Welcome to my Ryze build!

For a long time, I simply checked guides on here but never cared to make an account, now after my friend asked me to teach him how to play Ryze, I have decided to create this guide and hopefully someone will find this useful!


This guide will not cover the basics of the game, nor be really really detailed with a bunch of useless ****. This will focus entirely on how I play Ryze as a mana beast, but I will try to keep this short and sweet!

Probably the best about Ryze is that you can go for a full dps build, while still being very tanky.

Two of his skills scale with Mana, that way Ryze can be different from all the other casters out there.

He is also a great counterpick against for example Veigar. Laugh at him when he ults you for barely any damage :)

Last but not least, his single target nuke is pretty sick, while being able to constantly spam and dps with his skills that barely have any CD!


Now, as with every char in this game, here are the pro's and cons of Ryze:

Pros:

• Great DPS in small bursts
• Very tanky, while building FULL damage
• Short CD ult that can be used to farm
• Giant mana pool endgame
• Amazing passive
• Scales well lategame, but has potential to dish out some nice damage early game aswell
• Only 450 IP in the store!

Cons:

• Squishy early/game
• AOE damage isn't very significant
• Mid-game farming requires ult to be effective
• Sometimes hard to recover from a bad early game
• No way to sustain yourself in lane until level 6

Ok, now that you are convinced that you want to play Ryze, lets cover the recommended runes and the possible runes for him:

For Marks I choose magic penetration marks. These give my spells a little more "punch" early-game. Combined with
Sorcerer's Shoes you will do true damage on most squishies early-game.

These are the best marks you can get for Ryze, Mana Marks are simply not worth it!


For Glyphs I take flat Magic Resist Glyphs. This has 2 reasons. With the current meta of AP casters going mid, these will help you survive early harassment and get kills easily. The second reason is, that your magic resist is rather low compared to your defense late-game. Don't get me wrong, you will still have 90-100+ magic resist, but these just help you get a little more.

Alternatives:

Of-course you can take different Glyphs. Other viable picks are Greater Glyphs of Shielding for magic resist/level. This helps you especially lategame, but isn't as useful earlygame.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction are another alternative, tho when you follow the build you will have enough cooldown reduction already, so these are not really necessarily.

For Seals I take magic resist again, simply because they seem the most useful to me. You don't need armor as you will most likely be mid against another Caster and endgame you will have more def than you actually need. But that is just my personal preference, you can pretty much pick what you want here. Armor, CD reduction etc are all somewhat viable, but wont have a game changing impact.

Lastly, for Quints I take magic penentration quints for the same reasons I take magic pen marks.

Other viable options are:

Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed To get some additional speed. Great to chase down running enemies or land that last cast you needed to kill him/her.

Greater Quintessence of Magic Resist To get some additional magic resist. Can be useful but I wouldn't choose this over magic pen.

Greater Quintessence of Health Pretty nice to boost your HP earlygame, especially because we won't buy any dorans items. If you are having trouble staying in lane early-game, get these.

But wait! Above you mentioned Ryze gains damage through Mana, so why no Greater Quintessence of Mana, Greater Seal of Mana, Greater Mark of Mana or Greater Glyph of Mana???

Well, while they seem like a great idea, they simply don't scale enough with the skills to make a significant difference. For example you would trade in 10-15% increased damage for an extra 4,3 damage on your Q when changing magic penetration Marks for Mana marks. NOT worth it!
It's almost the same for the rest of the runes. Would you trade in 10%-15% more magic resist for a lousy 10 extra damage on your Q? No!

I don't want to bore you and go into full detail here, so I will only explain why I don't pick certain masteries that you might think are good.

• Defense tree - While this could certainly help early/game, it is way more important to get more XP for a level advantage, shorter cd on your summoner spells and more... However going 9/21/0 or even 0/21/9 is possible, I just prefer 9/0/21.
• Perseverence might look like a great idea, but you wont notice that 4% increased regen at all, simply because it is so little. You can do the maths if you want to.
• Expanded Mind will add a bit of mana, but the points are better spent on other masteries. At 5000 mana, you only gain 250 extra mana through this mastery, that is with 4 points specced into it.

My preference:

Ignite
Helps to get some early kills, extra dps or against annoying healers.

Flash
Great to escape ganks, counter-flash or just to chase after an enemy. Not much difference to Ghost, it's just personal preference between those 2.

Other viable spells:

Teleport
Good to get around the map, recover from a death, go shopping real quick without losing that tower or to teleport to a ward/shroom/box and gank. Use this if you think you wont dominate mid easily.

Ghost
Great to chase enemies or to get away. Not as fool-proof as Flash but once you get away you keep the speed boost for longer and therefore have a higher chance not to die.

Make sure that when you take this spell, replace Blink of an Eye with Haste !

Exhaust
Great alternative to Ignite. Slows the enemy champion and reduces it's damage by 80% for it's duration. Great to shut down a Yi or even someone with a lot of lifesteal, as 80% less damage means 80% less lifesteal.

Make sure that when you take this spell, replace Deadliness with Cripple!

This is the most important and cheapest source of mana for Ryze. The earlier you get this the sooner you will max it's stacks. Later you build this into a which will give you a nice AP boost to your skills.

Items that you should buy and stack quickly after Boots and Tear of the Goddess:

+ +

They are cheap and provide a nice amount of mana. They are later used to build in things like Rod of Ages, Banshee's Veil and Frozen Heart.

Core Build (IN NO ORDER):

+ + +

If you are doing extremely well, or if you are getting fed you can rush a after the Tear of the Goddess.

How to "counterbuild" the enemy team AKA What to buy first:

• Is the enemy team physical damage heavy? Build Frozen Heart and Rod of Ages before Banshee's Veil!
• Is the enemy team magic damage heavy? Build Banshee's Veil and Rod of Ages before Frozen Heart!
• Is the enemy team balanced out pretty well? Consider getting 2 Rod of Ages or decide on either Frozen Heart or Banshee's Veil, depending on who you think is the bigger threat. If you are unsure it is generally a good idea to get the Rod of Ages and the Banshee's Veil because they give you HP.

Enemy team stacking magic resist:

If your enemies are tired of you roflstomping them in the face and build a lot of magic resist, consider getting a

Because of Arcane Mastery you have to have a good combo to maximize damage. Therefore you have 2 options:

Overload ---> Desperate Power ---> Overload ---> Spell Flux ---> Overload ---> Rune Prison --> Overload....etc

This way, at maximum CD you should be able to cast Overload between every single other spell cast because of Ryze's passive.

Another option would be to start out with the Spell Flux debuff:

Desperate Power ---> Spell Flux ---> Overload ---> Rune Prison ---> Overload.....etc

That way you reduce your enemy's magic resist before you blow your nuke on him.

Pre-LVL 6:

Focus on last hitting minions with auto attacks only, your spells are VERY costly so you will want to save them up for harassing and killing the enemy.

After LVL 6:

You now hopefully have your ULT ( ;) ), so use it whenever you get lowish on HP and whenever your mana allows it. Hopefully you already have your Tear of the Goddess and a decent amount of mana, so you can now spam your spells a bit more frequently. Later in game you can pretty much spam your spells as much as you want, which is required because you will want to get the 1000 passive bonus mana of your Tear of the Goddess as soon as possible.

Remember:

Your ult has a VERY short CD, so use it whenever you can. With the CD reduction from your items and your passive, you should be able to use it every ~15-20 seconds late-game.

Jungling

Obviously Ryze isn't a very good jungler at level 1. Therefore you should not jungle with him, he belongs in a solo lane!

If you don't have a jungler in your team, you can start taking blue buff solo at level 8 or 9. You can take it earlier, just ask a teammate to help you get it!

When you have blue buff and your Tear of the Goddess, remember to spam your skills! You want those 1000 passive bonus mana, you want it NOW!

Endgame

Endgame you should have close to 40% CD reduction and about 50 per 5 Mana regen at about 5000 Mana. That way you really don't need that blue buff anymore! Give it to someone that needs the mana or the CD reduction.

Thank you for reading my guide! I hope you enjoyed it.

Before you vote, please take the time to try this build out. I am always up for suggestions and I will try to improve my guide with your suggestions.

If you don't like this guide, please provide constructive criticism so I can change and improve it.

Lastely, I will (soon) post some screenshots to prove that this build does work: