down and 100 to 0 them like a full assassin

eaglei36/4/2018, 8:20:41 PM1 votes

As a support player, his kit drives me crazy. On one hand, I want to set-up and protect my team through his cc. However, doing so puts you in harm's way and you die first not getting to use the ult. (Your team cleanup route.)

When you want to use him to ult, you have to make sure you stay alive which means you miss out on potential set-up in fights. You are then left doing small peel work hoping your team wins enough to begin executions. (You cleanup route)

If you miss an execute, it is good game with him.

I also find myself doing pathetic dmg overall with him. While it feels great chaining executes, I would rather play a Brand or Zyra for more overall damage from the position.

Will see how my opinion of him changes as he is out longer.

Last Note - I feel he is hard countered the most out of any other support. Most supports can atleast contribute something if in a bad match-up. This guy just outright can be shut down.

UpDownLeftRightAB6/4/2018, 9:36:03 PM1 votes

Just so people understand, you don't have to kill the enemy with your ult to get the kill gold. The enemy just has to die in the X, you should just be throwing that thing out everywhere there are low health champions.

Gabresol6/5/2018, 8:49:40 AM1 votes

Something I do not understand. Pykes scalings are not that good overall. The best one being on his ms buff from his w. They made it so he he converts bonus HP into AD, yet, I only see full AD/lethality pykes.

You wanna know what happens? If he hits an engage with that, he and his ally kill his target so quick that his ult animation is too long to get the execute!

I think arounf 70% of all Pyke ults I see either do not kill, becase they channeled too soon, or do not kill because the target gets overkilled before the animation hits. Pyke can actually deal too much damage for his kit too work, and ends up being very squishy becuse of that (no armor and mr).

When I frst saw Pyke, I expected him to not deal much damage on his own. That he would catch an enemy, his allies would do the damage and he would execute.

Like him pulling a victim into the ocean, letting the water draining the life out of them (drowning and all) and then finish them off, before the ocean has finished it's work.

Instead he is a full fleched Assassin. What is really bad for your team, should the enemies have Assassins themselves...

InTheory6/4/2018, 11:15:03 AM1 votes

+1 Nothing to add here

LoFat Yogurt6/5/2018, 5:30:46 PM1 votes

I switched from Relic Shield to Ancient Coin after the first game and never looked back. The trade is simple: Pick up gold and mana with 0 effort while sacrificing very little in terms of AD.

Here are the numbers: item 3069 200 health (7.145% Bonus Health Conversion to AD) = 14.29 AD item 3401 350 health (7.145% Bonus Health Conversion to AD) = 25.007 AD

You will never be low on mana going this way. And if you are thinking you need the extra 10 AD on Pyke to be effective, then you are doing it wrong.

NekoniClaws6/4/2018, 2:03:46 PM1 votes

Yep. Welcome to the realm of perma 48% winrate in plat and even lower below that Thresh, Ryze, Galio, Shen are all suffering from (as examples) -if he ever sees 50% he is officially broken.

SanKakU6/4/2018, 2:26:09 PM1 votes

Uh, he doesn't need to execute with his ultimate actually. If he gets the assist and was the last one to damage the enemy before someone killed him, he'll get the shared gold consumable item instead of someone else. So clearly, it's possible he grants kill gold with it to 2 of his allies while not to himself.

Also, if you've looked at his stats mid/late game you'd see his HP is way higher than any champ besides Braum that doesn't buy any HP items. The HP missed for attack damage ratio leaves him missing out on a little bit when it comes to gold cost, but it's made up for in that you can buy AD + whatever stat combination that you normally wouldn't. It would be an even more powerful passive if he actually had any AP scaling, but since he can buy something like Thornmail and it grants AD and armor, I'd reckon it's quite useful and puts him into a group like Taric and Rammus where you can find them buying defensive items while boosting their attack power. You can get Frozen Mallet which provides something like 80 AD for him while also giving him a powerful slowing passive. He's got an interesting gimmick going on here that you can take advantage of.

Alex h87216/4/2018, 2:44:21 PM1 votes

Ive used pyke in aram a couple times, and laned against him/had him on the opposing team on the rift a couple times.

Imo he is tuned just fine to work as a solo laner or a support depending on the case, his passive (and its synergy with his W camo) is amazing for healing up any poke damage he takes, and has virtually no cooldown, he has 2 forms of CC one thats also a dash and one thats a displacement, and he has the execute (relic shield for champs as OP called it).

I'd say the main issue support pyke players probably end up having is when the enemy support picks Leona or Alistar who essentially hard counter the squishy assassin style support by being able to catch him out if he goes in or early game simply engage on pyke's adc b/c if pyke isnt fed he wont have the damage to assassinate the enemy adc w/ just his damage.

Because pyke doesn't benefit conventionally from building health his main source of survivability is his passive (as well as resistance items and stuff like GA), which is tuned for healing up (and mitigating damage from) poke but is far less effective against all ins. While his ult is the most iconic and unique part of pyke's kit I would argue that it is far more his passive that determines his most effective playstyle which in my opinion is taking trades when cooldowns are up then dipping out of vision to heal up with passive, all the while waiting for a good moment to quickely all in and get a kill with full combo (including ult), his Q>E>aa>R combo is very bursty against squishies, this playstyle of quick trades is great against champs that want to poke you to death, but against champs that have better lockdown/target stickyness like a leona for example will punish you heavily for taking those trades and if they have a competent adc, probably get kills off it.

Done256/4/2018, 4:25:07 PM1 votes

The problem with Pyke is that his ultimate generates a large amount of gold for himself, but he has such awful scaling that he simply has no need of/can't take advantage of the extra gold. The only way to get any real post lane damage out of him is to stack armor pen, and the AD scaling on his ult got gutted before he left the PBE.