For anybody who absolutely hates playing support, Riot’s new champion Pyke, The Bloodharbor Ripper, is the perfect solution. Riot has released his full kit today, and he is probably the most bloodthirsty support that has ever been created.
In typical assassin fashion, Pyke’s kit is filled to the brim with stealth, dashes, absurd damage and other playmaking abilities. He definitely brings something else to the table for the support role, but will he actually be played as a support?
In the preview, it can be seen that playing as Pyke looks to be as fun for you, as it is terrifying for the enemy. With ludicrous amounts of damage and mobility, he is hard to catch, and will blow you up in just a few seconds.
Pyke’s Q, Bone Skewer works in two ways. The first way is to instant cast it, in which case it will be a stab attack in front of him that slows all enemies. The second way is to charge it up, and use it as a harpoon to pull enemies back to you.
Pyke’s W, Ghostwater Dive let’s him dive into “spectral water”, which turns him invisible. Pyke is revealed when he is too close to his enemies, when he uses an ability or attacks, or when the duration runs out.
Pyke’s E, Phantom Undertow is the dash and playmaking ability of his kit. Pyke dashes forward and leaves a shadow behind, after a small delay the shadow will come back to Pyke, and any enemy the shadow passes through gets stunned.
Pyke’s ultimate, Death From Below is another playmaking ability in his kit. Pyke deals a flat amount of damage in an X-shaped area, and any enemies below that amount of health are instantly executed. If Pyke executes an enemy in this manner, the cooldown of the ability is refreshed.
Despite being a “support” champion, Pyke needs to play extremely aggressive, finding as many kills as possible to ramp up his, and his AD carries damage. If Pyke kills an enemy with his ultimate, the last champion to assist will also get full kill credit and gold. This is where taking him botlane as a support seems to pay off. Not only will Pyke get gold and resources this way, but his AD carry will too. Furthermore, all of Pyke’s bonus health is converted to AD. This means that you won’t have to build expensive assassin items, but can instead build cheap support items, and still gain a large amount of damage.
With a kit like this however, we can speculate that he probably won’t be exclusively played as a support. I expect many midlane, toplane and jungle players to pick him up as well, and see how he does in those respective roles. While I am not entirely sure about mid and top, I expect that Pyke could be a strong jungle pick. He might lack early game clear speed, but his ganks have potential to be very strong, with stealth, a gap closer and crowd control. Furthermore, getting a kill will put both him and the lane he’s ganking ahead in gold.
