What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy.
Ryze is a champion we’ve talked a lot about lately and he’s been a pretty hot topic
in the community overall because of how powerful he’s been after each rework.
Since his next rework is due to hit live pretty soon, we wanted to do a history of Ryze but
without all of that boring stuff!
We’re going at this one a little bit differently because we want to focus on the big memorable
moments like his power level between reworks or his crazy old Ultimate, so make sure you
let us know if you like this format better.
And as if you like the video hit that like button, if not then hit the dislike, and let’s
get started.
Back in beta Ryze was all about stacking AP.
He didn’t have as much of the mana scaling that became a big part of his identity in
the earlier seasons, although because his mana costs were so high you’d end up building
mana anyway.
He did still have some mana interactions back then though, specifically his W toggle called
Arcane Mastery that increased his mana pool a lot alongside dealing a huge amount of his
ability power on basic attacks.
His Q, Overload, was just a single target nuke but it also dealt 12% of Ryze’s current
mana as damage.
Still, mana came second and the big emphasis was on getting as much AP as possible to blow
everyone up.
His passive Desperate Power was a cool nod to this too, giving him additional AP when
he fell below 40% health, making him even more dangerous as you got closer to killing
him.
Once Ryze had you in range, there was really not a lot you could do about it.
His Rune Prison was infinitely more overpowered back then, lasting up to 3 seconds and preventing
enemies from attacking or dealing any damage during it, as well as stopping their movement.
That doesn’t sound so scary really, sure he deals a lot of burst in his Q, auto attacks
and even in his E, but that’s not really what Beta Ryze was all about.
The thing that really jumps out about Beta Ryze was his original Ultimate.
This is the ability we showed in the thumbnail, and it was called Spell Flux.
Spell Flux was later changed to be a basic ability, but back then it was his Ultimate
and it dealt a literal crap ton of damage.
It worked by bouncing between enemy units or Ryze up to 6 times, dealing up to 500 damage
per bounce to enemy units.
It scaled with 100% ability power too, and this was a huge part about what made Ryze
so damn broken back then.
By standing next to a single enemy, Spell Flux would bounce between them and Ryze 6
times, so damaging them 3 times.
That’s 1500 damage at max rank, along with 300% of your ability power in raw damage too.
No squishy could stand near Ryze and expect to live.
Near the end of the Official League of Legends Walkthrough Trailer you can see Ryze use Spell
Flux on an enemy Ashe, almost one-shotting her with his Ultimate alone, and it only bounced
on her twice!
Ryze was one of the strongest 1v1 champions in the game, and Riot actively encouraged
people to try ganking enemy players with Rune Prison and Spell Flux.
That wasn’t the only way to use it though.
Although Ryze could use himself as a conduit if there are no additional enemies for it
to bounce off, Spell Flux would happily bounce from enemy champion to enemy champion.
With up to 6 bounces, we’re talking an insane amount of AoE damage that could just burn
out an entire team if Ryze was ahead.
Beta Ryze was the definition of anti fun for everyone except the guy wandering around using
Spell Flux on lonely enemies.
The insanely overpowered run couldn’t last, and fairly early on in Season 1 Ryze received
his first gameplay update.
Riot shuffled around his ability names a little, starting with his passive which became Arcane
Mastery.
Whenever Ryze casts a spell, all other spells received a cooldown reduction of 1.5 seconds.
This new passive was a huge part of what turned Ryze into the ‘machine gun mage,’ letting
him spam abilities as long as he had the mana to do it.
His Overload received a change, that lowered his base damage and AP Ratios overall, but
gave him more mana scaling through 10% of his maximum mana rather than 12% of his current
mana.
It also got a cooldown and mana cost reduction to help go along with his new spam happy playstyle.
His Rune Prison was swapped to his W, and received a healthy duration nerf to balance
it out a bit, although it also had a cooldown reduction so that Ryze could recast it a little
more quickly.
The craziest change was to his Ultimate, Spell Flux.
It actually became his E at this point, and was stripped of most of the power that made
it so scary.
It had a huge damage and scaling nerf and could only bounce 5 times, but it also was
given a magic resistance debuff of 15 to every enemy it hit up to 5 stacks.
It also bounced way quicker and basically worked as a way to strip an enemy of it’s
defenses while Ryze burned through their health with his other abilities.
This wouldn’t have been enough to make Ryze much of a threat though, so his new Ultimate
Desperate Power was turned into a way for Ryze to spread the love to all enemies rather
than just one.
Desperate Power would buff Ryze for 8 seconds, giving him additional ability power and causing
all his spells to deal 65% of their damage in an AoE.
The cooldown was surprisingly low at 40 seconds at max rank, and it cost Ryze no mana to activate
so he’d just happily use it to tear about the enemy team in a grouped fight or just
to push waves with his new waveclear tool.
The rework was a success and it made Ryze a hell of a lot fairer to play against, but
he was still super strong in his new found form as a sustained damage bruiser, rather
than the crazy burst machine he was back in Beta.
The next step in Ryze’s evolution was his second gameplay update.
Riot seemed to like the more spammy playstyle and decided to push it one step further - they
cut the damage of his Q almost in half but reduced his cooldown by over half to compensate,
letting him use it way more often and turning it into a pretty effective farming tool for
tricky lanes.
His Rune Prison was changed to up front damage rather than the old damage over time, and
was also given some mana scaling -5% of Ryze’s maximum mana as bonus damage.
It also had its duration nerfed to make Ryze a little bit less of a nightmare to deal with
once he had you in his snare.
His Spell Flux was still a bit too dominant so it was rebalanced, putting it on a longer
cooldown and lowering the damage but also reducing the mana cost.
The cooldown nerf was kinda just to help re-balance it against his passive, as his Overload was
way more spammable at this point so it was reducing his other cooldowns via Arcane Mastery.
His Ultimate was hit with a big change too.
Desperate Power had it’s bonus ability power removed and AoE damage effect percentage reduced
to 50%, but instead it was given passive mana and 15% spell vamp while active.
This change really committed Ryze to being more about mana and cooldown reduction rather
than ability power, with all the ability power ratio nerfs it really set him up to deal more
sustained damage through repeated casts of abilities in a fight.
Ryze kept this base kit for most of the game's’ history, right up until Season 5.
Ryze was a powerful tool in the arsenal of many competitive League teams, but one of
the most notorious was Alex Ich of Moscow Five.
The EU team had their first major break at IEM Kiev, where Alex Ich stepped up and made
a name for himself with his favorite champion Ryze.
Ryze was banned in almost every single game against Moscow Five, and the games where he
wasn’t banned away from Alex Ich, he was picked up and used to destroy every team at
the event.
There was only a single Moscow Five game at IEM Kiev where Ryze wasn’t picked or banned,
and M5 showed up huge at the event, only dropping a single game the whole time to TSM in the
finals.
Ryze’s power and Alex Ich’s skill with the champion was a huge part of this performance,
and it really kinda set the stage for Ryze’s career in competitive League.
He’s pretty much never been weak for his entire history in the game, which meant players
were pretty interested to hear he was being reworked a third time in Season 5.
The Season 5 rework by itself wasn’t really that terrifying.
It turned his Q into a skillshot, tweaked his Rune Prison stats and changed his Spell
Flux by causing it to return to its initial target.
The big change was in his passive, Arcane Mastery.
It caused Ryze to stack up on spell casts, and once he reaches 5 stacks he would gain
a movement speed buff, a mana-based shield and cause his ability casts to lower the cooldowns
of other abilities.
Combined with his new passive cooldown reduction on his Ultimate, Ryze became the official
spambot of League, able to combo his abilities together to destroy single targets in no time.
He wasn’t quite there though, and aside from an insta kill bug with Muramana, he wasn’t
really that strong for the first time in his career.
Riot swiftly dished out some buffs in a follow up patch though, and Ryze became one of the
most broken champions ever to grace modern day League.
His permanent snare combo had little to no counterplay, and despite the fact that Ryze
was kinda meant to be this insane late game champion, he was reaching a power spike way
earlier than he should.
He’d just carry games by himself, and he became pretty much permanently picked or banned
in both ranked and pro games until Riot managed to tone him back down again.
Riot viewed this rework as a bit of a failure, and decided to look for a new angle to take
Ryze that made him both more interesting to play, and more interesting to play against.
From that was born his fourth and latest rework.
Ryze’s fourth rework is currently playable on PBE, and it’s honestly pretty crazy strong.
The only unchanged part is his W, it’s still the same old Rune Prison we know and love.
His new passive gives him mana for his ability power and damage for his mana, and he has
a ton of new neat combos through the interaction with the new form of his Spell Flux on E,
giving him versatility and a little more strategic direction.
His Overload has new interactions with Spell Flux, and he even has this crazy team teleport
for an Ultimate.
Despite all that, he’s still the combo mage and he can still spam pretty hard, but he’s
a lot more flexible and exciting to play.
It’s hard to say for sure if he’ll be overpowered or not until a week or two after
release on live, but for our full thoughts on his rework you should definitely check
out our previous video on it where we go into way more detail!
Ryze has been around for a long time, and he’s been kinda scary for most of it.
With the new rework ready to be tested out on live servers, we’re excited to see if
Riot’s new direction for Ryze holds up to his reputation, but hopefully without being
way too strong all over again.
Make sure you leave us a comment with your thoughts on Ryze’s history and what you
expect to see from his rework.
And it looks like that’s gonna be it from me, if you enjoyed the video drop a like,
subscribe if you want, thanks for watching, and I’ll see you guys next time!