that’s exactly how I play him. if you focus on maxing your W, those missiles REALLY hurt in laning phase. I’ve gotten so many double kills in 1v2 lanes off people who underestimate them. The range is huge too and I’ve gotten dive kills without really pushing too far in to a turret, too. However I tend to build philostone -> morellos. I’ll try ToG to LR though and see how it works for me.

I’m starting to believe that at low through mid Elo it’s better to have a second bruiser than a ranged AD carry, because if you’re able to play an AD carry competently you’re almost certainly not low/mid Elo and if you’re not able to play one competently you might as well not even be on the team.

Ryze does damage, sure, but nowhere near–and yes, my list of AP carries was woefully incomplete–the sort of damage an Anivia can deal. His job is to be tough to kill while dealing enough damage that you don’t want to ignore him and/or murdering an enemy squishy, exactly like ye olde Irelia or Renekton or Warwick or whoever the hell. Except that those champs generally do the job better.

I mean, there’s a reason he was picked exactly zero times at Dreamhack.

Actually, I’m reasonably confident, just looking cooldowns and ratios and such, that Annie’s sustained damage is higher than Ryze’s.

I don’t believe you (without math) that Annie’s sustained damage is higher than Ryze’s. Did you take into account that Ryze’s abilities are all reduced in cooldown by his passive? He machine-guns spells like a motherfucker.

Ryze is a mana carry anyway… The nice thing about Ryze is that his core damage boosters (mana) are also good tank items (frozen heart/ BV) But he never becomes a real monster.

I like playing him anyway, because he’s fairly forgiving. No, you aren’t an AP/AD carry, but you aren’t going to screw your team up badly, and a few well placed rune prisons are good, and tough to kill. Main downside is that his push is weak. If you survive a team fight, it doesn’t translate into much advantage over the other side. I tend to go steal buffs/ dragon rather than tower push.

I think one of Heimer’s biggest problems is his inability to target his rockets. They might hit Vayne… or they might hit Galio.

They hit the three closest, you can generally guesstimate that reasonably in a fight.

Philo never made sense to me. His passive + pots gives him all the regen he needs. He farms fast and pushes fast, and you take their blue buff constantly (or your own) simply by placing two turrets from the other side of the wall (it’s like flash… if the ability covers more than half of the wall, it’ll still go through, I learned this by watching SaintVicious).

He’s vulnerable to ganks but his abilities actually give him pretty solid escape abilities. One turret on either side of the creeps, far enough to be good cover but close enough to still hit the creeps, plus hit ult and stun, he can run pretty well if he has to. And, of course, you should be farmed as shit so wards should be no problem.

It’s actually pretty cheap how much he can stay out of danger in the early game. It’s usually longer ranged AP champs that have to blow their mana to kill your turrets and keep the creep wave stable. The fact that you still gain XP and gold for kills from your turrets makes going back a breeze.

If he’s ulting, they hit Vayne and Galio, because he gets five of them. If he’s close enough to Vayne. Which, given the way positioning works, is probably not where he wants to be.

I don’t believe you (without math) that Annie’s sustained damage is higher than Ryze’s. Did you take into account that Ryze’s abilities are all reduced in cooldown by his passive? He machine-guns spells like a motherfucker.

Feel free to math it out, I’m not going to. I’m not certain, but I’m fairly confident; keep in mind that Ryze has to cast five spells in order to match the cooldown of Annie’s w, that Annie’s q is on a four second cooldown, and that Tibbers has a free sunfire cape (that scales–badly–with AP) as well autoattack damage that remains relevant through the midgame. I’m damned certain that most other AP champs bring more to a team than Ryze does–but at low/mid elo, comp matters less than how well you can use the champion you’ve chosen.

Grr. The problem is that I’d have to actually compute what each of their spells deals at the end of the game.

I’m going to go with Tibbers only AoE’ing one player with his faux-Sunfire, but I don’t think that’d make that much of a difference. I will, however, give Ryze two hits of Spell Flux, and I’ll calculate the damage if he’s hitting multiple people with his ult up separately.

We’re going to assume that they both have 40% CDR total. I think this is a viable assumption.

Annie’s got:

Disintegrate - 2.4s, 245 + .7 AP
Incinerate - 4.8s, 280 + .75 AP
Tibbers - 450 + .7 AP
Tibbers AoE - 1s, 35 + .2 AP

She bursts 975 + 2.15/AP instantly, and then does a sustained 195 + .448/AP DPS afterwards (putting out two Qs and one W every 4.8 seconds).

Ryze has:

Overload - 2.1s, 140 + .2 AP + .08 max mana
Rune Prison - 9.4s, 200 + .6 AP + .05 max mana
Spell Flux - 9.4s, 130 + .35 AP
Desperate Power

Every time Ryze casts a spell, the time remaining on a spell goes down by a second, So casting Overload, followed by Rune Prison, puts him on a 1.1 second CD for Overload.

Thus, to cast QWQRQEQ takes him less than five seconds (we’ll say five seconds anyway).

His W is now on a 4 second cooldown. Waiting 2 more seconds allows him to Q again and then to enact the combo all over again 1 second later, so Ryze’s sustained combo might go like so:

QWQEQRQ[5 seconds] [2 seconds] QWQEQ[4.5 seconds]

This takes Ryze 11.5 seconds, which is a pretty sizable teamfight / team brawl.

In that 11.5 seconds, Ryze deals:

Q x 7 for 980 + 1.4/AP + .56 max mana
Wx2 for 400 + 1.2/AP + .1 max mana
Ex4 for 520 + 1.4/AP

Total of 1900 + 4/AP + .66 max mana over 11.5 seconds, not counting Desperate Power AoE.

Annie deals 3,217 + 7.302/AP over 11.5 seconds, not counting her AoE.

The math doesn’t look good for Ryze, nosir. I might have to agree with you after all. :)

But first I’ll have to actually figure out how much AP an endgame Annie would have and how much AP and mana an endgame Ryze would have… anyone know of a place for that offhand?

Sure it would. If it were hitting four more people, that’d be an extra 100DPS, which would, over 11 seconds, add another 1100 + .2AP to her total, which would more than double Ryze’s damage. If it were hitting five people.

But then, you seem to have made a pretty compelling case that, in ideal conditions, Annie deals more DPS than Ryze without taking that into account, so we can let that go ;)

And if Ryze’s spells were hitting five people, do you even want to think about how much DPS he’d be putting out? He has an AoE on his ult, you know. In an ideal AoE situation for Ryze, he’d be dealing instead of Qx7 something like Qx30. :P Ryze’s spells all scale AoE, and only two of Annie’s do.

I still think Annie would win. Hmph. Well, never let it be said I cannot prove myself TOTALLY EMPIRICALLY WRONG. :)

But then, you seem to have made a pretty compelling case that, in ideal conditions, Annie deals more DPS than Ryze without taking that into account, so we can let that go ;)

There are other factors, of course. Annie comes with a stun (which she should be using on her AoE) but has positioning requirements that Ryze doesn’t, etc.

Solo queue. I pick Galio. The rest of my team is Yi, Nidalee, Ez, and Akali. After we load in they tell me to go solo top. I blink at them a few times and then do as I’m told. This is the result:

Nidalee was sort of right, in that showed up at the final team fight bot just in time to ult Jax and Sona and enable our Akali to not only not die but turn her double into a quadra.

On an unrelated note, I have decided that solo top Jarvan has carried me as high as he can, and I must rely on Irelia (and maybe Renekton) to take me higher. Or, I dunno, I guess I could start jungling Jarvan.

Irelia seems really powerful. I enjoy jarvan and renekton, should I try her out?

Only thing is her ult - some kind of straight line throwy thing: it seems easy to dodge and ignore?

Oh, and Garen builds/runes? Might grab the spin king.

I killed MrCoffee’s cousin MrChoice for the penta.

they surrender after that, since we 4vs5 aced them.

I really enjoy the new tryn, jungling is pretty fast, and with the new passive he can hit almost 100% crit with just IE and a Phantom dancer.

It’s not easy to dodge, and it has two uses: sustainability and finishing runners. If you’re in lane–or, yes, a teamfight–you ult a bunch of enemies and get a tremendous amount of health back. If you’re murdering some dude and he starts running, that’s 400 damage you can throw at his back. Assuming your blink is on cooldown, of course.

And yes, you should absolutely try her out. Start Doran’s Shield, start with one point in e, then w, then q, at which point you pump w until you can’t and then pump e until you can’t. You rush trinity force, and then build tanky. McKnight loves him some resists, but I don’t feel comfortable if I have less than 3k health, so I tend to go atmog’s. YMMV.

In lane, there are very few champs you can’t murder 1v1, so you go fight them. And kill them. Ideally at level four, say, so you’re doing 30 true damage per hit and have a stun if things go badly and a blink if they run.

OK - I have a confession. My last 3-or-so games have been with a nubby friend of mine and his nubby bro-in-law. Yes. I’ve been smurfing (although does it count when you’re playing with your lvl30 main?). I went 9/0/something in on game as Akali mid before they surrendered, and 22/something in another game. To try and be fair on the bad guys I took Garen and first game ran around spinning to win. Was pretty funny, he’s an amusing as hell hero to play. I wonder if I should try him in ‘real’ games.

Was nasus’ Wither bugged with respect to tenacity, or is it just going to ignore tenacity now?

Nasus wither effect increases over time and it was bugged in respect to that i think.

So I’m guessing the time is still shortened by tenacity, but the speed at which the slow increases is changed so it can slow to the max amount of the ability. Does that make sense?

It wasn’t bugged, Tenacity just made it useless. This is because wither’s slow increased based on it’s duration, the most powerful and important part of the slow happened at the end (which never effected you if you had CC reduction).