Hey there, I'm Zianni. I'm a challenger mid lane and Veigar is my go to off-role pick. With decent match ups and a heavy emphasis on AD Haste items for S11, Veigar will make a great addition to any team lacking Ability Power. He has a lot of good match ups making it easy to snowball and take control of team fights. If you enjoy stacking gameplay, nuclear one shots or upsetting ADC players. I think you'll enjoy Veigar :). Check out my livestream at https://www.twitch.tv/zianni so you can become a challenger Veigar too!

First Strike is incredibly good on Veigar because it synergizes with your scaling playstyle and enables you to hit item spikes faster. Your excessive range allows you to initiate combat at your own pace and generate massive amounts of gold off your combo.

If you plan on playing to win lane as early as possible, you'd instead opt for Summon Aery as it gives us consistent damage increase to duel or suppress the enemy in regards to resources.

First Strike

First Strike awards us for initiating combat with our long range by generating additional gold that allows us to reach our gold break points faster. This can help in securing important items like Shurelyas, Ludens, or RoA depending on our goals in game.

Magical Footwear gives us additional movespeed to get in range to box the opponent while also avoiding the enemy. The only issue with this rune is that we're losing access to boots in the early game that might make spacing easier against harder matchups. Burning flash and having no boots is a death bell for a mid laner. It does however give us 420g in free stats once we get our free pair of boots.

Biscuit Delivery gives us additional sustain for laning to hit our gold break points early without being poked out of lane and extra max health to survive more aggressive champion matchups.

Cosmic Insight is pretty good as it gives us additional uptime on Flash and Teleport. The item haste is also applciable to items like Ludens/Shurelyas/Zhonyas/Seraphs although it is less important than the summoner cooldown.

Manaflow Band is our first sorcery rune to top off our mana pool and regeneration for a fun stacking experience.

More CDR, more stacks.

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AP/AP and Health/Scaling health based on matchup.

Veigar has a lot of intersting builds. The most common that you'll see is a combination of Rod of Ages and Seraph's Embrace because it makes us nearly unkillable with an infinite amount of resources. This is really good if your team is lacking front line or you're playing vs assassins in the mid lane.

If your team isn't lacking survivability, you'd instead opt for one of these two builds:

Shurelya's Battlesong gives us access to a significantly FASTER power spike, free movespeed to engage on the enemy and get the box down forcing a beneficial trade. Once you have enough ability power stacked from your passive, you'll be force a free kill from any position if they don't have the mobility. This build would also take advantage of Boots of Swiftness and finishing off our core build with Rabadon's Deathcap.

Finally, we have the traditional Luden's Tempest into Rabadon's Deathcap with Sorcerer's Shoes. This would be your go-to damage build if you just want as much up front damage and access to Lost Chapter.

Once your core build is complete with these damage variants, you'd just slot in defensive items like Dead Man's Plate Kaenic Rookern or Void Staff to penetrate the enemy.

Dead Man's Plate vs consistent AD damage or Zhonya's Hourglass vs heavy burst damage

Kaenic Rookern / Banshee's Veil / Force of Nature vs Heavy AP.

Void Staff vs Heavy MR

Veigar has infinite stacking ability power from passive so itemizing damage after your core build (outside of Void Staff) is pretty redundant. You just want survivability.

SUMMONER SPELLS All three are extremely valuable and can change the flow of a game. - FLASH is a must include because it’s both a playmaking tool and a defensive tool. The cooldown should always be tracked so you can take advantage of its absence or play around its availability. (I.E Flash ult) Cleanse is an ideal solution to heavy CC teams saving you an item slot from building Quicksilver Sash. TELEPORT while typically inferior in lane for Solo Q has incredible application and a lot more variety to it. You can use it to avoid an unwinnable match up, join team fights, or simply get back to lane faster. While the application of this spell is more difficult than Heal, it has a lot more influence than Heal if you can control the flow.

Outside of summoner spell selection, it's important to recognize optimal compositions for Veigar. He does extremely well into short range teams because of the zone control from Event Horizon making it harder for them to initiate.

While Zhonya's Hourglass is a good deterrent it can be difficult to play Veigar into long range poke or hard initiation. Tank items can help supplement this weakness by building MR/Armor boots but it doesn't stop his inherent weakness against gap closing champions.

Finally, Veigar is a fantastic pick when your team is lacking Ability Power.
Being the only AP makes it harder for the enemy to itemize against your one shot potential while making room for your teammates to breathe.

It's ideal to pick Veigar in 1AP-4AD comps or 2AP-3AD comps. Most supports do magical so it's hard to achieve 1AP-4AD. As long as you're avoiding 4AP comps you'll be fine, Veigar has a very difficult time against multiple tanks due to their lifepool + resistances.

Veigar's lane phase is incredibly simple. All you need to do is farm, use your Auto Attacks to create situations where your Baleful Strike can get +2 AP as opposed to +1 or look to last hit minions while tagging an enemy champion with the second hit. It's honestly frustrating to lane against a Veigar because if they're committed to farming there's not much you can do to interrupt him.

Low elo players refuse to wave manipulate which means you'll always find them pushing the wave into your tower. This is extremely beneficial to Veigar as it creates a larger threat with your Event Horizon but it almost means your farm is uncontested. It's nearly impossible to be tower dived as Veigar if you're in a decent match up so take advantage of that to safely farm until you hit level 4.

You can opt to trade with Veigar pre-level 4, but your ultimate goal is one shotting the enemy anyways making it irrelevant. Prioritize Ability Power and last hitting so you can pick up a Lost Chapter on your first back.

This is especially important because it solves your Mana Issues while also granting a decent chunk of haste to stack easier.

Primordial Burst is essentially the death bell for this lane. The moment you unlock this ability, it doesn't matter how awful your support is or how bad lane is going. It just takes one combo to take a life. While using Event Horizon can be difficult, it's also a great zoning tool to close distance for your support or you can simply wait for others to land CC to chain it.

The nice thing about Veigar is that the box is the ideal set up for jungler ganks or to prevent being ganked. It's an extremely versatile skill that is the backbone of our laning, but it also represents a vulnerability. Play around the cooldown, don't be over-confident when it's down or you'll be punished. You might have one shot potential with just a simple Baleful Strike + Primordial Burst combo but only one of these skills is targeted.

Every death is equivelant to time you're not stacking, always put your life ahead of ego.

Once you've finished Luden's Tempest, there is almost nothing that can change the match up for the enemy outside of hard CC. You can continue to free farm or you can signal the end of laning phase by taking tower so that you can rotate mid lane.

If you opted for Rod of Ages you're effectively unkillable, so it'll be incredibly difficult for them to kill you.

It's important to recognize that if you run Teleport it's ok to side lane as Veigar once you've taken the bot tower, but you'll want to typically go mid lane for priority on objectives like dragon or rift herald. With a large amount of Ability Power, your auto attacks will shred tower making it easier to create dead zones on the map as opposed to just spending your time bot lane. You're a scaling champion, but you're a team fight menace. It's important to be there for important objectives or you'll never get the opportunity to utilize your champion's strengths.

Veigar is completely dependent on Event Horizon in the middle game to ensure his safety but also to create pick opportunities. If you're playing front to back, you'll be extremely safe with the protection of your teammates. Otherwise, you'll need to follow up on your teammate's engage and look to use Dark Matter as a psuedo execute. It honestly just takes one good box to change a fight entirely or deny the enemy due to it's massive zone control + duration. (3.5 seconds btw)

Primordial Burst is our biggest form of damage and should be typically used to remove carries from team fights, but it's acceptable to use it defensively if their front line is disrupting the fight too much. Regardless of ult targetting, the only thing that a Veigar player should focus on improving is their ability to control fights using Event Horizon. It interrupts dashes, it'll zone off carries, and it'll make it easier for your teammates to navigate through the fight.

To simplify things, Event Horizon is god. Your game is decided by Event Horizon have faith in it. Otherwise, enjoy nuking carries that overstep their boundaries.

If you're struggling with positioning it'll be much more meaningful to itemize towards that by purchasing a Zhonya's Hourglass or Banshee's Veil as you can't do damage if you're dead.