(aka summary)

NOTE: the example clickbait build is an example. DO NOT blindly follow it. The actual recommendation is in the "other items" section.

The is an advanced guide that explains how you abuse the unique base stats (read: Phenomenal Evil Power) of Veigar to maximum effect with items , and what it does to Veigar.

In this guide, it is assumed that you are familiar enough with Veigar to play decently at your elo(read: you get at least 250 stacks of passive at 25 mins into the game most of the time). The specifics on things like how to lane, how to farm, teamfight positionings, roam timings, combos and such are covered in multiple other guides here on mobafire, so I won't be going into that.

Skip to "The Philosophy Behind Veigar" and "Other Items" if you're fed up with the obligatory exposition of basic Veigar knowledge I'm about to present you with.

Play as a normal Veigar would. Getting the same core build means you do damage similar to a full AP Veigar regardless of what you build next.

Is this a short joke?!?

I'm skipping this part. It's done before, and done better than what I can do.

If you're new to Veigar and is looking for guides that elaborate on this section, I recommend Veigar for Noobs by Ramian. It's a guide that covers just about anything you want to look for when you're new to Veigar.

Veigar is a AP carry. What does a AP carry need the most? AP, cooldown reduction and magic penetration, each adds multiplicatively to your damage output. So why are there things like Dead Man's Plate in your build you might ask? It all comes down to this one fact:
You get 9~12 AP per minute on your passive. At 30 minutes you'll have around 320 base AP from your passive alone, ~300 base AP from your build if you build Morellonomicon Rabadon's Deathcap Void Staff, and money for the next big item that may or may not add to your AP.

What's another 135 AP from Luden's Tempest or 108 AP from Liandry's Torment going to do when you already have 800+ AP? Nothing much.

Your skill are balanced around having a cr*p ton of AP, AND you already have a cr*p ton of AP from your passive. The marginal benefit of more AP from items is much less than what a normal AP champion would get.

Imagine, if you will, you have 50000AP, 2000 health, 50 armor and 50 magic resist, 40% CDR, limitless mana, and 350 movespeed. What will you value more, 60 extra AP or 475 extra health?(both cost 1250g based on needlessly large rod and giants belt) In Veigar's case, you have a similarly skewed value as the example, but less obvious. However, that difference is all it takes to elevate certain items above what you'd normally get.

As much as it sounds insane, what I'm getting at is that AP from items doesn't matter much to Veigar after the first 3 items. Everything in this guide follows from this mindset.

With that in mind, not limiting yourself to items with high AP after your core build open up SO many opportunities.

Flat AP
Never take flat AP runes unless you're comfortable enough to go for early lane dominance, or you're opponent is at the level that they will ruthlessly bully you out of lane if you can't fight back. They fall off for Veigar even faster than normal AP mids. To quote a long forgotten souce*, Veigar's early game is a joke. You're better off avoiding trades altogether early game most of the time.

CDR
After some testing, flat CDR and scaling CDR both work wonders on Veigar. As long as you limit yourself to mostly using Baleful Strike in lane, you will be able to stack up a lot more than 15 extra AP than what you would if you took flat AP, most of the times. Refer to Math section for more detailed effect of how much CDR helps.

Magic Pen
The other multiplier to your damage that is scarce on items. With my sample rune page, you get 14 magic pen. Thats nearly an additional Haunting Guise worth of penetration. You can see in the Other items: Liandry's Torment damage calculation section how much it benefits you.

*please link me to it in the comments if anyone know which mobafire guide it came from, I'd like to pay my respects.

These are the first thing you get every game. Everyone builds these items for a reason.


Morellonomicon
Your first love, it is pretty self explanatory. 20% CDR, mana sustain, and 100 AP for a kickoff. This is the item that helps you stack best, and the 100 AP early when you don't have that much AP is vital to you're relevance early game.
P.S. If you don't know why you should take this item first in most circumstances, you'll probably need more Veigar games before this guide starts making sense.

Rabadon's Deathcap
Also pretty self explanatory. 35% buff to your passive on top of all the other cr*p ton of AP. If you're not thinking of getting this item, you shouldn't really be playing Veigar in the first place. Even support Veigar builds this as a third item.

Void Staff
Again, pretty self explanatory. You do magic damage. You can already *100-0 squishies Twitch. What's next? Putting the hurt on tanks Galio and off-tanks Jax, of course.
*defenition of 100-0: Killing a target from full health with your burst in an instance.

The common factor here is you get items that multiplicatively augments your damage. 300 base AP is enough for a Veigar

This is just proof I'm not sprouting the numbers from nowhere. TL;DR.
edit: it turned into some illustrative points of my reasoning all on its own. Read at your own peril. It's mostly basic math though.


AP marginal effect
At 800 AP, damage increase per 100 AP

Baleful Strike
230+0.6 AP at 800 AP=710
230+0.6 AP at 900 AP=770
8.5% increase

Dark Matter
300+1 AP at 800 AP=1100
300+1 AP at 900 AP=1200
9% increase

Primordial Burst
325+0.75 AP at 800 AP=925
325+0.75 AP at 900 AP=1000
8% increase

At 0 AP, 100 more AP gives around a 27% increase in damage.

At 10000000 AP, 100 more AP gives around a 0.01% increase in damage.

See the difference?

This means that any AP you get from items after the first few is just plain less effective than any other AP champion, since you a lot more AP from passive stacks.

CDR effect
The number of times you can cast spells in a set amount of time increases your passive stacking rate AND the actual amount of damage you do why you're casting spells on enemy champions. So in truth, the damage you do is more than just linear to your cast per unit time. With the base damage of spells and the stack before more CDR is built not increasing after you bought them, I recon your actual damage output is about the 1.3th power to your cast per unit time. However, since those are shaky grounds, I'll just go over the cast per unit time calculations.

If we set cast per unit time on 0% CDR to 1, abbreviated C/t
On 5% CDR we get ~1.05 C/t
On 10% CDR we get ~1.11 C/t
On 15% CDR we get ~1.18 C/t
On 20% CDR we get ~1.25 C/t
On 25% CDR we get ~1.33 C/t
On 30% CDR we get ~1.43 C/t
On 35% CDR we get ~1.54 C/t
On 40% CDR we get ~1.67 C/t
On 45% CDR we get ~1.81 C/t

The C/t increase you get for the same amount of CDR increases.

Using the example rune/mastery page, on level 9 with a finished Morellonomicon, you get 35% CDR instead of the usual 20% CDR. That's 1.54 C/t to 1.25 C/t. You get more C/t from the runes and masteries than the Morellonomicon itself. You can also achieve the same without the CDR runes with a Ionian Boots of Lucidity.

Magic penetration effect
The percent stuff below is Damage Effectiveness. It means the ratio of the magic damage you'll deal to a target with that much MR with that much penetration in comparison to a 0 MR guy.

Against 50 MR
nothing: 66.5%
14 penetration: 73.5%
29 penetration: 83.5%
29 + 35% penetration: 96%
44 + 35% penetration: 100%


Against 100 MR
nothing: 50%
14 penetration: 54%
29 penetration: 58.5%
29 + 35% penetration: 79%
44 + 35% penetration: 90%


Against 200 MR
nothing: 33%
14 penetration: 35%
29 penetration: 37%
29 + 35% penetration: 50%
44 + 35% penetration: 54%

The actual effectiveness of flat magic penetration depends on your target's MR, being the most effective the lower the MR the target has, until you reach 0 MR after penetration. After that the penetration is wasted.

(Yes, you cannot penetrate to negative MR. It only works when you decrease the MR by a flat amount, of which most of the ways to do are removed in recent seasons. e.g. Amumu's passive, the old Black Cleaver, Nasus's E for armor, Fiddlesticks passive, Ryze's E, baron nashor's aura, Rammus's E for armor, Abyssal Mask's aura, etc.)

The n% damage increase I'll use later in the guide means the damage after the change is 100+n% the amount of damage before the change.

e.g.
On a 100 MR target, Garen's ult does 100% increased damage if it deals true damage instead of magic damage. The damage type from magic with 50% damage effectiveness to true damage with 100% damage effectiveness. (disregarding damage modifiers from masteries)

1. This is not theory crafting.

I have personally tried every single item I listed below (and some others that didn't work so well)on my plat account. All the item breakdown below is an analysis from the actual games I've played, if generalized. They most definitely won't work 100% of the time, hence the "when to get" at the bottom of each item. One of the unsaid condition that for me to be sure the items work is that your game is somewhere around silver to diamond elo. I have no idea what master+ or bronze game feels like if I'm the one playing, so I'm not covering those parts.

2. This is NOT a troll guide or fun build guide.

I know the whole thing looks strange, as in not many people build some of the items I listed, but that is precisely the reason I listed them. Also the reason why I didn't spend much space explaining the core build and boots, because people know that already. The ones that doesn't work much, I'll state it pretty clearly in the "when to get" section after each item.
There's a reason the core build looks so similar to most other guides: they work on Veigar.

3. The next section is all built upon the fact that you already have or are planning to build the core build of Morellonomicon, Rabadon's Deathcap and Void Staff.

4. All item analysis below are generalized. If for example there's a Yasuo that for some reason went triple Negatron Cloak and always survives your full combo with 100 health after your core build, it IS worth getting the extra AP from a Needlessly Large Rod that you have no choice but to build into a Luden's Tempest later. You adapt to specific scenarios like this. You don't have to buy an Infinity Edge just to prove me wrong.

5. I will not recommend you to build this and that except the core build, which everyone builds anyways. What This guide is about is explaining WHEN and WHY which items are built, or avoided.

Without further ado, let's get into the breakdown of items other than your core build.

Luden's echo is one of the more popular Veigar 5th or 6th item. It gives 10% MS on top of the 100 AP and unique passive that's a bit like a second thunderlords.

It can also be a very powerful second item, giving you enough damage to start bursting down squishies at 70~100% health, depending on how early you finished this item.

At 800 AP (~35 minutes into the game where you finished your core), additional 135 AP gives you
a 11% increase in Q damage,
a 12% increase in W damage and
a 11% increase in R damage.
The passive gives a around 3% increase in a QWR combo damage.

Conclusion: late game it gives 14% damage increase + 10% movement speed for 3200g, early game it gives decent damage with 10% movement speed
When to get: Just after Morellonomicon if you're winning hard early and looking to roam, or you really like the movement speed, or get it as a luxury 5th/6th item when you're ahead enough that you can win even if you build an Infinity Edge next.

I'm just going to state that the buring passive is USELESS on Veigar. If you hit someone with your spell, they either won't have too much current health left to burn, or they are the full tanks who will take a lot more damage from the 3rd Dark Matter to the face than the pesky burn.

80 AP, 300 health, 15 magic penetration. The true attraction of this item comes from the flat magic penetration.

You'll probably never build this item early game. It is expensive, you don't really have the high AP for the penetration to really kick in, and the 80 AP for 3100g just isn't enough for Veigar with his high AP ratio and (relatively) low base damage skills.

On the other hand, assuming you build this after your core build of Void Staff Sorcerer's Shoes Rabadon's Deathcap Morellonomicon,

At 800 AP, an additional 108 AP gives you
a 9.5% increase in Q damage,
a 10% increase in W damage and
a 9% increase in R damage.

And the 15 penetration gives you
a 4% increase to 50 MR targets
a 14% increase to 100 MR targets
a 8% increase to 200 MR targets

If you take the AP benefit to be 9.5% for all skills,
The item on a whole gives you
a 14% increase to 50 MR targets
a 25% increase to 100 MR targets
a 18% increase to 200 MR targets

Conclusion: late game 14%~25% damage increase depending on target MR + 300 health for 3100g
When to get: You're needed to kill the offtanks. Though, most of the time you're better off with a Haunting Guise and only upgrade it after you finished your full build.

One of the signiture items that signifies a serious AP monster.

You'll have 2000 mana if took tear first, then Morellonomicon, then finished Archangel's Staff, and around 3000 mana at lvl 18. That is 170 AP. The ONLY item in the whole league of legend that brings a significant enough amount of AP to Veigar to really consider getting after Rabadon's Deathcap.

It also gives you infinite mana(as in you won't ever run out), but that is already the case if you took the meditation mastery and Morellonomicon

The gigantic shield (600~750) it gives is also a pretty big survivability boost.

However, this is only that good for Veigar on paper, since you can't really fit it into your build order. The core build contributes too much to your damage to delay, so you'll only build Archangel's Staff as a 4th item, or risk sacrificing your midgame. Even if you delayed by just a single Tear of the Goddess, you'll lengthen your (insert joke here) early game by a load where you can't roam at all. That hurts your team a lot at that point in the game.

Conclusion: Powerful if you can get it working, but otherwise screws up your build timing.
When to get: When you're actually going for a fun build. Doesn't work well most of the time.

This was actually one of my favorite 1st item on Veigar back in the days when Q was a single target spell, E was instant, and Veigar can in fact go for early lane dominace.
Anyways!
300+200 health, 300+100 mana, 60+40 AP, a powerful sustain passive. This is one of the best all round items for any mage.

Any mage that didn't already build Morellonomicon, that is. The 300+100 mana becomes obsolete then.

60+40 AP is also a ridiculous amount for such a tanky item, but Veigar is one of the few mages that doesn't really appreciate the extra AP that much.

300+200 health and the Mana health perpetual machine is the only true attraction left on this item for Veigar. It's still pretty good, as your laning phase really needs help, but is less mindboggling powerful like it is on Karthus or Cassiopeia and more a crutch that you won't need much late game.

In the end, what kills it is the same reason as how Archangel's Staff died. You can't really fit it in your build, and it takes time to grow. You simply cannot sacrifice your core build for this, and a late RoA is pretty much useless on Veigar.

Conclusion: Screws up your timing, but makes laning phase a breeze.
When to get: when you're gettnig destroyed in lane by a hybrid damage champion like Akali, and probably not even then. Avoid building this if you can.

The ultimate AP carry survival item. 70 AP, 45 armor, 10% CDR with one of the best active in the game.

This is the defensive item that you can afford early game while still not doing 0 damage.

10% CDR is a huge boon early game after your Morellonomicon, but when forced to buy Zhonya's Hourglass, you're probably going to get it even before Morellonomicon, that means a slight delay to your CDR instead.
See math section for exactly how awesome the extra 10% CDR is.

70AP is a bit meh, but doesn't matter much in the late game. Its also enough to make enemies at least respect your damage somewhat if you bought it as the first/second item.

45 armor is awesome against ad assassin midlanes, since they normally go heavy flat armor penetration, that's around 33% physical damage reduction (refer to MATH section for 29 pen, 50MR vs 100MR calculation).
The active is just flat out awesome. Makes you nearly undivable either in the middle of your team or under a turret, and hard counters Zed and Fizz and Karthus's ult.

Conclusion:Some AP and a gigantic survivability boost against burst and physical damage for 2900g. Opens up aggressive plays when your team is somewhat coordinated.
When to build:build when there are enemy champion(s) that can sometimes kill you even if you're in the safest position you can find, like Irelia, Akali, Zed, Fizz, and such. Or if you're getting destroyed in lane.

70 AP, 10% CDR, 60 MR, and a bubble of OPness passive.
This is another one of the best defensive item you can get while still not sacraficing all your damage early game.

70AP is a bit meh, but doesn't matter much in the late game.
If built early, 70 AP is enough to make enemies at least respect your damage somewhat, especially since you're most likely to get this only against squishy AP mid carries.

60 MR is the difference between a 100-0 by Annie without using ignite and flashing away with one sliver of health even if she used ignite. It's somewhere around 35% damage reduction to all incoming magic damage early game.

10% CDR is a huge boon early game after your Morellonomicon, but when forced to buy Banshee's Veil, you're probably going to get it even before Morellonomicon, that means a slight delay to your CDR instead.

Finally, the bubble of OPness. This is the ultimate counter to Malphite, Ashe, and many other such initiators. Being the hypercarry that you are lategame, it's pretty much a given that your life is worth more as a menace lurking behind your frontlines than a dead yordle after soaking up a lot of ults.

Conclusion:Decent stats while providing you with some allowance for mistakes in positioning late game, and keeps you from feeding the enemy burst mage, all for 3000 gold
When to get: when you're getting your sorry behind kicked (or about to) by a AP midlaner or if you get picked off a lot out of teamfights due to some CC engage like Enchanted Crystal Arrow.

The ultimate item for Veigar on paper.
80AP, 10% CDR, 7% MS, 250 mana, and the notoriously controvertial passive.

Assuming you bought this after your core build since its just a Sheen with better stats without a lot of AP to back it up.
You'll not benefit from the CDR much, since you'll probably have maxed CDR by the time you have the AP to make your enhanced AA hurt. Otherwise, it's a awesome stat.

From earlier calculations, 80 AP gives around 9.5% damage increase across the board at 800 AP before this item.

250 mana isn't much when you're that late into the game, especially if you have a Morellonomicon.

Finally, the passive. At 900 AP, a enhanced AA deals around 90 physical+520 magical damage. Thats arond the damage of 2/3 of a Baleful Strike or half a Dark Matter. Considering Veigar's cooldown buff on Dark Matter from passive stacks, at best you'll be able to fire off a Lich Bane enhanced AA every time you use QW if your target is a frontliner. That's around a 30% damage increase from lichbane's passive alone.

Sound great right?

YOU WILL NOT GET THAT CHANCE TO AA THAT OFTEN. You'll probably benefit more from getting to a better position to fire off your next round of skills, or to aim your W better to hit without stunning with E(what with extra short cooldown on W once you have passive stacks), or running around to just plain not die. More likely, you'll get off maybe 3 hits in a team fight where you fire off a total of 6 casts of Q and W each and an R, if you're lucky. That's less than 12% increased damage that only applies to the enemy frontline that doesn't threaten you much AND its only single target, for a total of around 23% single target damage increase for the whole item if you still hit as many Q and W's as you should without hampered by the need to AA

Or more even realistically a net decrease in damage output if you really tried to AA since you either die more easily or miss loads of Q W opportunities.

Conclusion: Below average stats with a passive you can't really use much. 3200 gold down the sink. It only works on paper, or when you're a god that somehow makes it work. If you're that good, I recommend a Nashor's Tooth to replace your CDR runes to go along with your Lich Bane to utilize your high AP to really dish out damage. Maybe add a Runaan's Hurricane to round out as the highest DPS in LOL?
When to get: Don't.

In all seriousness, the stats a Lich Bane gives are all great on Veigar. It's just that you can't use the enhanced AA to much effect, and the fact that Morellonomicon covers most of its benefitial stats much better for a lower cost.

My personal favorite. 60 Armor, 425 health, and 60 movement speed until you AA.
Consider this. Your Q does 700 damage. Your W does 1100 damage. Your ult does around 9001 damage. Why the hell would you even auto attack for 80 damage that gets reduced even harder by enemy armor as you have no armor penetration?
(No, Lich Bane is there for people who's so bad they can't hit Q and W or people who is so good on Veigar that they don't need to read guides on Veigar anyway.)

It's easy. You just don't.

Slows and stun decreases the charge VERY slowly, mostly designed to prevent the 100 stack AA slow/damage bonus, but that doesn't matter to you much since you're just here for the MS.

Together, this means Dead Man's Plate basically gives you 60 permanent MS. Thats around 17% movement speed, if you want to compare it with Luden's Tempest and Lich Bane.

Being a full tank item, it basically makes sure that whatever diver will NEVER be able to assassinate you as long as you don't misposition too badly.

Conclusion: The single best item in terms of opening up aggressive plays, with a whopping 0% increase in damage. All for 2900 gold.
When to get: When divers like Xin Zhao or Irelia menaces you a lot, but you still want to play aggressively.

This is pretty much just a reminder that you can get this item.
If you need an explanation for this, you shouldn't buy it anyway.

Treasure your life. You only live (insert however many times you died) times. And remember to report that Malzahar who likes to flash ult you and your team for not interrupting his ult. And the rest of the enemy team for winning. And the Baron Nashor for going AFK for 20 minutes.

800 health, 10% CDR, 200% health regen, and a strange regenerative passive.
First of all, you need more health than your base amount to make the passive work unless you took scaling health AND reached lvl 18. So don't count on this item alone to get to 2750 health. Warmog's Armor is better built alongside Liandry's Torment.

The passive gives you a get out of poke free card. Any random damage you take is regenerated unless you're in the middle of a fight, or that "random damage" came from Mordekaiser ult Children of the Grave or some other bullsh*t damage over time skills.

The 800 health makes you nearly impossible to burst down, be it with magic or physical damage. This is one of the alternative ways to deal with that pesky Annie that loves to flash bomb you as a revenge for making her laning phase a boring farmfest, though it doesn't work as well as other defensive items in helping you survive a dive.

Conclusion:For 2850 gold ,you'll never need to worry about sustain, or being low on health after a skirmish and your team wants to go pressure baron nashor.
When to get: If you're expecting a long siege of the enemy base, pressuring for your Master Yi or some other splitpusher to, well, split push. Or when there's a Xerath poking away at you. Niche item that you usually don't get the chance to ustilize to great effect.

A super minion on demand, 60 armor, 30 MR, 10% CDR, 125% hp5
This is one of the WTF items I expect a lot of controversy to come from.

This item is ONLY built as a 6th item.
At that late into the game, an ADC and frontline will suffer a huge penalty in teamfight for building something like the Banner of Command, as they all have stats that scale multiplicatively with each other.

You do too, but look at it this way. Your CDR is maxed, magic penetration from Void Staff, runes and Sorcerer's Shoes pretty much means additional magic penetration won't help that much in most cases, and your AP is already through the roof, so marginal effectiveness of more AP is lower than the average AP carry.

You are practically more like a support than a AP carry when it comes to the last two item's effectiveness, not because you don't scale scale hard off of AP, but because you already broke the scale with with your passive.

The super cannon minion is powerful enough that one alone is enough to push a lane all the way into a turret if you just W once before running off to whereever you're needed. It is also immune to magic damage, so many split pushing tanks will take a long time killing it.
It is also cheap enough that you can just use it as a place holder before you get the 6th item you were originally aiming for.

Conclusion:A surprising item which is less disadvantageous on Veigar than most other champions, with enough defense to make it viable.
When to get:When you really need side lane pressure very late game, and your team lacks a split pusher. Works a lot better against a AP heavy enemy team.

Basically the more generalized version of Banner of Command
55 armor, 55 MR, 125% hp5, loads of movement speed around turrets
And, of course, the active.

The reason Veigar and not someone else should get this item is the same as Banner of Command. Refer to the last chapter.

Zz'Rot Portal's portal have a limited range, but continuously spawn voidspawn and can be a pain to deal with, forcing the enemy to venture out to clear the spawn or post a player there just to defend. It can also be used to delay a lane where the enemy is spawning super minions, whereas a super cannon minion from Banner of Command dies to a single super minion. However, you need to place yourself at risk placing the portal close enough to the enemy turret to make it a real threat, which is a lot less viable an action for veigar than the traditional tank or support this item is designed for.

The movement speed near turrets also makes long retreats after a failed seige safer for Veigar, who has no mobility whatsoever in his skillset.

Conclusion: A surprising item which is less disadvantageous on Veigar than most other champions, with enough defense to make it viable.
When to get:When you really need side lane pressure very late game, and your team lacks a split pusher. Works a lot better when your team has good vision so you're safe enough to place a portal at a side lane.

60 AP, 10% CDR, 50% mp5, Icy Ghosts, and a speedup that you'll probably never see.

The stats are very lackluster for this item, but the cheap 10% CDR can be used to shore up your build if you don't have scaling CDR runes.

The Icy Ghosts or Twin Shadows as I like to refer to it as, is a major boon to Veigar.
At close range, it is a guaranteed W or E hit if your target is out of mobility skills.
In skirmishes, it is free vision of your target and an early warning to potential counter ganks.
It can also spell the difference between a close escape and a messy death, both when you're the hunter or the victim.

You get a mini- Stormraider's Surge if you hold onto it long enough. This takes a lot more time than you can afford holding on to such an item, but if you invade the enemy jungle a lot with your team, you might make it work. Once you get the upgraded tribute passive, this item is worth about as much as most other items.

Conclusion: A very niche item that makes gameplay a lot safer.
When to get: when you're banking a lot on the next fight, or when your team doesn't like to ward the map. Usually not worth buying if you're a mid laner.

vs

Objective before first back: survive, stay in lane, farm with Q.

Not Objective: survive, stay in lane, farm with only auto attack as you're quickly out of mana with the Doran's Shield you decided to start with.

Objective early game: survive, stay in lane, farm even more with Q.

Not Objective: survive, stay in lane, farm with auto attacks as your Q is on cooldown and a not as severe but still glaring lack of mana from your delayed Morellonomicon or its components due to a certain Doran's Shield after your doran's ring.

Suppose you're aiming to stay in lane before backing the first time from 2:00 game time to around 6:00. A Doran's Shield grants 80+288(from health regen) health, and an additional ~20 per trade you take, say 10 times. Add 180 from a Total Biscuit of Rejuvenation, that's around 745 extra health.

Compared to Doran's Ring which gives 60 health and 360 from 2 Total Biscuit of Rejuvenation, thats around 420 extra health.

The Doran's Shield giving 325 more health is worth around 2 Total Biscuit of Rejuvenation.

Doran's ring gives 50% mp5, translated to your 10.5 mp5 from 2 minutes to 6 minutes with an extra 4 mp per minion kill, assuming you have 35, it gives a total of 392 mp. That's 8 casts of Baleful Strike, which tanslates into somewhere around 12 AP if you're trying to get double stacks. It also gives you an extra 15 AP, which helps a lot early in lane.

Conclusion: Doran's ring gives around 392 more extra mp and an extra 15 AP for easier stacking while doran's shield gives around 325 more extra health.
When to get: Get Doran's ring. Always.

vs

The numbers of Doran's Ring can be found in the above chapter of Doran's shield vs Doran's ring.

Despite it's sustainability, the Corrupting Potion is best for people looking for aggressive trades early in lane. The health it gives is barely more than 2 health potions and the mana it gives is less than what a Doran's Ring will give you. The only benefit of this item is from when you are repeatedly forced to back, thus recharging the potion many times before it falls off. Unless, of course, you stack a few Dark Seals. I'm assuming you're not going to stack Dark Seals since it delays Morellonomicon, I hope I don't have to explain why that is bad.

412.5 health and 247.5 mana if you have the Total Biscuit of Rejuvenation mastery for the 10% boost. THAT IS LESS THAN WHAT YOU GET WITH Doran's Ring+2 POTIONS. I don't think I need to tell you how bad that is. Every time you back, you get less mana from Corrupting Potion than from a dorans shield as long as you stay in lane for somewhere around 2.5 minutes.

The only thing going for Corrupting Potion is that every back you get the 412.5 extra health instead of 60 from Doran's Ring.

Conclusion: Doran's ring gives better everything but the 352.5 free health sustain every back.
When to get:Basically Doran's ring. Unless you are certain you will be suffering so much in lane that whatever happens mid-game you'll be irrelevant to the game anyways, in which case it doesn't matter what you get.

vs

Elixir of Iron
-300 health
-25% tenacity
-Path of help meeeeeeeee
-no longer a short joke
Though intended as a initiator/tank item, on the whole it gives so much more survivability to carries than tanks especially against divers. That tenacity is boarderline OP.

The path of iron passive also helps your teamate peel for you better. If they care to, that is.

The ascension from midgethood also makes you a bigger target. Global taunt aquired.

When to get:You're already the target in teamfights.



Elixir of Sorcery
-50 AP
-25 bonus true damage on a 5 second per target cooldown
-15 mp5
The 50 AP is a huge buff......on any AP carry but Veigar. It's just not worth an elixir for that. If my words cannot convince you, then just let the fact that the item is balanced around a normal 400~600 AP champion that gets a ~10% AP increase from the elixir convince you. On Veigar, who most likely have 900~1100 AP endgame, that's ~5% AP increase It's nice, but not that powerful.

The 25 true damage is negligible.
(trivia: once upon a time, the 25 true damage can be triggered by Anivia's Crystallize and similar skills. Anyone know if it does on Event Horizon?)

The 15 mp5 is reundant with the meditation mastery and Morellonomicon.

When to get:You're too big to fail.

This is one of the more important items a Veigar can get. Of course, every champion gets them. What's so special that makes me put it in a guide that doesn't even cover gameplay becuase others did it?

The difference is how you use them. As Veigar, you lose trades. There is one obscure way to discourage trades that is seldom used by people I see. You buy enough Health Potion, and most important of all, keep your health at above 80%. It doesn't just raise the chance of you surviving a fight/gank, it also instills learned helplessness in your laning opponent, making them less inclined to trade or kill you. The early potion wasted on this tactic will more than likely prevent the need of buying as many potions in the long run than if you just sustained and backed normally.

It actually works more often than I expected.

It also discourages ganks in solo queue. Consider it an investment like Control Ward, if more subtle.

This is some next level psychological bullsh*t that will result in more pressure on your sidelane as the enemy midlaner might roam more and the enemy jungler will have more time to go to other lanes, but it IS an option. You control which game it happens, so how much it actually benefits your w/l ratio is up to how well you read the game and players.

Conclusion:The ultimate selfish buy. I love it. Works on other champions too, but benefits Veigar a lot more than most.
When to get: In games where you think you can do a lot more good if you farmed up, and might suffer otherwise, and your other lanes can hopefully survive the enemy attention.

Don't buy Lich Bane. I get triggered HARD every time I see one on Veigar. Let's spread the love to the league community together!
(no, this isn't the sole reason for me making this guide.)

I learned a lot from jhoijhoi's Making a Guide guide that guides prospective guidemaker to making guides. Thank jhoijhoi for preventing this guide from taking the form of a huge wall of text.

I welcome constructive criticism, ESPECIALLY on why I should also include such and such items and attacks on my reasonings, but a flat "lich bane is sh-=*t on veigar" without an explanation will be ignored even if I agree with the statement.

Try to keep it logical, so I can better understand your point.

Anyway, thanks for reading this Veigar item guide. Do try different items out sometimes!

Abyssal Mask
Randuin's Omen
Rylai's Crystal Scepter

10/16/2017- Expanded Math section. It now contains more information than just proof of numbers i'll Fixed some more typos.
10/13/2017- Added recommendation of flat CDR runes (ft. Raiman), expanded philosophy section. Added starting items doran's ring, doran's shield, corrupting potion for completeness sake.
10/6/2017- Added even more emphasize on how the example build is an EXAMPLE.
10/4/2017- Added RoA, Archangels, Health Potion. Generally smoothed out wordings.
10/3/2017- Created guide.