So as some of you may or may not know, I'm more of a theorycrafter or strategist rather than a skilled player. Back when League was quite broken I managed to hit top 200 of ranked players for a while because I knew what to abuse.

This is an intermediate level guide. I'm not gonna explain every little detail on how you should play the champion, because each person will develop their own playstyle, but I will mention all of the core mechanics that are unique or exclusive to this particular champion. I'm going to assume you've had some League experience and at most you are just new to the champion.

Today I share with you guys a new Ryze build thanks to the new item additions of Season 3 that will not only test your Ryze skills in new ways but show the world what a monster Ryze is now, specifically with .

Why is so strong on Ryze? The item procs with not only autoattacks, but also single target spell damage, aka ALL OF RYZE'S SKILLS. If you do the math, he increases his damage multiplicatively with this item. If you thought he did a lot of damage before, wait until you see him now.

A few extra tips to those new with Ryze: This is something that a lot of inexperienced players tend of overlook or ignore. Don't forget to move and re-position yourself after every spell cast if possible, especially after using crowd control (W ). This is the same concept as orbwalking with an AD carry, walking/kiting in between auto-attacks. That extra step you take might give you that last Q you need to finish off an enemy or escape certain death.

Because Ryze is casting so many spells and he doesn't have skillshots, it is HIGHLY recommended that you use smart-cast on him. It will make your life MUCH easier. Trust me.

For those of you who already know how to play Ryze, lemme just explain what's different so you can make the adjustments.

Not much.

However, there are a lot of new subtle things to take into account now with the addition. For starters, remember how late game Ryze almost never ran out of mana? Yeah, not this time. Even with thousands of mana, Ryze will run out very quickly if he has turned on. In addition, you need to keep your mana high, as your damage depends on how much mana you have left. This makes mana management on Ryze important throughout the ENTIRE game, not just early to mid-game.

In addition, having items that can proc through auto-attacks, such as means that your auto-attacks are now significant in both damage and utility, and could mean the difference between life and death or a won team fight. Keep this in mind.

So in summary, his skill cap just increased.

You definitely want to take because Ryze can engage really well with a snare that has almost no travel time and he doesn't have any other positioning options, and while is really nice in lane and for aggression, other summoners such as , , and are all fine too. It really just comes down to personal preference and situation. Just remember to take the appropriate mastery point.

Honestly, I don't find what masteries you choose matter that much. Use whatever you're comfortable with, although I find it preferable to go into the offense tree. You really want to maximize the damage you do to use the potential this champion has with the new items. Utility might be good but it won't scale into the late game, and you already have so much Defense from the items alone that most of the points will really only be used to reach the late game, so it doesn't scale as well either. However, if for some reason you need to be in top lane, defense masteries might be almost necessary just to be able to farm at tower and not get bursted with one combo.

Just make sure you get the basic stuff, like , , , and .

Again, run whatever you like, but I find the movespeed and mana are the most important on him, and the magic penetration is pretty standard.

So like I said, the skill sequence depends on situation. Sometimes you want W at level 1 for the snare, if you're expecting some sort of early engage. Either way, if you're using auto-attack to last hit, it's not much of a difference from Q .

After that, at level 4, you can choose to either get a point in E or a second in Q , depending on how you think the laning phase is going to play out and what your mana is.

You should max R , then Q , then feel free to get a mix of W and E . E gives you more damage and more procs on Muramasa because of the bounces, but W gives you longer CC duration. So put points in whatever you like.

Now to explain the items. Remember that Ryze is very flexible with his build. This is because with the addition, he can output a ton of damage with mana centric builds, which give him a ton of defensive options while still doing a lot of damage. Start by using cookie cutter builds until you really get a feel for how they affect his laning and team fight presence, and learn to adapt your build based on your opponents. Don't be afraid to try new items and stray away from the core build.

Start with and x3 because Ryze needs a ton of movespeed in order to avoid ganks and keep up with the enemy, since he doesn't have any immediate positioning outside of .

When you back, you want to either get first, or Catalyst the Protector first. Catalyst the Protector is more expensive, but getting it first can really keep you solid in lane, as it makes you tankier. makes you very prone to dying in lane if you get caught. If you can be careful enough to get early, feel free, otherwise it's a good idea to get Catalyst the Protector first. Your mana stacks will fill quickly, no need to rush it.

For mid-game, obviously you want to aim for that , which is the heart of your build, but you build that up slowly. In the meanwhile, you want to get a little bit of everything against a well-rounded team, which is the reasoning for the mid-game build. Feel free to upgrade your boots to whatever you might need, such as or .

Your final late game build should be as shown, although Ryze's build is very flexible, based on your situation.
is to make sure that if you die, you can still be useful and do enough damage to turn the fight around, and it does improve your defense. However, if you don't need this or it's on cooldown, feel free to get . Feel free to also switch out the for the or even a if you don't need the magic resist.
If the enemies start building a lot of magic resist, it might be preferable to build , but then you'll need to sacrifice an item. If you can't afford to sacrifice a defensive item, feel free to take out .
Change up your boots if you have the money to whatever necessary.

Now I'm sure by this point a lot of people are asking why I haven't mentioned or . Basically, I don't think they're worth buying over the other options. is nice, but getting it early so it will fill faster will mean that you left out a lot of really nice stats you can get by buying other stuff, such as magic resist or spell vamp. It might give you some nice health, but other mana items that give you resistances can give you equivalent survivability. And since this build is mana-centric, the AP doesn't really improve your damage all that much. In the case of , there's a critical problem: in order to use the shield, you need to drain a lot of mana, which drastically lowers your damage. It makes much more sense to just get the extra survivability from defense stats, especially when these options are already so attractive. Of course, that doesn't mean that you should totally avoid these items if you really want them, as they do offer their niche sort of advantages. For example, while the unique active of might be counter-intuitive, it still gives a hefty 1000 mana, so if you happen to find a situation where even after the amount of time it takes to accumulate 2700 gold for the item you don't need additional defensive stats but need the extra damage, by all means feel free to get this item. (But you see what I'm getting at, right?)

This chapter is pretty important. Ryze's passive, , makes him a very intricate champion with a lot of subtle details the player needs to pay attention to that make a huge difference in how he operates and the damage he deals.

Preferably, you want to cycle your skills as such for maximum damage:

Sustained damage: => => => => (QEQWQ)

(Note that the E and W are interchangeable, but in this case the E reduces magic resist, dealing more damage.)
This allows you to do the most amount of sustained damage over time because it drops the cooldowns of your spells as quickly as possible by using the most skills. However, it might be unrealistic to use this combo every time, as it's a bit slow. Here is a combo for burst damage:

Burst (QWE): => =>

Again, E and W are interchangeable. However, I put W first because E has a travel time, so it might be preferable to just lock someone down first. This could be used when say, someone is ganking and you want to burst someone quickly. The downside is that it'll be an extra 2-3 seconds until your spells come off cooldown again.

However, if that's still not fast enough:

Initiation (W): =>

If you can find a good moment to initiate, feel free to open with W , as it a very fast crowd control for locking down an enemy champion.

One extra point to mention though. While Ryze's skills are in midair, Ryze's R can be activated and will apply to the midair spells before they reach their target. So feel free to shove an R into your spell combo AFTER the first spell, which is usually Q .

Your laning is quite weak early on. Your mana pool is awful early on, and while it does get a bit better as you level and get items, normal mana regeneration doesn't offer too much because the mana costs of your skills are pretty high. Just focus on farming and if you can, harassing with auto-attacks. Once you hit level 5 or so, you should have enough mana to start whittling down your lane opponent with some poke damage, just be wary of your remaining mana in case of a gank or enemy sustain.

Because Ryze doesn't have any AoE skills outside his ultimate, you need to get used to last hitting at your tower. His Q is on a pretty low cooldown, and it's pretty easy to gauge how much damage it does, so use that to plan ahead. Fortunately, if you're about to miss a minion, you still have W and even E to pick up the ones you miscalculated or missed.

Watch out for ganks. All you have is , so if you mess up, your only option will be to fight. Simply put, if you're not sure if you'll be ganked, be a good boy and stay in lane to farm.

Once you do hit level 6 or so, you can find lanes or the enemy jungler to gank if you can spare some time. If you're not farming creeps, you could be trying to secure some kills.

Aim for the high priority targets if you can reach them. If not, just kite and keep your distance like any AP or AD carry would, and remember that you also have extremely high AoE damage. Keep in mind that you also have a lot of spell vamp from your ultimate, which can keep you alive in critical moments.

Try not to get focused down, as even with defensive items, you can still fall pretty fast, and without positioning spells, it's very difficult to run away if you're surrounded. Let your team meatshield for you, and only dive if you know you can get away afterwards.

When there are few people still alive, pretend you're a bruiser. With all of the defensive stats, spell vamp, and damage you have, you can very easily 1v1 or even 1v2 enemy champions.

Pros

• Extremely durable
• High sustain
• Almost instant crowd control
• Extremely high damage
• Flexible item build

Cons

• No positioning spells, making positioning mistakes very punishing, such as lane ganks
• Can run out of mana quickly with improper management, and then becomes extremely difficult to get the mana back without recalling
• Difficult to chase people down without teammates or /
• Laning phase is pretty weak
• Somewhat short range on spells, poke is weak as a result

And that's all of the basics you need to know how to play

MURAMANA RYZE

Have fun and good luck on the Fields of Justice!