Let's talk about Veigar's counterplay.

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/309/c/f/commission__jill_and_veigar_by_rintheyordle-d5k42m6.jpg "Counterplay? There is no counterplay! Your death is inevitable! Don't listen to her. She's just a Summoner. What does she know? I am the Dark Lord Veigar, Master of Evil! … STOP TRYING TO PET ME!" Artwork by Rin the Yordle.

The word "counterplay" is being used a lot in the discussion of the Veigar nerfs. Well, I suppose this is a safe time for me to share some of the things that, when playing Veigar, I'm always afraid the other team will do to counter me. I don't think any of this should be halfway surprising, but maybe some of it is.

Overall, I agree with the critique that Riot considers "counterplay" in a very limited sense, often involving mobility and twitch reflexes. That's definitely one kind of counterplay, but I think League is a fun game in part because it's not just about reflexes and split-second maneuvers: it's also about itemization, and teamfight positioning, and big-picture strategy. (Indeed, I suck at reflex-gaming; I'm trash at FPS games, and I can't ADC for the life of me. I like Veigar in part because I think he's a Champion who rewards slower types of strategy. When you make your move with Veigar, it's all over very quickly, one way or the other; the interesting part is what happens before that point when either you or the enemy makes the decision to throw down.)

For the record, I really like that he didn't get a total rework, because I love him as a Champion. However, I agree that these changes are nerfs. (Caveat: I don't really know how his new Q might play out. Too many variables at work there to say.) The game-breaker is the Rupture-esque delay on his stun. Do the designers have any idea what happens to Veigar on Live if he misses with the edge? He gets slaughtered from inside the stun-circle. Well, now not only does he always "miss" the stun, but he also has no way even of throwing down a wall to hold assassins at bay: they can hop right through and massacre him, and he'll watch the stun go up through a gray filter.

Anyway, here are some specific tips, as a way to illustrate his weaknesses and how they can be exploited by crafty opponents.

1. Don't beat him in lane: CRUSH him in lane. He's not trying to beat you in lane: he's trying to survive, and if he can even just survive, he's got a shot. (Also, now he hates you passionately, and will not hesitate to obliterate you once the tables are turned.) One of the dumbest moves I've seen against me when playing Veigar is an enemy mid deciding to just passively farm. As Veigar, I am DELIGHTED to have a passive farm-lane with you. No, you need to crush him. His mana costs are huge. He's squishy. If he throws his stun in lane, he is lunch for a jungler. Gank him. Watch his mana bar. When it's low, beat the fluff out of him.
2. Don't get cocky if you beat him in lane. Even if you trounce him in lane, that's no reason to think you're the next Froggen and start fantasizing about going 30/0 this match. The worst thing you can do is get full of yourself and go hardcore glass cannon in search of pentakills. If you pour all that gold you got from him into purely offensive stats, you had better be good, because he will mercilessly punish you if you get out of position. Instead, you should get a little tanky. Tankiness is extremely strong against a Champion like Veigar: if his burst destroys you in one shot, he gets to giggle. If his burst takes you to 5% health, you can beat him to death with his own hat.
3. Positioning. "Waaa, there's no counterplay to his stun, I can't use dashes to jump around and avoid it like I was playing some kind of demented DDR game." The counterplay isn't about bouncing around the map with your fifteen dashes, KALISTA. (How I loathe you.) It's about slower, subtler, less-twitchy counterplay. Are you rushing to the front of the pack to try to get a super-awesome initiation? Well, you'd better know where Veigar is. If not, let your frontline do their job. If Veigar gets greedy and just makes a beeline for you, he will get 100-0'd himself very, very quickly by your frontline, and they won't even have to blow an ult to do it.
4. It's not all about the 100-0. Everyone obsesses about his 100-0 single-target potential. When Veigar has been played at the pro level, do you know what the announcers talked about? Not his burst, but his stun. From a pro perspective, his stun is his greatest strength. Burst? Whatever. Vayne can burst you with her stupid crits. Darius can burst you with his axe, and then do the same to the rest of your team. Veigars who win games use their stuns (and those meteors, which HURT) to break the enemy team. Bursting a squishy mage or ADC is frosting on the cupcake. If you are a squishy, and the Veigar is good, you are not his primary target: you are a target of opportunity. If he catches you out, he'll destroy you, but if he chases obsessively after you, he'll get killed himself. He's thinking about how to use his stun to win the fight.
5. Bait his stun. Being Veigar means being very, very scared of the enemy team. Every one of them can delete you. Your stun is your protection. It's easy to freak out and throw it prematurely to save yourself. If you can scare him into throwing a misplaced stun, you only have to wait for it to disappear before your team is ready to counter-initiate hard. Once the battle-lines close, a Veigar without his stun available is an easy lunch for any halfway-durable bruiser or dash-y assassin. He can't waddle away from Zed or Akali, and odds are good he won't even be able to push "R" before he's stunlocked and killed. Once his stun is down, you should be seeing red.
6. Buy MR. This is largely what the second item is about, but it bears repeating. Buying a negatron cloak makes Veigar very, very sad. Is this shallow counterplay? I don't think so. It represents a balance of risk and reward. Veigar is a Champion who makes enemies pay very dearly for their mistakes. You don't have to buy MR against him, but if you decide to go all-or-nothing and build glass cannon, you need to really remember that the second half of that proposition is "or nothing". Itemization is meant to be about tradeoffs, and adaptability. If you rush a deathcap and don't stop to think, "wait, I'm playing against a burst mage, and I'm his number one target, maybe I should build some defense", you've tripped up on the itemization game. That's as legitimate a mistake, I feel, as forgetting to use your dash to get in position for one more auto-attack to get a third stack on the enemy or whatever. You're supposed to think about your opponents, and consider how you might itemize to defeat them.
7. Don't let him get in your head. Veigar is a very psychological Champion. When his timing and positioning are just so, he can lock you down and delete you in a way that makes him seem unstoppable. It's an illusion, like the way his hat makes him seem bigger than the teensy little yordle he really is. When I'm playing Veigar, one of my main objectives is to convince you that my stun means instant death, so that you're afraid to get close. I'm basically bluffing—even if I can 100-0 you, which is less likely now without DFG, I may not actually be in a position to move in and do so, e.g. because your teammates are in position to intercept me; more simply, it might be that you have a move which will take me out if you hit me first or if you survive my rotation, and I'm just intimidating you into thinking that I never miss mine, or that I'm sure I can finish you off before you can hit back. ("This here is Primordial Burst, the biggest single-target nuke in the League. Now I know what you're asking yourself: does he have the MPen to one-shot me? You know, in all this excitement, I'm not sure myself. So, you've got to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky? Well, do ya? PUNK?") Veigar has huge strengths and huge weaknesses, and he's trying to use the former (e.g. his ability to 100-0 squishies) to scare you so much that you don't notice the latter (e.g. his lack of mobility or any defensive option other than his precious stun).

So, just some thoughts.