The Truer Evolution 3rd

For the love of everything that is holy please do not continue to add "interrupts channels" into the game. It's such an incredibly underwhelming ability characteristic. I'd rather have a 0.1s silence than a channel interrupt. It's far, far too niche to be considered good. It's just plain awful.

****Background: ****Plat 1 Viktor main with ~140 games with him this season, 61ish % winrate.

1. How do you feel about his abilities working with each other, do they have a natural flow to them? Only his Ult and W really feel cohesive, the same as before. That's not a terrible thing though imo, as long as each individual part feels good.

2. How enticing are the augments in various points in the game? When / what do you think is the best time / order to upgrade them? Honestly, the low stat values on each of the singular augments has lead me to grab the death augment for poke/waveclear, then just wait til full build to grab the others. In this way, since most games don't reach full build, the "rework" just feels like an unnecessary nerf. Lategame does feel stupendous, but I liked Viktor's role as a midgame siege/teamfighter and this rework has made the midgame awkward in terms of purchases. (I want MPen but I also want death augment AND lichbane AND I also need a defensive item (Zhonya's or Rylai's, since I'm getting so close to the action with my autos).

3. Do you notice an improvement in the usability of Chaos Storm? / How does Chaos Storm feel to use for you as a player new to Viktor? Chaos storm feels MUCH better to use, but looks 80% worse. Why is it so wimpy now? Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but the fewer ticks per second means Liandry's builds took a serious hit (especially with the laser not having a DoT). Also also, the removal of the silence was a totally unnecessary nerf I think. It was only 0.5 seconds but in conjunction with his W gave him a lot of options. I think that this, combined with the nerf to his shield values, are really going to make it harder to fight anyone else with burst/combos. Which is most champions these days. And they already give him a hard time.

4. Is the damage on the empowered attack on Siphon Power adequate during all phases of the game? If not, when does it feel out of line? Enh, seems a bit too weak at level 1 considering the cooldown imo but overall it's good. (It's a cool change, even if I don't necessarily like it).

****5. Other notes ****

• Viktor's regular auto feels great, looks wimpy.

• Viktor's laser feels pretty awful now. I kind of like the explosion effect, since it makes me think of those arcade-y explosions from old scrolling shooters, but the lack of reliability on the damage hurts pretty bad. Viktor's laser was the #1 reason to play him before, and while I think it's not a bad idea conceptually to move around some of the strength of his kit to his Q to make it feel worthwhile, Viktor doesn't really feel like Viktor anymore. TL;DR please revert the changes to this augment. Getting damage from his Q is even more risky lategame than it was before, Vik needs his laser for reliable poke.

• I think that the new default texture's mask is too bright, and also too 'angry/evil' looking. I liked old Vik's more 'misunderstood psycho' persona.

• Viktor's arm, she is too bright and orange. I miss the more robot-y colors.

• Viktor's icons could use some color saturation imo, especially if his mask/arm stay as ridiculously bright as they are now.

• That is one sexy splash art.

Going to be blunt here, Chaos Storm looks like a child playing with a lightbulb.

Cmon, look at the name. Chaos Storm. That sounds BAD. ASS. When I drop a Chaos Storm, it should feel threatening. Right now it looks like a spotlight to stand in.

Please take another pass at its visuals, it's almost comical right now.

I'm a huge player and the only thing i see that I'm not sure of is the time between augment death's lazor and 2nd damage. I'm also worried that Viktor is going to be a bit overpowered with these changes but we'll never know until he's played. I love the new passive (we've been waiting a long time and you guys have come through for us) I also like the fact that the damage and utility is respected (this is a 3000 gold item). The real question to me will be what should i buy? get one augment, buy a deathcap and continue? get all augments at once? I really like that his augments will be able to be staggered based on a decent gold amount.

EDIT: Also, now that the new splash art looks amazing, I don't know if I want to use the creator skin haha. Also, I do like the new art design, please go in this direction with his prototype. Maybe artwork like the arm blowing up in his face or something (he is just getting started after all.)

Hi Solcrushed. I really want to thank you for giving some <3 to Viktor :'3 I honestly love these changes so much. Now my lovely Viktor will finally teach those g$% champs who's the real boss of bosses :D

A lot of people see this as a nerf but honestly it isn't.

Passive: AP from 54 (99 Augment Death ) to 183AP. That's a lot of new extra AP. So what did we excatly have here? A very strong late game item that also adds 500MANA (Which is amazing since Viktor has mana problems) BUT it is a nerf to his early game. Why? We Viktor players mostly rush Augment Death for the extra 45AP but now we get 25AP but it's worth it at the end.

Q Siphon Power I see this as a buff with a nerf. How? Well lets talk about damage first. If we have 700AP, this is how the damage would be: .... Old Q total damage: 715 Magic Damage New Q total damage: 860 Magic Damage>>> EDIT: I forgot to add the AD from the basic attack that converts to magic damage. So the New Q total damage (at Lv 18) will be 963 Magic Damage .... So as you can see, the damage is increased. Problem is, in late game we usually throw everything for burst damage but now we need to add an extra basic to reach that damage since the powered basic attacks deals most of it so honestly it can make problems.

So how does this really work? Q now is more of a utility ability. With the increased Range and having more Augments (Which will give us speed in this case) We can use it to run away or gap close or dodge then IF we think its safe, we can go for a AA. Don't forget that the original Q has almost the same range as the AA so either way before you'd still need to get close to deal the damage.

In the End of the Q: If you want to do the damage, go in for an AA. If you want to run away, you have an increased and insta speed buff for you to do that :)

W Gravity Field Well you have to admit we almost to never buy the Augment Gravity but now we get a 100 free range from Lv1. Also the new Augment will help a lot to keep those gap dash loving gap closing champs (I'm looking at you ) further away from you because 1.5 sec stun is not always enough to keep you safe but now they move slightly further away from you. Not just for safety but When they are all in the middle you will better positioning for Ult and friendly AOE damage.

E Death Ray Now the way I see it is: .... Old: 1 laser that if you hit you will deal 30% extra damage. New: 1 laser that has after effect explosion that deals 40% damage or **100% **if it hits enemies who hasn't got hit by the laser. .... What more do I have to say? Viktor is now a Late Game beast with a huge AOE damage. YES I know this nerfs him a lot early since we rely a lot on the DoT which was easier to use than an after effect explosions. It will also ruin my Support Viktor :( that DoT gives me so much gold from . But at the end, their entire team will go BOOM. I can see that happening :D

R Chaos Storm It got buffed a lot with a little nerf. Now it has a shorter cast time (THANK YOU), a better initial impact radius and can move **20% **faster late game :D oh and shorter CD :D But the DoT damage was lowered. If we have 700AP, the damage would be: .... Old DoT damage: 248 Magic Damage per second. New DoT damage: 230 Magic Damage per second. ... So honestly the little damage nerf will not effect the buffs it got.

At the end of the day, the way I see it. got a nerf on his early game but a massive buff to his late game. Don't forget that awesome looking splash art :D

Thank you so much Solcrushed. If you are here I'd give you a kiss ^.^ I hope you all enjoy this as much as I did.

I don´t want to judge before i haven´t tried it, but from what i´ve read this rework seems like a huge nerf to Viktor, especially in the current meta where you have to be able to hold your own in the early-midgame and you rarely get your 6 Item FullAP Dreambuild.

Here is why: Let´s start with his Passive. Ofc the ~180 bonus AP look like a lot, but you have to consider, you have to invest 3k Gold, an Itemslot and 18 Championlevel into it. Without reaching max level you won´t be even close to this bonus, you will be even further away from this huge AP Number if you don´t upgrade your Hexcore all 3 Times. And i personally doubt that anyone will pick up the 3rd Augement before has build up his Utility Item or has reached level 18. Which takes quite some time. If i have to invest 1.000 Gold, i want my stats that i pay for now, not in 10 or 25 Minutes (or even longer if you fall behind and have trouble getting XP). I mean, if i have to pay for my passive, then it should be attractive to do so. It is a part of the Champion. Why would i play him if his passive is so garbage that i won´t even fully use it until i can´t get anything else?

Let´s go over to his Q. This just seems to break his neck earlygame. Why? Because you actually have to combine your Autoattack with you Q which makes you draw minion aggro if you want to get any dmg out of it. Ofc i know that you trade in lane by Qing an enemy and then follow up with 2-3 AAs, but the thing is, you don´t have to. His new Q forces you to do so, and that limits his playstyle in lane, because you either Q+AA or you don´t Q at all, because why would you waste the mana on a spell that does no damage at all. I honestly thought Riot was against mechanics that force you to a certain pattern of Gameplay. Not much i can say about the augmentation, because it stayed the same but i´ve really hoped for an more awesome passive, something that provides durability to work with his short range, all in playstyle.

So, about his W. Yes 700 Range is nice, yes you had to change the Augment to make this possible, but wouldn´t it just have been better to leave this at all as it was? I mean, there was no necessity of making it more visible with his 812.5 augmented range, so why not just keep the low unaugmented range, and the high augmented range so it is some kind of attractive to actually get the augment. All i can imagine i could use the displacement from the augment for, would be to trigger Yasuo Ult (if that works, we will see on the PBE). On the other hand. You actually planned on buffing Viktor to get him into a better spot so somewhere you had to cut a little of the strenght. 812.5 range would have probably been a little to much. But the way it is announced now i just can´t see any purpose of augmenting his gravity field unless i have no other options. The field is small enough to land any AoE you want on multiple targets anyways. In the worst case dragging them to the Center could kill you because it could drag an enemy closer to you when you lay down a defensive gravity field. It also could make you or an ally miss a skillshot, because hitting stationary targets (only stunned) is easier than hitting moveing targets, also some allies may not notice you having the augment already which may lead to missing follow up CC. But that may just be the worst case scenarios. Could happen the other way around too.

Viktors E, the Death Ray. His signiture spell, the ability we all think about when people talk about Viktor, the ability some of us love and some of us hate him for. This ability was the reason i personally kept playing Viktor even though everyone was complaining about him. And after over 600 Viktor games i still love this ability. It is definitly not the easiest skillshot to land but it was worth the effort to learn how to aim properly. With his new augment i feel like i lose a lot of control of this spell, because i can lead the Ray, but i can´t be sure that the followup explosion will hit. My enemies now always have the posibility to avoid a crucial part of my damage.

Post (1/2)

DOT damage interval now 0.5 seconds (from 0.25)

This is actually super disappointing to me. One of the coolest, most unique things about Viktor's ult was that the damage numbers were just flying all over the place because of the .25 sec interval. It gave this Borderlands-esque feel, like the storm was violently tearing through anything and everything in its path. If it's changed to .5 sec intervals, it totally loses that.

I'm not a Viktor player, but I'll be sure to embrace progress when he's out on the PBE!

The ult-augment feels a bit...uninspired.

What about adding a mechanic like stattik-shiv: The ult emits a shockwave/chainlightning/nova-pulse every xy-pixels traveled, dealing some extra AoE+interrupting channels again. It also would put a tad more emphazise on controlling the ult instead of just casting it, even if your targets don´t run out of it.

So I had posted over on the original PBE post but here's my feelings so far.

#1: Reliability is moved WAY up with the changes

His ult feels infinitely better with its blast radius, cast time reduction, cooldown decrease as well as changes to how it can be re positioned. GREAT job there. W feels much better (in animation smoothness, cast range and the pull). Q is absolutely amazing but... could cause problems in current state.

The sheer reliability makes him a touch... problematic currently. A Viktor who falls behind isn't really shut down because his skills have so many things that are added together to give him strength. If you cannot go burst build, you just adapt and wreck the mid/late game with a lockdown tank build. Being able to adapt to situation is a huge part of what Viktor was missing but with his best case combos being so damn potent it feels a bit risky currently.

#2: His Q is bugged?

The bonus damage from Q is currently effecting inhib and nexus. Last night I did a 2,400 damage auto attack vs the enemy inhib as a result. Tested it today to be sure it wasn't some weird issue with lich being multiplied and that's not the case. Is this intentional because with any significant AP he currently is a backdoor god.

#3: His E 'feels' bad.

I've had to break out the math for a bunch of people to explain how much stronger Viktor is as a result of all the changes but there's no denying that the current version of E feels very lackluster. It's always needed a good amount of AP/pen to really smash targets (which is good) but the 'firecracker' explosions feel bad and all they really do is make sure his waveclear is still god like and make his best case duels incredibly terrifying (because they will be close meaning laser hits, you slow/stun and then secondary detonation strikes WHILE using your Q/AA+Ult)

It looks and feels bad yet actually contradicts what the laser is generally used for and cuts a good portion of the identity of his kit in half.

My suggestion is that upgraded E travels out but then the laser travels back along the same line. It's actual 'effectiveness' remains identical to how it works now BUT it rewards high range snipes with laser by hitting the target twice within a shorter window. Keep in mind that in the majority of cases this laser is being used from out of range of his other skills. In this example if you want the 'full burst' in a short range duel then you have to start the laser away from you and moving towards. This gives the opponent a longer reaction period where they can dodge BOTH blasts of damage if used incorrectly.

#4: His Q... might be a bit much

Ok so I'm not a big toplane and the matchmaking on PBE is famously bad (2v3 games where 5 people are afk from level 1 is fun... right??) but I was able to literally 1v3 an enemy team as tanky viktor top while barely dropping in health... Simply cycling his Q and AA marks is pretty disgusting right now and I could see how players would find it VERY overwhelming to play against. Its' even worse when a full burst build is used because it's not uncommon for the AA potion to take half the health of a squishy (Q minion for boost, auto for 50-70 pct targets hp... that's terrifying)

Overall GREAT work on the re-work... I just don't want to see him get through PBE with too many issues and be chain nerfed as a result when some minor tweaks could solve it before it becomes a problem <3

Tell me that Viktor image comes in higher resolutions.

I NEED this for a wallpaper.

Viktor was the second champ I picked up when I started playing in early 2012. I've played him on and off since then, but he always remains one of my favorites.

I've been looking forward to a rework of his passive for a long time now, and I'm happy it's finally come.

So lets run down the list, shall we?

1. I think his skills do flow together a bit better than before, with the ranges all being the same (Except for Death Ray, but that isn't really limited by the 540 range either.) This allows for his Q, W, and R to all be used at around the same time, making it easy to hit an enemy with his Q, toss down the W to hold them for your R.

His auto-attack animation is faster and feels more responsive, although the lack of him 'pulling back' the staff in the auto-attack animation lead to me messing up for a little while, not sure if the lack of 'pull back' is intentional or not.

The basic attack right after his Q seems to be much faster than his regular AA, making it very easy to get the extra damage proc.

2. I'm originally was torn between Turbocharge and Aftershock for first augment, but after a few games, I'm gonna say you'll want to start Turbocharge in most cases. Turbocharge can help immensely in lane with the ability to quickly escape any retaliation after landing your Q-AA combo. It can be used to easily escape from ganks by throwing down W between you and the jungler, hitting anything with your Q and making a quick get away. If you come to another lane to offer assistance with a gank, hitting even just a minion with your Q lets you bring yourself in closer for a better position for the rest of your skills.

(As a side note, I'm glad that the empowered attack's damage and q's damage are separate, as it lets you grab early points in E for poke while still giving you some nice trade potential.)

Aftershock and Implosion are honestly a bit of a toss up and really depend more on what you need at the time.

Aftershock is better to get next if your still in lane at the time I feel. It can help clear waves a bit faster and perhaps get a bit of extra damage onto the enemy. It'll be helpful in teamfights as well, potentially letting you hit other champs with the full damage of the initial laser.

Implosion is best if you and your team are starting to have teamfights. Managing to grab even a couple of enemy champs in your W pulls them right into the middle of your Gravity Field and on top of each other, perfect position for your AoE champs to nuke them down. Gravity Field was always strong in the jungle due to all the choke points and this is no exception.

3. Chaos Storm feels much more responsive and quicker, even without having the Augment. Having it go full speed when heading towards Viktor is a great improvement, and it seems to drop off in speed much slower than before. With Velocity, it is much faster, letting you chase down people super easily along with Turbocharge.

I did notice two things though, one was a problem noted by a few others posters, where occasionally the Storm would erratically begin to "twitch" away in another direction, without me being able to steer it. The other one that I noticed was that when directing the storm to move (not to target a specific champion) instead of showing the unique blue gear movement icon, it shows the regular green arrows. The blue gear still shows up under champions that the storm is following though.

(Too long for one post, rest will be in the reply to this post!)

Did i miss out that Viktor was #1 LCS pick or why are they nerfing him to hell?

This rework takes just everything what was good about Viktor. Poke -> Augment nerfed. 100 to 0 potential -> Nerfed. Your follow up AA and your E explosion are unreliable, they can be avoided/delayed. CC -> Gravitiy Field does not Slow anymore after you stunned someone, which costs us up to 1 sec of slow, Ult does not Silence anymore, what can cost us an entire 1.5 sec stun because we can´t delay their escape anymore. Adaptive Playstyle -> Nerfed. You now have to max E first, which wasn´t the case in some Matchups before. But now your Q does not really gain anything from its spellranks. Additionally you now get forced to follow up with baisc attacks after you Q to trade in Lane.

What did we get out of this Rework? Q: 100 Range for the initial Q. Still need to close up to the same range as before rework to get the actual damage off. 110 Basedamage and 0.05% AP scaling if we get off both, the Q and the AA on the target.

W: 75 Range. (or lose 112.5 Range if anyone had bought the old augment.)

E: 10% Augment Damage, which results in 25 Basedamage + 0.07% AP scaling.

R: We lose 10 Basedamage and 52% AP scaling. (Damn that´s actually a lot) We get a more reliable Ult due to the increase of movespeed when moving towards us and when fully augmented.

And last but not least, we gain 85 AP from his passive and the additional Ability evolutions for the cost of an additional 2.000 Gold. But to be honest. The only really good addition to this is that we are now able to combine the Q movespeed with the E bonus damage, which got hit hard with the nerfhammer. The Ult augmentation is nice too but feels more like a quality of life change.

I would really appreciate if Solcrushed would respond anywhere in the Thread and tell us his thoughts behind the rework. I´d love to know what his goal with this rewok was. Because it really feels like all he wanted was to give him the 3 upgradeable Augments that everyone was crying for since Viktors release, no matter the cost.

I kinda like the overall rework, but there are quite some things bothering me:

-His item pool will still be very limited compared to the number of stats he needs:

• Since he's extremly manahungy, the 500mana on his won't help, so u need a nother mana item.
• u need cdr on him, so the go to manaitem would probably even though would work well with his
• Spelvamp would be awsome on him, just like it is on most shortranged casters as they really could use some form of sustain
• He would want def stats as he's shortanged(meaning he needs some tankiness) and got a shield(so he profits more from armor/mr than from hp)
• His kit synergyses well with , and his ult would profit from
• His new Q screams for
• just like any other mage that wants to do some damage later on, he wants and

this would already be problematic with 6 item slots, but having the hexcore, how much ap it ever brings, makes it even more limited so u will always feel like u miss out an important item.

take away a huge amount off ap from (183 at lvl 18, wtf) and give it some utillity, preferable sufficient manasustain+cdr(5%cdr base+5per upgrade, would be the usuall 20% cdr at full upgrade) or some more survivabillity

(Needing to much diffrent items is generally a problem off shortranged aps, as they all have low cds and get into AA range so lichbane would work well, all got problems of either kiting them selfs or getting kited, so rylais would be nice, all need some defense as they need to get into dangerrange and unlike ADCs, they have no huge sustain from lifesteal, ALL MAGES THAT WANT TO DEAL RELEVANT DAMAGE IN THE LATE NEED VOIDSTAFF AND RABADONS!, and all mages want cdr and manasustain...)

-Having diffrent misslespeed on E and augmented E seems bad to me, as u would have to change ur aiming behavour after augmenting it, and playing against him would also become more complicated.

the misslespped should stay consistant if augumented or not

-'interupts channels' is a unneeded to specific nich from of cc. I also don't really understand why the damage interavall is increased from 0.25 to 0.5sek.

keep the silence and rather add more to it, for example always silences on first damage(like wukings ult-knockup)

Been playing viktor since he came out, there was even a point where I only played viktor. Have tried the new viktor about 10 times already; Feedback:

• Viktor's E is probably the most problematic, I understand that it was to balance out the buffs that he received. His laser doesn't do enough damage the upgraded laser's 2nd hit is pretty terrible and unsatisfying. Another problem is his itemization, you are forcing us to to choose between losing out on items in exchange for augment. Most of the time I have no clue what to build but this maybe just due to lack of play. Everything else seem to be a lot better, viktor's Q and W range increase was needed and it feels a lot better to use now. His R is too buggy to give feedback to.

To others on pbe already how do I get onto it?

Also, feel like we need clarification on the 40% damage with the laser augment. Is that still a dot?

I liked the silence on chaos storm. Would have preferred to see it extended not removed.

Crossing fingers these aren't nerfs.

I'm liking a lot of these changes but i'm still not sold on the W augment. Having people dragged to the middle sounds more flavorful rather than anything truly useful (they're already stunned, why does dragging them to the middle matter?).

New splash is cool though I didn't think Viktor needed a new splash lol. Good to see all the old splash arts being aggressively replaced now. :)

Also if Q's on-hit damage isn't a special AA laser to the the face with Viktor's 3rd arm then that is an opportunity well and truly missed!