Elastoid's guide on laning vs Ryze pt 1: Bruisers

Hey there, it's Elastoid (formerly HowDoIShot), making my first guide on these boards. Sorta trying it out. I want to talk a little bit about Ryze. First, about how Ryze matches up with the usual top lane picks.

So, you're first pick, and you confidently lock in Jax, or Riven, or Tryndamere, or Fiora, saying "I'm gonna carry," but then the fourth pick on the other team picks Ryze, and you're saying, "Great, I'm countered. Need ganks." You're having teammates say, "just farm under tower." You're already hating the game, wanting to dodge.

You're doing it wrong.

Here are some common misconceptions about Ryze:

1. Melee champs are hard countered by Ryze.
2. You can safely farm under turret against him.
3. He has a strong early game, particularly a strong poke.
4. Ryze is tanky, so it's tough to kill him.
5. Ryze is an easy champ to play.

If you think any of these things are true, you are mistaken.

The thing about Ryze into bruisers is, you can kill Ryze early. Take a level 1 Ryze vs, say, a level 1 Jax. You'd think Ryze has the edge because he can poke, but if Jax takes leap strike first level, he can hop on Ryze instantly. Now Ryze's Q is on about a 4-second cooldown, and his autos are lame. Jax, meanwhile, can chase him a little and auto him. If there's an all-in situation at level 1, from both champs at 100% health, Jax will win most times -- particularly if he took ignite. So the game for Ryze is to avoid that situation by poking Jax and keeping his distance.

RYZE'S BUILD

I hate seeing people say Ryze is tanky, because he's not. Graves is more tanky than Ryze. Ryze just builds tanky. If you're thinking "what's the difference?" you need to realize, there's a huge goddamned difference.

For the heavily uninitiated -- Ryze scales off of mana even better than he does off of AP, so his best items give him mana. His first buys reflect that -- he usually wants to start Tear of the Goddess, and then buy Rod of the Ages almost immediately. These two items are about damage, not tankiness. They give him mana, and Rod gives him a little AP as well. True, Rod can make him tankier, but it's not a full-on tank item. It just gives him 450-650 health. That health is not the objective for almost 3k gold, I promise. The mana makes his Q hurt more, and the AP plays a bigger role in his W and E damage. It's only once he has these two items that he wants to build Frozen Heart, which grants 500 mana and 20% CDR along with its 100 armor. That's when you really see him start to get tanky.

Why is this important for Ryze's opponents? Because once he's got his Rod of Ages, he's pretty much accounted for his damage. His Tear and Rod will give him more mana over time for a while even if he doesn't build another item, meaning he's going to keep hitting harder and harder. That's bad. The big threshold for him is those two items.

He's going to get a Tear on his first back 99 out of 100 times. Ryze will usually start with a mana crystal, meaning he needs only 300 gold to complete his Tear. The only way you can stop him is to kill him early, before he can get 300 gold, and if you do, that is a HUGE deal. Ryze WANTS to grab an early Tear and port back to lane. Sending him back without a Tear costs him more than a full minute, and the importance of that minute cannot be overstated.

But usually, he'll get a Tear early. The item that clearly indicates how the lane is going is the Rod of the Ages -- when did he get it? I've had games where I bought it at 9 minutes, and games where I couldn't get it until 23-25 minutes in. If you can delay the Rod, you can win the lane. Once the Rod is purchased, though, it's almost ALWAYS too late to turn a losing lane around -- better to roam and give up your tower, this lane belongs to Ryze now.

**PANTHEON AND IRELIA -- HARD COUNTERS FOR RYZE ** Take a lesson from Pantheon -- commonly listed as one of Ryze's strongest counters, and yet at the silverish elo, I have consistently beat Pantheon in lane, to the point where I'll willingly pick Ryze into the matchup. Is it a lie that Pantheon counters Ryze, or are people playing him wrong?

The thing about the Ryze-Pantheon matchup is that Panth has Ryze beat early, but will be outscaled really, really quickly. **A good Pantheon can get a kill on even a very good Ryze at level 2 more than 50% of the time. ** Pantheon's spears do comparable damage to Ryze's Overload at level 1, so every time Ryze pokes, Panth can poke back. Once level 2 hits, Panth can gap close for a stun, auto a couple times, ignite and spear as Ryze tries to flee... bam. Dead.

Now, if you're thinking, "But, Rune Prison!" stop yourself for a second. First, Rune Prison lasts less than a second at level 1. Second, Ryze can't run while casting it -- it has a small but very real channel time. What does that mean? He'll gain a little less than half a second on you when running with a level 1 rune prison. That's not an escape. A 10% slow is more effective peel than a level 1 rune prison, and no one complains that they can't close the distance vs. Nasus. Ryze runs MS quints anyway, so he's going to be able to slowly run away most of the time. That's fine, you should usually be able to stick to him.

The thing that most Pantheons do, though, is they wait until level 4-5 to try to get a kill, and by then... it's already too late. Ryze is weak SUPER early, but his passive hits full gear at level 4. Once he's at that level, he can throw four spells at you -- QWEQ -- every trade! Now, early, that's probably going to chunk you for 1/3 health or more, and that's goddamned terrifying. Now, Pantheon can't get close enough without taking a lot of damage, and a good Ryze can keep his distance and outfarm/outscale Pantheon, possibly getting kills if Panth isn't careful. Meanwhile, if Panth got that kill early, he would have used that to snowball and keep killing Ryze, to the point where Ryze can't even lane for fear of being turret dived. Once Pantheon has Hexdrinker, he can all-in Ryze with impunity and Ryze may be in serious trouble.

Take another lesson from Irelia. She is one of the hardest melee matchups for Ryze -- personally, my hardest. Why? She has a reliable gap closer on a short-ish cooldown, and can either slow or stun him. On a champ running MS quints, whose ult gives him more MS as his only real escape, a slow is actually a big deal. The small distance he gains when he uses Rune Prison is almost nothing when he's slowed, and Irelia can quickly catch up. (She also sustains well, so she's a double-whammy. I'll get to that in part 2.)

LESSONS FROM IRELIA AND PANTHEON

So these champs can kick Ryze's ass -- what does that mean? Irelia highlights the parts of a champion's kit that really mess him up: slows, gap closers, hard CC, high sustain. Irelia is strong because she happens to have all of them, but any of these tools can be employed to great effect vs Ryze. The best lesson is from Pantheon -- win early, or lose. You're not likely to outscale Ryze, and if you do, it's going to be by a margin to narrow to justify losing lane. Ryze is a poor laner. He's expected to lose lane. If he wins, you've got yourself a problem.

So how do you kill him? Employ the tools you have. A level 1 Fiora can kill a level 1 Ryze by Lunging at him, sticking to him, and autoing him to death. His Flash can even be negated by her second Q, and she can Ignite to finish him off. She has only two advantages -- the gap closer and the stronger auto -- and she has access to both at level 1, so that's when she's best able to get the kill. He wins this matchup at a distance, but that's fine because she doesn't have to let him STAY at a distance.

A level 2 Tryndamere can close the distance with his spin and slow Ryze so he can't escape. You can blow his flash super easy. You can force him back or just kill him.

Volibear can sometimes close and auto Ryze to death at level 1. Do you think Ryze has the dps to kill Volibear at level 1? No, he does not. So why stay back and let him whittle you down with a Q every 4 seconds? Get in there! You have a flip, a slow, and massive damage from your bite. Ryze vs Volibear is 100% about Ryze keeping his distance or getting wrecked. Playing passively vs Ryze is as bad as agreeing to a farm lane truce with Nasus. Just don't.

Riven is amazing at closing the distance, and she can get a guaranteed stun as well as a knockup. She may be as good at killing Ryze, 100-0, at level 2, as just about everyone else. Even Pantheon needs to whittle him down with a couple spears before going for the kill. Riven just can't be escaped. Don't use your Q to farm and dodge, get in there and WRECK HIM.

RYZE CAN'T 100-0 YOU

The main thing about all these strategies is that pre-level 4, Ryze's damage is much lower. A level 1 Q is not scary. A level 1 W doesn't do much. At level 3, he can maybe land a Q-W-auto-Q combo that hurts, but it can be tough to get that last Q. Even once he hits level 4, his QWEQ combo won't kill you. If you're running no MR runes, it might take you to half health, at worst. Ryze cannot kill you before you kill him, unless you let him whittle you down. At low health, you need to be immensely afraid of Ryze, but at full health, you don't. He can QWEQ you, yeah, and then he's got 2 Qs more in the next 10 seconds. That's pretty much all his damage. As a bruiser, your autos hurt, so use them. Your autos grant you the ability to 100-0 Ryze, because he's squishy.

LOOKING AGAIN AT THOSE MISCONCEPTIONS

1. Melee champs are hard countered by Ryze.

No. Pantheon and Irelia destroy him, and other champions can outplay him if they take lessons from Irelia and Pantheon and play aggressively early. Even in your worst matchup, you have a window to kill him early, but if you don't take advantage of it in time, it can close without you realizing it.

2. You can safely farm under turret against him.

Actually, no. His Q has a wonderfully slow travel time, meaning he can get in tower range, Q you, and run out before the Q connects and the tower aggros him. You can't farm caster minions under tower without taking harass from Ryze. Worse, if the lane is pushed to your tower, your window for a solo kill is probably closed unless he seriously misplays (which he might).

3. He has a strong early game, particularly a strong poke.

Every single strategy to beat Ryze revolves around his weak early game. As a bruiser this is most obvious, because bruiser strategy revolves around those pre-4 kills.

4. Ryze is tanky, so it's tough to kill him.

Ryze may ultimately build tanky in the late game, but Tear doesn't make him tanky, Catalyst doesn't help much, and Rod isn't gold-efficient as a tank item. He's building damage early. You can kill him.

5. Ryze is an easy champ to play.

I could write volumes on what's hard to play about Ryze, but the relevant part here is that if he doesn't manage his distance from a bruiser champion, harass efficiently, and manage his mana and cooldowns, he will die a lot. Punish his mistakes and you can kill him and snowball.