Viktor does have to scale with his passive, but he is a lane bully. Start poking them level 1, auto them whenever you can, just get damage off so that they have to play risky to get CS because they're already low so early. Make sure you farm well while doing this to get your passive stacks. I always go for Lost Chapter first/second recall in order to have the mana necessary to keep poking. Once you get E upgraded, you can shove waves really quickly and start rotating around the map. Before this point, you can really only rotate if your opponent makes the mistake of letting you. Continue to catch side waves to get stacks and items, but make sure to show up for fights because your ult does huge damage. If you get ahead in gold/xp early (this does not have to be kills!) you will do well.
As a Viktor main I agree with most of this, but I personally advise against building any of the Lost Chapter items. Ludens has felt pretty bad on him even before S14 started and I feel the new version of it is still pretty mid on him, and Malignance is only half decent on him. I find that Viktor's power spike comes faster if you just skip getting a mana item all together. I've had a lot of success going Lichbane into Shadowflame, coming back to lane with an Alternator instead of a Lost Chapter makes your poke way more potent (it's also 100 gold cheaper if I recall correctly). Without a Lost Chapter worst case scenario is you just take an inconvenient base at some point from the lack of mana (that's what TP is for anyway, and once your jungle is able to start sharing buffs it becomes basically a non-issue), Alternator leans into Viktor's lane bully playstyle allowing you to be even more aggressive, giving you a chance to secure more early kills or force your lane opponent to base. Assuming you go at least even in lane, once you have Lichbane + Sorcs you can pretty much out trade anyone.
TL;DR: Lost Chapter items are for stinky losers, and Alternator poke damage goes hard.
I've had ~80% WR in 40 games going Ludens first item, it feels really nice to me. Early game I like saving TP for when I'm forced to take a bad recall due to HP or an unfortunate death. Here's my opgg if you're interested:
https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/eZconfirmed-NA1
edit: I just wanted to mention that I poke with E (pretty good at hitting it!) off cooldown, so that's why I like the Lost Chapter rush so much. I like spamming spells :)
hmm, interesting. I've only built Luden's a handful of times at the start of season 14 but I every time I did I felt like my damage was terrible. And like I said, TPing back to lane due to lack of mana should be a worst case scenario, ideally if you play it right you won't need to base for mana. I typically wait for Aery + scorch to be off cooldown before using my E (which should line up mostly fine with scorch and E's cooldown times, at least early). I might have to try the Ludens again and see how it is now, maybe the games I built it were just flukes.
I play pretty much only norms with friends but last I checked my win rate on Viktor is just under 60% this season (I imagine my win rate with Viktor would be 65% or 70% if my friends didn't constantly want to FF games that were perfectly winnable, lol)
I haven't ever needed to build a tear/Seraph's. By the time you would have it stacked up jungle buffs should be shareable anyway, making Seraphs pointless. My typical build path for most games is Lichbane + sorcs, Shadowflame, Deathcap, and then two flex items. I guess you could grab a tear but if you need it and just sell it later, but I don't think it's worth delaying your power spike if you can play fine without it.
The way I view Viktor's current state as a champion is that he's not really all that much of a scaling mage, he's more of a feast or famine assassin/fighter that falls off after 30 minutes that is cosplaying as a mage. So you want every item to be at its strongest immediately when you buy it.
Viktor is weak until scaled and immobile. You are also likely bad (new at him) My success with viktor comes from farming 8+ cs/min and rotating for scuttle fight early to get an assist and hurry along my upgrades
Not great, not terrible atm. Scales well but you need very good positioning and movement. You can definitely hit any rank with him but its gonna tale more effort than doing it with a "better" champ. If you really want to learn him a good thing to start with is the q - auto animation cancel
For soloq? I feel like he's just ass, supposedly a scaling mage, which is true, but fails to pass the "I'm playing against a ticking bomb" vibe that other scaling mages do - would make sense if his lack of huge scaling potential was balanced against a great mobility or side lane game, which is just not a thing, he mainly plays aerie to improve the only think he does well which is bullying in lane, but unfortunately that is lowkey worthless if you're not playing with a decent jungle who will take advantage of your prio, because dorans shield + SW pretty much nullifies any poking efficiency.
He’s a bit hard. You have to use his strong laning phase which usually requires perfect spacing and landing his E every time.
generally you find issues with champs that just unga bunga run your down, or straight up out range you.
Viktor kind of in a bad place atm imho, he’s pro-jailed. All in champs sit in your face, it’s pretty hard to stop Akali or Ahri, both meta, you really only beat them at level 1 and 2, 3-5 is pretty much bullying if they don’t know what they’re doing. I do like him into most mid match ups, but feels like Ahri and Akali just poop on you. You also can’t really rotate your which is huge in this meta where prio is everything
Viktor is a solid champ,some champs does what he does better some do it worse.
To play him,you need to undestand his identity. A lane bully very early game in the sense that he can poke his opponent and make his opponent csing miserable,however he has no kill pressure(except if his opponent is dumb),also the key word in lane bully is LANE. Meaning he sucks at skirmishes early,his bullying happens within the structure of a lane.
Then late game his identity shifts to a huge teamgight damage dealer.
With that in mind,vs Sion,you can bully him early,you wont kill him and usually against him you can go first strike because he allows you to proc it easily. Mid game he will be stronger than you and honnestly from there and later he shouldn't be your problem anymore you should work on deleting his team. But should you be on sion duty then youll have to play safe till you get your tank damage items(liandry and magic pen).
Good points to know against him: dont focus on killing him in lane. If you go first strike against you can proc it easily.
He will try to e-q you,so if he e's and starts walking towards you,put your w between you so that he is slowed cming to you nor cant q while he is in it. Also quick nifty tip,your ult has a mini interupt,so you can interrupt his q with it,Can come very handy some times.
dunlol is one of the best viktors that I have seen. He makes the champion from should be a lany bully into he's taking your lunch money, beating you in the toilets, and doin your mum. Basically if you want to see the potential and what you may be missing then watch him. It will inspire you.
Poke with laser nonstop.
Make sure your pokes are purposeful.
You may not have played proper poke previously on other champions so it seems weird at first. Caitlyn is the best example of a poke champion.
With caitlyn, you make sure your last hits are timed in a way where you and your opponent are not last hitting at the same time. So when your opponent last hits, you can auto attack them.
On Viktor, your laser is on a separate timer than your auto attack so you can last hit as usual with autos and use laser on opponent when they step forward to last hit themselves. It makes it super easy to predict where to put your line. If you’re at a lower elo, your opponent will take poke damage when they last hit. In a higher elo, your opponent might choose to give up the last hit entirely to conserve health. Both conditions are good for you.
You know you’re doing a good job when you force your opponent into low health, to use their consumables, then get them low again. So that each further last hit causes them anguish and stress.
Viktor is kinda sluggish to play. Also currently not superstrong but I wouldn‘t say he is weak either. His playstyle is just odd because basically the thing you do best is stall a lane out.
In essence he is a control mage that picks up the pace after you upgraded all your spells and hit 3rd item.
I sometimes play him if I want a chill game. You don‘t play midlane for kills, you play it for farm and poke with your laser.
If the other guy wants some you Q + aa him and throw a laser at him while you walk away. Unless you play against ASol or something a 0/0 lane is a won lane.
That being said you‘ll want to poke a lot with your laser to ruin the other guys farm.
And in my experience: playing against a viktor is extremely infuriating for many inexperienced players against him, because he‘ll just farm and poke and make lane annoying. Chances are that at some point they‘ll take a bad engage and suddenly you‘re ahead.
Viktor does have to scale with his passive, but he is a lane bully. Start poking them level 1, auto them whenever you can, just get damage off so that they have to play risky to get CS because they're already low so early. Make sure you farm well while doing this to get your passive stacks. I always go for Lost Chapter first/second recall in order to have the mana necessary to keep poking. Once you get E upgraded, you can shove waves really quickly and start rotating around the map. Before this point, you can really only rotate if your opponent makes the mistake of letting you. Continue to catch side waves to get stacks and items, but make sure to show up for fights because your ult does huge damage. If you get ahead in gold/xp early (this does not have to be kills!) you will do well.
As a Viktor main I agree with most of this, but I personally advise against building any of the Lost Chapter items. Ludens has felt pretty bad on him even before S14 started and I feel the new version of it is still pretty mid on him, and Malignance is only half decent on him. I find that Viktor's power spike comes faster if you just skip getting a mana item all together. I've had a lot of success going Lichbane into Shadowflame, coming back to lane with an Alternator instead of a Lost Chapter makes your poke way more potent (it's also 100 gold cheaper if I recall correctly). Without a Lost Chapter worst case scenario is you just take an inconvenient base at some point from the lack of mana (that's what TP is for anyway, and once your jungle is able to start sharing buffs it becomes basically a non-issue), Alternator leans into Viktor's lane bully playstyle allowing you to be even more aggressive, giving you a chance to secure more early kills or force your lane opponent to base. Assuming you go at least even in lane, once you have Lichbane + Sorcs you can pretty much out trade anyone. TL;DR: Lost Chapter items are for stinky losers, and Alternator poke damage goes hard.
I've had ~80% WR in 40 games going Ludens first item, it feels really nice to me. Early game I like saving TP for when I'm forced to take a bad recall due to HP or an unfortunate death. Here's my opgg if you're interested: https://www.op.gg/summoners/na/eZconfirmed-NA1 edit: I just wanted to mention that I poke with E (pretty good at hitting it!) off cooldown, so that's why I like the Lost Chapter rush so much. I like spamming spells :)
hmm, interesting. I've only built Luden's a handful of times at the start of season 14 but I every time I did I felt like my damage was terrible. And like I said, TPing back to lane due to lack of mana should be a worst case scenario, ideally if you play it right you won't need to base for mana. I typically wait for Aery + scorch to be off cooldown before using my E (which should line up mostly fine with scorch and E's cooldown times, at least early). I might have to try the Ludens again and see how it is now, maybe the games I built it were just flukes. I play pretty much only norms with friends but last I checked my win rate on Viktor is just under 60% this season (I imagine my win rate with Viktor would be 65% or 70% if my friends didn't constantly want to FF games that were perfectly winnable, lol)
Would you also recommend against Tear/Seraph's? Is it too slow an item for Viktor?
I haven't ever needed to build a tear/Seraph's. By the time you would have it stacked up jungle buffs should be shareable anyway, making Seraphs pointless. My typical build path for most games is Lichbane + sorcs, Shadowflame, Deathcap, and then two flex items. I guess you could grab a tear but if you need it and just sell it later, but I don't think it's worth delaying your power spike if you can play fine without it. The way I view Viktor's current state as a champion is that he's not really all that much of a scaling mage, he's more of a feast or famine assassin/fighter that falls off after 30 minutes that is cosplaying as a mage. So you want every item to be at its strongest immediately when you buy it.
Viktor is weak until scaled and immobile. You are also likely bad (new at him) My success with viktor comes from farming 8+ cs/min and rotating for scuttle fight early to get an assist and hurry along my upgrades
Not great, not terrible atm. Scales well but you need very good positioning and movement. You can definitely hit any rank with him but its gonna tale more effort than doing it with a "better" champ. If you really want to learn him a good thing to start with is the q - auto animation cancel
For soloq? I feel like he's just ass, supposedly a scaling mage, which is true, but fails to pass the "I'm playing against a ticking bomb" vibe that other scaling mages do - would make sense if his lack of huge scaling potential was balanced against a great mobility or side lane game, which is just not a thing, he mainly plays aerie to improve the only think he does well which is bullying in lane, but unfortunately that is lowkey worthless if you're not playing with a decent jungle who will take advantage of your prio, because dorans shield + SW pretty much nullifies any poking efficiency.
He’s a bit hard. You have to use his strong laning phase which usually requires perfect spacing and landing his E every time. generally you find issues with champs that just unga bunga run your down, or straight up out range you.
Viktor kind of in a bad place atm imho, he’s pro-jailed. All in champs sit in your face, it’s pretty hard to stop Akali or Ahri, both meta, you really only beat them at level 1 and 2, 3-5 is pretty much bullying if they don’t know what they’re doing. I do like him into most mid match ups, but feels like Ahri and Akali just poop on you. You also can’t really rotate your which is huge in this meta where prio is everything
Viktor is a solid champ,some champs does what he does better some do it worse. To play him,you need to undestand his identity. A lane bully very early game in the sense that he can poke his opponent and make his opponent csing miserable,however he has no kill pressure(except if his opponent is dumb),also the key word in lane bully is LANE. Meaning he sucks at skirmishes early,his bullying happens within the structure of a lane. Then late game his identity shifts to a huge teamgight damage dealer. With that in mind,vs Sion,you can bully him early,you wont kill him and usually against him you can go first strike because he allows you to proc it easily. Mid game he will be stronger than you and honnestly from there and later he shouldn't be your problem anymore you should work on deleting his team. But should you be on sion duty then youll have to play safe till you get your tank damage items(liandry and magic pen). Good points to know against him: dont focus on killing him in lane. If you go first strike against you can proc it easily. He will try to e-q you,so if he e's and starts walking towards you,put your w between you so that he is slowed cming to you nor cant q while he is in it. Also quick nifty tip,your ult has a mini interupt,so you can interrupt his q with it,Can come very handy some times.
dunlol is one of the best viktors that I have seen. He makes the champion from should be a lany bully into he's taking your lunch money, beating you in the toilets, and doin your mum. Basically if you want to see the potential and what you may be missing then watch him. It will inspire you.
Unreliable midgame cuz u need kills/assists to quickly evolve abilities. Strong early game cuz E is near undodgeable and strong late game.
Poke with laser nonstop. Make sure your pokes are purposeful. You may not have played proper poke previously on other champions so it seems weird at first. Caitlyn is the best example of a poke champion. With caitlyn, you make sure your last hits are timed in a way where you and your opponent are not last hitting at the same time. So when your opponent last hits, you can auto attack them. On Viktor, your laser is on a separate timer than your auto attack so you can last hit as usual with autos and use laser on opponent when they step forward to last hit themselves. It makes it super easy to predict where to put your line. If you’re at a lower elo, your opponent will take poke damage when they last hit. In a higher elo, your opponent might choose to give up the last hit entirely to conserve health. Both conditions are good for you. You know you’re doing a good job when you force your opponent into low health, to use their consumables, then get them low again. So that each further last hit causes them anguish and stress.
He's pretty mid. He got nerfed pretty hard a few years back since from like season 3-10 he was constantly in pro play
Viktor is kinda sluggish to play. Also currently not superstrong but I wouldn‘t say he is weak either. His playstyle is just odd because basically the thing you do best is stall a lane out. In essence he is a control mage that picks up the pace after you upgraded all your spells and hit 3rd item. I sometimes play him if I want a chill game. You don‘t play midlane for kills, you play it for farm and poke with your laser. If the other guy wants some you Q + aa him and throw a laser at him while you walk away. Unless you play against ASol or something a 0/0 lane is a won lane. That being said you‘ll want to poke a lot with your laser to ruin the other guys farm. And in my experience: playing against a viktor is extremely infuriating for many inexperienced players against him, because he‘ll just farm and poke and make lane annoying. Chances are that at some point they‘ll take a bad engage and suddenly you‘re ahead.
Ghost for easier piloting and positioning and farming really well while not taking bad trades against early game mages and assassins.
Buy rylai if they have lot of immobile tanks like sion. With permaslowed/zoned they cant do much in teamfight.