Counter Guide

How to Beat Veigar

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Veigar gets stronger for being ignored, which is why the games he wins are the ones where nobody ever went to bother him.

He has no dash, no escape, no way to make you fight him and no way to survive being jumped on. He also has a damage number with no ceiling, which is a trade the game has decided is fair. The result is a champion whose entire matchup is a race between your team remembering he exists and his stacks reaching the point where remembering stops helping. Most people lose this lane politely, from a distance, while he farms.

Matchup Snapshot Veigar, the Tiny Master of Evil

Where You Meet Him Mid lane

Damage Type Magic, and eventually a great deal of it

Why He Is Frustrating Building health makes his finisher hit harder

Mobility None, and no escape either

Biggest Threat Primordial Burst [R]

Hardest Counter Xerath

What a Counter Needs

A way to get on top of him, since standing still is what he punishes
Magic resistance, and it needs to be bought before it feels urgent
The discipline to keep visiting him after the early kills stop being easy

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Veigar on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Veigar

Xerath2,333 games55.7%
Nasus1,162 games54.4%
Ekko1,553 games54.0%
Kassadin1,054 games52.8%
Fizz3,162 games52.5%

Picks Veigar Beats

Orianna1,397 games42.3%
Mel1,895 games44.0%
Vex1,662 games45.7%
Twisted Fate1,589 games45.9%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Veigar. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 74,676 Veigar games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Veigar Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He never stops growing. Every stack is permanent. A game that goes long is one he was always going to win, and there's no item that reverses it.
His finisher ignores what you built. Primordial Burst [R] scales off how hurt you are rather than how tanky you are, so the health bar you added is a target rather than a defense.
The cage is a wall and a stun at the same time. It doesn't need to hit you to work. It only needs to be somewhere you were going to walk, and most people walk there.
He turns a bad team fight into a good one. One well placed cage splits five champions into two groups, and the smaller group is the one that dies.
He doesn't need to win lane. Farming quietly is a winning line for him, and that's true of very few mid laners.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

He can't leave. There's no movement ability anywhere in the kit. A jungler who arrives with any form of crowd control is just collecting.
The cage is his only defense, and it's on a timer. Once it's spent he's a stationary champion with a health bar, and everyone knows exactly how long that lasts.
He's helpless for the first ten minutes. The stacks that make him frightening don't exist yet, and the early lane is about as one sided as anything in the game if you actually contest it.
Everything except the finisher (Primordial Burst [R]) is dodgeable. The rest of the kit is telegraphed and slow. A player who's watching the casts rather than the health bar takes very little of it.
Magic resistance genuinely works on him. He's the rare mage with no physical damage and no true damage anywhere, so one item bought early stays useful the whole game.

Countering Veigar

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Veigar comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Kill him early, and then keep going back. Everyone gets the first part right and somehow stops after the second death. The stacks don't care that you were ahead twenty minutes ago.
Walk around the cage. It's a closed ring and only the edge stuns, so everyone who tries to sprint through the wall gets caught. If you're already inside it, stand still for the 3 seconds it lasts rather than walking out through it.
Buy magic resistance before the game tells you to. The purchase that feels early matters most, because the moment it feels necessary is the moment he already has enough damage.
Don't stand in a line with your team. One cage placed across a grouped team is worth more than any ability he has, and it's only ever available because people bunch up while walking.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Veigar Matchup

Roam. He can't follow, can't punish you for leaving, and can't do anything with a shoved wave except farm it, which he was doing anyway.

Trade with the wave rather than with him. He has no way to contest a lane he isn't allowed to stand in, and pushing him under his own turret costs him more than the poke does.

Make him spend the cage first. Every fight against him is easier by an enormous margin once that button is on cooldown, and there are cheap ways to draw it out.

Best Veigar Counters

Three ways to beat a champion who wins by being left alone: out-range him, end him before the stacks arrive, or survive the one thing that kills you (Xerath, Fizz and Kassadin, in that order). One counter each.

Xerath Out-ranges Him

Arcanopulse [Q] charges out to 1450 units, and Baleful Strike [Q], Veigar's longest poke, stops around 1050. Xerath trades from ground Veigar can't answer from, and fewer champion hits means fewer stacks.

The cage doesn't reach either. Event Horizon [E] has to go down within 725 units, and Xerath has no reason to stand that close (Shocking Orb [E] is waiting for anyone who walks forward to try).

Fizz Ends It Before The Stacks

Fizz gets onto Veigar through the minion line and back out again. Urchin Strike [Q] dashes straight through him, and Playful / Trickster [E] makes Fizz untargetable while he's balanced on the trident, so a cage that goes up under him doesn't catch him there.

Timing matters more than cleverness. Veigar gets stronger every minute, and a Fizz who farms politely until Primordial Burst [R] has the stacks to one-shot him has handed the lane over.

Kassadin Survives The Finisher

He's built out of exactly the two things that beat this matchup: a shield that absorbs magic damage, and a blink that ignores the cage entirely.

Granted, the early lane is bad for him. He's countering the game the lane is played for.

Itemizing Against Veigar

The first two are the matchup and the last two are ordinary insurance:

Mercury's Treads is the cheapest way to shorten the only crowd control he has (the cage), and shortening it decides the fight. Verdant Barrier is the early purchase almost nobody makes and the one that changes the lane, because a shield that eats the first ability makes his whole trade pattern fall apart. Banshee's Veil is the grown up version of the same idea and it's aimed squarely at the cage rather than the damage. Force of Nature is for the game where he already has his stacks, and it's worth buying even when it feels too late, because he has no other damage type to fall back on.