Ryze: Muramana or Seraph's Embrace?

Ryze is a very unique champion to League of Legends. Although some champions like Olaf or Volibear scale off their maximum health, Ryze is special in that he is the only champion that scales off of his maximum Mana. Because of this, Ryze is very dependent on the item Tear of the Goddess, a 700 gold item made out of a fairie charm (180 g.) and a Sapphire Crystal (400 g.), and grants the champion an extra 4 mana for every spell he casts, up to a maximum of 750 mana. Thanks to Ryze's short cooldown on his Q and his two passives, he can constantly be throwing out spells to charge his tear of the goddess very quickly.

 

Because you want tear of the Goddess, you're going to want to upgrade it. I imagine you can understand why. So, there are two upgrades for your shiny Tear of the Godess, the AP route with Archangel's staff that transforms into Seraph's Embrace, or the AD route with Manamune, that transforms into Muramana. Now, most players know that Ryze scales off mana, but still has some AP ratios, that even if they are subpar, are still kind of decent. So of course they're going to go the AP route to maximize their damage. 

BUT WAIT

Well, most of you already probably know this, but bolding dramatic phrases is fun. So, both Mananume and Seraph's Embrace have active abilities that make them very different items that both have great skillsets. So now, we're going to look directly at the unique actives they give, and see which item is better for your money.

Muramana: Toggle: Dealing damage with single target, non-periodic spells or your basic attacks will consume 3% of your current mana to deal 6% of your current mana as magic damage.

Seraph's Embrace: Unique Active - Mana Shield: Drains 25% of your current mana to shield yourself for an equal amount for 3 seconds (120 second cooldown). 

For both examples, we will be using a level 18 Ryze with a fully stacked Rod of Ages, Frozen Heart, masteries for mana, and of course the extra 1000 from your Seraph's or Muramana. This gives us a total of 3506 maximum mana. 

Seraph's Embrace

Seraph's Embrace gives you a 3 second shield that lets you absorb damage for 25% of your current mana. Using this Ryze, at full mana, we get a shield for 876 health. Using Giant's belt as a comparison, that means were getting approximately 2.3 giants belts worth of health, which is a whopping 2305 gold worth of health. At half mana, you're still getting 438 health, which is pretty decent, and is worth about 1.15 giants belts. Clearly, you're getting a lot of moneys worth, but the item has drawbacks, mainly the shield only lasts for 3 seconds, and at low mana, its pretty useless. 

Muramana

While Seraph's Embrace gives you health, Muramana gives you damage. And as a magic damage carry, you want damage. But wait you might say, its an attack damage item! Well, if you read the toggle it gives, it gives you extra damage on basic attacks and single target spells, which includes Ryze's Q and W, which is most of his damage, plus his basic attacks. So now, we pull out our calculators and figure out the gold we're getting from this. At Maximum mana, 6% of your mana is 210. This means your Q and W is getting an extra 210 damage, slightly decreasing every time as your mana goes down.

To match this extra damage using your Q ratio, you would have to get another 3000 mana. You would have to be stacking tear of the goddesses for a long time before you can reach that. You can't really calculate the gold worth of this, but with Mananumes toggle, you are effectively doubling your mana ratios. Thats really good, and means you effectively are doing about 400 damage based on mana ratios alone with your q, not counting AP ratios and base damage. And on an extemely short cooldown, thats a ton of damage. The biggest drawbacks of Manamune are that you're using 3% of your mana with every spell, so use your toggle only during fights, and try to get a blue buff for mana regineration. 

Conclusion

Muramana can double your ratios on your Q or W, while Seraph's Embrace can almost double your health. Both have their time and places, but Muramana seems to be better because of the insane damage it gives, plus at a cheaper cost. Good luck on the Fields of Justice Summoners!