Viktor - The Glorious or Inglorious Evolution

Warning wall of text incoming.

I love to play Viktor, I love his theme and playstyle something about his character just clicks for me. I was frustrated when his waveclear was randomly nerfed several patches ago so that he could just barely not one shot the back line minions. Now its patch 6.9 and he has other random changes. I want to start this by saying I don't think all the changes are bad. Heck maybe I'm just have no clue what I'm talking about and none of them are bad. But I just wanted to talk about the changes and what I think of them even if it doesn't mean much.

So to start out on a good note, I like the changes to his Q. From what I can tell so far it seems to hit harder through out the game and the shield actually seems more useful as well. The slight down side to this change is that since his Q is now his main source of reliable damage Lichbane feels necessary. It might not be but I'll need to play some more games to see.

Now, onto the more controversial changes, his E and Ult. Straight up, I don't like the changes to the ultimate. The delay is weird and even when I started to play around the knowledge of the delay and attempted to use it. I couldn't see when it was gonna tick, because the indicated telling you is a faint closing curl e in the shock radius. There is just too much going on to see it, especially when you want the dang slow thing to stay I top of your opponent. Which if it is, they then can't play around the tick because they can't see when it's gonna happen either. If it has to stay the way it is it would be nice if the ticks were more clearly communicated.

The E has me confused. The reason that Viktor was nerfed in the first place was because his waveclear was too high and made lane interactions too low after a point. His new E does it faster, while being less useful for poking or using on the opponent. So Riot gave Viktor the exact same problem he had before but worse since he can't even reliably attempt to trade.

My final change to Viktor is more of an item one. He has 4 core items at the moment that he seems to need. The first is his hexcore, second is boots either cooldown or magic pen, third is rylais for the reliable slows to help the second part of his laser hit and to kite better, and the fourth is Lichbane since his Q has been made to be more important. I also believe that is an argument to be made that Morelonomicon is nearly core since it gives Viktor mana, cooldown reduction, Ap and a good passive. That leaves Viktor players with one item that could be some what optional. I could be wrong here and not really know the items well enough but it's what it feels like so far.

It would be bad of me to criticize this evolutions without me staring ways I think they could help Viktor towards a healthier playstyle. I do not speak for all Viktor players when I say this but the times that I have had the most fun with Viktor have actually been when playing a somewhat more sustained damage style. Kiting in and out of the fight with Q speed boots to zap my enemies the second half and a laser to the face before kiting just out of range with Rylais and gravity well while waiting for cooldowns. I also do enjoy oneshotting minion waves but hey, Riot won't let his keep that so,

Q- The only potential change I might suggest would be to allow the move speed on his upgrade to scale with AP to help with kiting.

W- Change the upgraded W to give a grounded ability like Cass's new ability.

E- Lower the damage, cost, cooldown and upgraded E's delay time.

R- The ability is called Chaos Storm so make it feel more like a storm, take away the initial damage dump that so many ultimate have and make it a zone of death that starts on Viktor and moves where he commands doing DOT damage that will make people think twice about staying it in, but it would still slow as it gets further from Vik.

These are just one Random Viktor player's thoughts on things. I like some of the changes and just wanted to get some thoughts out about things so far this Patch.