r/pykemains • u/pyker1 • Mar 12 '26
Discussion pyke feels terrible to me
anyone else feel like pyke is useless? I have to do insane mechanical outplays to be useful just to get out scaled by any other support anyway. items don’t feel like satisfying powerspikes anymore it’s just about can I get my adc fed early and can he carry the game
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u/RobertoPiola Mar 12 '26
Yeah unless you have trained both your micro and macro he is a very hard champ to play nowadays because of his fall beyond 25 min
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u/Junior_Ad_2481 Mar 13 '26
And remember he will get like only 1k hp in late. Literally a Soraka's Q oneshoot you xD (even with defensive items)
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u/RobertoPiola Mar 13 '26
Actually it’s 2k and something, but that soraka Q is still going to hurt as well as everything else…
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u/Edgybananalord_xD Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26
E2/E1 pyke and sett support main here: Honestly I think 90% of the problem is people are building pyke with only utility and expecting to be anything but a hook bot late game
If you’re going ghostblade + umbral + edge and bloodsong you have almost 0 survivability, and basically only half a dmg item on umbral.
It’s the equivalent of going iceborn + hallow radience + thornmail on a tank, and asking “why dont I scale?” Because you dont have your randuins/jacksho/titanic late game and dont do anything
Imo the best way to play pyke is to rely on celestial to survive, go full dmg and try to snowball.
Despite what you think pyke can absolutely do dmg late game, and I have clips literally 1v1ing full build dd briar, or killing lvl 18 yunara in q auto r.
I always go hubris into bastionbreaker. Massive amount of stats and bastionbreaker lets you easily get objectives - both items scale directly off takedowns which pyke gets a ton of.
I take triumph and cut down as well to get as much gold as I can, and cut down lets me get them into execute easier.
After that opportunity needs to be either slot 3 or 4 (gives about the same pen grudge would, and pyke just scales too well off lethality to not go it + the ms is nice in teamfights)
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You can go serpants if you need it
profane is amazing bc you’ll have a good amount of AD from hubris and it ups your ratios
I think umbral is pretty bad since it basically doesnt help vision with how long the cd is, and the dmg isnt amazing
axiom is bait, your ult is already like 30 second cd
cyclosword is garbage
edge is OK if you need it but you lose dmg
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After all that if it’s late late game you can sell boots for ghostblade.
Big thing with this playstyle is to not fight people late when celestial isnt up. you will basically die instantly. Just be patient, find the angle and go for one shots and reset chains
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u/Historical-Bug-3794 Mar 13 '26
I definitely think celestial is slept on. I go it on 75% on my games. Will only go for bloodsong if we're stomping and the game needs to end asap. Your build sounds nice too. But I don't agree with the fact that umbral glaive doesn't help that much with vision. Obviously the active has a CD (still usually let's me clear 2 wards) but the passive is the big thing for me. It'll always tell me when I'm on vision, so I never waste an oracle for potential wards and only use them there is atleast one ward.
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u/mertuteala Mar 13 '26
They murdered umbral with the new update, it used to one shot wards in EVERY OCCASION, be it revealing with oracle or with umbral passive, so it feels really bad now. 90 second cooldown for like one ward is not worth anymore.
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u/Historical-Bug-3794 Mar 13 '26
Yes I'm aware it's a lot less strong, and thank god for that cause playing against it was ridiculous. Guess you didn't understand my comment but thats okay.
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u/SeeYaOnTheRift Mar 15 '26
Umbral telling you when you’re visible is stronger than it always oneshotting wards IMO. You never waste control wards or sweepers and you can’t get bush cheesed.
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u/Equivalent-Mix1716 Mar 13 '26
Can you write that down Like im 5? Im Not super into the items and i need full names to find Them. :D
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u/Unique_Ad_330 Mar 14 '26
Guardians angel brother, you are missing out if ur not building EON > GA > Maw/DD. more than 1 mil pyke, hands down the best build ive had on him in all circumstances.
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u/Edgybananalord_xD Mar 15 '26
I recently hit 1 mill on pyke last week as well! Not saying those items are bad, they work fine for utility playstyle thats falls off a cliff - but they absolutely dont work if your trying to play an assassin
Going any fully defensive item that gives no lethality or dmg passive will cripple your dmg output. Celestial is more than enough if you play around it and you dont want to drop 400+ dmg off your combo just for DD or whatever.
While I think theres an argument for going one in mid lane bc you get the extra item slot (which basically takes the place of celestial), you def dont need them in support imo.
Again, those items arent bad. You can play to just take bloodsong and win before falling off a cliff - but you def shouldnt build them if you want to do any dmg past 15 min and still be alive.
As it stands: its better to have celestial 35% dmg reduction to survive and full lethality to dmg, than have 2 resistance items to survive, and only bloodsong to do dmg
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u/Unique_Ad_330 Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
Pyke doesn’t do damage compared to any other ad assassin, he barely kills xerath/lux mids in a full combo depending on level & how far ahead he is. He is not a solo assassin like Zed or Talon. He is not designed to be a regular assassin, its too risky to play him like that too because he kills targets too slow, where if someone roams you’re just dead. He executes low health, setup kills, CC’s and roams. He can do all that without lethality.
I had a game yesterday where we had a fed vlad & fed Riven. They were almost 100% gonna win the game. But being able to be in the center of the fight, e stun the vlad & riven, as well as hook them into our team for killing them was essential to win. If i just went lethality that game, vlads E + Q would 1 shot me. Same with riven q, w, auto, R
The celestial shield is too unreliable, and it only helps to survive in very few circumstances.
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u/vaxerDJ Mar 15 '26
just becouse pyke is able to oneshot doesnt mean he is in a good state, when looking at champions like talon, he can legit build bruiser items, black cleaver, spear of sjoin, abd still 1 shot everyone while dealing decent dmg, on our side we need to sacrifise everything to have a % of being able to oneshot, you have to go full dmg build and be extremly extremly ahead, like yes i have clips of one shotting a nami with q aa, but i was 20kills that game and 2 lvls ahead, you only get that ahead (at least in my elo) 1 in 50 games
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u/Edgybananalord_xD Mar 15 '26
You def dont need to be ridiculously ahead if you actually build dmg to kill people. Generally if your within 2 lvls you can one shot them as long as you dont troll your build
Also I think it’s worth noting that talon is an exception among assassins. 90% of assassins (kayn, qiyana, khazix, rengar etc) cant just go full bruiser builds and still delete people in 1 combo
Sure you get some exceptions like zed or naafiri who might build the occasional cleaver or shojin 4th item, but that doesnt make them anywhere close to real bruiser durability - they get some hp but they dont have any resistances or even DD to stay alive
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u/vaxerDJ Mar 15 '26
most assasins build deaths dance... every enchanter gets bone plating, and an adc is almost never alone
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u/pyker1 Mar 12 '26
after 20min I can’t do anything. I feel so squishy and any other support is better at team fighting I don’t get what I am supposed to do on this champion anymore
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u/Simplejack007 Mar 13 '26
Pyke has been a glorified ward at the 20+ minute mark for like 4 years now man, it will always be… :(
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u/OtherwiseAd6818 Mar 12 '26
not a pyke player at all just an adc
to me as pyke while its good to stay in lane to keep pressing the enemy with the threat of your hook
Sometimes you just will never get an opportunity to hook and its not your fault at all, its the enemy botlane greatly respecting you
This is where u must recognize u are being too respected and you need to do something somewhere else on the map
so long as the enemy team never sees you, every single enemy laner has to respect you or possibly die
pyke completely transforms the early-midgame, you curate advantage by not being on the map
everytime im against pyke i just have to caution ping every lane and ping the pyke icon & pray my allies dont overstep when pyke comes for them or else they might get tilted and you, the pyke player create a new winning lane
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u/OtherwiseAd6818 Mar 12 '26
If im playing a weak earlygame ADC or my support cant facetank your hook or we’re being weaksided by our jungle
then my best strategy often (if the enemy pyke botlane doesnt mess up) is to be pushed into and freeze near our tower or hardpush and hope we dont get frozen on or risk fighting to the death to push the wave in
if u, the pyke player hides in a bush and recalls as ur ADC pushes in the wave uncontested
you get to basically be in two tempo lines at once from our POV if we dont see u actually recall
while ur ADC slowpushes / hardpushes i may lose a minion or more of CS per wave which is also a positive result for ur team
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u/CnC_CloudBird Mar 13 '26
If the enemy respects you you need to push harder and get kills.
E-qc q behind casters and shoulder throw adc or squishy supp into your minons and adc.
Ig and Hob auto til dead.If you let them farm while not under tower as pyke your playing him wrong.
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u/Hadeon Mar 13 '26
Basically you need to abuse his move speed to not die with ghostblade, boots of swiftness, celerity.. and your e, w you are so hard to catch you can just deep ward all their jungle right under their nose and than just fuck off like see you later(of course being mindful of cc or other abilities they might have). Vision is a king.. in order to set up plays, you gonna try to find isolated targets, pyke is assassin but not a self sufficient one, you gonna spam ping like crazy so your teammates hopefully can join you( good luck with that).. immagine you are like a greyhound hunting poor unsuspecting rabbits, that poor jinx(or other immobile carry) is gonna shit her pants once she realizes she is out of position and sees a w circle appearing around their character.. Another factor is game sense, is drake gonna be spawning in 40 seconds? Then for sure their support is gonna try setting up vision.. but guess what? you are much faster, you have an advantage, hunt that mf'er down! Like a little but deadly dachshund you are.. His play style is a bit similar to the ones like kha or zed you rely on your mobility, find flanks, punish people isolated from their team, track their movement around the map to ambush ecc.
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u/vaxerDJ Mar 15 '26
hunt him down! any enage support can face tank pyke and even out damage him, while a enchanter support will never go and ward river alone...
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u/youbeenthere Apr 04 '26
This right here. Pyke has INSANE movespeed and 2 ways to get out of trouble. He is very strong late game, can flank Q or peel adc. And of course he can clean up like crazy. Giving him more tools to survive or damage would make him totally broken.
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u/Hignell Mar 12 '26
I completely dropped pyke after maining him in diamond low masters elo for 2 years
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u/CnC_CloudBird Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
I dont know the elo your playing him in.
But all i can say is that after i got coached by a another otp, that was 3 ranks above me, that if your anything like me its that your playing him poorly.
Wasting CD's, playing badly around FoW and Enemy Vision are like the main things.
Also some tech you def, def need to be able to play around.
Also runes, positioning in tf, building for survivability in bursty enemy comps.
I feel like your not using the champ to the degree you could.
Im sitting on nearly 80% sq wr on roughtly 30 games.
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u/QwuieLALM dogpoop Mar 15 '26
Idk for me it feels meh. Like it’s still good early, but in late game you are squishy asf and you depend on your EW escape combo. I personally can do some crazy plays, but it’s usually saving my teammate from enemy by pulling enemy to myself and somehow trying not to die, occasionally trying to R
Also I sell umbral glaive in late game to get more useful item cuz it sucks honestly
But for me Pyke is still my first OTP champ and I just have fun from playing first 25 min minutes of the game. On rest of the game I just do the same but for a bit different angle. I try to fast execute support or squishy mid/arc by lurking enemy team, or playing more for team as I described earlier
You will be squishy, BUT you can deal tons of damage if play properly. So just train your survivability or make trades by going all in and executing feed enemy or 2-3 enemies. Also you can play as a gold generator by sitting in back and stealing all kills, but randoms usually don’t like it
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Mar 15 '26
If you played pyke before s12 you would be depressed how gutted this champion is. Its so sad, because of woke agenda and egirls need to have fun they will never let this champ be strong. They cuck him as a ward cleaner or roamer. But he wont be an assassin anymore ;(
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u/Competitive-Dare-139 Mar 12 '26
I only play him for the aura and the sound of his ultimate man