With the mana cost normalization that happened a while ago i found out that viktor's laser now cost more than his ult. I don't think this is right as no other champion has an ability that is higher than their ult. (not counting ults like anivia's or maokai's) This is really unfair to viktor players as in certain situations they have to cast their ult and use the cd when they could use a laser.
traditional supports commonly have a basic ability that costs more than their ultimate (nami, janna, soraka, et al) as well as several mages that have an ability with strong wave clear potential (lux, morgana, viktor, et al). there isn't really a hard rule here—a mana cost is just one of several factors that 'gate' an ability's use, so we try to balance it around those factors within the context of the kit and the scenarios within that champion may find themselves.
viktor as a specific example is someone we'd like to look at sometime in the future (re: his mana situation) but the relationship between his death ray cost and his chaos storm cost isn't inherently problematic.
i find it funny that there would ever be a situation where the aoe normal skill of a champion is better than the aoe ult of that same champion.
Same thing with Yi Q and then his Ult.
cough poppy cough
There are several champions that have mana costs higher than their ultimate, but many of them are high impact abilities on a low cooldown, so it needs to be gated by mana, or are abilities that have too high of an impact to have a low mana cost. Viktor does not really fall into either of these categories, so his Death Ray should have a lower mana cost, regardless of the mana cost of Chaos Storm.
Many champions have basic abilities that cost more mana than their ults.
Mana's one of the gates to stop you from spamming your spells. Cooldown is another. Ults are gated primarily by cooldown, so most champions get to enjoy a reasonable manacost of 100 on them.
A lot of champs have this. Riot gives some champs absurd mana costs for no reason. Xerath's Q costs 120 mana and his W is 110.
