Listen I'm a 500 ranked game Ryze main, peaking in Plat 2 last season. I will tell you that you are trying to balance Ryze wrong!! Your main concerns: a stat-checker. Stand next to each other until someone dies. You have. Completely. Fixed this problem. By making his passive last for only 5 spells. Background: I used to have a sub-50 winrate when Ryze was in his completely busted state. Why? The obsession with power. I used to be able to 1v3 and win. Because I could scale well, and then apply that scaling to 12 spells in 5 seconds. Now, I literally never win a 1v2, EVER. By making Ryze's uptime less than half of what it used to be, you force him to rely on his team when he has to go on cooldown. You get this beautiful combat weaving where it's like in and out. Hey team, you got my back while I charge up? Andthen bam, back into the fray. I have just gotten used to this new deal, where you have the ultimate availible to fuel your next passive almost every time, but your combos are heavily limited in raw size. I respect the fact that Ryze is just doing too much damage. But you CANNOT take away his functionality like this. You are gutting, that's right gutting, his usability by taking the cooldown back to 50 seconds and you know it. That fuel was part of the deal. He would get shorter combos, but more of them- at least in the end game. Hitting that level 16 powerspike has been like reaching my final form. I feel enabled- I can actually sling spells again. Now he just gets short combos, all game? His kit was making sense. You're killing his identity as a machine gun mage, which DRASTICALLY lowers his skill cap. Lower the damage, not the number of spells.
I had a big issue listening to today's podcast. No way to address the perma-root? Please. With 5 spells per combo, that is quite simply not even a thing anymore. It made me really mad when a caster said Ryze can root a person for 4 seconds. The disrespect for his state of balance was real. In the real game, if a player strategically as hell cast his spells right, he can get a maximum root of 3 seconds on one person, and that's with max rank W. E's damage is so bad all around, that I only max W half of the time to compensate, meaning this level of snare often comes at level 18 and it sits at 1-1.2 seconds per cast for the rest of the game, but that's a different story. All this completely ignores tenacity in the equation, which is a factor to be considered against all cc champs like Twisted Fate and Morgana. 40% tenacity is now completely realistic. In reality, you get a maximum of 2 snares per passive, with little to no (0-4 seconds) cooldown reduction towards your 3rd. That's on a 14 second cooldown. When's the last time you got snared 3 times in a row, or for 4 seconds straight, Mr. Caster sir? It sure as hell was not any time in the past 4 months because that wouldn't be possible. Real players know that Ryze's snares are short but effective. Besides, it would be easy to add a lock-out timer where you have to snare a different target.
A few ways I think Ryze could be balanced:
Change the healing from ultimate to 20% at all ranks from 15/20/25%, to compensate for its now increased uptime lategame, while making its use in lane more realistic as well, especially when coupled with the high cooldown at level 6. Fix the ultimate cooldown to 70/50/30, and also change the AoE damage from 50% at all ranks to 30/40/50% to further enforce his late-game identity, squash his 1v2 potential, and also keep the returning E power in check. Buff single target E damage to the original 50/66/82/98/116, and bring back the .3 AP ratio, from the current 36/52/68/84/100 +.2AP, while reducing the outgoing bolt dmg to 75% (note to casuals: this outgoing bolt dmg applies 50% of its damage to all other targets with ultimate active), overall nerfing the empowered E in teamfights and increasing the situational kill potential in lane. Also make Q's AP ratio increase with points just like the mana ratio (+.40/.44/.48/.52/.56% AP from +55% AP), to make his laning more E oriented, and further reduce Q's base damage to its "original" state, which is another 20 points in the weaker direction at max rank from 6.10's 20 point nerf, which is roughly a Blasting Wand's worth of base damage weaker than he was in 6.9 at level 9 and up.
Thanks for reading, I hope my insight can take Ryze to a better place than the one he is in now.
Hello?
main, it's time to change your tactics. I am going to keep planting my cancer all over the map
"Balance is weakness"
in this podcast. Long-range hyper-carry with self-peel, major tower-shred, ridiculous mobility and escape, and a good golden chicken will punish any movement mistake you make by sending you into his team. If he doesn't obliterate you through the laning-phase and conquer the lane two towers down before the rest of his team, he'll make sure you die to his team if you try to go in an any carry.
feel less tanky then he should be early...