VELKOZ's state right now.

This may be a long read.

I am a VELKOZ main with 850k+ mastery points. When I read riot's State of Champion Updates Post from about 3 weeks ago, they mentioned how VELKOZ didn't hit mark and that they should have pushed more with him. I would have to disagree. The community really did not want VELKOZ to be reworked from the fear that his perfect balanced state cannot be reworked into another perfect balanced state. Riot however was successfully able to do this and if they pushed more as they wanted to afterwards, he would've been overpowered. Good job riot.

In their post they also stated that velkoz's play rate is about the same. This is also wrong. I've been keeping track of his play rate for a while since before his rework. Pre rework, VELKOZ's play rate range between 2.1-2.4% or 2.25% on average. Right after his rework at patch 6.9, his play rate almost doubled to 4.3%. Because of the fact that his new ultimate separated the good from the bad VELKOZ players, since you had to research your enemies or else you did no damage, this was a huge nerf for the NEW 50% of Velkoz players who weren't used to landing his skillshots so his play rate decreased back to his average of about 2.25%. When riot changed his ult to give his passive stacks, his playrate slowly increased. Now, his playrate is 4.67%. That's more than double VELKOZ's average play rate prerework.

Riot, do you still think you didn't hit the mark with VELKOZ? Stop being modest. His playrate is more than double than his pre rework and he remains balanced after his rework. Kudos to you riot. The true damage niche you gave VELKOZ was a good enough niche for more players to pick him. I actually like the new VELKOZ more than the old.

In fact, if his playrate keeps steadily increasing, he may be recognised as annoying by the community and may be nerfed.