Pyke Build Guide by The Jhin Cena

Hello everyone, my name is Pyke Tyson and I'm Pyke mid main. Previously I mained Pyke support, however I then realized that when Pyke is banned or taken I am forced to play a normal support which isn't as fun, and so I went and continue to go Pyke mid. Additionally, Pyke Mid is an excellent roamer which is essential to ranking up as a mid laner, so his kit works surprisingly well in the mid lane. As you can tell by my MOBAfire Username, I haven't always been a Pyke main, and have mained several other champions throughout the course I've played League which dates back to 2013 when Jinx was released. Some of these include Jhin (obviously), Akali, Swain, Fizz, Urgot, and even Vladimir. After the Pyke nerf hit, I was tempted to switch mains (perhaps back to Akali which I mained just before Pyke) because Pyke solo lane was certainly not as easy as pre-nerf. I then realized that this is simply giving Rito a pat on the back for nerfing my champion, that they are getting what they hoped for. And so I desperately searched for a way to bring Pyke mid into viability again.



I then came across a video of a Chinese challenger who was messing around with Pyke mid, however his playstyle proved to be very efficient for post-nerf. He rushed Tiamat, something I was too stupid to even think of grabbing however once I discovered the Tiamat build, I realized there was hope. Not only that, but Hail of Blades never even came close to mind, and with good reason. It seemed quite counterproductive— Hail of Blades on a champion that doesn't fixate on auto attacking? Though after testing Hail of Blades out, the damage was far better than Electrocute which I previously used. To this day, I main Pyke mid, although I have also been practicing with Viego mid as a potential alternative main. I will at least continue to main Pyke until Riot nerfs him even more than they already have to the point of being limited to the Support role.

Riot has a habit of nerfing the champions I like to main, and with all the nerfs Pyke mid has suffered over the years, I believe the 11.5 nerf was the nail in the coffin. Essentially what they did to Pyke is made it so his passive Gift of the Drowned Ones now gives substantially less Grey Health when near only one enemy as opposed to two or more. The passive also now scales based off of Pyke's Lethality. In short, this nerf was Riot's (successful) attempt to force Pyke into the support role, while at the same time ruining all off-meta builds for him such as my Goredrinker build, because no fun allowed right?

While near 1 enemy champion, Gift of the Drowned Ones only stores 10% of damage received as Grey Health + 0.25% per 1 Lethality. So if you have 20 Lethality, this only equals to 15% of damage received being stored as Grey Health. For being near multiple champions however, Pyke stores 35% of damage received + 0.5% per 1 Lethality as Grey Health. So if you had 20 Lethality, then being near multiple champions would store a total of 45% damage received as Grey Health—a substantial increase from 15%.

In conclusion, Pyke mid is a garbage role now. He lacks any wave clear, has little sustain, has long cooldowns, cannot gain additional health from items, can hardly get gold pre-6, is practically useless against tanks, is useless in the late game, and is considerably team reliant to make effective plays. With that being said, I would highly advise against playing him in the mid lane. Not only that, but I'd recommend to avoid playing Pyke in general. Pyke right now doesn't have much of a place in the current meta, so my suggestion is to avoid playing him in hopes that riot will realize he's in desperate need of some buffs. (And not just Phantom Undertow scaling CDR, REAL buffs.)