Ryze is still struggling with a bad situation. This time, however, it does not only apply to the ranked queue.
Ryze is one of LoL’s more iconic heroes. He entered the game in 2009 when League was just being formed and has received many reworks since then. Although the set of skills of the champion in question has been changed many times, in the end, he still remains a mage who showers his opponents with spells.
The hero has always struggled with several problems, which in the end practically never allowed him to reach the meta. The character requires quite a lot of skills to deal the expected damage. In addition, the ultimate, which is great in games where players are really well in tune with each other, is relatively poor in the solo/duo queue.
Riot tried to introduce changes that would make Ryze strong in the hands of the average player, while also allowing fans who have mastered him to dominate the entire Summoner’s Rift. For this reason, the developers are careful about the changes of this champion.
Ryze’s current state
While Riot can’t boost this champion too much, and being aware of his low-ranked win rate, the devs still want to make sure that new players picking him on Summoner’s Rift will have a chance to win the game. Currently, the champion wins less than 46% of games at one of the lowest pick rates in the game.
Riot wanted to help the hero with Update 12.11 by buffing his E – Spell Flux. The buffs weren’t enough to make any change, however, so the designers made additional hotfixes to reduce Q’s cooldown and strengthen E again.
Even so, the buffs weren’t enough for a hero to show up in the meta. The hero’s winrate is still not impressive and according to the statistics in the middle, he is only better than Nunu. However, the problem is not only related to the ranked queue. In this split, he has not been picked once in the LEC and LCS competitions. The situation was different in the LPL, where the teams chose Ryze 6 times. However, the hero only managed to win one game.
After the changes across League of Legends in patch 12.10, the champion’s win rate has dropped to 40%. Before that, he was League’s weakest mid-laner for 5 consecutive updates.
Ryze used to be really great at one time. Riot was forced to weaken and rework him many times to achieve a relative balance. Even so, the champion is not doing as it should, and it is almost certain that he will receive further buffs soon. Whether they ultimately have a positive impact on his win rate, it remains to be seen in some time.