Many League of Legends champions struggle to excel at a certain skill level. Throughout the game's history, many characters have suffered from this problem. This is the case for example of Amumu, which had to receive a small update during the last year to reverse this situation. However, of all the champions in a similar situation, Ryze is by far the worst off. Brilliant in competitive play and almost useless in ranked, you've probably wondered why Riot Games didn't dare to change it .
Ryze's big problem for Riot Games
Riot has some great examples of how it's dealt with this issue in the past, and is even aiming to make some really cool changes to champions who are currently experiencing similar situations with mid-range reworks like Olaf or Taliyah. However, the developer feels that all of these examples pale in comparison to the Runic Mage situation. The differences in his case are just too stark.
Among his problems is the fact that, in addition to the player's level of mastery over the character, the champion needs a lot of coordination with his team to use his ultimate, R - Transdimensional Portal.
Riot Games has likely considered making major changes to the champion on more than one occasion . However, a Rioter said that whatever they do, there will be disappointed. "We can't make Ryze players happy. Either we're going to do a very serious rework that will make some of his players very sad, or we're going to have to make him very weak in ranked matches," he said. explained to the community, hinting that not all of his signature abilities might be retained in an update that would fix the issue.
Ryze has managed to make his most recognizable abilities survive all the redesigns he's been through. His fast combos, his cage or the rebounds of his mesmerizing E - Flux have changed, but still remained very similar. However, the ultimate is now the character's most recognizable feature. While for professionals it's one of the best spells in the game, for the majority of the community it's an almost useless ability with a very long cooldown that takes away the ability to have an ultimate to use.
Riot Games changed their relationship with champion updates after the Aatrox rework. He is currently considered by the community to be the only deleted champion in League of Legends history, as his update did not preserve any of the original skills . Since then, the developers have tried to maintain the personality of the champions in one way or another. This seems impossible for Ryze, for whom it would take changing a lot of things and saying goodbye to his ultimate to free himself from the problems he is having.
The sacrifice may be worth it in this case, because the champion has been in this situation for far too long. But there's also an additional hurdle: Riot Games' pace of redesigns doesn't leave room for Ryze until the second half of next year . So it looks like League of Legends players who want to continue using Runic Mage will have to be patient.