Reworked Ryze: Explaining why he got the new ultimate

Explaining why Ryze’s ultimate changed so much.

The world has had over a week to mess around with the newly reworked Ryze, and while he isn’t doing that great currently, it’s clear that the potential for greatness is there for the mage.

The biggest upside to Ryze comes from the most drastic change from the rework — his new ultimate.

Realm Warp — the ultimate ability — allows Ryze to teleport himself and all allies to a target location if they are in the portal he opens.

It doesn’t take a high elo pro to realize how powerful that ability can be, but seeing it on Ryze was extremely shocking. It was something that came out of nowhere and no one would have ever expected Ryze to have an ability like that.

Yesterday, on the League of Legends boards, someone asked what was the thought process of giving Ryze the ability, and Meddler (Lead Gameplay Designer) gave some great insight.

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Meddler first gave reasons as to why it made sense for them as far as gameplay goes: “Part of the reason Ryze has been hard to balance in the past is because he’s mainly just brought damage. Giving him some more utility, and in a team focused way, allows us to give him power without him being as effective in a straight head to head fight. A group teleport is an ability we’ve wanted to do for quite a while. First time we tried it, at least while I’ve bee at Riot, was on Lulu. It showed promise, but we concluded it would work better on someone who could do well even if no allies went with them (we were assuming Lulu would just get support play and not outduel a huge number of champs if solo, whoops).”

It’s very interesting to hear that this ability nearly went on Lulu. The ultimate she has now obviously complements her kit well, but this ability also would have worked out amazingly.

It would be cool to see a list of all the abilities that were nearly given to champions already in the game. We’d probably be extremely surprised at how things could have turned out in an alternate universe.

A group teleport is an ability we’ve wanted to do for quite a while. First time we tried it, at least while I’ve bee at Riot, was on Lulu.

In addition to why it made sense for gameplay reasons, Meddler also explained that it made sense thematically: “Ryze is an ancient archmage who roams Runeterra searching for World Runes. He’s been doing so for an extremely long time (centuries?). Some form of transportation magic seemed like a really strong fit for an eternal traveler as a result. Unlike many of the other mages in LoL Ryze has time to master his craft. Annie or Syndra for example have a lot of innate power and raw talent. They’re not yet very refined about it though, so tend to do one or two things really hard (burn stuff and smash things into other things respectively). Ryze however’s got enough practice to have a broader mastery over his magical talent, so he’s adept at doing a range of different things with the power he’s got.”

It’s shocking to see that Riot puts this much thought into their champions. Most people would have thought they do things just to do them, but it’s clear that they always have a plan in mind.

If you’ve been a person complaining about why Ryze was given a teleport, you can now see that it wasn’t a random decision at all — the ability fits him perfectly.

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