Thoughts on Vel'Koz from a Vel'Koz player
Since S4 Vel'Koz has been the champion I've been most comfortable and skilled with. I mean honestly, I'm not good at any other champion. XD! So it concerns me to see the way Vel'Koz is being changed and the context comments in the patchnotes.
First of all, I don't think Vel'Koz needed any changes in the first place. This is a champ I usually get S grades with and I easily pulled impressive 70-80% winrates in plat when I was playing ranked with him. So as somebody who plays him relatively well I never had any complaints about him.
I understand that his low popularity is seen as a problem by Riot, but I really wish you guys would stop mucking around with a champion's mechanics in an attempt to raise its popularity. There are a lot of champs that are objectively weaker that are unpopular, why not pay more attention to those champs?
I have some issues with the changes to Vel'Koz and the attitude about him from Riot.
- The "research" mechanic is a cool idea thematically but it was not executed very well specifically because Vel'Koz is a high base dmg champ that thrives with magic pen. Converting his ult to true damage doesn't mesh with that at all because now to take full advantage of it he needs to use a different build. However, this is barely relevant because not many champs build a lot of MR. This isn't season 2. So basically Vel'Koz is most effective by building enough penetration to cut through base MR+runes. The new mechanic only helps against tanks.
Side note: I'm really glad you gave back the passive stacking on ult. That was needed for the exact reasons given in the patch notes, so good job on that one.
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This brings me to my other issue. I disagree with the idea that he should be especially good at killing tanks. There is little challenge in landing his combo on tanks, so that would be a low-risk/high-reward strength for him to have. It's not healthy. If you push further in this direction you'll end up with a problem and you'll respond by nerfing him heavily. Not fun for people like me who actually play him! Tanks shouldn't feel like they are automatically going to die every teamfight because the other team has Vel'Koz. Given that tanks have very little counterplay against his mechanics, he shouldn't be any better at killing them than he already is.
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I also disagree with the idea that we need to be pushed away from using a waveclear centric strategy. I understand that focusing on waveclear is considered boring and lame, but given his mechanics it is often the only available strategy. There are a lot of champs that he can't fight in the early game, or ever 1v1 for the entire game. A lot of those champs actually have good waveclear on top of easily beating him in 1v1. I simply cannot envision him functioning without a waveclear focused laning phase unless you want to give him radically different tools for laning against
Of course, against most other mids he needs to compete with their waveclear anyway since he doesn't really have any particular advantages over them in duels.
Anyway, I don't have any suggestions for increasing his popularity or improving him. I think champs without dashes are generally less popular and that's just a reality we should accept, lol.
To me he's fine. I can play him mid, support, or top reliably. Even the blasphemous mage instead of ADC strategy I usually win with. He's good, I can't complain. I think it's fine to have obscure champs that are unpopular as long as they're actually pretty good and some players enjoy them.
