Hi guys, it's JefferXpr3ss, this is my first ever full on guide to a League of Legends champion. I chose Pyke because he is probably the most fun champion I have ever played. I say this because I started off playing him at support and really liked the idea of an assassin support with crowd control AND high damage. But then I thought to myself, “it seems like he can do more than just support.” So then I compared him to zed and he seemed almost the same playstyle with different abilities. But they are both assassins with high burst, with the only exception of Pyke being that he has what I would call continuous burst because of his ever so great ultimate which he can cast over and over. I tried a couple games of Pyke at mid and it seemed to work very well. First I played a Talon which was Semi Brutal so I just played passive and out scaled him late game, the other was against a lux which was difficult given her massive range. But I found out that if u can get a hook on an enemy, you can almost 1v1 any champion. With all of this in play, I think Pyke can be a very strong mid laner. And that is why I am writing this guide.

The runes are pretty straightforward assassin runes Domination and Sorcery. In the domination route we have Dark Harvest, Sudden Impact, Zombie Ward, and Relentless Hunter. In the sorcery route we have Celerity, and Waterwalking. I took the typical assassin runes because that’s literally what every other Build agrees with and Pyke is arguably the most Assassin-Like Assassin. I say this because of his frequently usable Camouflage and speed meaning he has good ganks, and high-kill potential. Because of this, it seemed good to me that Pyke would make a good roamer. So why not add good roaming runes along the sorcery branch? This is why I chose celerity and waterwalking to utilize Pyke’s insane Gank potential. Then we take two runes of adaptive force for extra damage and a rune of health which with pyke's passive will give him even more AD.

In this section, to avoid massive length and to spare anyone brave enough to actually read this guide, I will keep it simple and only explain the starting items, the core items, and the standard final build. The starting items are basically the starting items for any high damage laner, Doran’s Blade, a health potion, and a ward. The core items are the standard assassin items, duskblade, youmuu’s ghostblade, and boots of mobility. I choose the duskblade because of its passive to go with zombie ward, and youmuu’s to just tack on extra burst. For the final build, we take these core items, and add on edge of night, and Guardian Angel with stormrazor to make diving into the enemy team more forgivable and stormrazor for extra burst with its crits.

The skill sequence that I chose basically maxes out his Q and E almost simultaneously because in my opinion, they are both objectively equal and combo together very nicely to get ahead in a fight whether it be a team fight or a one on one. While his W is still objectively really strong, it isn’t quite as useful in fights as it is an escape method. While it is helpful for escaping death, you really only need level one or two for it to be useful. And as usual, you upgrade his R any time possible at level 6, 11, and 16.

To conclude this guide, I would first like to say I do believe that Puke deserves to be nerfed in some way, but even with a nerf, I still think he will be very viable at mid lane. Yo summarize, he has high burst with CC and very good mobility and good escape methods. What more could an assassin need. This makes me think Puke could be one of the best assassins in the game. That’s all for this guide, hope you guys found this interesting and see you out on the rift!