Ryze Rework Has Been Revealed

Besides the new champion Maokai, the biggest thing this patch is the new and improved Ryze. The patch hasn't come out yet but they did release the patch notes. After my post on Maokai I will have one on how the new ryze plays out, but for now we'll have to stick with what we know and theory craft.


An analysis on Ryze, Old vs New


Overload:
Overload is Ryze's signature skill, a high damage bolt of energy that not only scales off of ability power, but also scales off his maximum mana. Obviously the bread and butter of any Ryze assault, and the rework still sticks true to this deliciousness.


Old Overload:

• 2/4/6/8/10% cooldown reduction as a passive effect
• 50/90/130/170/210 base damage, plus 45% of his ability power and 10% of his max mana
• 11/10/9/8/7 second cooldown
• 50/65/80/85/110 mana cost
• 600 range and 1200 missile speed

New Overload:

• 2/4/6/8/10% cooldown reduction as a passive effect
• 30/55/80/105/130 base damage, plus 20% of his ability power and 10% of his max mana
• 3.5 second cooldown
• 70 mana cost
• 675 range and 1400 missile speed

Obviously the biggest change is that while nearly slicing the damage in half, they also sliced the cooldown in half. Along with that, the mana cost has been set to 70 at all ranks, and they increased the range and the speed the missile travels.

It seems like it would be a good skill to use for farming now, with the reduced cooldown, but lets check with the closest skill, Annie's own q, Disintegrate.


at level one, disintegrate does 90 damage, while ryze's Overload does, lets say 60 damage. (at lvl 1 ryze has 305 mana unaltered, which would add 30 damage.) Overload also has a less cooldown, at 3.5 compared to 4, but it costs 10 more mana.(not counting the miniscule 2% cdr, not getting too in depth on this part.)


The only problem is that Annie's disintegrate refunds the mana off a kill, meaning that ryze is at a considerable disadvantage as long as Annie constantly last hits. This is not a farming skill, you are best off last hitting with your auto attacks.


However, New Overload still has the potential to do more damage than the Old Overload. Lets say at lvl 18 ryze has 400 ability power and 3000 mana.


The Old Overload would deal  690 damage(210 + 180[45% of 400] + 300[10% mana]) before calculating mr and penetration.


New Overload would deal 550 damage(130 + 80[20% of 400] + 300[10% mana]) before calculating mr and penetration. AND it has half the cooldown of the Old Overload.
Still not seeing the machine gun comparison but we still have 3 other skills to cover.


Rune Prison
Rune prison is Ryze's W skill, a simple snare that deals damage over time. Unique as it is the only snare to deal damage as a dot instead of just straight up when it hits you. I've been told Morgana used to have a dot on her snare but I started playing LoL when shen came out, ok back on track now.

Old Prison:

• 40 base damage plus 20% ability power every tick. ticks 2/3/4/5/6 times.
• 1.2/1.5/1.8/2.1/2.4 second snare
• 14 second Cooldown
• 80/95/110/125/140 Mana Cost
• 600 Range

New Prison:

• 60/95/130/165/200 base damage plus 60% ability power plus 5% max mana.
• 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 second snare
• 14 second Cooldown
• 80/95/110/125/140 Mana Cost
• 625 Range

Wellp, so much for that. They took another semi-unique skill and simplified it. At least he has the only snare that isn't a skill shot, right? 


 Anyway, lets take a look at the damage difference. For starters the big thing about this is that he now also has some damage on it that scales with mana like Overload. Once again for comparison we have a lvl 18 Ryze with 400 ap and 3000 mana.


The Old Prison would deal 720 damage([40 + 80{20% ap}] times 6.) ignoring mr and penetration.


New Prison would deal 590 damage(200 + 240[60% ap] + 150[5% of max mana]) ignoring mr and penetration.


Overall this seems like a bad trade off. Sure the damage is upfront instead of over time but unless you have a ton of mana then the damage won't overtake the old one. Not only that, but the snare is lowered by .4 seconds.


Spell Flux
The third basic skill of Ryze, Spell Flux is a bouncing orb of doom that deals damage and reduces the magic resist of all enemies it hits.

Old Flux

• 70/85/100/115/130 base damage plus 38% ability power.
• Reduces Magic Resist by 12/15/18/21/24
• 9 second Cooldown
•  60/80/100/120/140 Mana Cost
• 625 range

New Flux

• 50/70/90/110/130 base damage plus 35% ability power
• Reduces Magic Resist by 12/15/18/21/24
• 14 second cooldown
• 60/75/90/105/120 Mana Cost
• 675 range

So it is obviously apparent that Spell Flux is getting nerfed. 3% less scaling on ability power plus 5 extra seconds on the cooldown. Hopefully I don't have to run any numbers to show you the damage difference.


Desperate Power
Desperate power is Ryze's Ultimate, and the new version looks so different from the previous version.

Old Power

• Grants 50/80/110 ability power
• all spells deal 65% splash damage
• 8 second Duration
• 50 second Cooldown
• No Cost

New Power

•  Passive
• grants 75/150/225 mana
• Active
• Grants 15% spell vamp
• all spells deal 50% splash damage
• 5/6/7 second Duration
• 70/60/50 second Cooldown
• No Cost 

This here is probably the biggest impact to Ryze. Mainly in the fact that this cuts his damage output, by not buffing his ap but instead buffing his mana, which all his skills scale better off of ap, but i guess its a trade off as the mana is permanent. Another reason that this cuts his damage output is that they reduced the splash damage by 15%, along with the fact that it lasts for less duration, especially at level 1 and 2, which even have a bigger cooldown.
Interesting to note however is how much the 15% spell vamp plays into all of this. Although it might not look that bad, take in mind that this spell vamp is active while his aoe damage is active, which actually gives you only 5% spell vamp (aoe skills only vamp for 1/3rd of your total spell vamp.)


How does the rework affect his combo?


Namely, the biggest effect this has to his combo is the reduced cooldown on q. Before hand his combo was R>W>E>Q, but I'm thinking that it would easily work for a R>Q>W>E>Q with the new cooldowns.


So lets theory craft up some damage. Once again same statistics, level 18 Ryze with 400 ap and 3000 mana. I will be ignoring his aoe damage as then I would have to take into account how many people are nearby, and all of these calculations are before mr/penetration. Also for this example we will say that the target is hit by spell flux, say, 2 times.

Old Ryze

• Desperate Power, bringing his ap up to 510.
• Rune Prison, dealing 852 damage (142[40 + 20% of 510] per tick, 6 ticks.)
• Spell Flux, dealing 648 damage (324[130 + 38% of 510], also hitting the target 2 times.)
• Overload, dealing 740 damage (210 + 45% of 510 + 10% of 3000)

Dealing a total of  2240 damage to the main target alone, ignoring magic resist and penetrations.


New Ryze

• Desperate Power, the passive still bringing his mana to 3225
• Overload, dealing 533 damage (130 + 20% of 400 + 10% of 3225)
• Rune Prison, dealing 763 damage (200 + 60% of 400 + 5% of 3225)
• Spell Flux, dealing 540 (270[130 + 35% of 400], also hitting the target 2 times)
• Overload, dealing 533 damage (did the math just a second ago.)

Dealing a total of  2369 damage to the main target alone, ignoring magic resist and penetrations.


As we can see, at this point its fairly tied (and New Ryze still had to cast the same spell twice), but until we actually get out there and play we won't have a clue.


Summary, TL;DR
I know I just talked a lot (no surprise I do that often.) and with my simple calculations he seemed to do a little more damage, but again we won't see how big a difference this is until we play him.


What do I think? Ryze has always been a unique champion in the fact that stacking mana increased his damage output. It's great to see Riot buffing an older champion that needed it, besides the fact that Ryze is the "poster boy" of LoL, but its definitely great to see them taking Ryze a step away from the other champions by expanding upon his uniqueness. Within a few days I'll do a follow up post on how the New Ryze plays out.