Heya and welcome to my guide to Ryze. I'm Sanun,a top laner who have played League Of Legends since season 1. Ryze was my first champion and is one of my most played champions, I started playing Ryze at League Of Legends release. I'm Diamond on multiple accounts on EUW and pretty known for my Ryze top and mid. I'm here to share you the secrets about Ryze top and mid and how to be a hyper-carry with him. This is my fifth guide so feedback is appreciated!

Flash is one of the summoner spells that is available in League of Legends. Most of the time, everyone will have Flash as one of the two summoner spells they can equip before getting into a game as it is considered to be an important and must have spell because it grants you the ability to instantly switch your position to wherever your cursor is pointing at within a 425 units range, and this allows players to make creative plays as well as escaping from the brink of death.

Since season 4, there are almost no summoner spells in League of Legends that have a bigger impact than Teleport. Sure, Flash is a big deal and can change a team fight, but Teleport determines everything from which objectives you can take, to whether or not you can fight, to where each individual player can and should be standing on the map.

In fact, until patch 8.23, even just starting a Teleport then cancelling it could be enough to turn a fight, or save your team’s bot lane. But, after this most recent preseason patch, Teleport can no longer be cancelled. And that’s probably a good thing.

Now, when you want to impact the map with a teleport, you have to be absolutely sure it’s a good idea. No more faking teleports to get enemy teams to back off of a fight, or to bait teleport out of your opponent, if you start a teleport in season 9, you’re teleporting.

This is the kind of change that, rather than making one playstyle weaker, actually impacts the entire game itself. At the highest levels of the game, map movements will have to be more purposeful, while things like tower dives can be done with a little more confidence, knowing that the enemy team will have to either decide not to help the target of the dive, or commit everything to help them.

If you have kill-pressure, go for ignite. If not, just pick TP and farm up and be ready for dragon. You can still pull up a good teamfight TP if the opponents overextend a lot and you team has good CC. Ignite also falls off hard as the game goes, so you have to abuse it and snowball and close the game before its 'late'. Champions like Kled (which can use his ult to get into places/fights and have more map pressure AND can also kill ppl with ease). That means you can use your ult kinda like a weaker TP and go with ignite, therefore he's more forgiving with ignite than most top champions.

Runes: I play this set up of runes 95% of the times:
Sorcery primary, domination secondary tree.


Keystone: Phase rush: It is simply the best keystone on Ryze, it works well with his passive and there aren't many other options. I've tried Arcane Comet in order to bully melee matchups, but honestly it is useless outside of the laning phase and Phase Rush allows you to kite enemies pretty well which is a must on a champion without mobility.


Manaflow band: Best option since it gives you free mana which scales with Ryze's damages, Tear of the Goddess and it helps Ryze in the first minutes of laning phase. Another option, when you have learnt how to manage mana for the first 8 minutes, is Nullifying Orb. Against AP Assassins like Le Blanc, Diana etc. it helps a lot and I usually use this instead of Manaflow band.


Transcendence: Best option again on Ryze, I take transcendence because i value capping cdr, but when i used to take celerity before the small nerf i thought it was extremely overpowered


Gathering storm: Since waterwalking is a bad option on Ryze, I usually choose Gathering storm over scorch since I think having 24 ap at 20 minutes for free is pretty good and it scales very well with ryze as a champion, who is a mid-late game champion.I pick Scorch when I'm against a melee champion, since it helps to bully him out.




Secondary tree is domination:
I choose to play Taste of blood and Ravenous hunter. There are only 3 viable options for Ryze in this tree: The two I mentioned and Cheap Shot. One is obvious since it's on a different line and it is Ravenous Hunter. It's really powerful from 20 minutes + if you got 3 takedowns on different champions, and in my opinion it really makes the difference during fights and skirmishes.
Then I usually play Taste of Blood since it helps ryze laning phase and gives you even more healing with Ravenous Hunter.


Cheap shot is another very good option honestly, and it's a must play if you have many ccs in your team.

Passive - Arcane Mastery

What it does: Ryze’s spells deal additional damage based on his bonus mana, and his maximum mana is increased by a percentage of his ability power

How it works: Basically this passive is just going to affect how we build Ryze. His Q, W and E scale off of his AP like most abilities, but they also pull from his bonus mana (bonus as in, mana that you build). So the more mana you have bought, the more damage those three abilities do. Similarly, the more AP that you build, the more mana you get. This passive might as well just be named "Build Tear of the Goddess."

Q - Overload

What it does: Ryze fires a projectile in a straight line, damaging the first enemy hit. Passively this ability will reset it’s own cooldown every time Ryze casts either his Rune Prison or his Spell Flux. Casting Overload also activates a rune. Casting either Rune Prison or Spell Flux will charge a rune half way. When a rune has been fully charged (Ryze has cast two abilities in a row that were not his Q) and Ryze casts Overload, the rune is discharged and Ryze gains a temporary shield and a temporary boost to his movement speed. If Ryze casts Overload before he has charged a rune all the way, the rune will be reset without giving him a shield or movement speed.

How it works: This ability seems way more complicated than it actually is. This is Ryze’s main damaging ability and it is very important to order it properly with your other abilities. This is a straightforward skillshot that hits the first enemy it comes in contact with. It moves fairly slowly so it can be pretty easy to miss if you aren’t paying close enough attention.

W - Rune Prison

What it does: Ryze locks an enemy in place, rooting them and dealing a little bit of damage.

How it works: Press W on an enemy, Ryze will cast Rune Prison, his target will be rooted and take a small amount of damage. It has a fairly long cooldown compared to his other abilities, so it is important to think before you cast.

E - Spell Flux

What it does: Ryze casts Spell Flux at a target, dealing a small amount of damage and marking it with Flux. The next spell that Ryze casts on a target marked with Flux will have additional effects set against them. If Overload strikes a target marked by Flux, they will take bonus damage (the percentage of which will scale off of Spell Flux’s level) and Overload will hit nearby enemies that are also marked by Flux. If Rune Prison strikes a target marked by Flux, the duration of the Rune Prison is doubled. If Spell Flux strikes a target already marked by Flux, Flux will spread to all nearby enemies. When an enemy marked by Flux is killed, Flux will spread to all nearby enemies.

How it works: This ability is targeted, just like Rune Prison. If you are Brand player, you will recognize that this ability is very similar to his E, Conflagration. Think of Spell Flux as a primer. You can use your abilities normally and still do just fine, but when you want some extra effects you can prime your target with Flux.

R - Realm Warp

What it does: Ryze channels for a short time before teleporting himself and any allied units near him a short distance away.

How it works: The important thing to know about this ability is that everything about it is short. The distance you can travel is short (especially at level 6) and the time it takes to charge is short. It allows Ryze to move his entire team (as long as they are near him) to a different location relatively nearby with almost no downtime.

Champion Spotlight:
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In order to talk effectively about what playing Ryze is like we have to talk about combos. You have several ordered combinations of abilities that you use in different situations. Keep in mind that the first Overload in all of these combos are optional and really only exists to pump out a little extra damage and take advantage of the cooldown reset.

Overload-Spell Flux-Rune Prison-Overload

This is the main combo we are going to use when Ryze has all cooldowns available. This is the most optimal dueling combo that there is because it will also charge your rune fully.

Overload-Spell Flux-Overload-Rune Prison-Overload-Spell Flux-Overload

This is the machine-gun combo, which we are going to default to when we are more interested in maximizing damage rather than building up a rune. You may not get the added shield or the speed but you will hit like a truck in a very short amount of time.

Overload, Spell Flux, Spell Flux, Overload

This will spread Flux to nearby enemies before hitting them all with your final Overload AND it will also charge your rune to give you your shield and speed boost. Spell Flux is on a very short cooldown so it allows for mistakes and experimentation while you are still learning.

Regarding early game mana management:

Use your auto attacks as much as possible for last-hitting. This is vital. Just use a spell for CS when there is no way to get that CS by means of auto-attacking.

This will make sure you freeze/do not push the wave too hard aswell. You don't want the wave far away from your tower because if you run low on mana in that position you have a problem.

Dont be lazy, keep moving continously in lane (even if its just left-right-left-right), stay in auto-attack range when a minion is low. Move accordingly to the enemy laner, use your minions as shields. But dont forget watch map.

Just make sure you watch how your enemy laner is treating his wave. if he tries to shove you in hard, make sure to continously use your auto-attacks to counterpush a bit. you dont want to be pushed completly into your tower as you will have a tough time last-hitting there, and you will have to waste mana again. The ideal wave spot is a piece away for your tower, where you are not susceptible for getting ganked.

If enemy has strong wave shoving cababilities you have to sometimes waste some mana and lasthit with E, spreading flux and damage fluxed minions with a q. this is good minion damage for 100 mana and you should be able to afford it.

If you get pushed into tower, ryze has actually good farming techniques under tower. For example caster minions that are full hp: just auto&E the minion that got hit by a turret shot, the resulting e flux will make sure you have to just auto the other caster minions once after they got hit by the turret for the last hit. -> 3 caster minions under turret can be easily farmed with 60 mana.

Its pretty easy to get to 500 gold (you get 500 gold in 3 waves if you can last-hit very well and get all cs) and back early for tear without going OOM.

I find it harder after first back, because tear doesnt give you much mana and now you ideally will need more gold for the next item. If you already see you wont make it to the next item with your mana on the second laning round, waste your mana to shove hard and back fast for an aditional sapphire crystal or a dark seal, so you wont lose to much cs, maybe just a half wave.

Also, think twice before TPing back to lane. Before you do that, look lane state and estimate if the TP is really worth it, and how much CS/XP you gonna lose if you dont TP.

The TP can be huge early game to gank other lanes when they are pushed, using a deep ward. This move is not expected most of the time.

The big damage combo is usually the wrong choice, unless you are focusing an enemy who is out of position. EEQ is your bread and butter. Getting that spread is the only way you can truly compete with other AP mid laners in damage.

Ryze is much easier to play as a peeling mid-line. He can take a very respectable ammount of abuse from the enemy team, especially vs AD heavy teams where you get the privilege of itemizing into frozen heart. I've had the most success teamfighting as ryze by standing between the enemy front line and their back line. Threatening the backline while being able to protect my own if the enemy carries respect my range, cc and damage.

In a lategame teamfight you only really get 1 W until the teamfight is more or less cleanup for 1 side or the other. If you're using that W offensively you damn well better make it count. I almost never find myself doing the big damage combo against anything that isn't a full tank. You can't afford to blow your 1 root as a .75 second CC unless you are reasonably sure this course of action is going to win you the fight (most times, it won't).

This is the end of my guide, I hope you enjoyed it and learned a lot about our Rune Mage Ryze. If you have any questions or want to watch some educational high elo content, then be sure to follow my stream on https://www.twitch.tv/Sanun
Here I will be streaming a lot in the near future.
GL HF with Ryze!
Thank you for reading my guide! if you have any feedback or questions feel free to comment. Upvotes are heavily appreciated!