I versed him once and sometimes when he shoots his laser straight down (vertical) It bugs out for the rest of the game where you can't see the pathing of where the laser is going, making it impossible to dodge.

Biggest annoyance with viktor from the start is he feels very locked into a single role despite his cores. Also his cores dont feel suitable as late game items...a 2nd upgrade would be huge.

In the end, hes always gonna have a main damage source and the damage core is gonna get picked 90% of the time "or more". I suggest either making the cores effect his ULtimate in 3 different ways so his normal play isnt so effected by the core. OR go the other direction and make the core effect his abilitys MORE to where he's almost like jayce and could actually "with the aid of the core" be able to pick up different roles 'tanky ap, ap carry, support" That would be really exciting and make mastering him "and buying skins" really rewarding.

I enjoy Viktor for his theme and style. His mechanical clunkiness is what prevents me from playing him most of the time, specifically with the death ray. Sometimes it stays in one place, but deals damage in the direction you pointed it at. Sometimes it passes through the direction you chose, but doesn't deal damage to anything.

I believe he doesn't see tournament play due to his locked-in midgame/tier2 item that can't be replaced. The augments all should have a tier 3 upgrade to them in my opinion.

Outside of those two things, and possibly the specific ability bonuses to the non-death ray augments, Viktor isn't in a terrible place. He just needs a little love.

I picked up Viktor near the time of his release and I really enjoyed him. I thought his skillset was cool and he was a fun champion.

I started ranking with him and spent countless games trying to find a decent build for him outside of simply the generic Deathcap rush build. I think he's a viable Solo Queue caster but he will not survive in Tournaments. I played hundreds of games with VIktor and became well known for being one of the only High Elo Viktor players (Although the true pioneer of Viktor goes to Terreo).

After awhile I wrote a guide on Solomid to show people that this badass robot is NOT underpowered. It was a rough journey to go through a lot of hate for playing this champion at his early stage where sheeps existed even in the 2k Bracket.

Now I would love to discuss a few things about Viktor although I really hope his future fixes won't take away the high risk high reward (in which very few champions have nowadays).

His skillset as a whole requires him to be close combat but this is counter intuitive as nothing in his skillset makes him a tanky caster (The 40% Shield is quite useful but it won't change how fragile Viktor is).

His mobility is SOOOOO lacking. Gragas can go bottom, take a drink of beer, throw his spells down for a double kill, dance a few times, come back to lane before Viktor gets halfway to dragon. It's quite pathetic how often I walk bottom and a ward catches sight but I have no way of getting to the enemy. Diving is of a rare circumstance but lets say the enemy jungler catches you while you're roaming. If you're Ahri you can dash away. Gragas will bellyflop away. Cassiopeia, Veigar, TF, Ryze and even Annie can stun and run away. Viktor has his Gravity Field but it's not nearly as safe. In team fights, he needs to be in close range. He really has no way of getting to his targets other than practically flashing.
That being said, that can be fixed with a good team who can initiate nicely for you.

Everyone should know by now how big of a burst Viktor has. He'll cremate you before the Singularity needs to churn or the Death Ray's aftereffect ticks in. I love this style of play where there's such a high risk but it's so rewarding to obliterate the enemy team if they group. However, this is what makes him weak in terms of popularity. Gragas is needs to be close range to have his optimal damage but his W makes him extremely tanky. Other champions who aren't as tanky can cast from far away. Vlad and Swain both have spellvamp and can build tanky items without having their damage heavily penalized. Changing his mobility may require fixing his set as a whole.

Suggestions
-Make his passive increase movement speed on consecutive hits on a spell.
-Make his Ultimate give increased movement speed as it churns (For pete's sake, I want to see a cloud do its thing rather than standing there because Viktor is currently running for his life)

Augments

Well I think this is where Viktor needs the most work on. Considering his passive as a whole, it takes a passive slot and a item slot. Augment: Death is the most popular Augment it's not because the other choices are to say... bad, but because Viktor's entire design is to be a come in a fight, drop all your spells, and get out type of guy. So it's only logical to make Viktor do more damage. I mean, what if Vlad had Augment: Power's passive. He'd be broken off the charts, but Viktor isn't.

Augment Death: I believe this is balanced but the only thing is that Viktor falls off late game because there could be another item to build. People say 99 AP at level 18 + 30% extra damage on Death Ray is amazing for only 1k gold. Yes... yes it is except you're missing the fact that 54 of it comes from your passive and I'd prefer Viktor have a passive that gives mobility to just 54 AP.

Augment: Power Riot's trying to make Viktor able to be a sustained, tanky mage here. But here's the thing, the stats are less valuable than perceived. Think about it, the first thing you want to do as Mr. Tankbot is to get either a RoA or a Rylais or heck even both. They both give astounding HP but not resistance. Yea you can get an Hourglass + Abyssal but that's way too expensive. That's telling me that you need to wait til late game (the time where you conveniently start to fall off) to start being effective as a tanky mage. What? Ok so say you just go with your regular build, Deathcap or some sort of bursty damage. Then why the heck not build Augment: Death in the first place? Look at Vlad and Swain, they both can go tanky because of a few things :

1. Tanky item builds do not heavily penalize their damage.
2. They have nice sustain with their spellvamp
3. Heck, Vlad's natural HP is going to be very high
4. If they built completely tank with no AP whatsoever, Swain has decent CC and can actually um... tank. And Vlad's hemoplague benefits the whole team.

Suggestions:
-Take away the HP and the HP Regen (HP Regen isn't going to work on Viktor as of now) and instead give him armor and magic resist.
-Change the effect to make his shield stronger (And I mean it)
-I don't think this is fitting but give him spellvamp on power transfer?
-If his shield's up, maybe he can have double the MR + Armor

Augment: Gravity

The only thing I don't like about this is perhaps because Viktor's play style is, as I said earlier, close ranged. The extra 30% is only more useful for chasing and peeling. Even so, it's not that much more useful. The stats are really lame. The CDR is nice and one can argue that CDR will improve overall damage (Think of cooldowns as attack speed). The intention here is to make VIktor a utility mage but his skillset doesn't fit this. I tried support Viktor once and it was horrible. Even if I go mid I'd rather have a blasting wand and a ward rather than this augment.

Suggestions:
-The mana regen isn't that good because most good players know how to manage their mana well. I'm not sure what to replace this with.
-Maybe increase the duration of the stun or increase the strength of the slow.

It just feels very off to get this Augment.

Or, as suggested multiple times by other people, give his augments a tier 2 upgrade. I also like the idea of combining augments.

I think his spells, other than his ultimate, are fine but their cooldowns and mana costs are a bit high.

The last thing I want to mention is his Chaos Storm. The singularity is meant to chase people and deal massive damage to those who doubt its power. But why run when a vulnerable Viktor is nearby?

First of all, the cooldown and mana cost are too high. Second, the point of the cloud is to do damage, but way too often is only the initial burst used.

Suggestions:
- Make the Chaos Cloud have an additional effect based on the Augment. Ex:

Power: Viktor gains extra MR + Armor for the duration of the cloud.
Gravity: Viktor gains movement speed / the cloud gains increased damage radius
Death: The Cloud churns for additional damage.

- When the cloud is dropped, it immediately locks on to the closest enemy regardless if the initial damage hits (For the record, it does follow enemies if they are hit by the initial damage)
When the targeted champion dies, the cloud locks on to someone else. Any redirection of the cloud will ignore the automatic chasing command.
- At the very least, give him something that allows him to maneuver around the battle field and perhaps allow him to live longer so that the cloud can do its job.

My Opinion in terms of competitive play

Viktor's definitely viable in Solo Queue but his high risk, high reward game play (Which sadly only a few champions retain) makes him a low tier pick in competitive play. I've used him in some tournaments and honestly it's very stressful. I wish to see him played more often because despite all my experiments with this champion, there's probably a better way to play him than I do now (Take Ezreal for example. UP until PFE came out. Without a change, he became top tier and used way more frequently. Maybe we need a PFE Viktor ^.^). Hopefully, the future of Viktor is in good hands and I do not want him to fall apart because watching a god-tier Viktor is an amusing sight.

an active for his hex core would be pretty cool

I really like Viktor's aesthetic. I haven't played him much lately because he's weak, but he's one of my favorite AP carries.

I think the problem with him is that his item just feels like a normal item that nobody else gets. It doesn't feel like a unique piece of evolving technology; you upgrade it along a path just like every other item. In fact, it "evolves" a lot less than most items in the game; look at Randuin's Omen's item tree and compare it to the one-stop evolution Viktor has.

First off, thank you so much for working on this! I always thought it was a problem with Viktor.

I decided to play Viktor because I saw his Chinese art, which is so amazing that I made it my desktop and stare at it from time to time, hehe. He also just simply looks cool, he just has a good looking default skin. You don't need to purchase his skins to like how he looks and I think that is a very very wonderful thing.

I also like how much he hurts, and the dynamic of him being more of a threat to the enemy team the closer he is to them.

I think his jokes are the best in the League. :P

The only things I dislike about him are his invisible laser, and his augments being underpowered aside from Death (good thing you're working on that!).

1700 Elo Viktor main:

All of his abilities feel nice, and they do great damage - it's really fun to chunk people as others have mentioned. I have no problems hitting the laser - it feels effective (I'm not sure about the experience levels of other people making the claim that it feels funky).

Main problems are the lack of differentiation with regards to which upgrade you purchase. Death is almost always the optimal option because it's the least situational. To quote from my post in another thread:

"Viktor main. Death.

30% MS is situational
30% cast range on stun is situational.
30% more damage is never situational (unless you can't hit your laser, in which case you shouldn't be playing Viktor).

Unless they balance this fact, death will always be the obvious choice in all but the most extreme cases. A short MS buff will not guarantee you an escape or a successful kill. A cast range increase on your W will not guarantee you a stun on your enemy. A 30% damage increase on your E is always guaranteed provided you hit it.

And the opportunity costs don't even line up. 30% movespeed on Q and 30% cast range on W is not comparable to a 30% damage increase on a 500 damage line nuke (especially since E can hit multiple targets)."

Basically, death is the most rewarding AND the least situational of the augments.

I would LIKE to see a 3rd tier upgrade for his hex core, but I don't think it's necessary and is honestly pretty low on my list of priorities.

Only other concern is his stun. The unfold time needs to go down or something. It's already on a huge delay and a short cast range, and then it still needs 1.5 seconds before it actually stuns, which is near impossible to do until you get more ranks in it (and you can't rank it, because your burst suffers). Other mages' CC abilities like Ahri, Annie, Ryze, have damages that scale with level. They're not as AoE in potential, but they're WAY more reliable.

Also please check if the .5 second silence on his ultimate is working as intended. I very often feel like it just doesn't silence targets (even accounting for how short duration the channel is).

As far as aesthetics go, please keep with the power hungry mad Soviet theme. If I could describe Viktor with one phrase, it would be "TRUE SOVIET POWER!." So keep his theme to that.

Also i maek fahnny video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkkN9Pwld4

Note the hilariously Soviet satisfactory disintegration of Kayle, with the cries of "OBLITERATE!" and "TRUE POWER." That's the Viktor I love.

As a Viktor player, what made me want to pick him up was his death ray. I was curious about what it was like when I first read about it, and decided immediately I would eventually get him when I saw how it actually worked.

I'd have to say, the two biggest things holding Viktor back would be his passive and his gravity field. His passive's best upgrade is Augment: Death by far, with the other two being lackluster in comparison. This, combined with the fact that it takes up an item slot, seems to take a lot away from his versatility. While his gravity field is great in team fights, there are very few reasons to use it in lane besides escaping ganks. I don't think that his w should receive a slow increase or stun sooner or even do damage, but maybe a very small non-stacking debuff would give it a reason to have a rank in it at level 4.

Maybe a decrease on the cast time of his stun, and a more efficient way to aim his laser. Its aiming mechanism+cast time feel kinda clunky and the laser is core to his damage, but does not feel 'smartcast dependable'