Because getting a frozen heart and Veil increase your damage output. What more could you ask for?

Because having 3200 HP, 4300 MP, 64% damage reduction and still doing a ton of damage and being able to solo baron is fun.
Full Tank Ryze build:

You are wrong, he dealt massive more amounts of single target damage because of the E bounces, I would literally kill any squishy and most tanks at level 7-9 because they simply weren't tanky yet. I can't play him anymore due to Q being ****ty harass compared to old E and having to wait until we teamfight to get kills on anyone who is half decent. Before they had 0 choice in the matter, they were dead before the 1.5 second root came off. Definite nerf.

haha thats funny, thats exactly how I built him before, and I played him in ranked games. Did fine too, except now I'm expected to stand still and get my face beat in or not do any damage. casting QWERQ and backing off and then QWE again is so much more viable than

"Hey you, cmere, yeah cmere get in my range, now stand there while I let off this 5 second combo that might kill you, might not, Oh wtf? My root doesnt last that long, God ****it!"

I see your argument, but I'm just trying to be fair. If you work the math out, old Ryze, when built identical to his current incarnation, dealt quite a bit more burst, mostly due to the bonus AP from his ult. However, current Ryze is able to match old Ryze's damage by about his 2nd-3rd spell rotation, and surpass it by his 4th-5th spell rotation. Arguably, that's a fairly substantial nerf, as burst is simply greater than sustained. After all, they can't retaliate if they're dead.
But in the end you aren't going to change anyone's mind. Too many people are stuck in the mindset that old Ryze was garbage, without ever actually trying to play him seriously.


Also +1.

^ same question.

why the **** does everyone keep parroting this?

he's not "EXTREMELY TANKY" he has almost no mitigation over other casters, other then perhaps a Frozen Heart which isn't rushed.

Yes, he ends up with a slightly larger health pool, due to often building into RoA + Banshees by the end of the game, but he's still going to drop in 1.5 seconds againt any focus fire.

Plus his early game sucks now and his damage isn't amazing compared to other casters. I'd say Vlad & Karthus are strictly better in almost every way.

You're building him wrong. New school ryze uses Q and W for dmg as opposed to E

E/R are mainly to refresh cd's.

Q is a great harassment tool due to its long range and short cd.

Check out vman7's ryze page to learn how to abuse him (lol wth +600 mana at lvl 18)

Because ryze has 4000 mana and 3000 HP, and hits for 800 every 3 seconds.

I don't want to call him out in detail, but I played with OP in ranked once...I hope none of you have that displeasure.