I remember this one time when I played Viktor during his free week. My team had absolutely no inclination to initiate fights so I bought the Gravity Field upgrade to let me initiate. It worked fine during the midgame, but then lategame I had hilariously bad damage and not enough range or utility to make up for it.

Here's my question: how OP would Viktor be if you could upgrade his augment twice, or even three times, each time gaining all the effects of the augments?

In other words, he'd be paying 3000 gold for +45 AP, +200 health, +200 Mana, +6 health regen, +5 mana regen, 10% CDR, and the three upgrades to his basic abilities. Would that be too much? Would it take away the interesting choice of which upgrade to buy?

I see what you did there.

Death is always very tempting for a straight forward, burst mage play, especially if you rush it. You can farm like a beast very early on thanks to it. But, if you play him more to be a bully during the laning phase, you'll want to torment your opponent with Q's. If you're upping your Q first, though, the extra fire damage from the augment isn't as helpful early game, so holding off on your augment and instead building your Rabba's first or a Haunting Guise is an option.

Couple options for other augment use, though: getting blue gives you a good initiate, especially if your mid opponent is being a long range machine. The W range essentially turns him into an anti-poke. I've used it for support Viktor as well, but the problem is that by late-game you just don't contribute enough. The W works better if the rest of your build is good damage.

Then there's the yellow augment...oh lord, is that thing underrated. If your team goes for a "everyone play tanky" strat, building him around this (with a Rylai's and a Liandry's) is pure joy. Poke comps...not only can you do the general Viktor poke with your E, but you can land a Q and get out of there. As Phreak noted, playing as a bruiser top. It's not guaranteed to work, but I turned an enemy Darius into a miserable man by just poking constantly with the speed boosted Q and using that speed to get out of his range when he lands his E or just avoid the E all together.

Also, sort of side note to the question: Q augment is the best on Dominion. I know most of this is applying to SR, but just figured I'd mention it.

And finally, people need to stop saying that he should be able to buy all the powers. That's not the point. The point is that each one should change how he is played in general. The revised augment system is most likely going to base itself around this by letting you augment whichever Hexcore you got first into something even better and more in line with that role (ex: the tank/sustain yellow augment, when one of the prototypes for the new system was leaked, made it so that his ult healed him and did more damage on the D.O.T part when upgraded a second time. On the other hand, the 2nd upgrade to the Red Augment gave his ult more damage on the burst, but not on the sustained part).

As someone said previously, Q augment + Furor = Hyper Drive. Pretty powerful.

The key to playing Bruiser Viktor is hitting the 40% CDR cap alongside that augment as fast as possible, giving you 100% uptime on both your shield and movement speed boosts (both the shield and MS last for 3s, and CDR makes you Q exactly 3s) making it really easy to deal a ton of damage in a fight and keep up with your Chaos Storm. Run Hybrid Penetration runes and get used to auto-attacking your opponent!

As a top laner, Viktor has a surprisingly good kit once you get used to it - admittedly the pushing is awful (i don't max out my Laser often, but even then the mana->damage ratio is pretty meh without Death Augment), but you have Q to either trade blows with everything from Spear Shot to Elise's Neurotoxin, or on the offensive auto->Q->Auto gets a good bit of harass toplane while proactively absorbing minion damage. Gravity Field is amazing when the big bruisermen use their gap closers - Jayce trying to combo you? Xin's charge being audacious? J4 tryna hookshot? A quick reactive W-Q not only stuns them, but mitigates incoming damage - allowing you to Power Transfer again as they leave, making you King of Trades. If they're low enough when they enter the Gravity Field, you can also drop a Chaos Storm on them and begin to all-in, as your Q MS boost is enough to keep up with them (especially since they just burned their gapcloser into your field). I've beaten all kinds of different characters toplane, but my biggest stomps were vs Rumble, Jarvan IV, and Jayce (Harrow approved Lore Battle!)

We've been running it in Ranked 5's on a team with Jatt, Shanzilla and ManWolfAxeBoss tentatively called 'Chaos Dunk' - Jarvan or some other mass disable locks them all down, and then the Glorious Evolution begins. 9-2 in ranked so far with it.

There it is.


Shame on you, Phreak.

What rune/mastery setup (besides the hybrid pen marks) would you use for it?

Gravity Augment is really good if your team has a lot of damage built on it since it's absurd utility. Death is really nice since you get really good wave clear right when you get it. As Scarizard says, Power Transfer is the king of trading.


That's Viktor's purpose; to specialize in damage, utility, or dueling but not all at once.

Scarizard, what is your normal build for this, and when he was free i felt the same way about him, thinking he would be a better top then mid, what cdr items do you normally get?

ad victor

I usually go 9/21/0. with Hybrid pen red, armor y, MS quints, and cdr or ap blues.

My normal build varies quite a bit, but i usually start fae charm + 4 hp + 2 mp + ward, turning it into a chalice if i'm vs magic damage, or Seeker's Armguard vs bruisers. I try to feel out when to upgrade the augment, usually getting it as my 2nd-3rd big item. Morellonomicon is almost always in my build, since 20% CDR is pretty amazing and the passive is great for letting chaos storm finish off my targets. After that i just try to adapt the to the game and what my team needs - Grail, Will of the Ancients, Liandry's/Rylai's, Sorc boots (with Furor), and Abyssal Scepter all find their way into my builds most games. Lichbane's also pretty awesome!

How does Renekton do against him? Nidalee? Elise? Volibear? Vladimir? Mordekaiser?

Also, im assuming you max out on CDR just by rushing Athene's and Morellonomicon.