Are we going to see Viktor Resurface anytime soon?

Lil Rio·6/14/2017, 5:39:07 PM·1 votes·282 views

Hello!

I'm a Viktor main, and I simply must say, I certainly feel the impact of last season's balance changes made to his kit now that Rylais has been nerfed. To compound his issues, Viktor has no reliable mid-game purchase, and his first back is unusual. I have resorted to buying Blasting Wand on many a first back these days, and even that feels sub-par.

Don't get me wrong, I think Viktor is still a decent champion, and in the right hands, he can do well, but I find that winning consistently with Viktor is often much harder now, and there are simply some games I cannot win as Viktor - the reason this is significant is that, in many of these cases, I feel like I had less of an impact overall than I would have had if my kit and early buys were more innately reliable. I have 2 meager proposals, and I was wondering what the community (and possibly Rioters) thought on this subject:

**1.) **Provide **ONE quality-of-life buff to Viktor (2 at the most), either to his Death Ray/Aftershock, or to his Chaos Storm. **I find that those are the two skills that lost the most reliability over the course of Season 6 (because they were balanced around Rylais). Now that Rylais is gone, those skills should be tweaked (possibly receive a minor rework?) so that they can be not oppressive, but can be more reliable than they currently are.

**2.) **Simply change the price of Viktor's Hex Core upgrades to be 1,000 Gold across the board for each upgrade. This makes a ton of sense to me, because it solves much of Viktor's mid-game woes with one simple 250 gold tweak (Hex Core MK-1 isn't even very strong, anyways - even if you take Aftershock). Having the least expensive upgrade last makes little sense, as it becomes a formality to purchase at that point in the game when income is higher, and having the most expensive upgrade first is at the core of what makes Viktor less usable right now. This compounds Viktor's mid-game issues - not only is his mid-game itemization bothersome, but it is also impossible to reasonably achieve before the game gets to snowballing one way or the other - unless you get massively ahead.

Proposals 1 and 2 are related, because Viktor's biggest issues are reliability and early-to-mid-game itemization. Of course, these two issues are also related. If you compare him to, say, Syndra, Anivia, or any mid-laner with high win rate and performance rating, you see that he simply doesn't have the outright reliability that those champions have to do their jobs with their kits alone. What's more, you see that those champions also tend to have either a kit that reliably gets them to their item spikes (Anivia), or their early-to-mid-game buys are very potent.

Most commonly, the current meta champions are champions who have no problem snowballing a game, whether due to their kit or due to favorable itemization. This isn't simply a "meta" influence, this is the nature of what makes a mid-laner consistent. Viktor not only lacks the ability to outright snowball a game (without a VERY significant lead), his kit is not consistent enough to consistently hard carry later when behind (unlike, for instance, Kassadin, Fiora, or Twitch). He neither fits the "hypercarry" role NOR the "carry" role, not well enough, anyways. This is why he wins less games overall than before - because creating conditions as Viktor that are right for winning games is simply so much harder.

What are everyone's thoughts on this? I genuinely want to hear about this - I also want to think about other mid-laners for whom many of these complaints are also true.

4 Comments

WitchQueen Annie6/14/2017, 5:55:15 PM2 votes

Yes, I would like to see Viktor buffs.

Give me a reason to pick him (other than for fun) over a Vladimir sometimes pls.

HalcyonDweller6/14/2017, 6:22:32 PM1 votes

I've heard he's doing well in the carry role in bottom lane at higher elos. I dunno how much merit that has as I haven't checked myself, but it's possible.