Why does nobody use Power Augment on Viktor

GG Poopbollsack·Aug 23, 2014·2 votes·1,071 views

Bought Viktor and his Creator skin recently. Just went 12/2/19 until we pooped all over that nexus, built yellow power augment, sorc boots w/ Furor, and Rylai's Crystal Scepter. Seriously, whenever I Q'd someone during lane phase, I could poke them about twice with autos and then land an E before they could get out of range. If I didn't go OOM so often and wouldn't rather keep it for stopping gankers, I'd land my W in there for some more autos too.

Not to mention the chase and escape potential, DAAAANG. For example, since so many people play Yasuo, and his Q's range is bigger than Yasuo's poke, you can just slam it on him and vroom the heck out of there, and it helps shred any chance of you getting hard CC'd by the enemy team when you're last-man-standing. Same concept can work for just about any midlaner I can think of, except for snipers like Ziggs, who you're probably just going to want to get the Death Ray augment so you can spit on each other more.

His Death Ray augment only gives 30% more damage (Mathematically, if it does 200something damage w/o counting AP at max level, then it only gives 60 extra damage, subtracted from enemy armor is almost miniscule. Yes, I know it can be a lot more with AP, but this is considering without).

The Gravity augment is also kind of poopy, in my opinion. I can block the entire jungle path with one gravity field, I don't know why people say you need it to be bigger to stop followers. The 10% CDR is also bad, I'd probably end up picking up some CDR while getting a mana-regen or mana cap item like a Morello.

It just seems that Power has more utility, especially considering Q's damage falls off hard late-game because it doesn't do nearly as much damage as E. Bridges his almost nonexistant escape potential if W is on cooldown.

Break the meta, FOR THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION

There are several reasons that Augment Power is not picked. I will attempt to give you as much perspective as my stupid number of games on him can provide (260+ ranked games alone this season).

Lack of Kit Synergy Viktor was the last champion designed in 2011; this was before the the current mobility creep became so prevalent. Viktor was designed with the old-school of thought of mages being fairly immobile, but when they did get to the right position, they would have the ability to punish the enemy team. (Nothing wrong with this; players just have to always keep positioning in mind because they can't change it on a whim.) Because of this, Viktor was designed with heavy CC in the form of his gravity field and the silence on his ultimate and not with a mobility ability. As a general rule of thumb, synergy with a champion's strengths creates a lot more power than patching up his weaknesses. Viktor has one of the longest ranged pokes in the game with his Death Ray, and adding power to his shortest-ranged ability becomes counter-productive in a sense.

Stat Inefficiency 220 health and 6 health regeneration per 5 seconds really is very "meh". In fact, based of base item stats (ruby crystal, beads of regeneration) the stats on this Augment are worth 796.8 gold without the passive compared to the 978.75 gold of Augment Death and 1022 of Augment Gravity. (of that does not included the scaling AP).

Lack of a Power Spike Power spikes are very important as they provide another tool in the player's arsenal to gain an advantage with. Augment Power's stats don't suddenly make you feel much stronger to yourself or to the enemy, even with the passive; you are just a touch tankier and can move restively quickly from time to time. This is vastly over shadowed by Augment Death. Assuming that you purchased your Augment at level 7 and were maxing Death Ray, Death Ray has 250 base damage on it, and you have 66 AP. This translates to 385.06 damage. By purchasing Augment Death, Viktor gained 120.36 damage which is huge at level seven. Since the burn damage in calculated after AP, this Augment also technically increases Viktor's scaling form 70% to 91% which makes all other AP stronger.

Prevalence of Slows Nowadays every champion and his grandmother has a slow, and slows are direct counters to movespeed boosts. Because slows are applied after movespeed boosts, a 30% slow will leave you slower even if you have a 30% movespeed increase.

Other Bonuses Given by Augment Death The burn damage is calculated after AP, so this Augment also technically increases Viktor's scaling form 70% to 91% which makes all other AP stronger. Also since Liandry's burn is refreshed by every tick of Augment Death burn, a 7 second Liandry's burn is achieved instead of a 3 second one.

Now there is a time that Augment Power is useful. Some people like to do a bruiser-style build on Viktor that is normally taken top. For this, the extra health synergies well with the other health items that are being built. Also due to the fact that top-lane is home to a very large number of melee champions, the fact that even though power is shifted to Viktor's shortest ranged ability doesn't matter because he still out-ranges the enemy. The one thing about this play style is that 40% CDR is an absolute must. This will reduce power-transfer's CD to be equivalent to the duration of Augment Power's active for a constant, in-combat speed boost.

Any questions or points that I missed? Feel free to ask.

Why does nobody use Power Augment on Viktor

8 Comments

There are several reasons that Augment Power is not picked. I will attempt to give you as much perspective as my stupid number of games on him can provide (260+ ranked games alone this season).

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