Tips for Support Vel'Koz?
Does anyone have any tips for play Vel'Koz as a support? I keep hearing he's a pretty viable support, but I've never played him like that.
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First buy: spellthief's edge, yellow trinket, pots/ward
Second buy: frostfang, pots, wards
Subsequent buys: sightstone, pink ward, swap trinket for red trinket, AP items that give CDR
Vel'koz has the advantage of being able to do true damage via multiple spells, which means that he can scale off CDR in ways that other support champions can't.
How to play in lane: I max spells with this preference R>Q>E>W
I max Q first in lane for poking, after that you need to max E to lower the cooldown so that you can save your teammates more often.
Generally in lane I will try to poke with Q.
If they are in range of E I will try to do the following: Cast E for knockup + damage minions Cast W for damage + passive stacks E and W have hopefully cleared a path for Q to hit your target Cast Q
If you're about to pull this off frequently you are doing your job. Vel'Koz supports not by making his ADC stronger and not by protecting his ADC. Vel'Koz supports by doing so much damage to the enemy team that they will be too weak to win a full engage.
The ninja boots are purely for survivability, both in lane and afterwards, when you are leading your team's vision and supporting you can't be ducking out on them (especially the adc) when things go a bit sour. Morello's brings the cdr, mana sustain and healing debuff you need both for lane and afterwards and torment ensures your ranged inits and harass in teamfights will bring the opposing team low very quickly for you own team to finish them off. Rylai's although very useful with torment and getting that extra damage on your ult (mostly due to the better slow than your ult brings) is a finisher to give you more cc and damage late game. This can be easily switched out as a last item for situational but i strongly recommend the rest. Notice i do NOT fully upgrade frostfang. Money is better spent elsewhere, since you will need sightstone before or by the time laning is over and the poke from this item is no longer important. He doesnt need the slow from the active item, the cdr isnt worth the extra money investment needed for it. avoid.
He's very aggressive support. You need to develop a kill or be killed strategy with your ADC, so he's pretty terrible support in solo que. Be sure to use your passive for damage and use your minimal peeling effects on your abilities to save your ADC when necessary. His high base damage makes him dangerous as a support.
He is very decent as a poke/cc support, his Q, E, and ult can all peel hard with cc and damage, items like 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, 
, and can make him horrifying as a lockdown support, and for boots you can take 
, or 
, or even 
.
he doesn't scale that good but has an amazing early game. abuse it
poke relentlessly - since you don't need to cs, you never need to use an ability to last hit you're free to be nonstop aggressive. Your mana pool should be used 100% for poking, just throw that shit out on cooldown. You won't do THAT much damage until your first back, but afterwards you'll be very strong, lots of bully potential.
The nice thing about AP poke supports is that they're a natural counter to engage supports, which are the most popular, so it's good to have one AP poke support in your champ pool.
If it goes super late sell the frost fang and get something else
I build him tanky as either an AP bruiser or even going full tank. His base damage is really high. If you want to increase his damage focus on pen rather than AP. Learn the geometry for his Q. Swiftness boots are great on him. Liandry's is almost always a standard item on him. The new Zz'rot Portal could be good on him as a hybrid tank item.
Here is a build I have for him, in this game I ended up going full tank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntr3vva3nWc