Veigar and why his rework was hypocritical

Burnt Light··53 votes·2,643 views

"Of all the champions that were primary customers of the late Deathfire Grasp, none were more iconic than the Tiny Master of Evil himself. While we recognized and intended to preserve Veigar's role as a 100-to-0 burst mage, flatly increasing the power of a champion with such a powerful combination of crowd control and single-target damage didn't feel like the humane option (for everyone except Veigar).

Freeing up Baleful Strike to cover more range and doubly enable his AP-stacking minigame was a natural change to Veigar's kit and made his laning better. We quickly learned, however, that a strictly better Veigar left opponents with less and less options, especially with the immense power that is Event Horizon. While old Veigar needed to rely on Event Horizon's immediate stun to zone out potential threats, keeping its current iteration meant we either needed to reduce Veigar's damage (but you can't reduce a 100-0 burst mage to 100-20) or tackle his outright reliability. Ultimately we went with the latter.

The bottom line is this - characters with inflexible kits are often balanced on a knife's edge, and the slightest change to a range or damage value can be the difference between unplayable or overbearing (Hi Ryze!). While Veigar's reliability when it comes to "blowing fools up" has decreased, the added laning flexibility and higher late-game scaling should help make Veigar more than a one-trick pony. He has to work harder for his one-shots, but has the tools to earn them in a way that feels fair...ish for his opponents."

Annie She is able to do the same job as Veigar did. Immediate stun a single target without anyway to avoid it unlike Event Horizon. And why does Veigar have work harder for his one-shots and make it fair...ish for his opponents.? Annie doesn't have to work for anything to get her one-shots when all she has to do is have her stun ready and even without her stun still does massive damage. Anytime I see an Annie, I am forced to build banshee, regardless who I am playing since you need specific items to counter her unlike other mid champions that you can build normally against or someone as equally hard in CC. Silence would be effective but you removed the silence off from the assassins and god forbid if she flashes in towards a team. The reasons you "reworked Veigar" are not justifiable when you still have a champion like this doing what he did and is a large threat And don't tell me, "Well Annie is weak because..." since all that counters her now would've worked on Veigar.

Give an actual good reason on the next champion you decide to break when it didn't need fixing.

46 Comments

Raptamei21 votes

Veigar needs to be reverted.

If instant burst is too overpowered, give silence back to Talon and add items that specifically counter burst.

Riot needs to accept that counterpicking and counterbuilding are a thing and not everything should be about dodging.

Very Hard Engage16 votes

Q is worse than before, i could farm 6ap per wave with Q when it was around rank 3, otherwise i needed to trade earlier, not stay further away from my opponent. as it sits with this new Q i cant hit the enemy mid laner with it at all because they stand behind minions and my Q hits minions before it hits them, meaning they are free to harass me and my W? lets let them stand still for 1.2seconds see how that goes... and now im pushing the lane in favor towards their tower with the extra damage i do to minions. "hey jungler come gank me!"

veigar is in a worse state than before, its very difficult for him to lane right now, he cant defend himself, hes stuck playing super passive back towerhugger farmer until the mid game team fights break out at which point he can only support the fight with his E, and wait for hard cc from other allied champions. his W is still difficult to land without actually catching someone in his E, which never happens anymore.

dont get me wrong, people occasionally will get caught by the E simply because flash/their escape is already on CD and i happened to be in a good position and they can deal with the stun or the rest of my team.

but the majority of stuns are flat out dodged and irrelevant. making his W also irrelevant, so now veigar only has his Q which has a longer CD to work with.

lB2kGRlc8y3 votes

AP farming is safer, baleful's range was pitiful, and often left you in the line of fire of any champion that goes mid, but aside from farming safety, it didn't really help veigar out any. Now Veigar needs a clear wave, or to maneuver around a team fight to land his baleful w/o it being bodyblocked. Considering its his only semi-reliable damage besides his ult, its pretty pitiful that they think it was a buff in any way. Veigar works better in team fights now because he actually traps dash champions, but in return, hes lost 35% of the damage from his kit (not including the R nerf) and the ability to duel anyone at all. He can run away magnificently now, but veigar isn't a kite mage, they've soiled his identity and left the more cancerous champions fully intact. I mean, they're planning on reverting blitz's overdrive, so if they have brains sloshing around somewhere, they should do that same for veigar.

Athenes Lulu8 votes

Because Rito refuses to touch their little princess. Annie totally has counterplay, she gets to keep her stun FOREVER, unlike TF!

Also, her ult is instant, is a full on AoE coverage, and has even more DoT that she can control afterwards. Her Q is literally undodgeable (come on, it's targeted), and somehow she can still exist in this state.

Curling Veigar7 votes

Theres a lot more things you forgot to point out, one being that they said they didn't wanna reduce his damage so they nerf his CC. And then nerf his ult's damage. l

Matt The Hero5 votes

Funny that you mention how little Annie has to work to 100-0 people. I wrote about this in another thread, but I think the problem lies in Annie, not in Veigar. I don't think the fact that Annie can do what Veigar can't means you should buff Veigar--I think instead you should rework Annie.

Hard Penetrator2 votes

I think the main reason they are fine with Annie is that she actually needs flash to pose a huge threat while Veigar could easily zone, split or stun half of the enemy team (including very mobile and flashy champions).

I think at non competitive lvl both of them were fine. Veigar will never be the same, at least Riot is trying to make him less trashy.

Loken Stoneheart1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Hard Penetrator,realm=EUNE,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=j8LEewl6,comment-id=00020000,timestamp=2015-04-05T07:56:22.329+0000)

I think the main reason they are fine with Annie is that she actually needs flash to pose a huge threat while Veigar could easily zone, split or stun half of the enemy team (including very mobile and flashy champions).

I think at non competitive lvl both of them were fine. Veigar will never be the same, at least Riot is trying to make him less trashy.

Annie's stun-range is only a few units smaller than Veigar's increased range E. Even when they buffed Veigar's range after gutting its ability to actually work, its still only 100 units further ranged than Annie's Tibbers. He needed flash to land a stun just as much as Annie does.

Hard Penetrator2 votes

She had to charge up her passive and have her ult off cd while veigar could stun every 10 sec's late game. Support Veigar could block any engage repeatedly. Annie without flash is almost useless in professional games.

Jungle Lux God4 votes

I won't even try to justify the Veigar changes as, obviously, he's trash right now, but the comparison to Annie and saying Annie doesn't have to work for her kills is not very accurate.

The reason Annie is allowed to 100-0 opponents with a stun with as low counterplay as it is is because Annie's spells all have extremely short range and her stun isn't always available. This gives her opponents opportunities to play against her by either poking her from outside her range or engaging on her when she blows her stun. In other words, there's definitely a way to play around Annie's burst for quite a few champs. This also doesn't include the fact that she can't 100-0 a target without her ultimate, which even further gives her opponents opportunities to play against her. And she's immobile, which is a death sentence to anyone that doesn't have CC that isn't always up.

If I'm not mistaken, Veigar had similar weaknesses in some form or another, but many of the strengths he had are way more oppressive than Annie's strengths. If anything, Annie had to work a lot harder for her kills than old Veigar did, and even if they fell behind Veigar is still a lot more useful because of how insanely strong a near-guaranteed 2.5 second AoE stun is compared to a near-guaranteed 1.75 AoE stun.

Veigar wouldn't be nearly as bad as he is now if he actually got proper compensation for the reduced reliability of his Event Horizon. A .75 second delay wouldn't be nearly as bad if his W could actually be landed without using his E.

Sammystorm5 votes

You highlighted the actual problem here. Veigar was too reliable before he got nerfed and not reliable enough after he got nerfed. Basically I think his stun should be left more or less as it is and riot should add more consistency to his w.

Oleandervine4 votes

I feel that Annie is one of the few truly balanced mages that flirts on the line of really powerful, but doesn't necessarily cross it. Sure, she has an AOE potential stun in Tibbers, but unlike most other mages, her stun is very telegraphed due to the little aura when it's ready. Plus, most of the time, Annie needs to be delicate when she has a stun available, so she's usually not going to be pushing the lane as hard if she knows danger is coming her way. I like Annie as she is, and I don't want her nerfed. I'm not saying I support the Veigar changes though. I would have preferred most of his kit left the way it was; that being said, instead of adding a telegraph and delay on top of the cast time, they should have simply added the telegraph when he was halfway through his cast time. That way, there's a small window for escape, but he doesn't have to wait an ungodly amount of time for the cage to appear after the warning. A change to his W should come as well, to make it less reliant on the stun, since it was made less reliable. Perhaps if there was a large AOE slow/knock back around the impact site of the W (think Starcall with Soraka), it would help to make him effective and give his W more usefulness if you can't directly land the damage on foes. Either way, he still needs love and help to reach a good spot.

Oddysseas3 votes

Veigar's immediate stun was too op, considering the area it covers and it's duration, however since he is yet another immobile mage they should at least increase the thickness of the circle so he can land stuns easier, also people would have to burn a flash or a spell in order to escape it as now they can just walk away.

DrCabes1 votes

or walk kill you... yeah they usually kill you

BluePolarizer2 votes

Yeah you mage mains get 1 tiny nerf, while still having OP as fk champs like Xerath.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of sub 50% win rates are melee bruisers and assassins who get kited to fk in teamfights.

Sona Ping10 votes

{quoted}

Yeah you mage mains

No such thing. There are Veigar Mains and Lux Mains and so forth, but just because they play them doesn't mean they like, play, are good at or even own Xerath or "X champion I don't like playing against".

P.S. Protip: Winrates are meaningless. #Skarner #Taric #LeeSin P.P.S Even if they were relevant, in the bottom 10 win rates there are 0 melee bruisers and the assassin is Evelynn. The others are Mages and Twitch.

Velasan2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sona Ping,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=j8LEewl6,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2015-04-04T06:01:20.254+0000)

No such thing. There are Veigar Mains and Lux Mains and so forth, but just because they play them doesn't mean they like, play, are good at or even own Xerath or "X champion I don't like playing against".

P.S. Protip: Winrates are meaningless. #Skarner #Taric #LeeSin P.P.S Even if they were relevant, in the bottom 10 win rates there are 0 melee bruisers and the assassin is Evelynn. The others are Mages and Twitch.

I actually do main mages. They fit my playstyle.

There seems to be a lot of confusion involving mages like veigar and annie though. Veigar is stronger now. He has more aoe damage overall. Played 8 games with him I think since rework and won 7.

The confusion lies in zoning tools. Veigars W is a zoning tool not an insta burst device. By comparison Annie can be frustrating but needs her damage or she has nothing. Consider that a glass cannon with no burst is just glass. Every mage has a slow or stun. I think every single one. One of the reasons VIktor is being played now, but the rework was actually worse for him.

He went from zone mage to burst mage and lost utility. However, his stun field still hard counters problem champions like kat, zed, and akali.

Annie used to be better at this too until they reduced her flame shield.

lB2kGRlc8y3 votes

Veigar's only "gain" in the patches was ap farm safety at the cost of reliability, and the ability to actually cage dash champs. What he lost was 20% scaling on his ultimate, the ability to land his stun on players with functioning brains, and the notion of landing dark matter without the player being dense, or having stun from a teammate. I think veigar is playable, and still fun, but he is in no way stronger than he was before.

SirPacifista2 votes

I know what you are trying to say, but trust me when i say that it will get nearly impossible to play against Zed Vladimir Talon Lissandra Katarina Fizz AnnieOrianna in the higher elo.

You will NEVER hit your stun, not even ONCE, when the jungler doesnst stun/root the enemy for you.

And above all, all these champions above will either kill you by jumping out of the cage, or killing you in the Cage (Like Annie, she will just Q+E+R and you are dead, but she should stay that way, Veigar should just be fixed)

So the E no longer stuns anybody, what does that mean for the rest? His W wont hit anymore either, nobody will ever get hit by something with 1.25 delay.

So 2 spells are now worthless in 1 vs 1.

What about his Q? Longer Range and can hit 2 minions at once. Sound great, but there are 2 mistakes there.

  1. You will not get much more ap then before, only a bit more.
  2. If the enemy is behind 2 minions ( which WILL happen in Lane) its worthless for harassing.
DrCabes17 votes

I wouldn't call Veigar's nerf "tiny". It removed all solo kill pressure without the other team making stupid mistakes. Now Leblanc's .05 ap nerf I think you could call "tiny".

KnivingDude2 votes

Annie's lategame isn't as bad as Viegar's but still... She doesn't need to work that hard to be effective in the least.

qetzel2 votes

I think that Annie is allowed because of her range. Unless the opponent is stupid (really, really stupid) she has to use flash to burst them - this gives a 5 minute window where Annie can't just delete you. Compare that to old Veigar who had an 18? second window. I am not saying that it is air, but there is some reason.

Fuzzleberry3 votes

Except Veigars stun has a longer cooldown than 18 seconds while annie has 5 mins? haha not even close, 120-100-80 seconds for tibbers to come back up not only that but annie can actually still stun and be very dangerous without tibbers and has more defense than Veigar does. Ether way they need to fix veigar because as he is now... its just horrible.

The Soulforged2 votes

{quoted}

I think that Annie is allowed because of her range. Unless the opponent is stupid (really, really stupid) she has to use flash to burst them - this gives a 5 minute window where Annie can't just delete you. Compare that to old Veigar who had an 18? second window. I am not saying that it is air, but there is some reason.

Her q range is actually very high, and if you have to be stupid to be caught in the range, then she could just zone you out of cs for all of the game.

Sammystorm1 votes

625 on q and w. 600 on tibbers. Basically she had to flash to get you unless you were playing a melee champion in which case you would probably lose to annie anyways.

If she holds onto stun she has garbage waveclear. Just clear the wave and force her to use the stun on minions or keep stun and miss cs to turret. If she uses stun bully her well her stun is on cd. Viegar on the other hand could zone you. His spell had much longer range and he often didn't need w to land to kill you or force you out of lane. So yeah it isn't fair to compare them.

The Soulforged1 votes

{quoted}

625 on q and w. 600 on tibbers. Basically she had to flash to get you unless you were playing a melee champion in which case you would probably lose to annie anyways.

If she holds onto stun she has garbage waveclear. Just clear the wave and force her to use the stun on minions or keep stun and miss cs to turret. If she uses stun bully her well her stun is on cd. Viegar on the other hand could zone you. His spell had much longer range and he often didn't need w to land to kill you or force you out of lane. So yeah it isn't fair to compare them.

That range really isn't that bad...

Loken Stoneheart1 votes

{quoted}

That range really isn't that bad...

Its longer range than all but the longest range Autoattacks in the game, meaning its more than long range enough to destroy the enemy squishy-- especially considering that the popular ADCs tend to ... well, not be Cait.

Sammystorm1 votes

That is only partly true. This statement assumes that the enemy squishy is autoing annie. Which is usually not happening.

Sammystorm1 votes

it is pretty terrible for a mage. It means you have to move into basically auto attack range to land a stun. Most mages have their utility spells on at least 700 range.

The Soulforged1 votes

{quoted}

it is pretty terrible for a mage. It means you have to move into basically auto attack range to land a stun. Most mages have their utility spells on at least 700 range.

You act as if everyone is a mage who can kill you while kiting you from a long range ;)

Sammystorm1 votes

It means she is easily kited unless she blows flash or she wastes stun on low priority targets. She is great in 1 v1 situations though.

GorillazNtheMyst2 votes

Agree entirely. Annie's stun is just as oppressive - if not worse - than Veigar's, and she has it from lvl 1 on. Once she gets her stun up she can lord it over you, zoning you away from CS for whole minutes if she wants. Not sure what anyone is supposed to about this.

You'll think I'm silly, but I think Taric's stun is also pretty oppressive. They nerfed Zilean's click-to-bomb main ability because of its "oppressive" quality, but a click-to-stun ability apparently isn't OP. Rito pls.

SlushieDee4 votes

And then they added a click-to-bomb to Tristana, that can be put on towers AND damage can be increased by autoattacks. Fair.

kile1472 votes

The difference is that her bomb doesn't do as much damage without follow up from auto-attacks.

Sire Hippington2 votes

The reasons to rework veigar are perfectly resonable, and if a champion is 'balanced on a knife's edge, and the slightest change to a range or damage value can be the difference between unplayable or overbearing', thats a clear sign that the kit needs some bigger changes, just as it happend to veigar.

However, keeping annie or ryze as they are defintly isn't resonable...

Loken Stoneheart2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Burnt Light,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=j8LEewl6,comment-id=,timestamp=2015-04-04T05:32:08.537+0000)

While old Veigar needed to rely on Event Horizon's immediate stun to zone out potential threats, keeping its current iteration meant we either needed to reduce Veigar's damage (but you can't reduce a 100-0 burst mage to 100-20) or tackle his outright reliability. Ultimately we went with the latter.

Ultimately we went with the latter both.

He can't one shot for crud, his laning is even worse, his E is pretty much useless and thus his W is useless, and to top it all off he lost DFG. He lost 120% in AP ratios (his W isn't an ability anymore, there goes 40% of his kit's total damage), lost DFG (there goes roughly another 40%!), and they STILL nerfed his E.

Zelnorack1 votes

I think I made a thread similar to this back when it was first announced... but much more rage-filled. Like... It was filled with my indignant feelings towards the "compensation".

I think I had a few examples, yet I somehow overlooked Annie. Good work bringing an actual comparison with someone who does a similar job to old Veigar.

Fuzzleberry1 votes

Bring back old veigar so he can actually do shit!

Sammystorm1 votes

still do not understand why you make this comparison. Veigar had twice the range and didn't have to stack spells to get a stun. Usually the best tibber stun requires a flash to get in position.

lB2kGRlc8y3 votes

Veigar's stun pre-nerf was a measly 50 range more than tibbers, and it didn't fill in the entire circle. It also didn't stop any champions besides tristana and tryndamere from jumping right past it. The stun required a lot of pre-thought, as veigar had to defend himself (usually placing the close edge near him for champs with charges) while also needing to land the outer edge on the enemy. There was always a delay to his E anyways, forcing him to painfully telegraph his intent every time he tried to use it. Unlike annie, when the enemy used their brains and decided to get qss or banshee's to counter the stun, he lost 35% of his damage, as nobody would eat the meteor if not forced to, but annie's single target nuke and cone attack would always hit a target gunning for her face. Annie also has the option of using her single target nuke to stun the target, which was infinitely more reliable in duels than landing Event Horizon's awkward ass hit box against the mobility creep meta that plagues leage.

Sammystorm1 votes

the inner edge of the circle is only 50 units further away. The outer edge is substantially farther away almost 1050 if I remember correctly. I am not going to debate whether or not viegar got hit too hard or not. I am saying that the comparison to viegar and annie does not make sense and should not be used. A closer comparison to veigar would be someone like syndra. Annie fills a substantially different role then viegar and she also plays substantially different. Also your post is full of things that are kind of true but not are too loaded with bias to be accurate. Veigar had a .25 second delay with a cast animation that is barely noticeable on top of huge range. that doesn't require much pre-thought nor does that make you telegraph your intent. I can make any champion sound broken if I take their kit and read it in a bias way as well so can we avoid that as well. Simple put. Annie is a substantially different champion then viegar, so much so that the two are not comparable.

KaisadiIIa1 votes

Veigar's stun pre-nerf was a measly 50 range more than tibbers

Veigar max. range stun = 1,050. Annie max. range stun = 745.

Lordofthepittt1 votes

I personally like his rework. I found his damage late game to be extremely strong, and I hated it. I found it to be ridiculous that he could kill me in under one second with his full spell rotation. Honestly, I think the quickest I have ever been killed by him was 0.39 seconds. Pretty much no reaction time for that.

Loken Stoneheart1 votes

{quoted}

I personally like his rework. I found his damage late game to be extremely strong, and I hated it. I found it to be ridiculous that he could kill me in under one second with his full spell rotation. Honestly, I think the quickest I have ever been killed by him was 0.39 seconds. Pretty much no reaction time for that.

And he had to waddle right on up to you to do it. Unlike say. LeBlanc. Who then escapes after immediately blowing you up. Only Veigar doesn't have mobility OR low cooldowns like she does.

SirPacifista1 votes

I Agree with you on every aspect of your post. Nothing more can be said.

BUT i want to say something else,

Im from EUW, (germany) to be blunt, and im quite happy to see people in NA Unite FOR Veigar. In EUW and EUNE most people really have something against Veigar, and i have a hard time argueing with everyone.

So i hope that **YOU ALL ** will help REVERTING VEIGAR back to its old (little) glory, so that he will finaly be playable again ;D

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