Hey, I just finished getting a bronze 3 mmr account to plat in 11 days only losing 15 games this preseason, while only playing Ryze. I'm currently sitting at plat 1, and I'm here to either change your mind about Ryze being dog-****, or reiterate how great he can be if played properly, particularly in top lane.

This guide will not have information on Ryze's abilities or kit, but will more-so focus on top lane matchups and strategies to being an insanely oppressive lane bully.

Disclaimer: Ryze top is still good despite the change where minions will aggro if you use a point and click ability on the enemy champ. Some matchups are considerably harder, and I will make note of it in the matchups section. He is still great to build as a bruiser, even more so now that he doesnt have shields to keep him safe. The biggest change in his strengths and weaknesses in my opinion is that his good lanes got better, and his bad lanes got worse, since you have more damage options but no shield.

Pros: - Usually Not banned
- High burst and sustained damage
- Great at kiting
- Much stronger after runes reforged
- Fantastic champ when mastered
- Reliable CC, great for setting up teammates with unreliable cc
- Scale like a monster with a great laning phase and a mid game power spike
- Huge AOE burst
- ^Beard

Cons: - HORRIBLE when behind
- Gankable early
- Not great at teamfighting
- Short range
- Now draws minion aggro when E and W are used on champions
- No shield
- _Bald

Pros: - WAY better into melee matchups
- No hard counters top, great blind pick
- Depending on draft order, other team will think you are mid and counter pick you, giving your mid lane a favorable matchup
- Scales better with the prolonged laning phase (More CS)
- Can escape ganks with ult better since it's a longer lane

Cons: - Can't roam as easily
- Waveclear isn't as useful top lane
- Easier to get punished by a jungler
- _Still ^Bald
- MINION AGGRO CHANGES

Ryze's q is a linear skill shot that does damage
Ryze's w is a point and click slow that lasts for 1.5s, that resets the cooldown on Ryze's q
Ryze e is a point and click ability applies flux to the target and resets our q cooldown. Using e on a target spreads flux to nearby enemies. Using q on a fluxed target will do extra damage to all nearby targets with flux on them. Using w on a fluxed target will snare them for 1.5s.
Ryze's r is an aoe semi-channeled portal that teleports everyone in the vicinity after a delay. It unfortunately no longer works with stopwatch or zhonyas, and using either inside your ult will cancel the ability.

Just some quick Ryze combos are:
W-E-Q for higher damage trading
E-W-Q for escaping or safer trading
Q-W-Q-E-Q for max damage against enemies
Q-E-Q-W-Q-E-Q on targets CCed by your team or objectives

If you are still unsure about how to play ryze watch a youtube video and try him in a custom. Now for the good stuff.

This part was too long to see in the runes section since I wanted to talk about all of the new runes reforged options. Here goes.

This is a general Ryze page, the only two other options are using transcendence instead of celerity for the late game cdr, or using cheap shot instead of taste of blood. Having said that there are other options if you switch out the sorcery or domination trees.

OPTION 1 PRIMARY TREE: SORCERY - Ryze Phase rush is pretty much mandatory for Ryze. Gives him the ability to escape and gap close. I can't even imagine playing ryze with anything else at this point.

Manaflow band was made for Ryze.

Celerity is great for early movement speed, it is equivalent to 2 MS quints at the start of the game, and scales with your movement speed.Transcendence I think is the better option after the celerity nerfs, since it lets you cap out on cdr late game. celerity is better for top lane Ryze since trades can be won or lost on one auto, andthe extra movespeed helps you weave in and out of auto range.

Scorch even after the nerfs is the best option here. Waterwalking is pretty bad, gathering storm is TERRIBLE (In general, any mastery you can't notice until 50 minutes is a BAD mastery)

SECONDARY TREE: DOMINATION - Ravenous hunter on Ryze is a little broken. The healing you get from just assists is pretty great. Also, if your team has a decent invading support, invade. There’s no better feeling than getting 4 assists to start a game even if you die, since you get to walk to lane with 12.5% spell vamp lvl.

Taste of blood is my preference since it scales better than most people think, and it helps bait enemies since they don't expect your healing. There are several other viable options for Ryze in this slot however. Cheap shot is great, arguably better than Taste of Blood, since you can proc comet, scorch, auto, and get true damage from Cheap shot from a single w. Ghost poro is decent for top lane if you watch your map, eyeball collection is good if you have an easy matchup, and ive even seen ryzes with sudden impact for after you ult, but im pretty sure that one is troll.

The other option for secondary tree is going inspiration with the Perfect timing for the free stopwatch, and cosmic insight for cdr all around the board. Perfect timing is actually so valuable for outplays, it can actually determine the outcome of your lane. Cosmis insight is just a better version of the cdr overcap from before runes reforged since Ryze also gets 5% cdr on item actives and summoners. I actually think this rune is often overlooked its really great.

OPTION 1 VARIATION: PRIMARY TREE: DOMINATION - Take Electrocute, Taste of Blood, Zombie Ward/Eyeball Collection, Ravenous Hunter, then Sorcery secondary with Transcendence and Manaflow band. Electrocute actually scales much better and the burst is pretty insane after level 8, but early levels (especially levels 1 and 2) electrocute is hella useless, and makes the e start much worse top lane. It is starting to grow on me since it really helps late game with the W-E-Q damage and most of the time it's either kill the fed vayne or lose the game. It is situationally dependent, but in general Ryze players that use electrocute are not as big of heretics as we originally thought. Taste of Blood and Ravenous Hunter obviously, then Eyeball collection gives some good ap or zombie ward can be really useful top lane though so it is probably the better choice.


[bold]SUMMARY FOR TLDR[/bold]

Electrocute is great against enemies that outrange you who you can't poke down since you will have a better all in (kennen, jayce, quinn), comet is best against someone you can constantly poke down since you can easily get them out of lane, and most importantly PHASE RUSH IS THE BEST RUNE RIGHT NOW FOR RYZE. ok.

Personally I don't believe there should be much flexibility on Ryze's runes right now. The ones I have listed at the top of the guide should pretty much always be taken. It's also worth noting that regardless of the option i take for a keystone, i will always bring taste of blood and ravenous hunter. The sustain from it has absolutely won me some games, I seriously think players that don't take it are strongly missing out.

Playing top lane is nothing like mid lane. Sure it's a solo lane, but instead of spam clearing the wave you need to focus on manipulation and jungle paths much more. Since you are going to be playing into mostly melee matchups, the most important thing you need to work on is autoing your opponent and dropping minion aggro.

Ryze's level 1 is strong and taking e first is vital in many melee matchups. For example, tryndamere starts lane by autoing your melee creeps and stacking his rage. You need to be able to CONSTANTLY auto him and make him back off from the wave without pulling the wave too far and taking too much damage from creeps. I see a lot of top players use bushes to drop aggro, which is fine, but the quicker method is to stand on one side of your casters (either below or above), and once you have minion aggro just walk to the other side BEHIND your creeps (this means you walk around your creeps on the side closest to your tower and away from the enemy creeps). You drop aggro almost instantly, and you are free to Auto and e or w depending on the matchup. This also stops the enemy wave from being pulled too far up.

There are almost no hard counters for Ryze top lane, while mid lane there is cassiopeia, ^anivia, any poke champs, _anivia, some assassins, and ANIVIA. This guide is meant for aggressive Ryze players who want to win lane, not wait for late game and teamfights. Be sure to get as much farm as possible, and follow the correct build path.

Before Ryze's rework, playing this aggressive was less dangerous for Ryze, especially post-6 as many top lane champs get powerful ultimates with cc (Maokai, Ornn, Naut, Etc. ETC.) great for setting up jungler ganks, which are problematic no matter how hard you won your lane. Even though stopwatch and zhonya dont interact with our ult anymore, you can still somewhat unreliably ult out post-6.

Lastly for the lane phase, in harder matchups like irelia and jayce there are two ways to approach the wave: either you farm with your q like a *****, or you e creeps near the enemy and q the wave to do a little bit of q poke, but this pushes the wave. I recommend taking barrier in these matchups and immediately getting components for frozen heart and abyssal mask to negate the enemy damage as much as possible.

Late game Ryze is significantly OVERRATED in my opinion, since he is a good duelist but not great, mediocre teamfighter, and a safe but not the best split-pusher. The key with Ryze is to get ahead, which is why so much of this guide has focused on the early game. The standard for late game teamfighting with Ryze is to constantly e the closest target and then either q them and hope you get a flux spread on other targets, or empowered snare the nearest target and hope to either burst them down or have your team burst them down. Another subpar option is peeling for your carries, but you are also a carry and having all your carries hitting their frontline at the start of a fight usually loses the fight. Even empowered snaring a frontline member is a waste of a cooldown, since using your empowered snare to lock down the enemy adc is immeasurably more valuable.

The reason Top lane bruiser Ryze works so well right now is because of Ravenous Hunter and Taste of Blood. The healing on taste of blood scales surprisingly well, and ravenous hunter is BROKEN. Having any sort of healing on Ryze feels so good, always try to get all 5 stacks as soon as possible and your late game will be much easier.

One actual problem with picking Ryze top lane is that your team composition can suffer, which contrary to scrub-bronzy belief DOES actually matter a ton.

For instance, If you have a malz mid, and an elise jungle, you have a super strong single target mage right now in malz, and a great early pressure jungler in elise. If you pick Ryze top with these champs, you essentially have 3 similar single target ap champs, which can be fine, but it'll be much harder later on.

Ryze excels in team comps that are already tanky, and have aoe cc and damage. Using the previously mentioned comp as an example, if you have a leona support to go along with the triple ap top side, you now have a frontline, engage, and follow up peel/cc that would all have been lacking before. However, If you get a vel'koz support instead, you're in trouble.

Just a brief list of champs that work fantastically with Ryze top in different positions:

Jungle: Maokai, Amumu, Ornn, Sejuani, Zac

Mid: Vlad, Azir, Brand, Ziggs, Corki, and any ad mid.

ADC's shouldn't affect when to pick Ryze top, however MF and aphelios are strong right now with great aoe team fight potential

Support: Leona, Alistar, Rakan, Nautlius, Sion

Team comps obviously aren't everything and if every lane wins the game is much easier, but if you have a Maokai Jungle, Gangplank Mid, Miss Fortune ADC, and Leona Support, Ryze top is a free win.

Let's say you are against an Irelia, get ganked twice then get solo'd, and you lose first tower and are 0-3 by 8 minutes. What do you do to get back in the game?

A lot of players will let the enemy top laner roam mid, while they sit top lane and farm with tp hoping for an opportunity to tp in and clean up a fight. This strategy doesn't work when you are this far behind on 0-3 8 minute Ryze, since you'll never be able to beat the fed irelia in a fight, solo or with a team, especially when she's already had 4 seconds to wreak havoc before you tp.

The ideal option to stall out the game while having some pressure is to farm 1 wave top, then immediately run through your jg to mid to help him hold his tower since irelia will likely be rotating there. You need to keep your jungle lit up with wards since the enemy top laner can just wait for you to cut through to mid and blow you up. Continually farm top, then run to mid to either set up a kill or counter gank if irelia is already there. Hold tp in case irelia goes bot, and generally just try to match her global pressure. There are a lot of irelias that will stay top and try to continually solo kill you. If that happens its actually better and less work, but you will have to rush defensive options immediately after tear.

If the enemy top laner is 3-0, you are basically at their mercy, but zig-zagging between top and mid to keep getting farm while helping your other solo laner is the best potential you have at matching the fed enemy laner's pressure once your tower is gone.

Note: If Irelia is trying to focus bot lane you hard push top and try to help them with tp if possible. As previously mentioned this is subpar since Irelia can dust your team off in the 4 seconds it takes to tp, but if she doesnt get anything off it you get a major catchup advantage by getting more time to push top in.

1 - it is possible to Q-E-Q-W-Q-E-Q and get a 2s snare. The key is to be far enough away from the target so that when you Q-E-Q-W-Q, your w hits before the 2nd Q. This is caused by the 2nd Q's travel time, and since W is instant it hits first. It is not an empowered Q, but it is an extra q nonetheless. It gives the same effect as a Q-E-W-Q, but there is an extra Q woven into the combo.

2 - E stalling - if you watch the majority of Ryze players, when they are chasing an opponent down a lane they will try to get an immediate E-W to snare them, then Q and wait for their E to come off cooldown to continue their dps. A simple trick is to just E them and save your snare for when you E comes back off cooldown, so when you use your snare you have an E-Q ready for your still immoblized target. This strategy lets you E-Q the stationary target rather than a moving target.

3 - This is a fairly easy trick but one that a lot of Ryze players forget to do and it is really important. Moving around in your ult to get closer to whoever you are chasing down makes your ult considerably more useful. Even if you are escaping you can make up some extra ground. Just be careful not to walk out of your ult range.

4 -*This no longer works but the video is cool*- I don't really know what to call this one, but it is where you E two separate targets (minions most commonly) and with flux on both targets you Q one of them and that target has to die. What this does is send a chain reaction to the other flux target, where it first E's the target from the dying minion, but also spreads the Q damage. What ends up happening is it creates a chain of E-Q damage to all nearby targets. Here is a video of my dad showing the interaction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtnLIHzb3CU I highly recommend his channel for Ryze highlights and tricks.