Riot said over and over "he seems to be doin too well on PBE, bursting people so well we had to nerf his ult."
Now that he's gone live, he is considered utter trash, the buffs do not appear to have improved him very much.
Did Riot notice any oddities with his winrate or player complaints before "compensating" him?
Players complained that his E was pretty useless when they tried to use it the way they had before (instant AoE stun). Riot's response was pretty much, "Well, that's okay, he can trap people inside the cage. Instant AoE stunning is a bit too powerful anyway."
And they were correct. An instant AoE stun on Veigar was too powerful. However, their reasoning that "he should trap people in the cage with him" does not live up to the fantasy. Veigar gets NO benefits for trapping opponents inside the cage, except zoning them. If there was some kind of debuff applied to enemies trapped--even one that scaled up depending on the number of champions inside--that would be cool. That would be worth it. However, in the current state, all it really does is zone.
Veigar does stack damage faster than ever. People were outraged that his AP ratios got nerfed. He NEEDED them to be nerfed, his damage is off the charts once he gets rolling. He's INCREDIBLY snowbally now more than ever. But because he no longer has reliability in his stun and Q, he can't duel, and that hurts him alot. If he can stay in the backlines in a teamfight, he's fine, but his duel potential went way down. People were used to dueling as Veigar, and tried to apply those old habits to the new changes. It didn't work, obviously. However, Veigar now does well in teamfights where he can wall off his own back line so he doesn't get dove on, and unload Qs and Ws while everyone is clustered up (lower cooldown on W makes this viable. YES YOU CAN LAND IT ON PEOPLE WHEN IN GROUPS.)
TL;DR: Veigar has craptons of damage, more than ever, so Riot felt justified in hitting his reliability. Players expecting old-Veigar patterns got dumpstered when it didn't work. Riot may have over done the nerfs, and are rebuffing him, but he's not quite as weak as first perceived.
