[2020] What Champions don't necessarily upgrade R at levels 11 and 16?

Ryze, before his most recent rework, had a significant (read: 10 points) winrate increase if he didn't skill his ultimate at level 6 but instead at level 11. His most optimal leveling looked something like 3 points in Q then max E and then take R in solo queue.

Back then, his ult only had two ranks and not very useful at rank 1 in solo queue because of its short range. Ranking up your E instead would give you significantly more waveclear because your Q damage on targets with E would scale with E rank, not Q.

This was before his flux damage scaled with his ult. That change pretty much killed that strategy.

On one hand I agree with you, on the other hand, the difference was so large on such an unintuitive build that leveling the 'normal' way you do with every other champion was essentially a trap. It wasn't so much that the skip R build was a playstyle so much as the optimal way to play the champion if you were solo. Building juggernaut items on Darius isn't a playstyle, it's just the best way to play him - similar thing here.

Ryze was changed for reasons unrelated to this max order, I believe - More to do with the massive gulf between his pro play and regular play performance.

His waveclear with his old E scaling was very strong, particularly in the laning phase, so it had to be changed. Shifting the damage increase of Q away from E ranks to his ult was a great way of doing that. It just so happened that it also made his leveling order more similar to every other champion (ie max a single ability at a time, always level your ult when you can). It's a useful tactic, because it means you can guarantee Ryze is going to spike at 6/11/16 rather than spike hard at 10 and never fall off.

It was mostly skilled Ryze players playing it, but that in itself should tell you that it was known to be the optimal build. It wasn't like it was one Ryze player doing it for the lulz. The sample size was statistically significant

The 10 point increase definitely had confounding factors but even a Ryze with 100 wins on Ryze doesn't have a 10 point increase in winrate compared to a first-time Ryze, which seems to imply to me it wasn't necessarily about skill of the operator

I'm not a data analyst or on the balance team, though, so I could be wrong!