Ryze

Master Tier Champion Guide

Identity: Why You Should Play Ryze

The biggest misconception is that Ryze is a late-game super scaling team fight mage. While he scales well from a damage perspective, his short range and stationary casting make him weaker than longer-range mages late game. Instead, Ryze is extremely strong in the early game and has the tools to get ahead of the opponent and the rest of the map in almost every game. His identity is that of a roaming champion, similar to Ahri or Twisted Fate, who seeks to get involved in 2v2s and 3v3s and set up the jungler. Ryze is unique because he gains all the benefits of roaming—mid priority, insane wave clear, and point-and-click gank setup—while still winning most of his 1v1 matchups. He is a balancing nightmare because he has insane economy, is highly blind pickable, and snowballs really hard. When Ryze gets ahead, he becomes extremely difficult to deal with.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

Insane Wave Clear and Mid Priority: Ryze possesses insane wave clear, allowing him to get mid priority in almost every matchup, making him a good blind pick.
Exceptional Snowballing Tools: He wins most of his 1v1s, clears waves quickly, has point-and-click gank setup, and uses his ultimate for rapid rotations (like diving side lanes or joining skirmishes), giving him insane economy and snowballs really hard.
Mana-Based Scaling: Ryze's abilities gain additional damage based on bonus Mana, meaning items like Tear and Catalyst act as both defensive and offensive items.

Weaknesses

Short Attack Range: Ryze’s abilities have short range, making it difficult to deal damage against opponents with longer reach, especially late game.
Immobile/Stationary Casting: Ryze is stationary while casting, which, combined with his short range, makes him significantly weaker than other mages that have more safety or longer range.
Unforgiving when Behind: Ryze is very bad at team fighting if he is even or behind, as his style relies on being stronger than everyone else; falling behind makes team fighting very difficult and unforgiving.

Laning Phase

Ryze’s laning identity is to make plays with the jungler. Your goal is to use your wave clear to get priority and then use that priority for deep wards, invades, roams, or dives.

Aggression and Positioning

Play pretty far up in the lane to stop opponents from auto-attacking the wave, ensuring control.
Utilize Ryze's high base movement speed (340) to dodge skill shots and run rings around opponents.

Base Spikes

Aim to get a Catalyst of Aeons on your first base if possible.
Ryze is good even on low buys (Tier, Tier 1 Boots, Dark Seal).

Dealing with Pressure

If you lose too much health, you can use Teleport with a good first base (Tier/Catalyst) to come back strong, so losing health is acceptable as long as you don't lose the game in the first three waves.
If you have priority but nothing to do on the map (jungler farming, no wards placed), you can opt to freeze to deny creeps and build a bigger 1v1 advantage.

Start Items

Default to Tear of the Goddess with two health potions.
If against poke-heavy range champions (like Orianna, Syndra, Victor), start Corrupting Potion and take Teleport for extra sustain.

Using Priority (Macro)

After pushing a wave (especially post-Level 6 when your EQ damage is increased by R rank), you must decide how to use the priority.
Look for vision first (deep wards), or push the enemy tower (many champions struggle to farm under the tower).

Wave Management

It is often best to push aggressively. Look for a three-wave crash to secure a safe base.
Even in losing matchups, you can spam push to make it difficult for your opponent to harass you or trade effectively.

Team Fighting & Macro

Macro

Ryze's ultimate, Realm Warp (R), is exceptional for macro play:

Quickly rotate to skirmishes or dive side lanes.
R can be used to check vision in bushes (like around objectives) without having to step into them yourself.
Use R to teleport minion waves, useful when sieging (E.g., sending a bot wave over to mid).
In organized play, R can send an engaging ally (E.g., Alistar) into the enemy backline.

Team Fighting

Your main goal is to put out as much damage as possible without dying. Generally, hit the front line until you spot an opportunity for a flank or a flash onto the backline.
Do not be the first engage. It is much easier to survive if the enemy team has already used their essential cooldowns. Wait for your teammates to engage first, then follow up.
Focus on DPS using E-Q combos to hit a lot of AOE damage. Utilize your bonus movement speed (by stacking two abilities before Q) to kite, run away from threats, and dodge abilities.
You must live most of the time to be useful, as Ryze is not a burst champion. Be highly aware of enemy CC and threats.
Ryze wins team fights by being extremely ahead of the rest of the game. If you are not ahead or are only even, you should look to side lane instead and try to force a 5v4 fight when someone is forced to match you.

Single Summary Runes

Recommended Full Page

Ryze has a few different viable Keystone choices, but the best default page is Inspiration: Unsealed Spellbook. Spellbook is highly valued because it provides combat summoners useful in lane, skirmishing, and early team fights, and allows you to swap to a crucial sum (like TP at level six for a power spike base) or to ensure you always have a combat sum up for fights. The recommended full page is: Primary (Inspiration): Unsealed Spellbook, Perfect Timing (Stopwatch), Futures Market (preferred for early spikes like Catalyst), and Cosmic Insight. Secondary (Sorcery): Manaflow Band and Transcendence (Ability Haste is very nice on Ryze, and Max Mana is super good). Shards: Attack Speed (useful for early wave pushing), Adaptive Force, and then Armor/MR/Health scaling depending on the matchup.

Viable Alternatives

Viable alternatives include First Strike (for maximizing gold and rushing Rod of Ages), Conqueror (only for highly melee-heavy, low-CC comps, roughly 1% of games), and Phase Rush (mainly taken for slow resistance against champions like Irelia).

Key Combos

Max Damage

Start with Q and weave Q between every ability to refresh its cooldown and maximize total damage. Weave in auto-attacks whenever possible.

Max Mobility/Quick Trade

Cast two abilities consecutively (E, W) to stack a rune, then Q to discharge it for bonus movement speed.

Root/Gank Setup

Simple point-and-click root. Use this instantly if the opponent might Flash away. Can be used with Flash: Flash-W or Flash-E-W.

Guaranteed Max Damage Root (Advanced)

Delay the usage of W after applying E Flux. This ensures the target remains rooted long enough for you to execute the full E-Q damage combo before the root expires, guaranteeing damage.

Trading/Wave Bounce

If the opponent is hiding behind minions, apply E on a nearby creep and then Q that creep. The Q will bounce to the opponent for trade damage.

AOE Team Fight

Instead of standard E-Q, wait for the E cooldown to near completion, apply a second E, and then Q. This bounces the Flux further down the enemy line, hits more targets, and gives movement speed.

Tips & Tricks

Abilities

General

Cannon waves are the easiest to clear; putting yourE on the cannon usually allows you to clear the entire wave, though you may need to auto-attack the creeps a bit.
Ryze’s high movement speed allows you to walk up to bait out enemy cooldowns (especially in difficult lanes) before dodging out.

You can buffer W by pressing W and then instantly using Flash (W + Flash) to automatically cast the W immediately once you are in range of the enemy.

You can start your ultimate (R) and then initiate a base recall (B). You will successfully recall and not teleport with the R, but the portal will still open for your team.
Using Zhonya's Hourglass while the R portal is active will cancel the teleport completely for all allies, preventing them from going through if you change your mind.
You can use R and then immediately Zhonya's Hourglass upon arrival at the destination to avoid being immediately CC'd by waiting enemies.
If enemies are attempting to CC you to cancel your ultimate, you can avoid their CC by running around the edge of the portal or Flashing back into it at the last second.

Item Synergies

Catalyst of Aeons

The reason components like Catalyst are so strong is that Ryze's abilities gain damage based on bonus Mana, making defensive items like Catalyst (which grant Mana/HP) also effective offensive items.