Talk:Malzahar/@comment-24309189-20140922041323/@comment-8506165-20141016145442

Because he scales pretty well off just mana. I mean, QWEQ alone (pretty basic Ryze combo, without ult) is a max of 20.5% max mana as damage, and when you have just 3k or so... that's 615 bonus damage just off the mana scalings.

Tear and RoA add up to 1650 and Ryze will almost always get Frozen Heart for max CDR and a total of 2050 bonus mana. Then he just builds an MR item to be more durable and then usually either a spellvamp choice or Void Staff for MPen - sometimes another tanky item depending on situation, or hell even a second RoA. He still ends up with a fair bit of AP because of Seraph's Embrace, as well as being pretty tanky with 100 bonus armor off Frozen, 50ish bonus MR off whatever he picked up and 650 bonus health off RoA (and possibly some from whichever MR choice he got too).

Back when Banshee's gave mana it was a staple on Ryze too. And the fact that Ryze can be tanky despite dealing a lot of damage is again, why he's a higher tier than Malzahar despite not being as good as deleting a target outright.