When I first took a look at the Ryze 'redesign' I thought to myself, "Wow they just beat him with a stick". They had nerfed nearly everything but his ranges and his Q's cooldown. His AP ratios became **** with all around nerfs, coming to 0.2, 0.6 (flat), and 0.35 respectively, and I remember thinking, "How am I supposed to build a caster for damage when he scales so badly?". After giving it some thought I came to a conclusion that, at the time, I thought was insane. What if there was a caster that stacked Mana and Cooldown reduction (CDR) instead of ability power. Thinking it through and testing has proven my initial assumption that I was insane wrong and I can confidently say he is better and before. I now present to you, Ryze, the caster with no need for AP.

Change Log

May 25th, 2011 :
Apparently Expanded mind isn't fixed, last time I take a posters word for it. I'm not going to both changing the masteries because I'll just get another 50 posts asking the same question without reading the guide. So, for those of you who have red the guide, be advised that Expanded Mind is broken. Do not get it.
May 17th, 2011 :
Expanded mind appears to be fixed

April 26th, 2011 :
Overload damage scaling reduced from 10% to 8% of his max mana.
Nerf, sigh. I blame elements, adding champions to his list is like the easy street to 9000 idiots playing him, getting banned in ranked games, and getting a nerf.

Apr 12, 2011 :
Fixed a few errors created from changes. Changed quints again.

Mar 30th, 2011 :
Changed mastries,
Note, Expanded mind only affects base mana so the bonus to damage is laughable at best. The mastery, as is, is so mind blowingly useless that I can't even comprehend why it hasn't been fixed.

Feb 26th, 2011 :
Finished most combo testing. Still up for debate :D

Feb 22th, 2011 :
Wow so if you save your guide with even the slightest bit of lag it saves a blank guide. Sigh, at least I didn't publish this time so I get to copy paste the public version and redo all those tags, joy.
Added a series of recommended 6th items as suggested.

Feb 20th, 2011 :
As some of you may of noticed my guide was basically wiped clean yesterday. I apologize if anyone tried to use it and was unable to find it. I now present the newly rewritten Ryze revamped v2.0:

Ryze, and this guide, may be for you if you enjoy:

• Dealing burst as well as sustained damage at long ranges.
• Not being easy to kill and focus in team fights.
• Ability to do AoE damage should your enemies foolishly stick close together.

Runes are basically the caster standard.

9 Greater Seal of Clarity, mana per 5 per level.
9 Greater Mark of Insight, magic penetration.

Glyphs is where things get a little weird, you have two options here:

I use 2 Greater Glyph of Focus (.65% CDR), 6 Greater Glyph of Celerity (0.96% CDR at level 18) and finally 1 (25.56 mana at level 18). I do this because it adds up to 7.06 CDR at level 18, an important number that will be explained later in the guide.

However if you prefer having more CDR earlier you can do 5 Greater Glyph of Focus (.65% CDR) and 4 Greater Glyph of Celerity (0.96% CDR at level 18) which is 7.09 CDR at level 18, but by doing so you lose the 25.56 mana at level 18. It's entirely up to you.

Quintessences also give you some choice:

I use 3 Greater Quintessence of Swiftness, movement speed.
But I have no doubt these would work as well:
Greater Quintessence of Fortitude, flat health.
Greater Quintessence of KnowledgeGreater Quintessence of Knowledge, mana per level.
Greater Quintessence of Insight, magic penatration.

Ryze begins with 250 mana and 4.35 health regen. Add in a Sapphire Crystal and you being with around 450 mana. 1% of that is a bonus 4.5 health regen at level 1. Yes you read that right, Ryze more than doubles his health regen at level one thanks to Strength of spirit, and this only gets more ******ed as the game goes on. In regular games I get around 23 health regen per 5 early game thanks to Tear of the Goddess. I end games with around 70 Health regen with NO items that give health regen.

9 points in Offense for Archaic Knowledge is basically required and the rest can go in Utility.

Note, you can play around with the points in Meditation and Awareness to fit your play style.

Games should start with you buying Sapphire Crystal some combination of Health Potion and Mana Potion. I'd recommend 2 Health Potions when you are just starting to play Ryze and when you are doing a solo or 1v2 lane.

Why not Meki Pendant?
Because the Crystal adds 20 damage to your Q, 2 health regen, and you're objective is not to stay in the lane for a long time and farm, in fact that is a bad idea because you need to rush an important item.

As you might of guessed your first back should be when you have around 595g or 945g so you can quickly get Tear of the Goddess and maybe a Boots of Speed. If you have 595g and still plenty of mana don't be afraid to use spells to both push the lane and get the last 350g you need for boots, otherwise go back.

From there you must make judgment calls on what core items to buy next and at what times.


I realized the new Ryze would require 40% CDR and wondered how I would get it. He gets a passive 13% from the mastery Sorcery and his Q, Overload, and you can get either 7.09% or 7.06% from runes easily so that leaves 20% from an Item, and I had the perfect one in mind.
Frozen Heart had everything Ryze needed as well as some defense.

Core items

Tear of the Goddess
Easily the best item for Ryze, adds the largest amount of mana in the game when upgraded to Archangel's Staff. You may notice however that I wait till practically the end of the game to upgrade it. This is because the upgrade cost is 1860g and you have more important things to buy, from the upgrade you get 100-150 ap, 50 mana, and some mana regen. I didn't even mention the fact that it takes longer to fill out the bonus of 1000 mana when you upgrade since Tear gives you 4 bonus mana up to twice in a 6 second time periods and Archangels gives you 4 bonus mana up to once every 3 seconds. This may seem the same to you but Ryze is a burst caster, I sometimes cast 4 spells in the space of a second or two and no more for another 4 to 10 seconds. Therefore it is better to gain 8 mana in 3 seconds than it is to gain 4 mana in 3 seconds.
Sorcerer's Shoes
Ryze is a caster and getting more magic penetration could never be a bad thing. However in specific games with an annoying amount of magic damage enemies with CC it would be in your best interest to use Mercury's Treads instead.
Rod of Ages
Another great Item for Ryze, increases your mana, health and ap by a lot. The earlier you buy this the better, as it takes time to build up.
Glacial Shroud
Ryze's one and only CDR item, this should be gotten early too. Doesn't need to be upgraded to Frozen Heart fast unless they have a lot of physical damage.
Banshee's Veil
Great for teams with magic damage, not overly important if they have a bunch of physical damage and few annoying abilities for it to block.


Your 6th item is a situational item. Some other 6th item choices in no particular order are:

Rod of Ages, a great 6th item for games with split damage sources
Quicksilver Sash, great for games with annoying ultimates such as Malzahar's Ult
Force of Nature, in games with plenty of magic damage I sometimes buy Mercury's Treads and this to survive.
Guardian Angel, for games with a little bit of both types of damage and they will do whatever it takes to put it all on you in the first 5 seconds of a team fight.
Thornmail, I haven't had a chance to buy and test this yet but I would probably only buy it if they had 3-5 heavy hitting physical DPS.
Void Staff, if any of you were unlucky enough to get in a game where your team thinks because they have Ryze they don't need another source of damage you know this item is basically required. You must note that while you can be a carry your team should still have another physical damage carry. Having no other physical damage option means that the enemy team can and should stack magic resistance. I get this usually when I see 3+ enemies getting large amounts of magic resistance.
Zhonya's Hourglass, good if you need the active to survive team fights and maybe even the 50 armor to help screw over their physical DPS. While I have never had to I imagine a game where you were facing 5 physical DPS you could forgo Banshee's Veil in favor of Thornmail and this to reach 300+ armor and REALLY **** them over.
Lich Bane, you'll be wondering "Why the contradiction" in a few sentences so let me get this out of the way. This item is good if you feel like enemies are escaping with low amounts of health and your speed feels lackluster. DO NOT spend the time to catch every proc, do so only when all your spells are on cooldown.

There are also items I am on the fence about, things that in some situations I can see being useful but have wasted stats or I just don't feel like testing them, I'll leave this up to you.

Deathfire Grasp, a amazing active in games where your opponents are stacking health and even if they aren't it's still great. Wasted CDR unless you rework the build somehow. If I got in a game with enemies stacking health I would get this, it just hasn't happened yet.
Will of the Ancients, having more spell vamp and not to mention you are buffing your team.
Rylai's Crystal Scepter, a slow on your spells and some health.


I'll now highlight items I believe to be terrible for Ryze, with reasoning, that for some reason various threads and builds/guides seem to think is actually good for Ryze.

ITEMS THAT INVOLVE ATTACKING, (Manamune, Lichbane).
How this ever got onto the forums is beyond my comprehension. First of all your skills have a range of 675, 625, and 675 respectively while your attack range is 550. If you REALLY want to take the extra second or two to get in range AND the extra second to actually auto attack you deserve to die.
"YOU DIDNT MENTION IF DEY ARE MELEE AND DEY GET IN RAGNE OF MEH!"
You're right, if melee get in range of you by their own volition AFTER you use your 2 second root and AFTER you use your full combo maybe auto attacking once would be wise, or you could kite until your next combo. But if I see one more person suggesting you chain lichbanes during your combo I'm going to come through the internet and punch said person in the gut. Your combo goes off in the space of a second, saying you want to take the second or two to get in range and another half second to fire off a auto attack combined with a ****ty 300 damage lichbane proc is laughable.

ITEMS FOCUSING ON MAXING ABILITY POWER, (Deathcap, Stacking Archangels).
I can't understand this either, Ryze's ratios are absolute ****. IF you stack ability power you will not only be a squishy mage with **** damage, you'll also look like a ******. For example's sake lets say you have a generous 2k HP, 3.2k Mana and 800 AP. Probably impossible but lets go with it. End game I usually end games with 3.5k HP, 5.1k Mana, and 340 AP. Comparing Q's we get yours doing (3.2k*0.1)+(0.2*800)+120 = 600. Mine does (5.1k*0.1)+(0.2*340)+120 = 700. Before some ***hat argues that W and E will do more damage allow me to point out they have a 14 second cooldown, compared to Q's 3.5. If you plan on arguing that you can destroy players with your two 14 second cooldown spells with 0.6 and 0.35 for ratios maybe you should be in an institution designed to accommodate your level of stupidity.

No doubt some idiot will try a combination of the two sides of ******ation and argue Lichbane AND AP is the way to go. Then you'll just be a squishy mage with bad ratios who has to get extremely close to your target and spend 5 seconds just to get the most out of your lichbane procs.

The skill sequence is fairly locked in place.
However there is an argument to make about getting W, Rune Prison, as your first spell over Q, Overload. Not my cup of tea but it's up to you.

Ordered according to my preferences
Any options other than these are highly unrecommended:

For getting out of ganks, starting ganks, repositioning yourself in team fights, jumping over walls. Such a great spell.
Makes catching and running from enemies so much easier.
Makes going toe to toe with those annoying champions even easier, also slows annoying runners. (Get the offense talent for it).
Adding that little oomph to your burst combo and lowering healing. Also a good choice
Getting to end game and spending every fight in 5 seconds of CC isn't conducive to your mental health.


Teleport might also not be terrible but I prefer these choices.

Your standard Burst combo is:

Overload -> Desperate Power -> Spell Flux -> Overload -> Rune Prison -> Overload

Your standard sustained damage combo is (Great for Blue buff and fights where you don't think you'll need burst, thanks so much for the suggestion FighterRanger):

Overload-> Spell Flux-> Overload-> Rune Prison-> Overload-> Desperate Power-> Overload-> Spell Flux-> Overload-> Rune Prison-> Overload

You should be able to get the first combo off extremely fast, since casting two spells after Overload reduces it's cooldown by 2 seconds thank's to Ryze's Passive, making it a 0.1 second cooldown with 40% CDR. The second combo gives a much higher sustained damage.

For that reason I highly recommend you use smart casting (Think Karthus's Q). Smart casting allows you to cast while just hovering your mouse over the target. Essentially cutting out the "who do you want to target" phase. Some consider it an acquired taste and you'll probably need some time to get used to it but I with out a doubt think it will make you better.
Enabling it is as simple as going into keybind options and rebinding your Q, W, E, R to the Smart cast version. (For which the default is I believe Shift-Q, Shift-W, etc.)


Why Spell Flux before Rune Prison?
Because it lowers magic resistance. Nothing major. This doesn't apply to the second combo because you are spreading it over a few seconds and they aren't just going to sit down and take it so you need them to stay put.

After testing this guide extensively I can say without a doubt Ryze is stronger than before. Riot said they would make Ryze the "spell machine gun, the Ashe of magic", to that I say nay. You are Ryze, the spell howitzer. Assuming that howitzer was 5 feet from your face, shot nukes, and if you were unable to protect yourself, stop it, or move. Able to deal great damage and take plenty of punishment which your enemies are sure to give once they realize they are being decimated, not by your physical carry, but by the Ryze. The caster that doesn't give a **** about AP.


If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments please feel free to post them below and I will do my best to answer them. I may add a FAQ in the future to make them easier to read.