Ryzin' to the Top: Ryze update

By Helmight

Riot's ChampUp team has finally unveiled the next champion in line for an update: Ryze, the Rogue Mage. Ryze has long been a feast-or-famine champion, either getting played or banned in every game, or not seeing play at all. This is largely because Ryze's kit is always on - his passive, in conjunction with his Q, made it so that his abilities were always available, provided he had enough mana. With the update, Riot hopes to give Ryze moments of weakness and moments of strength to help people both fight against, and fight as Ryze.

Keep reading for a better look at the blue mage's updated kit!


Passive: Arcane Mastery

Ryze builds up stacks of Arcane Mastery as he casts his abilities. After reaching max stacks, Ryze becomes temporarily supercharged and gains a couple of powerful buffs: casting an ability significantly reduces the cooldown of his other abilities. Ryze also gains a shield based on his max mana.
Ryze’s damage dealing abilities scale in part with his maximum mana

Fomerly, Ryze's passive just reduced all of his ability cooldowns by 1 second every time he used an ability. It was a pretty boring passive and contributed heavily to his kit always being available. Now however, Ryze will have to pick and choose his moments in lane to trade. As he approaches max stacks, enemies know to back off and focus on poking or farming. Once the bonuses from Arcane Mastery have worn off, they can then successfully trade with Ryze. Overall, it gives him more counterplay in lane while still granting him incredible moments of damage and durability in the lategame.

Q: Overload

Ryze fires a ball of rune energy out in a target direction, damaging the first enemy struck.

Ryze has lost the free CDR that this ability granted, and it's now a skillshot instead of a targeted ability. This is a net nerf to Overload, but it's overall a healthier direction for Ryze. Overload has had it's ranged buffed to compensate for the skillshot-ification, however - which makes last-hitting in a losing lane that much easier.

W: Rune Prison

Ryze traps a targeted enemy, damaging them and rooting them for a short duration.

Rune Prison is the same as it was before, but now has a longer cooldown. This is probably to compensate for the free CDR that Ryze gets from his passive and ultimate. Besides that, it functions just as it normally did. Carry on.

E: Spell Flux

Ryze targets an enemy unit, blasting them with a slow-moving ball of energy that, after striking the target, splits to damage all nearby enemies before returning to Ryze’s original target, dealing increasing damage based on the number of bolts.

This has changed quite a bit, and took me a little time figuring out what it did exactly. Instead of shooting a bouncy blue ball around, Ryze flings a ball of magic at target enemy a la old Overlord. When it impacts the enemy, the skill damages them, then sends out bolts of magic to nearby enemies as well. After those bolts have done their damage, they return to the first target and damage it again based on how many bolts were fired.

It's basically a more reliable ability now, capable of stripping through the enemy team's MR and doing tons of damage to a single target if they're clumped up. In lane, I can see this being Ryze's go-to ability to harass melee champions that stand in the middle of minion waves. Its cooldown is also lower than on live, making it a better ability to max first than Q now.

R: Desperate Power
 

Passive: Ryze passively gains cooldown reduction.
Active: Ryze channels immense power, gaining significant spell vamp and movement speed and turning all of his abilities into area of effect abilities.

Hasn't changed much from live, but it now passively grants Ryze CDR with each rank. This means Ryze doesn't really need to invest in CDR at all with his build and can instead focus on damage and tank stats. Pretty solid buff in my opinion.


Overall Opinion:

I know a lot of Ryze fanboys will be hating the nerfs to Overload, but Ryze gained a LOT in his kit because of them. Ryze is also a healthier champion overall now, with both clear moments of weakness and some degree of skill in how he plays. He's arguably stronger now than he was pre-rework, provided you can properly wield his passive and land Qs. Ryze's rework is definitely one of ChampUp's stronger updates, and I can't wait to play him myself once he hits live.

What do you think about the Ryze rework? Is he too strong now? Too weak? Too blue? Let us know in the comments!