ARAM has gotten its first significant changes in a while heading into next season. Patch 12.23, one of the pre-season patches before Season 13 begins in January, has introduced changes that have made ARAM even more chaotic. It introduced frost gates which allow you to teleport quickly back into the fight, while fallen towers literally fall over and create walls. Even another bush has been added. Games have become more fast-paced and more difficult to stall out. Matches consistently end around 15 to 20 minutes.
Where does this leave Pyke, a character that thrives in chaos and scrappy situations? Will he thrive or will he dive back to the bottom of the sea?
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Table of Contents
Current ARAM meta
With the recent changes to ARAM in patch 12.23, we have seen a resurgence of melee characters in ARAM. But not all melee characters are equal. Those that have started to perform particularly well are champions that utilize Ravenous Hydra or Jak’Sho, like Zed or Irelia. There has also been a strong resurgence of real beefcakes like Sion who do incredibly well with Heartsteel, essentially becoming unkillable. And then you have characters that counter this meta, like Darius that have a field day. In the top twenty in terms of performance, fourteen are melee characters. And the ranged are specifically good against melees or deathball comps. And fourteen out of twenty are melee characters. So it is clear what the meta is, and Riot themselves have admitted that they overshot the results with their changes.
Can Pyke and his Harpoon Play?
But what about Pyke? He has a health-based true damage execute, a useful spell against resistance tanks, like those that build Jak’Sho. But overall he is not that happy about going against bruisers as they usually have a lot of bonus health.
Pyke was also buffed indirectly by the ARAM changes in 12.23, gaining both flat magic resist and tenacity. Characters like poke MF or Ashe can keep Pyke at an arm’s length and he can’t do much about it. But both of these are massively nerfed and are much less played. And if they are picked, they suffer against many other characters in the new meta.
Pyke’s ARAM Performance in the Pre-Season
At the moment, Pyke’s performance is around 50%. He is a very skill-based character that can thrive in the meta where snowballs often happen. He can easily pick off people when they come back through portals, or when half of the teams are dead and the rest are coming back.
Pyke was performing very poorly before the 12.23 patch, with nerfed long-range poke and increased magic resistance for melee characters. After the patch, he performs at around a 50% win rate, but with better performances at higher skill levels. Pyke is one of the examples where these changes did what they were supposed to. Maybe with some tweaks to the new items, other characters will similarly fall into line. Pyke already has very strong modifiers in ARAM, with 10% additional damage dealt and -15% damage taken.
Pyke’s ARAM Builds: Not Much to See Here
His builds are largely the same as before the pre-season patches, except that Axiom Arc is more prominent. So the changes in win rate have not come from a new item meta.
Pyke’s builds are not very varied, and most of them involve Duskblade to increase Pyke’s slipperiness and ability to weave in and out of fights. Axiom Arc allows Pyke to use the ultimate even without resets. This is needed as his ultimate is his main tool outside of his hooks. It is especially important with the new map, where there is little time to recharge as the teleportation gates keep the fights coming. Ghostblade is also a useful item for extra movement speed help with engages and get out more easily. But one may switch Ghostblade for more defensive options like Death’s Dance, Edge of Night, or Maw of Malmortius.
The reason he can’t build more versatile is that all his bonus health is converted into additional AD at a pretty poor rate by his passive. So most of Pyke builds ignore items with extra health. He also particularly likes lethality as he gets extra bonuses from lethality on his abilities. Another chain and ball on the build freedom for Pyke is that his spells do not stack that well with items that amplify spell damage like Muramana or Ravenous Hydra. Thus he is very limited in his option. The only real choices he has is Duskblade or Prowlers, Axiom or Ghostblade, but even with that choice, you will most likely build both of them in the end. And then which of the defensive options you are looking for, Maw of Malmortius, Deaths Dance or Edge of Night. Not very exciting for people who like to experiment with builds.
Pyke’s well-performing runes can be found in Aftershock, Glacial Augment, Hail of Blades. While the most popular rune, Dark Harvest performs at about 50%. Glacial Augment helps to hit the combo of hook into E and makes it harder for the opponents to assist, making hooked targets very exposed. Aftershock is good if the opponents will inherently focus on you, giving you some survivability. But in terms of pure damage, nothing beats Hail of Blades.
Overall, there are not many improvements to be made in Pyke’s builds.
Pyke’s place in the ARAM meta
The addition of teleportation gates means ARAM has gotten even faster. Fights can seem never ending. This helps Pyke if he can get his reset off, as he can continuously use his ultimate if people keep teleporting back to the fight. This is also most likely why people build Axiom Arc a lot more now, as the games in the new meta have fights going so much that it is very hard to get the cooldown back on your ultimate if you miss your reset without it.
The problem with Pyke is that you still need to be pretty creative to get engages off with him and know when you can do a combo and get out.
But he is very strong early with Hail of Blades if played correctly, and these early fights can get the infamous snowball rolling. Pyke is also useful in this meta due to having true damage, which is key against many of the tankier characters that’s popular now.
But he is not the best against what is the current meta, bruisers.
What he does excel at is snowballing games, so if you can manage to win early with his inherent strength, you can help to continue it by hooking people out of the turret, giving extra gold, and keeping resets going. It is difficult to win once you lose the second turret early on. But to do this, Pyke does require a team that can force a snowball with him, like bruisers.
With a team full of ranged, he will look to create opportunities with hook, but it becomes very difficult against several bruisers. Pyke wants to make the game chaotic, and bruisers can at present tank too much to allow that to happen, even when singled out, they can tank enough for their teammates to come back.
Pyke will likely perform better after bruisers are nerfed. This will make carries more viable, which is what Pyke especially wants to face. So overall, Pyke seems to be in a healthy state going forward, better than before the changes. And it may get even better, as changes are coming to the bruiser meta, then Pyke can thrive like a fish in water. Or a harpooner eaten by a fish in water.
