I don't forget that. I ignore it because the AoE will only ever matter if you can catch two targets in almost exactly the same spot (The AoE range is marginal, and spreading out makes it useless). Fun fact, Ryze has zero ability to actually keep two people in the same spot, which makes the AoE literally almost useless.
Further, I also mostly ignored the AoE damage that most of the champs I calced for are dealing. I showed it on Karthus because he deals an unholy amount of it, and I give examples in the some of the analysis paragraphs of how much more powerful they are if you add in the fact that their spells are AoE. So if you think that my calculations are fucked up because one can't hit skillshots all the time, maybe you should take the time and think that even still they're doing more realistic damage in team fights than Ryze is.
Not no utility. LESS Utility. Again, the point isn't that his Late Game is terrible. It's better than most of the other Mages that I didn't do calculations for, since I only calced out for champs I considered to have a stronger late game. The point is that he simply doesn't do as much damage as these champions, and doesn't have as much utility. Late game.
Dominant for different reasons. His midgame was the most powerful of any champion. Gets CDR, plus passive and how quickly one can stack mana over AP. Ryze got damage faster than any other Mage and could dish it out faster. My point is that in late game he stops being as dominant and other AP's start getting better.
I'd also like to point out that the majority of the community thought the Ryze changes to make him a Machine Gun DPS Mage made him the worst champion in the game. I don't find it uncommon that the majority of a gaming community can misunderstand and hold a false opinion on something.
I think I'm just gonna say GG here, because literally there is no possible argument that's left in favor of Ryze's late game beyond "easy to use", and guaranteed CC application. Neither of which make a champion inherently better than others (If it did, Annie would be seen more often than she has been).
EDIT:
Actually, Kennen can use all of his other spells while Lightning Rush is active, and there is no global cooldown stopping you from rolling your fingers across the keyboard. Kennen has 25% less Spell Vamp, yes, but on spells that are damaging multiple targets more reliably than Ryze's, as well as having half a second down time on a free 50 Armor and MR. So, actually Kennen can take shots for quite a while.
The only hindrance would be energy limit, which I didn't take into account, and I guess that would be a fair comparison, but he's still dealing more damage in a teamfight since 3 of his 4 spells can hit multiple targets.
Also, if you're only getting 8 or 9 off in ten seconds, you aren't playing her very well... or they're straight up just running away, and in terms of sticking power and chasing, Cassiopeia is better at it than old Ryze (Not so much anymore).
