League of Legends [New forum, check OP!] - Page 606

all thoughts below are what i've personally perceived after my return to the game. take it with a grain of salt but i believe everything i say below to be true. feel free to argue.

the problem with ryze is that he's essentially a melee caster relying on short CD. optimal ryze play would involve getting two sets of spells off during the course of one ult (someone told me it's ~30cdr or something?). that means during the course of the ult you have to essentially stay in melee range the whole time and you haven't reached your full potential until you actually do blow both loads. as a result, he gets overshadowed by other "blow-up" heroes that do "full" damage instantly (annie, fiddle) or heroes with range or a gimmick to help them sustain their damage (karthus, kass, zilean). malzahar and articuno are other examples of heroes suffering from lowered/gimped mobility and an inability to do maximum damage immediately.

take into account that most team fights now are so shifty and spread out, you won't get to take advantage of your splash too much unless you find a heavily advantageous fight in the jungle. the best you can hope for now is to take out or neutralize the enemy physical carry but that is quite difficult as they usually don't let you wait out your CD in melee range.

especially nowadays it becomes increasingly difficult since the "ranged physical dps" is quickly dying out with the exception of ezreal/kayle hybrid style. mobility and kiting becomes essential as people play thicker heroes more and more (tank nidalee for me, off-tanks for others) and they have the ability to chase you down through the wall of damage. for example, annie used to be so good since she could flash/tibbers and insta-gib an enemy and turn the fight into a 4v5. it's much harder to do that now vs "modern" comps and vs good positioning/play.

as a result i think the "caster" class is shifting more towards a support oriented role. morgana becomes the post-girl for this shift as she cannot be ignored (due to her huge impact in a teamfight) yet at the same time isn't really worth killing (due to her being hard to kill and not being the primary source of damage). janna/soraka are other examples. heimer also fits this role but for different reasons entirely. you may argue that someone needs to do magic damage from your team but that role can be fulfilled by others (hybrid carries) even when the support heroes can't.

the other way it is shifting is towards off-tank roles. magic damage from tanks is sort of ridiculous at this moment. there are so many threatening "off-tanks" right now that the game is sort of stupid. take a look at your champion screen and see how many "tanks" you'd fear to fight due to their ridiculous DPS. these guys all do so much damage that every team fight you have to make the difficult decision of whether to let them live (and do damage) or kill them (and waste DPS on a tank). rammus, amumu, vlad, udyr, WW. even sion, nunu, shen, and singed do significant magic damage. add in the fact that garen, nasus, xin, olaf are good sources of physical damage and you realize that tank-heavy teams are the way to go. 3-5tanks with the rest support is IMO the best comp at the moment.

RIOT's inability to balance has faded out the need for 'casters'. hopefully this is only a temporary metagame shift since it wasn't that long ago that tanks RIOT faded out the need for tanks (during janna disengage/heal/rescue comps). but right now tanks lane way too well (ever laned vs a good nasus and felt stupid as he free-farmed and you didn't do shit?) and DPS discrepancy between tanks and "carries" are disproportional to their ability to survive. even heimer becomes useless when 5 tanks just dive tower+3 turrets and insta-gib your team.

tl;dr
tanks are stupid, hard carries and "casters" are dead, RIOT blows