FOTM Report: Veigar

Hi everyone! I know you're all anxiously waiting for the new FOTM and Division Climber tier lists to come out, which are in draft format and should be complete later tomorrow along with a few new mechanics posts I've been working on lately.

In the meantime, I wanted to cover a champion with a strong spike recently in both popularity and win rate, Veigar!

Introduction

Hi everyone! I know you're all anxiously waiting for the new FOTM and Division Climber tier lists to come out, which are in draft format and should be complete later tomorrow along with a few new mechanics posts I've been working on lately.

In the meantime, I wanted to cover a champion with a strong spike recently in both popularity and win rate, Veigar!

Patch 5.18 Changes

Q - Baleful Strike

ASSISTED DOOM Now grants AP on champion assists in addition to champion kills.

W - Dark Matter

DOESN’T EVEN MATTER Front-loaded Dark Matter’s effects to the beginning of the cast animation instead of the end; Delay and cooldown effectively reduced by 0.25 seconds

In the latest patch, Veigar received two very short lines of text that effectively translate to a massive buff for him all around.

Win Rate/Pick Rate

Currently, Veigar is showing approximately 52%~54% win rate across all divisions depending on which sites you're using to collect data, up from a unanimous 49~50% in Patch 5.17. 

The pick rate on Veigar mid is approximately doubled, but from a starting point of less than 2% of all games, that's not statistically significant.

Quantifying the Benefit

Under the assumption that most kills in the game will come near mid to late game when team-fighting breaks out, in the bloodbath known as solo queue Veigar currently averages about 8 assists per game.

Baleful Strike grants the following AP per kill/assist: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 AP (depending on its level).

Assuming an average of about 3.5 for when assists roll around, Veigar now has an extra 3.5 x 8 = 28 AP per game (not including kills gained via snowballing off the AP). With Needlessly Large Rod granting 60 AP, Veigar essentially gains about half a rod extra in AP per game.

As it's difficult to calculate the worth of the dark matter buff, I'll leave that alone for now.

Conclusions

An approximate 600~700 gold net benefit on a champion throughout a full game is actually fairly significant, especially since it does spread through the beginning of the game as well. 

I think that Veigar is in an excellent spot right now and will likely get moved to low-mid Tier 1 as a mid laner, but isn't super overpowered in his current form.

Meanwhile, support Veigar just received a massive buff from this change, and although I'm not entirely sold on its merits, its definitely stronger now than it was before.

What do you think about Veigar? Think he's stronger/weaker than stats would indicate? Comment below!