Ever since Pyke was released in Patch 8.11, the champion has been an enigma. The first month he received a higher than average playrate for a new champion. This was mainly due to this new concept of an assassin being played out of the support role. After the balances to his kit and the end of the honeymoon phase for the champion, Pyke fell out of the upper echelons of the support hierarchy in favor of Rakan, Alistar, Thresh, and Tahm (just to name a few). Ever since Patch 8.19 brought a seemingly small buff to Pyke’s ultimate ability, we’ve begun to see a couple of builds come through that have allowed the Bloodharbor Ripper to reclaim his spot amongst the top supports. Without further ado, these are the two builds that have let Pyke get his cut.

Before That:

The masteries for both builds are as follows:

Max Q (Bone Skewer) first followed by E (Phantom Undertow) while leveling up his Ultimate (Death from Below) at every opportunity. For both of these builds, Ancient Coin is the support item and Boots of Mobility/Eye of Ascension are the staple items. Relic Shield used to be preferred as Pyke is melee, but Ancient Coin feels amazing with the gold generation as well as mana regeneration it provides. It allows you to keep slinging your spells without going oom.

Balanced Pyke

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This build allows Pyke to go in and get out safely as you’re a bit tankier. You’re also able to go in more often because of the extra cooldown reduction. After your core, go Frozen Heart, Guardian Angel, then Spirit Visage. Frozen Heart allows you to take more damage in lane as well as dish out more spells. Also, don’t underestimate the effect on the attack speed slow on the enemy AD carry. Now Pyke was designed to do a bunch of damage, the Frozen Heart won’t fully facilitate that, but a Guardian Angel as second item will. This item will give you the flat AD stats of a BF Sword and allow you to go in until it’s popped.

The Spirit Visage at the end increases the heal on your W (Ghostwater Dive) passive as well as giving you that key amount of magic resist in order to balance your damage negation in this build. Overall I believe this build is better when the enemy team is tankier and it takes a little more than one rotation of skills to bring the enemy champions down. I usually prefer a Duskblade of Draktharr as the final item for some more damage, But a Sunfire Cape or Warmog's works for more sustain or ambient damage.

Bloody Pyke

This is the Pyke build that most people think of when considering Pyke for the team composition. This is the glass cannon "I’m a support but wanna murder people" high-risk high-reward Pyke build. Now I would say this build is a little less beginner-friendly as your positioning and spacing is key. If you’re newer to the champion, I highly recommend going with “Balanced Pyke” if you don’t want to be frustrated with the state of being very, very, very brittle. As Bloody Pyke, you want to build as many attack damage and lethality items you can. Start with a Youmuu’s Ghostblade, add a Duskblade of Draktharr, then The Black Cleaver and Guardian Angel to finish. This build is intended to be used when you want to outplay a team of squishy (usually high-damage as well) champions. You will hurt people with this build, but also get hurt by people with this build. Decisiveness and communication are key as being caught in between full all-in and poke means death.

Pyke is a snowball champion. As such, gaining momentum and pressure early is imperative to the success one will have playing him. If you fall behind, it becomes increasingly difficult to do much besides waiting for your team to get some enemies low enough in order to chain executes. That being said, although difficult, Pyke is so much fun and feels great when you can pilot him properly.

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