Guide to play Pyke in League of Legends season 12

Pyke is a champion who has remained in the League of Legends meta almost forever. He is a champion who can always be a difference maker on account of his extremely versatile kit.

This article will dive into a guide to Pyke. Apart from being a top-tier pick, Pyke is also a fun champion to play with. In fact, Pyke was sort of developed to give those players agency who felt that the support role was boring.

This is a champion who changes the dynamics of how a support can be played and offers both self-satisfaction as well as teamwide value. Apart from that, he is not very hard to play either, which makes him a good pick for newer players.

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Runes, Item Path and Gameplay tips to play Pyke in League of Legends season 12

Before moving any further, it is first important to provide a brief overview regarding Pyke in League of Legends. As mentioned, he is an extremely fun champion to play.

Pyke is something that players can call slippery. He would hook someone, jump into them and then become invisible and walk away. He is hard to track and that makes him a massive threat, especially against squishy ADCs.

Pyke is one of the champions who has the grey health bar mechanics in League of Legends. It means that when he goes invisible, he will heal back up a certain portion of the health that he has lost. The recoverable part appears grey in color when he goes into stealth mode.

Pyke can create a sense of fear in the enemy team and it is very exciting to play around with that idea. Apart from that, he also has a powerful ultimate that can execute any champion below a certain health bar.

Hence, Pyke is extremely good at stacking up kills and can snowball games single-handedly even from the support position. In terms of weaknesses, Pyke probably has only two that can hold him back.

One of them is that despite being extremely slippery, he is also very squishy. If he gets locked down, there is no way for Pyke to escape. Apart from that, on account of being extremely fun, players can often go overboard and give away shutdown gold to the enemy, which can be disastrous.

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Rune path for Pyke in League of Legends

Rune Path for Pyke (Image via League of Legends)

Primary Rune (Domination): Hail of Blades, Cheap Shot, Zombie Ward, Treasure Hunter

Secondary Rune (Resolve): Bone Plating, Unflinching

Pyke is a support and is not an auto attack based champion. Therefore, players might expect him to play passive in the lane. However, these runes of Pyke's is what allows him to completely reverse that ideology.

Hail of Blades makes Pyke one of the best champions to trade with in the early game. It deals massive damage and can rip apart squishy ADCs. Apart from that, Bone Plating keeps him healthy, which makes him a menace even at level 1.

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Item build

The item build for Pyke in League of Legends is as follows:

• Duskblade of Draktharr
• Umbral Glaive
• Youmuu's Ghostblade
• Serpent's Fang
• Plated Steelcaps

Thus, the item build for Pyke revolves around three different areas namely damage, vision, and movement speed. Duskblade of Draktharr and Serpent's Fang provide him with the lethality needed to execute champions with ease.

Umbral Glaive is obviously quite crucial towards maintaining vision and Youmuu's Ghostblade helps Pyke escape from sticky situations.

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Gameplay tips

In terms of gameplay, one of the key facets to consider regarding Pyke in League of Legends is that he is all out being a surprise. Pyke will not gain much value if the enemy teams get to see him at all times.

Therefore, players need to learn to play around the bush as much as possible. In fact, this is one of the reasons why many players build Umbral Glaive on Pyke before anything else as it helps out a lot in vision control.

The second important thing to consider about Pyke is being fearless. As mentioned earlier, Pyke's runes allow him to trade quite efficiently. Therefore, it is vital that players take advantage of the same as much as possible.

In terms of skill prioritization, maxining out Q and E first should be a priority, followed by W. As always, the R ability should be leveled up as much as possible since it is the ability that helps Pyke snowball games in League of Legends.