I want to play Viktor because of the transhumanism thing and he's a mage and has an appealing aesthetic design. Further, his gameplay is very well-rounded as a mage: he has a bit of everything, good AoE, good single target, good control and a little bit of defense. He still requires tactics, but I like that he has a variety of tools and especially his crowd control. It's just so refreshing, actually, to have half-decent tools on a mage these days since Riot has been giving all the manipulation and utility tools to the tanky Fighters and Supports these days.

What I absolutely cannot stand about Viktor is that he can't do anything but damage right now. The Gravity augment range increase was convenient, but unnecessary and didn't change how the skill was actually used. Ditto the Power augment and Death Ray augment: they make the ability more powerful, but don't actually do anything to change how it functions -- and I think that's huge potential for design just going to waste.

Please don't make Viktor just another lame mage with just another lame "power without gameplay" passive.

I'd like to see his ult changed to cause more noticeable damage over time. The total damage it currently deals is quite good, but it trickles out over so many tiny ticks that it just feels a little bit weak. I'd be fine with moving some of the front-ended damage into the DoT portion.

Viktor's main problem is that, because he actually has tools in his kit the way a mage should, he will completely overshadow the ****ty mages that have come out lately. Poor Zyra is simply awful, for example, because she can't make good use of a Rylai or WotA so she feels trapped between her awful AP ratios and the AoE nature of her spells ruining the benefit of the more utility-oriented AP items. It's even worse that Viktor's Gravity Field so completely outclasses her crowd control (indeed, Gravity Field outclasses most Mage-type champion's crowd control abilities. The only Mages that can compare would be Veigar, Morgana, LeBlanc, Lux and maaaaybe Cassiopea).

love:

-- Transhumanism
-- strong CC
-- half-decent ratios
-- flexibility

hate:

-- dat passive!
-- that his crowd control and utility will be removed when the passive is fixed

the ONLY thing i want changed about viktor is the augments that aren't death. currently there is never a reason to pick PT or GF augments over his death augment. honestly, why would you want health and tankiness on viktor, who is going to be squishy even if you built a warmogs?

Augment Death is used almost all of the time while Augment Gravity is used rarely. I barely even remember the other Augment because it was a waste because the cast range on his shield was so small and it just didn't seem worth throwing away the other options for a small movement speed boost and the extra health wasn't worth it. I only have that experience from his free week but I don't believe he is as underpowered as people make him out to be. But he could use some additions to his Augments since it takes up an item slot.

Proposal.

Keep the same Augments(but include changes you deem necessary) but have them upgrade to more powerful Augment(s). For example, Augment Gravity upgrades the cast range of his gravity field by 30% while giving some nice CDR and mana which we know, but why not give another upgrade(not cheap) such as "350 mana, 15% CDR, Makes the radius of gravity field increase by 30%. And the other upgrade gives the same stats but makes the time taken to stun enemies in the radius reduced by 30%.

People like getting Augment Death for the nice lump of AP and extra damage on death ray spam. But why not give the 2 upgrade options for deathray seem not as impactful, making the players think "Can we dominate the game hard enough that I get Augment Death? Or should I get the other augments in case this drags out for an hour?" An example of the 2 upgrades could be something like "60 AP, Death Ray sets fire to enemies, dealing 30% additional magic damage over 4 seconds(unchanged), Speed of the death ray increased by 30%. And for the other upgrade it could give the same stats but make the length of the laser's damage area increase by 30%.

Augments can only be upgraded into the respective Augments. You can't get Augment Death and upgrade it into making the cast range of gravity field larger. You pick either full damage, or go with great team utility. I couldn't think of an example for Augment Power but I'm sure you'll come up with better ideas.

Just my 2 cents, I'm not a champion balancer

I Started playing Viktor when he was last free, whenever that was. Afterwards, I literally fell in love with him. He was all I played for about a week, and my favorite part is how defensive his abilities feels.

You can zone an entire teamfight with your W if someone is getting chased/caught. Your Q is great for any DoT damage or for surviving that one last hit. His E is wonderful for kiting, since the laser stays on the same path, regardless if you're running towards or away from an enemy, but still packs a big enough punch to deal the damage you need in a fight.
His ult just feels like it's part of him. Awesome AoE damage, keep an entire team from reacting to a well placed W... and not to mention the dialogue...

It is safe to say that I have been working on maining Viktor, and will continue to play him to learn as much as I possibly can.

As a previous Viktor player:

Likes:
Great harassment
Great team support & CC capabilities
Great character design
Interesting Passive & Augments
Great situational pick
His main abilities are very good, only his ult needs work (see Dislikes)

Dislikes:
-Ult seems weak. I played him a LOT when his ult was bugged and would double-cast. During this time, he seemed appropriate in comparison to other AP Casters. Now that this is fixed, he is an okay pick and doesn't do a lot of sustained damage, but decent burst damage.
-You can't alter your Augment for situational purposes & the Red augment seems to be considerably more favorable compared to the other two.

Conclusion:
What I feel should be done are just minor (or not-so-minor) alterations to his ultimate and his augments. His ultimate does not seem very powerful at first compared to other mids who get extreme sense of power using their ultimates. Viktor's kit doesn't really lend himself towards gratification in using his abilities because his ult is lackluster and his Death Ray is spammy, even though it hits like a truck.

As far as the augments go, I feel the Yellow and Blue augments should be updated to be closer in effectiveness to the Red augment, or change the augments to promote not only aggressive play, but supportive play as well.

For example, what if the Yellow augment allowed Viktor to cast his Q on allies as well, but when cast on allies, it gave the ally the shield and increased their movement speed for a short duration. In addition to its current effect of shielding Viktor when cast on an enemy and giving him a short speed boost, this would make it a nice support option for a team that does not necessarily need raw damage output from Augment Death.

In addition, the Blue augment could be updated to instead of increasing range, shred Armor/Magic Resist while standing in it, like Morgana's pool. For its "friendly interaction", perhaps it could be an augmented GP5 item that also grants him GP5 in addition to the shredding affect. This could be useful for a Viktor that is behind in the game/farm and needs gold to get caught up, as well as being particularly useful against high armor/MR teams.

I feel these changes could possibly allow a support Viktor to also be more favorable as it gives him a sense of worth even when he is not doing massive amounts of damage and make him similar to Orianna in terms of roles as both a powerful mid or situational/fun support. With the (possibly limited) amount of times he change his augments, he would be able to be strong at every facet of the game, and, like a machine, able to adapt to multiple roles.

Can't tell if he's missing an item slot...

...or if he's missing a passive.

As someone whos played viktor as both support and ap mid heres my thoughts.

His passive
Is pretty much garbage and holds him back vs other true ap mids. Now i don't mind that you get a cheap upgrade that puts you pretty far ahead if you can nail and early kill or kick butt farming. But the fact that you can only upgrade it once is severely limiting. Even with the passive bonus its only worth a mid tier item when it should be something his entire build revolves around. Bout the only good thing i can for his passive is that it gives him a slight edge over other supports in terms of item power.

Q

Its a straight forward spell with what on paper looks good but in practical application fails to achieve its goal. If i run in and Q someone the shield doesn't pop up until the projectile returns and by then the enemy's harass has already done its dmg. This gives me a shield that is only useful in a full engage and in that situation it doesn't even block one spell's worth of damage or an auto attack from that angry jungler. It needs to have a quicker return or higher shield rate because right now I don't even think about the shield and just Q-E combo them and get out before getting blown up.

W

Great spell, one of the things that just works on him. Its like having veigar's stun for gank protection and initiation. Nothing really bad to say about this skill other than it comes out pretty slow. I'd gladly sacrafice the stacking speed for a quicker deploy.

E

And we come to it, the reason people would even consider playing viktor mid. I'm going to just look at this spell without its passive boost. We have a spell here that takes time to aim properly but has HUGE burst and basically makes ap mid possible for him. It gives him safe poking distance, it picks off runners, it can snipe flashers over the wall. Its just an awesome skill. Theres really nothing bad about it aside from people fighting against you sometmes cant even see it coming and that does need fixing. The only other thing i can think of involves his passive which needs to be made better in order to give this more utility. As a spell on its own its just fine.

Ult

I'd REALLY like to see this lose the speed difference depending on where you are to it. Its really not a threatening skill and its just mainly used for added burst to your combo to secure a kill. It'd be nice if it provided a silence through its duration except for the people it already hit (ex, can't reapply the silence). Giving people something to actually be afraid of. But right now its just a aoe nuke with a pretty meaningless after effect (cant even remember the last time the actual storm damage killed someone).

All in all viktor is in the average area. Hes not sleeper op like people claimed he was, because 2 nuke bursters can only carry if they're ultra fed. And hes not nearly as bad as some people make him out to be, an aoe silence and heavy damage in a prolonged fight keeps him somewhat viable.

Right now the biggest change you can give him is make his passive worth an item slot. It HAS to be something that is worthy of a 50 min long game.

Some things that trouble me about viktor:

The range of his W. His only crowd control ability (and also a non-damaging ability) is basically relegated to exclusively defensive use because it lacks the range to be used offensively. It can't even zone very well due to its lack of range, unless the enemy team is funnelling through a jungle chokepoint.

I feel like I need to get the W augment just to make that ability reliable and dependable, but I feel like taking any augment except death is punishing me because I'm losing out on a substantial amount of bonus damage potential and gaining very little for it beyond making a weak ability more useful.

In general I'd like to see all of his augments changed to offer more in terms of the stats they provide. perhaps the bonus stats could scale with level, or even scale over time (like RoA)to ensure they are giving relevant bonuses lategame without being too cost effective for their power earlygame.

I'd also like to see the Gravity Augment provide a small amount of % based manaregen like bluebuff

Viktor's E needs replacement. While I love that the E can become invisible long enough to be impossible to dodge resulting in complete domination of the enemy mid, it's definitely buggy and needs to be fixed sadly.

More/better augments would be nice. What would be preferable is a set of augments where you have early-game ones that cost between 250-1000 and late game ones you can buy based on what early game augment you selected that can go upwards of 3000 e.g. a replacement and/or second Rabadons Death Cap. One of the augments should have tenacity, and it should be whatever augment allows for the in your face offtank AP mage style. These augments can and should be varied enough to be different go-to augments based on how the metagame shifts, so at minimum he either needs 3 other hex cores to augment with or 3 hex cores to augment with above and beyond the first 3. These do not necessarily have to be stacking benefits, e.g. each of the initial 3 augments unlocks another choice of 2 augments beyond that, and only 1 of those 2 choices overlaps with the choices presented by a different early-game augment. So you are offered a choice of continuing to buff whatever you started augmenting or can change to be more versatile instead late-game by switching to the second choice later while retaining the benefits of the first augment (or not as the case may be)

His W needs some tweaks, even with the range augment, the slow on it isn't strong enough to catch and hold runners. They get one stack and then get out of it, and that augment is supposed to be comparable to a blitz grab. e.g. weaker with a short stun but a strong enough slow to ensure the stun hits and punish bad positioning. This is why the AP ratios on his Q and E are so high because he gives up damage on the W and right now it doesn't pay off for anything but the Annie burst style of gameplay. Which Annie does better purely by virtue of being tankier and having lower cooldown CDR. While you can just go death augment and win the lane/farm creeps all day errday, there should be more options.

Finally, there should be a set of augments allowing him to use his Q and W as support abilities so he can be played as an offensive support, which he works great for. e.g. lots of CDR, allowing Power Transfer to transfer to an ally by chaining a bounce off himself, and so forth. A buffed W with a stronger slow would make for an excellent offensive support character with great poke but not necessarily any sustain. It would be the least useful path in his augments but he could be designed as a sort of anti-support support laner instead of an AP carry, something for him to fall back on if/when he gets behind. Something that would allow his ultimate to go up to a full second of silence on the initial cast would be absolutely wonderful but not strictly required, with the exception of the payoff for moving the ult being pitifully low due to it's speed scaling with his distance you could probably remove the ability to move the ult entirely after cast in exchange for a longer AOE silence. Not preferable, but definitely a thought if moving the ultimate proves to be too gimmicky and removing the scaling speed leash doesn't make him feel any more fun to play.

I used to play Viktor almost exclusively, but I've since migrated to other champions. Here's what I remember, keeping in mind I wasn't as good at the time as I am now:

WHAT I LIKED
-The speed buff on his Q augment. It provides a lot of mobility for very little cost.
-His W, just in general. Learn to place it properly and you can shut down almost any champion (except Yi and Olaf).
-The awesome range on his E, as well as its flexibility. It gives you options to be unpredictable, and if you catch someone by surprise they aren't going to dodge it.
-The damage on his R.
-The way that, if you rush his augments, you get a really significant buff over your opponent... for a little while. (If you rush Death then you stay above for most of the game.)

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
-His Q has crappy range.
-His Q's shield is useless. It can give a good amount of protection but it can't block anything on reflex due to projectile delay, and it doesn't last long enough to give you any real durability.
-His W has crappy range unless you get the augment.
-His W is his only real way to keep carries/assassins off you, and Yi and Olaf are immune to it. Viktor can't even touch either of them. It's alright for champions to have weaknesses, but I hate feeling so helpless.
-His R only has a split second of silence, which makes me wonder why it's there at all. It interrupts a few channelled effects but I'd rather scrap it and do more damage, or take off some of the DoT and/or AoE to make the storm silence for the duration.
-Power Augment isn't cost-effective. Gravity Augment is too situational. Death Augment is the only one that feels like it makes a significant difference in the endgame.
-Death Ray has visual bugs, but you guys know already, so this is kinda redundant.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE CHANGED:
-Maybe have his augments provide bonuses per level instead of flat boosts? Aside from the 3AP/level, I mean. Right now, Power Augment and Gravity Augment give you midgame-ish benefits (like Fiendish Codex, or Chalice of Harmony), but you can't sell or upgrade them, so once everyone catches up with you, his passive feels more like a drawback than a useful tool. If the Power Core gave you scaling HP and regen per level, and the Gravity Core gave you scaling mana and CDR per level, it would feel like a much stronger investment.
-If his Q is supposed to be a worthwhile shield, then increase projectile speed or increase shield duration. Right now it's a great single-target nuke but not much else unless you get Power Core (which nobody does).

EDIT: Oh, here's an idea for his passive!
Make his augments work kind of like Rod of Ages. They provide flat boosts, and then extra benefits that increase over time. But also allow us to swap augments! Say, it costs 1000 gold to pick a core, then 500 to "upgrade" to a different core. This means that a Viktor player can swap specialties on the fly, but is rewarded for sticking with one over an extended period. If the benefits max out after 5 minutes or so, then you don't have people madly switching from tank to support to burst, but you aren't punished too badly for switching.

EDIT 2: Experimental stats for the cores I suggested just now. (Note that I removed the +3AP per level on each)

Augment: Death
Cost 1000
+45 Ability Power (+4 Ability Power per minute, maxes out at 5 stacks)
Ability Augment: Death Ray sets fire to enemies, dealing 30% additional magic damage over 4 seconds.
Ability Augment: At maximum stacks, Death Ray causes Grievous Wounds for 4 seconds.
Upgrades into Augment: Gravity (500gold) or Augment: Power (500gold)

Augment: Gravity
Cost 1000
+150 Mana (+20 mana per minute, maxes out at 5 stacks)
+5% CDR (+1%CDR per minute, maxes out at 5 stacks)
+5 Mana regen/5 (+1 mana regen/5, maxes out at 5 stacks)
Ability Augment: Gravity Field has an additional 30% cast range.
Ability Augment: At maximum stacks, Gravity Field has an additional 30% area of effect.
Upgrades into Augment: Death (500gold) or Augment: Power (500gold)

Augment: Power
Cost 1000
+200 Health (+30 health per minute, maxes out at 5 stacks)
+6 Health Regen per 5 seconds (+2 health regen/5 per minute, maxes out at 5 stacks)
Ability Augment: Power Transfer increases Viktor's movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds.
Ability Augment: At maximum stacks, Power Transfer's shield buff duration is extended by 100%.
Upgrades into Augment: Gravity (500gold) or Augment: Death (500gold)

These are probably a little overpowered, but the mechanic is what I mean.