I'm scared about Ryze. My favourite champion.

I don't really know how to start this but here it goes. Ryze is one of my favourite champions in League of Legends. I first bought him back in early Season 2 because I had spare IP and thought "this guys cheap and :O he shoots electricity COOL let's try him!" The first game I booted up with him I sucked, I raged, I face palmed, I wanted to refund him because I thought he was the worst mid lane AP ever made. I tried my hardest to find out why people played him at all, why was he a main counter to Katarina? He sucks so bad! I cursed and then if it wasn't for a guide on Solomid that suggested to use SMART CAST :O I wouldn't had realised what I was doing wrong, so away I went and I learned and learned and learned so much about him, I got penta kills with him, I carried teams late game with him, I stole barons with him. I was in love with Ryze. I put up with the constant flame I'd get for picking him and I'd be mad at all the number tweaks to his spells Riot would make to balance him but still I played him and justified all the buffs and nerfs. I thought they'd never change him, why would they? Ryze has been in the game from the very start and his rework he got a long time ago made him into this solid low elo, low range melting AP Tank pick that will stay solid forever constantly going up and down the competitive pool.

The only thing I knew was coming was a Ryze Visual Update which I feel is well needed for him since he's so old now, but little did I know that wouldn't be the only change he'll get. A few months ago a talk about Ryze and Kassadin's gameplay being changed sparked up and at first I was optimistic, I felt like Riot has too much respect for Ryze to ever make him too drastically different, I mean he's been in the LoL cinematics, he has his own human sized statue, he is a mascot for LoL when you see that blue peanut headed mage you know exactly what games he's from. So here we go, now for the part I am worried about, scared about and really upset about.

A few simple questions:

Why did you change so much about him? Will this happen to many other old champions for no clear reason other than "they're old, let's make them more complex" example: Singed Do you dislike Ryze that you had to destroy what Ryze players loved the most?

I've played so many games of the NEW Ryze and my simple review is: Inconsistent, random and disappointing. What do I mean?

Inconsistent: His skills and passive aren't consistent, Q being a short-ish ranged skillshot hitting first targets, making it HARDER to poke/last hit those mobile champs and crafty minions that are low hp but hide behind their friends and champions. The damage is inconsistent without passive which causes spamming spells to get 4 stacks ready and having to wait for the PERFECT moment to release the passive making sure also they are easy to lock with W and are near minions/champions for the best trade, there's no mellow moment for him now, you are constantly thinking "can I go in? Can I use the passive?" "Should I wait 12 seconds after my 4 stacks to reset and spam 4 more Q's because I have to wait for another damn minion wave to try again wasting more mana!?" It really is a inconsistent mess and needs work.

Random: There's no point in the game where I feel "useful" Early game sucks before level 5/7 (I can deal with that since old Ryze was similar) Mid game I'm trying to get more AP and hopefully some tank items... (still working out how to manage damage and tank items, been trying so many different items to understand what the hell is CONSISTENT build path on this idiot) Now let me say I have carried with the new Ryze, not every game has been awful I'll admit that but I never feel useful unless the team jumps into me and gives me free kills because they forget my passive is strong.

Disappointing: This is going to be aesthetics mainly, why did you remove his lightning effects? You even got rid of his sparking wrists, he hardy says "Zap!" anymore and when he does I think it's a glitch because it seems like you removed that quote because he's now "Runic energy" and people can debate me all day about if he was runic or not all along but let's honest here when you think of Ryze you think of a mage that has learnt so much magic that he literally has become a power out-let of energy and blasting, firing bolts of thunder at your enemies, overloading them until they go BOOM! Now his spells look very wimpy, his Q looks like it slithers underground and you can hardly see the epicness, I love the way when you pressed E and R on old Ryze the electricity would split everywhere onto targets it was so cool looking even with the old graphic effects. I just feel like a wimp, and Ryze already looks skinny and wimpy, you are supposed to look at Ryze and think "What a weak puny blue man" and then when he reads his book he just melts your face off with these spectacles of spells.

Last thing I'll bring up is his upcoming buffs in 5.10 I've read in PBE that his Passive will be better early game and his Q will do a bit more base damage and his ult will last longer all game instead of late game. This is a nice little tweak for him since I think his passive does need some help. But I really hope you aren't going to leave it as that since I think he needs more love on his new skills than his numbers like Q firing faster or removing the stop and channel turn it into a Darius Q with the non-interrupt movement. Give him higher Armor scaling, His ult passive goes 10/20/30% CDR when I think it should go 10/20/35-40% because you made buying FH annoying and on masteries you'll take the 5% CDR so if you don't buy any CDR items because new Ryze doesn't want to overcompensate then you are left with 35% CDR and that last 5% is important because you don't get CDR from leveling spells anymore.

I really hope someone at Riot reads this. I'm scared he'll never be good again and that really upsets me. (Just to be clear these items were what I used to use as my main build path on old Ryze, just wanted to represent how good it was)