League of Legends Gives Ryze a Final Rebalance Opportunity

Riot Games is taking one last shot at balancing Ryze between normal and competitive play before moving away from the champion and focusing more on others.

In March, Riot Games said that the balance team would be moving away from champions centered around competitive play and would instead turn towards others for work. Ryze, Azir, and Kalista are just a few of the champs mentioned that excel in organized team environments but can be a pain to utilize in normal play, thus leading to the recurring balance issues.

Several days ago, Riot Repertoir posted on the League of Legends boards to give players an idea of what Riot Games plans on doing with Ryze during this latest PBE pass. At the time, the Rioter noted that this was part of Riot’s recent announcement that champion work would be focused less on team-oriented champions, and in a more recent post, Riot Meddler confirmed as much.

One Last Chance

“It’s a final stab at trying to better balance him for regular play and organized play (which includes things like Clash and other tournaments, not just LCS),” Riot Meddler said when asked about the Ryze changes on the PBE. “If it doesn’t accomplish that however we’ll be putting future time for a while into other champs.”

He expanded on the statement in another comment and explained Riot’s plans for if Ryze’s PBE changes don’t work out.

“If it doesn’t work it means we’ll be putting time instead into other champs rather than constantly sinking time into Ryze to try and maintain his identity while having him be playable in both regular and organized play.”

If you didn’t catch them before, below are all of the changes on the PBE that are currently being tested for Ryze.

Ryze Changes

General

• Improved spell queueing for Overload, Rune Prison, and Spell Flux

Overload (Q)

• Spell Ranks :: 6 (1/3/5/7/9/11) >>> 5 (1/3/5/7/9)
• Damage :: 60/85/110/135/160/185 (+45%AP) (+3%BonusMana) >>> 60/90/120/150/180 (+50%AP) (+2%BonusMana)
• NEW :: Deals (14+2perLevel)% additional damage as true damage to enemies with Flux (replaces E bonus damage mechanic)
• Cost :: 40 >>> 40/50/60/70/80
• Shielding :: (60+5/lvl) >>> 50/75/100/125/150
• Movement Speed :: 25/28/31/34/37/40% >>> 20/25/30/35/40%
• Rune Duration :: 4 >>> 5, renewing on taking or dealing damage

Rune Prison (W)

• Cooldown :: 13/12/11/10/9 >>> 15/13/11/9/7
• Damage :: 80/100/120/140/160 (+60%AP) (+1%BonusMana) >>> 80/100/120/140/160 (+60%AP) (+4%BonusMana)
• CC type :: roots for 0.75 seconds >>> applies a 50% slow that decays over 1.5 seconds
• REMOVED :: Mana Cost
• NEW :: Casting Rune Prison restores 6/7/8/9/10% of Ryze’s maximum Mana

Spell Flux (E)

• Cooldown :: 3.25/3.00/2.75/2.50/2.25 >>> 3.5/3.0/2.5/2.0/1.5
• Ability Power Ratio :: 30% >>> 40%
• Bonus Mana Ratio :: 2% >>> 1%
• REMOVED :: Overload Damage Bonus (replaced by Q true damage mechanic)
• W Bonus :: Increased Root Duration >>> Roots instead of slowing
• Spread Damage :: 50% >>> 100%
• Bounce Radius (also applies to Q) :: 350 >>> 275
• Bounce Rules (also applies to Q) :: Center to center >>> edge to edge
• Effectively makes bouncing between minions the same, and bouncing to champions a bit easier

Realm Warp (R)

• Ranks :: 2 (6/11) >>> 3 (6/11/16)
• Range :: 1750/3000 >>> 4000 all ranks
• Cooldown :: 180 >>> 300/240/180

Ryze Goals

After seeing all the changes that are being tested, Ryze players may be wondering what the goal is here with the last pass on Ryze before moving on to other champs. Riot Repertoir explained that even though there aren’t any new skills on the PBE, Riot is hoping to reshape Ryze to bridge the gap between the levels of play.

To structure the Ryze changes, Riot has a list of goals for what the balance team is looking to accomplish.

Ryze Goals

• Ryze is more vulnerable in the early lane especially. Adding a mechanic that necessitates him regularly casting Rune Prison in lane aims to create more moments where you can catch him with it on cooldown.
• Ryze’s dps and dueling power is pushed to later parts of the game.
• Slower wave push across the board, especially in the laning phase. Looking to achieve this through a change to how E->Q deals its damage, as well as reduced Mana ratios (early/mid game damage) and increased AP ratios (mid/late game damage).
• Reduced reliable lockdown. Base W is a slow instead of a root – upgraded version is still a root, but duration is down a bit.
• This means that if Ryze wants to Flash root you, he has to throw an E at you first, giving you an extra .25 seconds to react (with your own flash or dash, for instance). It also aims to reduce the power of his gank assist in a coordinated setting slightly.
• More baseline reliable dps added to later game Spell Flux (E).
• E cd is reduced a bit later on, and E and Q bounce rules favor bouncing between champions by using edge checks.
• E->Q’s damage bonus is changed to true damage at half the current magic damage values, in addition to scaling with Ryze’s level rather than any of his spell ranks so that there’s no way to get it fully online before end game.
• Realm Warp (R) has a longer range to make it easier to use per cast, but its cooldown is waaaaaaay up. More accessible baseline, but fewer opportunities to cast.
• Yes, this does make Realm Warp a more powerful spell per cast, which may seem unintuitive. However, the intention is that the extremely long cooldown means it’s something that solo queue players have to think about less as a portion of their total success, but also something that pros are able to utilize less as a portion of their total success on the champion. If this ult cooldown gating is successful, it’s something we could potentially consider applying to other champions with pro-warping spells.
• I’m sure some will ask “why not just replace Realm Warp?” The answer is that Realm Warp does exciting things for the champion that we like, but that the primary satisfaction driver of the champion is his core combat loop, so we’d like to keep that intact and just adjust R to be less important overall.
• Bonus Improvement – all spells benefit from spell queueing.
• This is actually tentatively being applied globally across all champions in 8.9, but it’s worth calling out for Ryze especially, because it will tend to benefit characters that cast rapidly the most. We put some tech in with Irelia to make the game process your spell casts a bit better, so if you’ve noticed how smooth she feels, this is likely a large contributor.