Why was Veigar stripped of his identity?

dunkeroni·May 19, 2016·1 votes·768 views

Riot decided to buff up Veigar's scaling passive in 6.9, but in doing so they had to completely remove his identity as an anti-mage. For the first time ever, Veigar is countered by glass cannon mages like Ahri, and nothing has really been added to help him against ad assassins in mid lane.

His ult does less damage now unless you trigger it when the enemy is at almost 0 health, and he no longer has any scaling on the enemy AP. Veigar used to be a mid laner pick to counter squishy mages, now he's just another squishy mage with not mobility. Where's the benefit of this? The only improvement is that he gets slightly more mini-game in hitting enemy champions as well as minions.

12 Comments

AramsAreBestMay 19, 20161 votes

DESTROY TANKS

Darth SidioussMay 19, 20161 votes

Veigar is my go-to mid now hes strong AF! despite dealing less dmg to other ap dealers you can still one shot people with your combo. You have to build mana friendly items first then build the nuke items later on. He feels like an AP nasus now and i like that alot.

AeroWaffleMay 19, 20161 votes

He's even more of a scaling powerhouse now. So yeah, his focus has shifted a bit.

Before, if the enemy was AD, you would have needed to have done really well during the lane phase to be able to take them on. If you were against another mage in mid, they would just focus a little more on MR and magic pen to shut you down.

Since he scales much faster now, he's more viable against more targets mid to late game. He's also encouraged to poke during the laning phase, where before he only wanted to farm. Since a Q used to poke was a Q that was not spent stacking.

lightdragoon88May 19, 20161 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYbetvkPA6I

AnnoxisMay 19, 20161 votes

Gosh, so many things to speak about.

His identity as a anti-mage : Design a champ in a way that make impossible/very hard for a particular kind of champ to win against it is bad design. The fact that Veigar has lost the Enemy-AP ratio on his ult is good in term of Game Health. Furthermore, they needed to restrain the use of a point-and-click spell, to allow opponents to manage Veigar.

The only improvement is that he gets slightly more mini-game in hitting enemy champions as well as minions. : So, hitting a champion with a spell is now a mini-game ? A mini-game is a game inside the game. There are only two things in League of Legends that can be called mini-games : Skarner's Crystal Spires and Bard's Chimes. That is all. The others things called that way by the community because the term acquired a negative connotation since the Skarner's rework and is now throw at the slightest opportunity to make something sound bad when you don't like it.

AbyssphereMay 19, 20161 votes

They removed the "anti-mage" identity because it was shit. Nothing more to it honestly.

MirkhailMay 19, 20161 votes

Not really, he's anti-mage identity was only his ulti ap scaling, it was fun to oneshot mages late game but this was difficult to balance and so riot could not let him being strong. Veigar real identity is the BURST MAGE and NEVER ENDING GROWING POWER, he is the little guy you think is weak but then he absolutely destroy you, his ulti ap scaling was to give a revenge feeling. Veigar new ultimate is not very interesting (the old mechanics was more fun for veigar against mages) but now it absolutely destroy everything when they are at 33% health and his new passive is perfect, the old one was boring and not so useful since you had to farm with q but you could get infinity mana easily so.

MiraweaveMay 19, 20161 votes

Because the only 'anti-mage' identity he had was the completely unfair ability to 100-0 a squishy ap champion with one use of a targeted ability, and that's terrible for game health.

Regardless of how fun it was, Veigar's old ultimate was unfair for literally all the reasons Talon was unfair when he was overpowered.

Athenes LuluMay 19, 20161 votes

The way his "anti-mage" identity was executed made him very binary in terms of matchup, so that has to go.

Binary as in absolute shit against non-mages, stupidly OP against mages. Old ult's enemy AP ratio was what limited him from having a better scaling on a SINGLE TARGET LONG CD ultimate. Plenty of mage ults have much better bases and scalings because it isn't point and click, and that they didn't scale off any enemy AP crap.

DrakylonMay 19, 20161 votes

That ultimate still does have a 75% ratio when the enemy has 100% health, which with his passive AP might as well be a 100% ratio on any other champion. At ~22.2% missing health (or 77.8% remaining health, which is very achievable with a single Q on a squishy), his ult has a 100% ratio off of all that bonus AP. It definitely still does enough damage to kill even with the situational missing heatlh scaling. Perhaps not 100-0, but no single ability should do that.

As for the enemy AP scaling, that's just bad design. It punishes enemies for buying their damage items with zero interaction required from the Veigar.

MiraweaveMay 19, 20161 votes

{quoted}

As for the enemy AP scaling, that's just bad design. It punishes enemies for buying their damage items with zero interaction required from the Veigar.

Veigar's old ult basically read "if you're a mage, i get to kill you with absolutely no counterplay unless you build wrong".

SasogwaMay 19, 20161 votes

His identity was removed at his rework, the anti-mage was nothing but a gimmick. Veigar used to be a midgame reliable burst mage with huge manacosts and exploitable cooldowns and laning phase, heavily countered by banshees, QSS and merctreads. Now he's a weird unreliable lategame-ish (provided he hits spells, which depends on his team and his ennemies) teamfight mage.