This guide is not for the feint of heart. If you are pregnant may be pregnant or have a serious heart condition, do not read this guide. If you are a stickler for listening to the pros and only the pros, this guide is not for you, for this guide leans to the other direction. The pros direct you to be painful, I direct you to being a Panzer, lord of the tanks, painful to all.

In all seriousness, I'm having a hard time locating too many cons in playing Vi top.

Pro::
=Tanky
=High base value with decent ratios
=built in escape/engage
=Moderate capability to ranged harass
=Strong duelist
=Passive post-mitigation health shield that you can time
=strong Initiator
=High crowd control
=***** wears sunglasses with /t

Cons::
= Melee
= regardless of build, Vi tends to be all up in the fights
= harass is highly mana dependant, prone to spam

I go for full damage runes for the easiest last hitting possible, not to mention you dont need ADDITIONAL armor penetration early, not when farming is so important

I got 13-17 because it gets you enough in the damage portion to ease last hitting, and gives you the cool downs you might need, and a hefty portion into the defensive tree, shoring up armor, magic resist lots more health a 2% increase in all armor and magic resist makes you just that much harder to kill

the winner of toplane is not the one that kills the tower first or snowballs hardest with kills its the one that comes out of top with the most impact in mid to late game, the one that comes out of top and gives the most to the team, for this purpose we take teleport.

The amount of times that Teleport has provided multiple kills to the team, saved towers and turned baron fights. Teleport is bread and butter to making an effective toplaner.

flash is simple, you use it to escape and hope to god that you don't need it again in 5 minutes to save your but, or secure a kill. personally I like ghost but ghost doesn't synergies well with our delightful tank.

Itemization is always important, and so I have this little number for you, If its AP enemy, build MR if AD build Armor. Easy right? WRONG. Its never that easy dont worry too particularly much on guarding one more then the other, consider, If you kill the AP carry, and all they have left is AD then all that MR just went to waste, because proper focus was proper.

Items are practical, when Im facing the dreaded singed top, Im not going to build armor, becaues 90% of the damage is going to be from that blasted poison. but! items are not enough without the conjunction of the proper skills, for instance, I cannot start with a mantle, for that 20 Mr and expect two pots to hold me against a singed, so I begin with boots four, and use his poison spam against him.

Visa vi- If im facing that Irelia top, why wouldn't I go cloth 5, the boots come on my first buy and I get a phage next, because true damage can only be mitigated by health.

the key to itemization if maxing your potential in conjunction with your units skills, passive and what is needed for the moment at hand.

Vi already has decent damage and good scaling, not to mention her W makes her hurt tanks just as much, so the Items she needs, give her durability. you build Vi tanky to be the initiator, the be that indestructible panzer of doom.

Skill sequencing is simple enough on Vi, her difficulty set by riot dictates that they think the skills are enough to use, and its true, mastery however is a bit different. knowing when and were, and most importantly, why.

easy enough rule of thumb, I can give you, but you on your own will have to learn where and when.

If you have a lot of ranged harass in your lane, per say nidalee or kenenn, run E maxed first. If the enemy is obscenely tanky, builds a lot of natural armor, max W. If your against another bruiser or someone that doesn't tank well, go for Q. If you are in a lane you expect to be easy, and you think that you will often be ganked, max Q not for the damage, though it be considerable, but for the cool downs as its your most effective Escape.

Regardless you might find yourself with its cool down being high, and you may need to use that flash, save it for ganks and try not to overextend, its very hard to not do so with Vi as her engage gets more then enough distance most the time. play it carefully.