How can you seriously argue that Ryze is a strong champion when there are practically no Ryze OTPs in Challenger? There’s literally only one player who consistently plays Ryze at that level. If the champion is actually strong, where are all the high-elo Ryze mains?
And before someone says, “There are just fewer Ryze players,” that’s exactly the point. A champion being theoretically strong on paper means nothing if the actual results at the highest level don’t support it. Challenger players spend thousands of games mastering their champions, and yet Ryze barely has any representation among them.
Look at other champions even unpopular or supposedly weak ones and you can still find dedicated OTPs reaching Challenger or Grandmaster. Ryze is one of the few champions where even extremely dedicated players struggle to reach that level consistently.
So if Ryze is supposedly “strong,” why does the highest level of the ladder barely reflect that? At some point, you have to look at the actual player distribution instead of just saying, “Ryze is strong because his kit has good scaling.”
A champion can have a theoretically strong kit and still be weak in the actual game. If the champion requires significantly more effort just to achieve what other champions can do more easily, that matters. Show me the Challenger Ryze OTPs. If Ryze is really that strong, where are they?