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[Not a Riot-bashing post] Why was Veigar changed at this point in this way?

Volt Cruelerz··201 votes·41,962 views

UPDATE: Meddler has responded in comments below.

I'm glad you're looking into our endearing master of evil. I adore the Q change. Q farming is better than it's ever been. The R change (as I've pointed out on the PBE forums) I believe was due to mistaking what appears to be a bug for Veigar's innate power. The W change is... well... kinda pointless, really, based on how Veigar is played in practice, but okay, whatever; we'll take it. It's just the E that has everyone up in arms.

As you pointed out originally (and I think many people glossed over/forgot on account of rage-induced amnesia), Veigar was in a state that if he ever became popular, he'd have to have the tar nerfed out of him until a rework came on account of his E which is up there with even the most powerful ultimates. I agree his classic E is bad (see footnote 1) for the game. What I do not understand is what caused this. Veigar didn't suddenly become popular. To my knowledge at least, Veigar didn't become a popular pick in the pro scene (though admittedly, I only watch casually, so perhaps I'm wrong). Given his lack of popularity, Veigar ought to have been low on the priority list to fix since while his E definitely had problems, he wasn't picked frequently enough to actually cause much of a larger nuisance.

What piece of straw broke the camel's back? Did you do some analysis of Veigar mains and find that 90% of their games basically had them toxically stunning/instagibbing people or something? Did the other things in your work queue lose priority or something? Was this just a freak thing that got through since it was chalked up to "easy solution?" Was this really all just a byproduct of removing DFG and fearing that the Q change would make him popular?

So far, your posts on the subjects have made it sound like the last of the above. This has made me curious. You see, a lot of players (as I'm sure you've noticed), including myself, have been upset by the change that we believe invalidates what Veigar is. Veigar is a burst mage that previously could 1v1 a squishy. Now, that's not really much of an option. Between the removal of DFG (see footnote 2) and the grave difficulty of hitting his new stun (see footnote 3), I see the changes having a very net negative impact on him. I play a lot of Veigar. I used to main him actually and while I don't play him that much anymore, I do still play him a lot. I just don't understand why you'd allow a champion with so many strategic counters (see footnote 4) to be given such a major tactical one as well.

Veigar getting more AP via Q is great. Everyone loves that. Yes, there's a valid argument that it's now worse against mobile champions, but overall I'd call it a buff and a major QoL improvement (though I will admit it makes keeping up in poke difficult). But just because he has more AP doesn't mean he'll actually be more useful. A large chunk of his damage, particularly during laning, is focused in his W. If he can't hit that, he can't get a kill. It's just not going to happen. In practice, E and W were basically one ability (W being effectively worthless in 1v1 situations unless you'd previously stunned them so it would hit).

Without the assurance that E will hit now (refer again to footnote 3), W has basically been rendered useless in lane, barring a gank. Veigar, a classic 1v1 mage, can no longer effectively 1v1 provided he is facing a competent opponent. I just can't understand why adding a delay to his E was what was considered the best option. You've indicated that you're confident that this is the right route to take, even if 0.75 is too much of a delay. Why? I don't think I've seen that explained and I'm genuinely wondering what your reasoning is. I'm sure you have something. Is this just a temporary band-aid until W and E get proper reworks some time down the line? Is this here to stay? Something else?

From my perspective, it looks like this is meant to be a permanent fix to remove the toxicity that was his old E. If that's the case though, why did the change implemented have to run the risk of invalidating W? Why wasn't W changed to make it usable without E or something? There have been tons of ideas thrown around the forums ever since the Veigar changes were announced and IMO, many of them solve the issue better than a simple delay. I just don't understand why so much tactical counterplay was added to him without at least removing some of the strategic counterplay against him. At this point, it just feels like he lost nearly all 1v1 kill potential against competent opponents and his ability to initiate teamfights, yet gained basically nothing except raw AP that he can't actually put to use. Again, that's my main concern at this point (please see footnote 3): Veigar seems to have been rendered an AP collector that can't actually do anything productive on account of being too easily countered.

So to summarize: Why was Veigar changed at this point in time and why was he changed in this way?

Footnote 1 - Event Horizon's Toxicity: His E allows for unquestionable, unanswerable damage once a player has mastered Event Horizon. I agree there is no tactical counterplay to be found here. That said, the argument has been made that Veigar has strategic counterplay in spades and as such does not need the tactical counterplay. Thus, it has been argued, while it may itself be toxic, on the whole, it does not make Veigar toxic. I am not, however, advocating that E shouldn't have been changed at all.

Footnote 2 - DFG's Removal: It has been said that Veigar's changes would compensate for the removal of DFG. One of the biggest things about Veigar losing DFG is that he lost something that could have potentially been used to compensate for using his Q to break a Banshee's Veil (see footnote 4). Not only did he lose damage, the removal of the item also significantly strengthened a strategic counter against him. While the damage can be compensated by Q farming, the newfound counter is not, to my knowledge, accounted for or compensated for anywhere. Also, I do not see Item 3285 (it's a Statikk Shiv for mages that gives 120 AP and 7% MS that's on PBE, if you're a community member that hasn't heard of it yet) as doing much to compensate Veigar.

Footnote 3 - Laning Against Competent Opponents: As soon as the changes hit PBE, I and a friend that mains Vel'koz who also plays a lot of Veigar hit the test servers to see how it would turn out. It's worth noting that we've done this matchup before. I typically stomp him, at least after I get enough AP. This time was very different. Despite my play being worlds better than his, he was able to defeat me at every turn with ease. He never even built boots. That's how little he cared about my E. He'd walk out or even if he did magically get trapped in it, he'd just walk away from my W as it was falling. At the end of the game, I had 5k gold more than he did and 1487 AP, yet I could not 1v1 him to save my life (and I play a lot of Vel'koz, so I know how to dodge his abilities and did the vast majority of the time). E was changed from useful in 1v1 situations to useless which in turn renders W useless. Once he got a Banshee's Veil (see footnote 4), nothing I did mattered to him. To reiterate: with the delay, half of my spells became useless, even without him building movement speed. Once he built a classic strategic counter to Veigar, I was useless. It's one thing if he can sometimes dodge it and sometimes not. But he was dodging the stun upwards of 95% of the time. That's... not good. If this were one mere datapoint, that would be one thing. But I've played games since then. I overwhelmingly defeat my opponent in terms of CS, but absolutely cannot kill them on my own anymore unless they are remarkably incompetent until after laning phase is over. Until Veigar gets so fed that he can QR to instagib someone, he's little more than a CS-absorber.

Footnote 4 - Tactical and Strategic Counters: It's unquestionable that classic E has no tactical counters. The thing is though, Veigar has always been held in check by strategic ones. First and foremost, you can easily counterpick him due to the mechanics of his ultimate. He can also easily be killed early game as he has not yet spun up. Unfortunately for the little demented Yordle, there are more than just those two. Being the archetypal burst mage, he is and has been hard countered by two items: Banshee's Veil, and QSS. Veigar must rely on getting off his full burst in order to kill someone (now more than before since R's ratio has been nerfed and Q has become a skillshot which has made W's damage a higher percent of his total burst). BV has always naturally prevented this by blocking at least one of his spells. QSS on the other hand allows the player to escape E which in practice means escaping W. Tenacity is similar, but by no means as effective as QSS. Zhonya's, when combined with either QSS or Tenacity, allows enemies to completely ignore all of his damage. No other mage is hit nearly as hard as Veigar is in this department. Even Karthus is less impacted because at least he has other spells aside from his very blockable ult. Let me be clear: a competent opponent will buy BV against Veigar, thereby forcing him to burn his ult if he wishes to do any damage whatsoever. I cannot understand why Veigar was given additional tactical counters without assisting him with his existing problems with strategic counters (on top of the DFG removal exacerbating a classic strategic weakness). I feel very strongly at this point that countering Veigar is simply too easy and will result in Veigar's win rate and pick rate both dropping precipitously.

Regarding responses from community members: I genuinely would like a response from the devs on this. Please try to keep your posts in this thread respectful.

269 Comments

RiotMeddler83 votes

We've wanted to do some work on Veigar for a long time. He's a cool character, with both a strong personality and clear high moments in his gameplay. He's suffered historically however from a significant lack of counterplay, particularly on his E. That meant that we felt we'd be uncomfortable if he was to become a common pick and deliberately didn't buff him at times because the experience of playing against him could be really poor.

When we decided that we ought to remove DFG from the game we felt it would be the right time to also work on those champions that most commonly used it. We weren't certain exactly how much of an impact its removal would have, but wanted to be free to work on champions affected if appropriate. That meant looking at some existing problems and prioritizing some work, such as Veigar, that had previously been on our backlog. Veigar's instant stun was the biggest barrier to him being healthy (or at least, much healthier) and we felt adding a delay would do a lot to shift the spell to something it's appropriate to have be strong and seen regularly in LoL.

As it turned out DFG's removal didn't have a very significant impact on Veigar's performance on average. It was a really useful item on him, but so are the alternatives that Veigars are putting that gold into instead now. We felt we had a direction that would lead to a much better Veigar however and as a result continued to refine a set of changes to him as far as we could with internal testing. We included his changes in patch 5.4 as a result and are now waiting to see how he performs. We're confident this direction will help make him a better champion overall, it's certainly possible the current numbers may leave him unbalanced however, and there's been a lot of understandable concern expressed that he'll now be too weak, particularly against mobile enemies. Next step for us is to see how he performs now, dig into which circumstances he does well in and which poorly, figure out whether those are appropriate, and then adjust him in subsequent patches as appropriate.

Big Sexy Himself53 votes

I'm super frustrated with how the new Veigar feels. We all are. I'm glad for your response, but honestly I think you guys botched him this time - I can't really say anything more than the OP has on his state, but I hope you guys can repair what's been done.

Keevalroy60 votes

He's suffered historically however from a significant lack of counterplay...

That meant that we felt we'd be uncomfortable if he was to become a common pick and deliberately didn't buff him at times because the experience of playing against him could be really poor.

I'm pretty sure there are better examples than Veigar who fit this description. Kalista LeeSin Zed

patmax1712 votes

these already are common picks, and aren't kept down on purpose ^^

19 19 196 votes

{quoted}

We've wanted to do some work on Veigar for a long time. He's a cool character, with both a strong personality and clear high moments in his gameplay. He's suffered historically however from a significant lack of counterplay, particularly on his E. That meant that we felt we'd be uncomfortable if he was to become a common pick and deliberately didn't buff him at times because the experience of playing against him could be really poor.

When we decided that we ought to remove DFG from the game we felt it would be the right time to also work on those champions that most commonly used it. We weren't certain exactly how much of an impact its removal would have, but wanted to be free to work on champions affected if appropriate. That meant looking at some existing problems and prioritizing some work, such as Veigar, that had previously been on our backlog. Veigar's instant stun was the biggest barrier to him being healthy (or at least, much healthier) and we felt adding a delay would do a lot to shift the spell to something it's appropriate to have be strong and seen regularly in LoL.

As it turned out DFG's removal didn't have a very significant impact on Veigar's performance on average. It was a really useful item on him, but so are the alternatives that Veigars are putting that gold into instead now. We felt we had a direction that would lead to a much better Veigar however and as a result continued to refine a set of changes to him as far as we could with internal testing. We included his changes in patch 5.4 as a result and are now waiting to see how he performs. We're confident this direction will help make him a better champion overall, it's certainly possible the current numbers may leave him unbalanced however, and there's been a lot of understandable concern expressed that he'll now be too weak, particularly against mobile enemies. Next step for us is to see how he performs now, dig into which circumstances he does well in and which poorly, figure out whether those are appropriate, and then adjust him in subsequent patches as appropriate.

What is Kalista doing in top lane?

Oh right, her passive and slow.

As if Fighters/Tanks had enough stuff to put up with :/

Junkο2 votes

Or you know buy a Warden's Mail to completely shut her passive down in lane. Kalista only becomes toxic against melees in mid and late game, so it's way better to just play her as an ADC.

InsaneSamurai7 votes

Wardens mail does not shut down her passive? At best she just has to kite you longer and kill you with an even bigger rend.

Volt Cruelerz22 votes

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and respond to all this this.

I would like to clarify one thing though. I take it you guys arrived at the idea of a delay on the grounds that it was the simplest possible solution and delays traditionally solve problems of this sort? Or was there a more involved process than that where this was not the first solution seriously pursued?

RiotMeddler37 votes

Thanks for a well written opening post, was a pleasure to read.

Our conclusion was that an instant stun, at that range, at that cooldown was blocking Veigar from being a healthy (and therefore able to be made powerful) champion. Adding a delay was the best way to preserve what we felt was the core of the skill (lock down an area, at a range that doesn't require Veigar to be completely in the middle of the fight).

As a general update our initial take is that Veigar's looking too weak after these changes. Options we're looking at include having E stop dashes once the walls are up (people attempting to dash out get stopped and stunned), starting the delay at the start of Veigar's cast time rather than at the end and reducing the delay on W. None of those are guaranteed changes yet of course, but that's the sort of direction we're thinking.

Solidair315 votes

I'm liking the sound of anti-dash.

It would truly make his cage FEEL like a cage, too.

Thryale6 votes

eh, I think it would have less of an impact than you'd like. the cage is still plenty large enough for ppl to simply move out of the way of all your spells, and with how long it takes to pop up, even if you cast it dead center on ppl, they can still walk out before it pops up.

Torenia4 votes

Thanks for the update, reduced delay on W would be sick and the dash thing really should've been there from day 1.

I am curious about a few things though.

You mention that Veigar did not seem that much in trouble without DFG. The purpose of the "buffs" was to also "tune" him to be healthy. If he could do fine without DFG then why not revert back? He was not in a danger of being overplayed or overpowered prior to all this. Is reverting his E back at all never going to happen for sure?

My other question is what of other champions like Annie whose instant aoe high damage stun being ok? There is no real counterplay to it similarly to what is being mentioned here about. Not that I would like to see Annie in this kind of situation, but I am still curious on it considering how much more popular Annie is both as AP and support.

ItemsGuy7 votes

While these are naturally changes meant for the short-term, in the long-term, I believe you should consider what place that stun has on Veigar's kit in the first place.

I can't remember if it was in AoS, but the earliest incarnation of The Cage I can remember is from DotA--namely, Disruptor's ability, Kinetic Field. It has the huge telegraph, giving opponents an opportunity to react, but just as importantly (perhaps even moreso), it has satisfying synergy with the rest of his kit. On its own, it's merely a pen that keeps people in, but with Disruptor's kit, it can keep entire teams bunched up while Thunder Strike shocks them down, and can guarantee a few seconds of them standing within Static Storm (which in turn prevents opponents from blinking out, and deals more damage the longer enemies stand within it). Even Glimpse, which sends an enemy back to the spot they were standing a few seconds ago, can be used to create predictable enemy movement for more accurate Field placement.

But on Veigar's kit--and why the huge telegraph has hurt Veigar more than a healthy gameplay change should hurt any champion--the stun's entire purpose was as a very oddly-shaped stun to hold a single enemy in place while you blow the rest of your nukes on them and (hopefully) delete them.

If Event Horizon is going to be both healthy AND satisfying, Veigar's kit either needs to support it 100% (as opposed to it being as convenient as just about any AoE stun), or it should be replaced with something that carries more synergy with Veigar's kit.

WolfBV5 votes

I think the delay starting at the cast time would probably be the nicest one.

Thryale1 votes

how long do you think you need to wait before you feel like the dust has settled and you can start testing more changes for veig? (I know this sounds kinda edgy, but I'm can't find a better way to phrase it. I'm not angry, honest!)

RiotMeddler15 votes

It's likely we'll have at least some follow up changes in the next patch (5.5). It will take a little while for people to adapt to the changes to his kit though and for us to assess how that goes. Design changes for patch 5.5 are tentatively scheduled to lock mid next week and that means if bigger changes are appropriate they'll be in 5.6 (or potentially later).

The Red Warden4 votes

Will the .5 second cast delay on the stun be removed since that makes it actually take 1.25 seconds to activate and why it feels so clunky? It's removal would make the .75 second delay more bearable

MrBuffington4 votes

He just commented that they're looking at potentially starting the delay when he starts the cast animation, that way they overlap and there is only a .75 1 second delay as oppose to 1.25

RiotMeddler10 votes

One other minor point - Veigar's E has a 0.25s cast time, same as all his other skills. not 0.5s.

Azurasha40 votes

{quoted}

**Next step for us is to see how he performs now, dig into which circumstances he does well in and which poorly, figure out whether those are appropriate, and then adjust him in subsequent patches as appropriate. **

Isn't this for the pbe? I don't understand the point of pbe if you are just going to ship things to live without enough data anyways.

Mathbalnase34 votes

So far as I can tell, PBE has become a place for catastrophic bug detection, and little else.

Junkο25 votes

Azir is a great example

oh wait

RiotMeddler17 votes

The PBE's really useful for bug catching and feel feedback, it's not as good as a source of balance feedback however. That's in large part because it's got a player population that's a tiny fraction of the regular servers, so it's hard to generate a good matchmaking outcome. Additionally games tend to be taken less seriously, with more experimentation (people playing things they're unfamiliar to test skins etc) and, unfortunately afking. That combination of factors, plus a couple of other things (e.g. mirror matches) make it difficult to isolate out the effects of balance changes.

Dfenestrator14 votes

While this makes sense, I'm confused why these changes shipped as-is when people gave some pretty well thought out feedback, while other changes were pulled under similar conditions (e.g. Lee's infamous rework). Have you guys changed the way you approach reworks? Or is it something else?

Thryale56 votes

veigar main here. I have nothing to add, so just take my upvote

A Superb Villain41 votes

Dark Matter is now a glorified bush checker.

Edit:

But the worst part is the bug on his R has not been fixed. Still no laughing on a successful kill, and considering how difficult it is now, this is incredibly harsh neglect.

Thryale4 votes

this was somewhat the case before the change, now it's so true it hurts.

Devack The Holy31 votes

RIP, Veigar.

Apparently his lack of mobility wasn't enough. They had to give a skill with a .5 second cast time a .75 second delay just to make sure even the most braindead players can get out of it.

And to top it off, Riot said his identity was to trap enemies in the cage and torment them... It really isn't. Can't really torment people in the cage if you can't get them in there in the first place.

His identity is the ultimate late-game mage.

It's "Let me farm like hell, then oneshot people"

It's "DFG? Even with it gone, I'm still the final boss"

It's "Oh, look an enemy Zed/LeBlanc with their mobility on CD? FREE AP!"

It's "Hi, Lee Sin! ults Bye, Lee Sin!"

It's "Oh, you're building AP? Thank you for the extra damage!"

Just had a game where I lost to a Sona mid as Veigar... The tears I shed. Couldn't land a single stun, barely landed any Ws, and by the end, I was really missing the extra scaling on my ult. And yet, the Sona was thinking she's the next Faker... News flash, honey. The old Veigar would have had you for lunch.

When they removed DFG (Never found it core on him, anyway.), I wasn't too upset, since he had more options for that 120 AP, and the extra damage. In fact, I played better WITHOUT building DFG on him, since I didn't have to worry about getting into range to use the active. I was fine with Veigar the way he was, and was even considering making him one of my key mids. (Even bought Final Boss)

Then the changes came.

GG.

The only reason it was even changed was because a few people in Korea played Veigar support (Which really isn't much, Annie/Morg are even bigger threats, and Support veigar's seen as a troll pick in NA.), and Riot worried about how this might affect their mobility gods.

Riot really missed the mark with the Veigar changes. I'm praying that someone in Riot sees some sense and removes the E changes. The Q changes I can live with, that's not a big deal. The E changes just made Veigar unplayable.

Thryale13 votes

this is me in a nutshell. veig can't do his job anymore because his job is being reliable.

Xelane30 votes

Where is the button to upvote you infinity more times?

Your post on the subject is by far the most salient and concrete that I have seen period.

GauffreEnchantée25 votes

All the Veigar players are thinking the same thing. With the timer on his stun, Veigar can now be surprised and dived with even more ease than before, due to the fact that they have time to deal the damage before being stuned. Add an early qss in lane against him and you have yourself a very easy victory. But what if we gank Veigar to help him ? Before his ennemy had to play very safe, despite the fact that Veigar was extremely squishy with no escape, his pressure was that on a gank with a well placed stun, it was often very deadly, or caused a flash minimum. Now the Ganker must go in way before Veigar and cc the ennemy at least one second (heavy slow or stun / root) to let him come in range to stun, and again, if the ennemy is free of CC, he will just flash out before the stun hits. And that is of course if this goes well. In reality zed is almost ungankable and will probably kill the jungler, being free from any cc from veigar.

His Q, which was used not only to farm but also to kill and poke in lane, can now be countered by mobility / dodge or, yes, standing behind minions, at least 2. So now all you have to do to win VS Veigar is to push the lane under tower, his W not doing enough damage to OS minions in early, his Q not being able to poke through the lane, bait his stun if you are a decent player and poke Veigar, him not being able to do anything to counter such poke. (exemple: Orianna shield tanks the only damage source, Q, from Veigar while autos + spells can be dealt with minimal turret aggro).

His stun was the only thing he was considered a threat for, now he is just a guy with no mobility, a joke to lane against... I miss my Veigar i really do... The game that made us forget stress and enjoy some fun, is now taking my favorite champion and making him obsolete in any lane, even in jungle his stun is just not good enough to gank properly.

I am soooooo desperate to see him buffed, and tweaked for the better this time, if not, well, i don't know, imagine losing your favorite character.. Of course we can still play him, but it is so, sooo much frustrating to no be able to stun anyone, and to be one of the worst laner in League..... Damn this is depressing, but it really is..

edit: coming from a Veigar main ranked diamond and being well ranked in the Veigar leaderboard.

Thryale6 votes

I may only be a silver scrub, but I've mained veigar for a while 2 yrs ago, dropped him due to me being too much of a scrub, and picked him back up again a few months ago. I have always loved playing veigar, and the new legendary skin I recently got made me love him even more. And despite me being silver, I totally agree with everything you mentioned from experience.

Veigar was all about the feel for me. I was even starting to get good with smart casting my gate (I know everyone tells me you shouldn't smart cast it, but it's so rewarding when you get the hang of it) And these changes just completely screw up his feel.

Not to mention, veig's job is about being reliable. Reliably landing his stun, reliably removing one target (maybe 2) from a team fight. But with these "counter play" changes, veig can't do his job anymore, because he is no longer reliable.

GauffreEnchantée8 votes

Veigar was one of the few champions in the game able to zone the whole ennemy team, while being a very weak and vulnerable champion at the same time, suffering heavy cooldown from mistakes. The feeling of landing your stun was amazing, once you've mastered it you can play in smartcast and feel even greater. Yes he was able to oneshot someone, but many many champions can do this aswell, and most of them can do it from safer distances or with safer kits. Veigar was a little and weak champion, slow and vulnerable, but deadly if you did not play safe enough or build some defensive items. Now you can remove the deadly i think.

All Veigar players are very nice to others, and i am glad to see all of us here trying to talk and explain things. Also silver or diamond, we all love the same champion and all we want is to have fun with him.

KingsRight19 votes

Veigar is my main champ and i HATE the changes. I WANT OLD VEIGAR BACK!

I don't ever use DFG and yet i do extremely well as Veigar. It was moronic to change this staple champ based on an item i never needed.

Now i will probably not play him any more.

The biggest change that screws me up is what they did to his Q. I hate that spell now

now i have to find a new champ to play for my main. =(

I love the OLD VEIGAR.. please bring him back with zero changes. Just undo everything you did riot.

Solaxo12 votes

They won't answer unfortunately, they only read joke or LC$ threads now

Joushi5 votes

Alright time to present the opposing side of view.

The reason Veigar's E has to be changed is this. At the highest level, he's no longer played as a burst mage, in C9 Lemonnation's words, "He's a stun bot. He brings a stun and that's basically it." He even ended up playing it in LCS and it's been seeing play in Korea for awhile now. As a support. Because his stun is absolutely ridiculously powerful.

The way you guys are playing him, as a mid lane pseudo-mage-assassin, is the way Riot wants him to be played, and they frankly need to change the way his E works to do that. While Riot can and should not balance strictly for the competitive level, it still does not make something ok to be played at all levels if it is incredibly abusive at some elos. I've even seen it come up in one of my games.

It was one of the stupidest things I had ever played against.

I like Veigar. I don't play him very often because he doesn't do what I tend to like to do when I play, but he's still fun. That said, I want him to be played in the mid lane, as a burst mage. In order for that to happen he cannot continue to have his current stun and Riot has put a bandaid on it so that he won't be as dumb to play against at the highest levels while they come up with a more permanent solution.

Ablogqwer12 votes

Except... Then they lower his ap damage across the board and make it so his w can't land. Now he's even less likely to be played as a burst mage for exactly those reasons. It's like shooting yourself in BOTH feet.

Joushi1 votes

The damage has honestly been overtuned for quite a long time. Just got out of a game where Veigar hit literally nothing on me and my ADC (he ended 6/10) except for ult and ignite, and we died (death recap literally read Primordial Burst: 1800, ignite 100). (to be fair I was TF with no defensive items, but he didn't get the bonus AP damage against Cait) He still has more damage than he needs, especially for a point and click ability.

The argument that he has "strategic counterplay in droves so he doesn't need tactical counterplay" is rather non sequitur. Having one doesn't mean you don't need the other, and an argument that is honestly incredibly dangerous to use.

  • What happens if Veigar is last-picked? Which as a niche-pick, probably ought to happen (many characters fall under this category as "should be last-picked")
  • Lots of weak early game characters can be ganked early. It's also beneficial to try and gank for your own strong lanes and snowball off of their advantage. The jungler doesn't have infinite time, and has to decide whether they want to gank the enemy hyper-carry or support their own, especially in solo queue. In competitive environments, Veigar should have comps built around him so that his jungler can support him due to the strength of the side lanes.
  • The argument regarding Banshee's Veil is salient, but not nearly as significant as it's made out to be unless Veigar is solo-hunting targets. There are so many ways to break the shield that having a teammate break it for you is not unexpected or uncommon, especially if you have something like Ezreal, Kog'maw, Corki, or any kinda poke champion on your team.

Katarina has tactical and strategic counterplay, but is still first-picked in solo queue all the time. Veigar is meant to be an assassin, particularly against mages. He still does this very well.

His E is also much more reliable than you guys are advertising it as. The pre-indicator feels kinda wonky at the moment (it feels like you're outside the range when you actually aren't), but it's a quarter second difference between what it was and what it is. It can't be seen in brushes anymore (incredibly annoying to walk near a brush and be stunned for seemingly no reason) and is still very reliable and impactful during teamfights, especially in the jungle. The only real place this change seems to be a significant nerf seems to be during laning phase, which, considering his infinite scaling, is something that should be weak in the first place.

While I hesitate to say that Veigar is in a good place right now, he is definitely much less weak than he is portrayed as in this thread, especially since he's so new.

SantoJoe7 votes

He is not anymore a mage-assasin, if you land your R to the enemy mage, he will just press Zhonya's, it was an assasin because he was able to land an instant cc on a mage, and then, ulti him, putting himself in danger also. I highly recomend you to play Veigar right now, you can't argue that he is in a good spot because you got 1800 dmg from ulti while you didn't get a defensive item. If you balance a champ around the idea of "enemy team won't build defensive items", what will happen when enemy laner builds a banshee's?, or pick Cleanse? (Every game with Veigar I have had an enemy laner with Cleanse, and sometimes 2 exhaust in enemy team).

Veigar is right now in one of the worst places in lol, by far,you can got dived by every assasin in lane because you don't have instant cc or movility, it has no realiable dmg anymore, he can't trade in lane (Q blocked by minons), W is almost useless if your team doesn't have hard cc (Morgana's Q, etc) and in top of that, he can't offer realiable cc, which is one of the most important aspects of a pure mage.

Thryale7 votes

A few things:

  1. just like riot should not balance solely because of the woes of certain elo ranks, neither should they balance due to regional woes as well. This is a game played world wide, and it is unfair to the rest of the world if certain balance changes are made specifically because of problems in one section. However, that does not mean that it should be left unchecked. It's a delicate system.

  2. I've been maining veigar because he was reliable. If something went wrong, it was usually obvious that it was my fault. Honestly, I find no feeling more frustrating than that when I do everything the way it should be done and still fail simply because my opponent "out played." It leaves me feeling powerless despite me playing my champ the way he should be played. And the new veigar very much makes me feel like this. (I'm completely defenseless against zed and talon now, played a game today with a talon top, was basically free kills cuz my stun would not save me from him)

  3. lemon was refering to veig support being a stun bot, not veig as a champ.

  4. I like using the term "executioner" instead of psuedo-mage-assassin for veig's mid lane role.

LittleBlast2 votes

Let me just say that his ult still 1 shots. I wad playing ap gp top vs a veigar and lategame he 1 shot me when we were equally fed.

Devack The Holy2 votes

{quoted}

Let me just say that his ult still 1 shots. I wad playing ap gp top vs a veigar and lategame he 1 shot me when we were equally fed.

Yes, the ult's one thing, late game.

The only issue is getting to late game now. Before, Veigar was easily able to use his E to harass and escape ganks, making it safer for him to farm, and lategame, he could just wreck face. Now, his E's a joke, and it's difficult to farm the AP needed to become the one-shot nightmare he once was.

LittleBlast1 votes

The ult also did really high dmg early aswell. Wasnt a "His ult did nothinf all game till lategame" thing.

Thryale7 votes

his ult only does 250 base dmg at rank 1, by lvl 9 veig's q has a higher base dmg.

Volt Cruelerz15 votes

True. So once a minute Veigar has the capacity to kill someone. Unfortunately, most champions can kill several enemies in that time.

LittleBlast7 votes

Thing is veigar never really did kill multiple people after his first target. That is his job, blowing up 1 person then not being able to do much else for a bit after unless he hits some good w's or q's

Volt Cruelerz10 votes

Right. But now he can't hit W.

LittleBlast1 votes

People just need to adapt, instead of putting e side on them trap them in the middle. Even with 502 ms on gp i couldnt run through that thing from the middle at times.

Volt Cruelerz15 votes

Okay. I've trapped you in the middle. Now what? It's wide enough that you can easily dodge W, so all I did is force you to duel me, but without half my burst, why would I do that?

ShhImmaSmurf3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Volt Cruelerz,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Q6AojjfV,comment-id=000d000100000000,timestamp=2015-02-25T19:42:57.640+0000)

Right. But now he can't hit W.

During teamfights god forbid if u fight in a lane you wont be landing any meaningful q's. Either minions absorb it or tanks will.

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