Welcome to my guide! My name is SkyYoRick. I am playing League of Legends since Season 1-2 starting on EUE and then later creating new account on EUW and continuing there.



Click on the picture for my op.gg profile!
My ranks during previous seasons were:

Season 3 - Silver III (Only placements)
Season 4 - Gold II (playing Mid and Support Vel'Koz only)
Season 5 - Platinum III (playing Mid and Support Vel'Koz only)
Season 6 - Platinum I (playing Mid and Support Vel'Koz only)

I play only Vel'Koz since he came out on PBE (so since his release). Before Vel'Koz I have mained: Lux, Zyra, Swain, Malzahar, Xerath, Brand (maybe if you enjoy playing Vel'Koz, you might enjoy to play one of these champions as well).

About the champion:

Vel'Koz is really strong poke/combo/burst mage that relies on landing his skillshots. If he lands all his skillshots perfectly he can instantly delete almost anyone with his true damage. His kill potential pre level 6 is kind of weak, but after level 6 he becomes disintegrating monster that wants to learn everything about his enemies. Vel'Koz provides in teamfights a lot of AoE magic damage combined with true damage. He is immobile champion so assassins, CC and overall champions with a lot of mobility and gap closers are his biggest counters.



What is important to itemize on Vel'Koz:

cooldown reduction (to be able to proc your passive as much as possible)
mana sustain (mana - to be able to spam as much as needed)
ability power (to hurt as much as possible)
survivability (to make sure you survive to dish out as much damage)

Even though I am not the best Vel'Koz player I hope my guide will be helpful to you. I am sorry that my English is not perfect and I know it will bug some of you, so I want to apologize ahead. If you have any relevant questions you are free to ask them in the comments or you can add me in game. I will always find some time and I am more than happy to answer all of them as best as I can. Enjoy!

Vel'Koz's abilities apply Organic Deconstruction to enemies on hit. If 3 stacks are accumulated, the enemy will take a burst of true damage.


Cost: 40/45/50/55/60 Mana
Range: 1050
Vel'Koz shoots a bolt of plasma that splits in two on reactivation or upon hitting an enemy. The bolt slows and damages on hit.
Vel'Koz shoots a plasma bolt that deals 80/120/160/200/240 (+60% Ability Power) Magic Damage and applies a slow of 70% that decays over 1/1.4/1.8/2.2/2.6 second(s).Upon reactivation or upon hitting an enemy, the bolt splits at a 90 degree angle.Killing a unit with this refunds 50% of the Mana Cost.



Cost: 50/55/60/65/70 Mana
Range: 1050
Vel'Koz opens a rift to the void that deals an initial burst of damage, then explodes for a second burst of damage after a delay.
Vel'Koz opens a rift to the void that deals 30/50/70/90/110 (+15% Ability Power) Magic Damage. After a delay, it deals an additional 45/75/105/135/165 (+25% Ability Power) Magic Damage.Void Rift has a 2 second cooldown between casts.



Cost: 50/55/60/65/70 Mana
Range: 810
Vel'Koz causes an area to explode, knocking up enemies, and knocking close enemies slightly away.
Vel'Koz disrupts a nearby area which, after a delay, deals 70/100/130/160/190 (+30% Ability Power) Magic Damage and knocks up enemies hit for 0.75 seconds.Any enemies hit that are close to Vel'Koz will be pushed slightly in the direction the ability was cast.



Cost: Mana
Range: 1575
Vel'Koz unleashes a channelled beam that follows the cursor for 2.5 seconds that deals magic damage. Organic Deconstruction Researches enemy champions causing them to take true damage instead.
Passive: Deconstructing enemy Champions Researches them for 7 seconds. Basic attacks and all abilities refresh Research.
Active: Vel'Koz channels a ray of energy that follows the cursor for 2.5 seconds, dealing Magic Damage up to a total of 450/625/800 (+125% Ability Power) and slowing units hit by 20%.Enemies that stay in the beam will periodically gain Organic Deconstruction stacks. Deals True Damage instead of Magic against Researched units.

Flash


Teleports your Champion to target nearby location under your mouse cursor.

Flash is a must have for a champion with no escape. Helps you escape gank or initiate on enemy laner. Overall really good summoner spell. Take different summoner spell instead of Flash at your own risk.



Exhaust

Exhausts target enemy champion, reducing their movement speed and attack speed, their armor and magic resist, and their damage dealt for 2.5 seconds.

This is my favourite summoner spells to take instead of Heal. You can use it while fighting with enemy laner to make it even harder for him to kill you or to disengage from you, helps you to escape ganks or helps your jungler with ganks. Really good spell especially against champion that have huge burst damage/are melee ( Zed, Yasuo, LeBlanc, Fizz, Syndra, ...).




Heal

Restores health to your champion and the allied champion nearest to the caster's cursor (or the most wounded ally if no target is near the cursor).
Healed champions are debuffed for 35 seconds, causing subsequent Heal casts on them to be 50% less effective. Affected champions gain movement speed for 1 second.

As my second summoner spell I like to take Heal. It helps you to survive trades and ganks. You can also save teammates life with Heal and get them out of a sticky situation. You can as well use it when you are being chased/you are chasing someone else for that extra movement speed to help you escape/catch up.



Ignite

Targets a single champion dealing true damage over 5 seconds.
Also reduces the target’s healing and regeneration by 50%. Grants vision on target.

Most of the time this is second summoner spell you want to take after Flash as mid laner, but Vel'Koz doesn't benefit from it that much. Why? Because you are going to be out of Ignite casting range almost always because you have to channel your ultimate. Take this only if you want to snowball in early game with early kills as this will help you do more damage or you are going against champion with a lot of sustain such as Swain or Dr. Mundo, as it reduces their healing by a lot.


Teleport

After 4 seconds, teleports your champion to a non-champion, friendly target. Cooldown is shortened to 240 seconds if you cancel it by reactivating.

If you feel safe only with Flash or you know you are going to lose/win your lane 100%, you can consider to take Teleport. It helps you to take more objectives, help other teammates around the map or just gank a lane to get few kills and start snowballing the game. Vel'Koz is not the best champion as a ganker because his kit is based on pure skillshots. You can easily mess up by just missing 1-2 skillshots, but if you prefer this kind of roaming playstyle go for it.

Must have for Vel'Koz top lane, if you are brave/crazy enough to play top lane Vel'Koz.

This is the Rune page that is used against Standard AP Mid laners. What I mean by 'Standard' is that the Champion is typically an easy or average matchup for Velkoz and they don't have a lot of lane pressure, or high burst damage. Some examples of Champions that this page would usually be used against are: Ziggs, Karthus, Ezreal,
Ekko, Twisted Fate, Orianna, Xerath


Greater Seal of Scaling Health x 9 are the Seals used in this Rune page which equates to 216 Health at level 18 (+12 Health per level). Scaling Health Seals are a very good choice of Rune for Velkoz because of how squishy she is in terms on her health pool. She has the 22nd lowest HP at level 1, and the 30th lowest at level 18. That's out of 133 Champions too, so you can see how low her base HP really is which is why
Health Seals are so important on her.

The alternate choice for Seals here are the Greater Seal of Health which grant you 72 Health at level 1. These are also a great choice on Velkoz and they are a lot better for Early Game since they give a decent immediate boost to your health pool. The reason I don't use the Flat Health Runes here is because you are typically using this Rune page in a comfortable match up, or one where you won't get bullied in lane and so you'll
get the most value out of the Scaling ones.



Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction x 6 are the main choice for the Glyphs in this Rune page which equates to 10% CDR at level 18 (0.54% per level). Cooldown Reduction is a fantastic stat on Ahri, mainly because it puts her Spirit Rush on a lower cooldown, which
essentially translates to more potential kills and plays.

The reason that it's only 6 CDR Glyphs instead of 9 is because it's the most efficient use of Runes that allow Ahri to reach the CDR cap (40%) with a standard Build. You get 10% from here, 20% from Morellonomicon and 10% from either an Abyssal Scepter, Zhonya's Hourglass
or Ionian Boots of Lucidity, which you'll likely have 1 of.


Greater Glyph of Magic Resist x 3 are the choice for the remaining 3 slots which equates to 4 Magic Resist. The added 4 Magic Resist generally helps with reducing the overall damage you take. Because this Rune Page is used for Standard matchups that aren't too troubling for Ahri, there's not as much need to run a full page of MR Glyphs, but 3 is still quite nice.

There are a few alternate choices for the last 3 slots here with the most common being some AP. Because Ahri's weakest stage of the game is the early phase and first few levels, I think it's best to just go with a defensive approach with the MR rather than a small amount of AP.


The standard Glyphs used to be 15% with a full set of CDR per level, but with the change to CDR being in increments of 10%, running 15% from Runes would mean that you would end up wasting 3 Glyphs to get to max CDR. With that said, I believe that it is still perfectly fine running a 15% CDR at level 18 and I have a strong argument as to why I think it’s still fine.

While running 10% scaling is the more efficient route to take with Runes, you won’t cap out until level 18. Running 15% @ 18 caps you out at 12 and most games you'll get to that stage, whereas there aren't many games that you end up reaching level 18 in. It's also worth to note that you are ONLY wasting the 3 Glyphs after level 12. So if you're level 14, you're wasting 1 Glyph, 16 you're wasting 2 and 18 you're wasting 3, so you can see how insignificant it is.

It's also not as if you are wasting the 3 Glyphs for no benefit because the benefit is that you cap out CDR much earlier at level 12, and it means that if you for any reason only go Morello, you'll end the game at 35% CDR instead of only 30% which is another plus side.



Greater Quintessence of Ability Power x 3 are the choice of Quints which equates to 15 Flat AP. When it comes to Quintessences for Ability Power Champions, there really isn't much variation. Flat AP are by far the best choice and you'll see almost every AP Champ take these. The only time you might see something different is the odd AP Quint here and there being subbed for an MR, or CDR one. Most of the time, it's just 3 AP though.

The only other alternate combination of Quints I would ever consider running, is 2 Flat AP and 1 Flat CDR, paired with 9 Flat CDR in Glyphs for the 'hit max CDR as fast as possible build' but I very, very rarely ever do that build and so 99% of the time it's simply just 3 AP Quints.