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Veigar shouldn't be an anti-mage

Enosetc·10/7/2015, 6:03:39 PM·120 votes·8,357 views

The only thing in his kit that's indicative of being an anti-mage is the ult that has its anti-mage functionality randomly tacked on.

None of his other skills do anything that screw over mages more than they screw over any other class of champions.

Do you want a good example of an anti-mage? Look no further than Kassadin.

-Reduces a percentage of magic damage taken passively -Can interrupt channeled abilities -Has a shield that blocks only magic damage -Excels at putting immobile mages in unfavorable positions with his R and E

Meanwhile Veigar:

-Punishes a mage for progressing in their build path with an ability that has very little outplay potential

Veigar's R scaling with his opponent's AP is one of the main reasons his balance state has been a game of ping pong. This skill already has enough damage to remove non bruiser/tank roles from fights regardless of what they're building.

Keeping this archaic mechanic tacked onto Veigar's ult makes it impossible for Riot to distribute power evenly throughout his kit and will keep him in a state where he's either overwhelming or underwhelming with no middle ground to be found.

186 Comments

Bharhash10/7/2015, 6:23:43 PM46 votes

Loathed though I am to admit it, OP is right about the problem of Veigar's ult scaling off his opponent's AP. You do well and get punished for it as a result.

A similar justification was used (by Meddler, I think) to justify Garen's Villain mechanic no longer proccing on the person who killed him. So I do think Veigar's ult needs another look if we're going to hold to that justification.

DokiDokiTodoroki10/7/2015, 11:21:26 PM20 votes

I feel like Veigar sacrifices a lot for his late game scaling in terms of laning phase. It's pretty weak, and you run oom quickly if you do anything but farm up with q. Even then, using q off of cooldown drains your mana, so you make a choice between delaying your scaling or sitting around mid lane as a squishy low mobility champion with no mana. He's a lot like Nasus in that sense. Weak laning, fantastic late game scaling. It's possible to counter a safe playstyle as an ap assassin/mage. Either:

A. Kill him like you're supposed to because you have a strong laning phase. B. Push to tower and roam, because if he follows you and face checks a bush you just got a free kill.

Veigar's ult has 650 range, which makes sense for a nuke of that level because it's relatively short. To put it in perspective: Ahri's charm is 975. Leblanc's distortion is 600 range, and her chain is 950-1000. Brand's w-q range is 900-1050. Cassiopeia's q-e range is 850-700. Zyra's e-r range is 1100-700, respectively.

So most mages that build glass cannon that aren't even classified as long range mages can do a significant portion of their damage without even walking into range of his instant nuke. Also, all these champions can build Zhonyas, which is another strong counter to Veigar's burst. Veigar tends to build almost pure ap, which means that he is very squishy and very easy to catch out in a team fight before he can press R on a priority target. I feel like saying it's unreasonable to expect players not to walk up to a late game Veigar on a glass cannon assassin is like saying that Yasuo should be able to walk up to a late game Nasus and somehow come out alive. His ult has legitimate outplay potential in Zhonyas and positioning, and refusing to acknowledge his weak laning phase is ignoring a large part of what keeps his power budget in check.

On a side note, I love playing Veigar because it feels like a series of mini games. The most recent one was "I Survived a Leblanc Laning Phase." Justice never felt so sweet.

AyRe CoNteMpT10/7/2015, 6:07:37 PM10 votes

veigar is pretty balanced right now

WarlockLaw10/7/2015, 6:23:10 PM10 votes

Veigar was the original anti mage, Kass came later infringing on that design space. The thing is though, Veigar has had his anti-mage mechanic changed over time. It was originally his passive which allowed him to steal ap from his opponents. At some point Riot decided that stealing stats wasn't something they wanted to have like that so they gave him the original iteration of his current passive and gave him the extra ap scaling on his ult. Veigar should remain the anti-mage burst mage of this game, anything else would destroy his original identity which will pissed players off worse than the Cass rework.

Spaceman5pff10/7/2015, 7:23:19 PM7 votes

"Excels at putting immobile mages in unfavorable positions with his R and E"

You act like Kassadin has a displacement. Or like he is good or something. Maybe you just got salty when you lost to Veigar as Kassadin. More importantly, you seem to think that there is only room for ONE anti-mage in this game. News, Honey, there are 3 Champions with Anti-Mage qualities, and all of them approach it differently, and that is okay.

Saianna10/7/2015, 9:12:07 PM7 votes

Veigar shouldn't be an anti-mage

No.

Veigars ultimate scalling of enemy AP might be a problem (for you), but that's how Veigar always has been. And those Threads like yours just started sprouting lately.

Which means it's not Veigar, but you who has a problem. All those years he was fine, now every spoiled dude that haven't learned to play it safe is screaming to nerf Veigar, Annie and w/e.

crazydanddgnat10/7/2015, 10:31:32 PM4 votes

  1. I would be okay if they removed that feature, so long as the scaling on the ult was returned to 1.2, or if the cooldown was reduced. This won't give you as much damage at level 6 on your lane opponent, but it would let you reach the point of nuking entire teams faster.

  2. There is in fact exactly as much counterplay for veigar ult as there is for zed ult, or fiora ult, or nautilus ult, or vi ult, or even garen ult. It's all zhonya's, which is apparently a fair form of counterplay according to riot.

  3. Veigar is pretty healthy honestly. Sure, there might not be much you can do once it's 40 minutes into the game and he has 1500 ap, but if he gets to that point it's because you already failed to counterplay him by taking advantage of his weak early game, just like nasus, fizz, or lux, or any number of other strong lategame champions. Don't play like a damn beta.

FakeGravity10/7/2015, 11:07:18 PM4 votes

what about galio who's power get rewarded for building magic resist? meanwhile his ulti favor from targeting high attack speed ppl( sure he get damage by it but his ulti does increase in damage further) and morgana black shield? i think pinning down a champion as a pure anti mage is not the right aproach just look at rammus who is in my opinion great against heavy ad auto attackers

if we were to combine all skills in a single kit (galio passive, kassadin Q morgana E and veigar R) i think it would be unbalance (good bye ap champions while crying in a corner against AD)

i great this champions have other tools instead of being straight forward into countering a type of champion

junglerboy1610/8/2015, 12:45:27 AM4 votes

His ult is not a tool that makes him an "anti-mage".

Being an anti-mage is someone like Kassadin used to be where he took reduced magic damage and silenced casters (he isn't quite the same now, but is overall a bit healthier, so moot point there).

Veigar's R enemy AP ratio serves as a very significant and very important gating mechanism that helps him maintain at least a crumb of relevance if he gets beat into the dirt early game (it allows him to contribute damage even if drastically behind) and also serves as a way to allow him to scale exceptionally well into late game without powering up extremely quickly on his own.

If Veigar only had a self AP ratio on his R and got to late game having farmed little to no AP because he was bullied all game long and was also down in items, even with say 400 AP and a 1.5 AP ratio, he'd just barely break even with average mages. on the opposite end of the spectrum, imagine a Veigar who's been stomping you all match, instead of counter playing him by building Mpen heavy and low AP, you get bursted for the same amount no matter what because he has 800+ AP and a 1.5 AP ratio. The enemy AP ratio also prevents him from being able to instagib everyone, or at least delays that point to the super late game.

Your analysis is really uninformed and just using taglines like "archaic mechanics" and "very little outplay potential". His ult is short ranged, can be zhonya'ed easily, and is fundamentally built around keeping Veigar's in game power levels in check. The part that makes him broken has been and always will be his cage. You can add a delay, you can add particle warnings, but at its core, until they reduce the punishment to Veigar for missing his cage and reduce the punishment to enemies for being hit by it, he will always be broken. His ult, Q and W have excellent counterplay by themselves, but once his cage gets involved his kit goes to crap since you can no longer do anything but hope you're tanky enough to survive his burst.

If you want to fix Veigar, give Q a weak slow (say 25%) and reduce E's stun length to around 1.25/1.375/1.5/1.625/1.75 seconds and then he'll be much more healthy. he now has ways of lining up W without E, can kite a little, can slow targets to hit E better, and if/when you are hit by E, it is far less brutal. Problem solved.

LeprechaunJinx10/7/2015, 11:46:19 PM2 votes

Copypasted response I made from another thread where a similar question came up and I would like more feedback since the matter interests me greatly.

As a question of my own interest, would a higher self-scaling on his ultimate and drop the enemy scaling be preferable to play against?

There was a thread a couple months back with Red posts debating about Veigar's feel rather than his actual gameplay and one point of debate was the enemy scaling on his ultimate. The concept was: would it be preferable to have a higher scaling of his own AP (say 1.5 instead of the 1.0 it currently is) and drop the enemy scaling or is the enemy scaling part of the Veigar fantasy.

A lot of the debate came down to what people felt Veigar's core experience was, is he an anti-mage or is he the preeminent burst mage? Anti-mage would synergize well with his underdog story, driven by rage against those stronger than him he destroys them at their own game. As the premier burst mage simply a higher scaling would be better suited as it makes more sense for all parties involved as to where the damage is coming from and frees up Veigar's own options in terms of who his ult is most effective against.

For you, as a proponent against Veigar's enemy scaling, would your experience against Veigar be better with just a higher scaling? I'm asking about more than just Veigar's own strength in any scenario since things like how it feels to be killed by his current anti-mage identity vs. just bursted out in general play into this discussion.

I can try to find the red post as well as the discussing thread I mentioned if necessary but am unable to do so at the moment.

BoxOfDOG10/8/2015, 5:44:40 AM2 votes

..Eh..

I kinda like Veigar as an anti-mage. He's immobile and there's plenty of opportunity to play against him. This is just another post QQing because he's popular again.

Shosuko10/8/2015, 4:39:44 PM1 votes

Veigar isn't supposed to be an anti-mage, he is the ultimate mage. He draws power from all sources, which is why his Q stacks AP on farm and takedowns, and why his passive feeds him more mana.

I do NOT want to see Veigar reworked into anything but the most powerful mage in Valoran.

While his ult can seen as a trap of "do good, get punished" that isn't really accurate. He forces you to weaken your early game by buying a chalice or other MR first, or just pick an AD mid into him.

PopePancake10/7/2015, 6:42:33 PM1 votes

Do you have any ideas as to what we could do with his Ult if Riot were to remove the enemy AP scaling?

increasing AP ratio sounds like the idea most people would go for, but im interested in hearing what you think Veigar