I'm keeping this separate from the other thread to get focused discussion. If you're lazy scroll down to the TL;DR.

Baleful Strike:
Here's my opinion. For Baleful Strike to be effective, you have to last hit creeps with it all the time, and use it as your primary nuke against heroes. There's two problems with this.

First, in early game, you can't spam it that often, because the mana you're using toward last hitting creeps is better spent using Dark Matter to farm, or Event Horizon to run/chase. If you keep using it early game then you have less flexibility with other spells. Because Dark Matter is key to farming mid game, and a stun should never be passed up, I only get one rank of Baleful Strike. I might as well be spitting on creeps, half the time i manage to score a hit, the other half the creep dies while the projectile is in transit.

Second, in mid game to late game, your primary nuke will be Dark Matter, for farming and for harassing. It simply hits harder than Baleful Strike (because, as mentioned before, it's wiser to levle up Dark Matter early) and you can combo it with Event Horizon for heavy damage in team fights. More importantly, because it hits so hard, creeps will be dying in waves so there's little chance to spam Baleful Strike in order to take advantage of the AP bonus.

Proposal: Honestly, I don't like Baleful Strike at all. I'd like to see the AP gain rolled into Dark Matter, while decreasing the gain to something like 0.1-0.4. Or make it a passive. Vivi's current passive is ****, how often do you hit people with your wand? And how many of them even have AP to steal? Vivi doesn't have a giant casting range, especially since you need to be in position to use Event Horizon. The champions that are the closest targets tend to be tanks, who rarely stack AP. And even then you want to move in and out of range as cooldowns demand instead of staying still and attacking.

Dark Matter:
A very strong delayed nuke that reminds me of Pugna's Netherblast. It doesn't hit very hard early game but it can be devastating once AP is stacked. I like it as is, but would like to make the location less obvious. The only way for someone to miss it is if they're looking somewhere else or it's cast in a crowd of characters. Otherwise you he to rely a lot on luck to make it hit. It's better than Baleful Strike in so many ways that it is my primary nuke whenever I play Veigar.

Event Horizon:
Awesome stun with a twist. Which seems to be a theme among all of Veigar's moves. it also needs a lot of planning. Especially if you want to ensure the stun. You can cast it so that the edge touches them and chain it into a Dark Matter. I don't think it would hurt to up the range a little bit. I'd like to be able to cast it through terrain in order to help ganks (since Veigar isn't the type to run around the stage) and catch a channeler who's hanging in the backlines.

Primordial Blast:
Heavy version of Baleful Strike. Suffers from being too situational. It's good against only a few kind of targets. The rest of the time it's lackluster.

1) Targets with low HP and/or Mana Resist. Since you only gain AP if you land the killing blow, you're pretty much forced to save it to use when they're obviously low, or you can instapop them. Also, the AP gain is pitiful.

2) Targets with huge mana pools. Also tends to overlap with targets with low HP. So they're doubly weak to Primordial Strike but at that point you're pretty much garunteed a kill anyway. Unless you're fighting a Tankgana, which has it's own problems (lol spell immunity)

If the target doesn't fall into one of these two categories, you're left with a heavy nuke on a large cooldown that only grants as much AP as Baleful Strike on a kill. At least Lion's Finger could hit people pretty far, Primordial Blast's range isn't good enough to get a kill. Finally, you have to stack a LOT of AP to make it effective late game. The alternative is to save it for opponents with large mana pools, assuming they didn't stack HP as well.

Proposal: Buff the damage. Rank 1 is all but useless and rank 2 only works well if you already have a ton of HP or you catch a caster who is low on health (and you're close enough to nuke them). Either remove the bonus to mana damage and raise the base damage, or up the mana damage to 50% and give the base damage a slight increase.= i rankes 1 and 2. Also, allow Veigar some time in order to reap the benefits of the AP bonus. Like, if the target dies within 5 seconds of behind hit by Primordial Strike, then Veigar gains such and such AP. If I recall correctly, it only gave 5 at level 3. Which is pretty sad for an ult. If Veigar isn't raking in the kills then it doesn't help at all. With the time delay, then a Veigar who isn't killing, but getting lots of assists will reap the benefits of the Ap bonus.

Passive:
It's ****. Since Veigar is AP based, his passive should do far more for his playstyle. Give 0.1 AP per creep kill and 5 AP per champion kill like Pudge's Fleshheap. Or, increase Veigar's AP by 5 for 30 seconds after every spellcast (stacking). Or something as simple as "Veigar gains an additional 20-30% AP from items".

TL;DR
Vivi suffers from Silencer syndrome. Deadly in theory, squishy in practice. Yes, I've fed as Veigar, but I've also went 16-2 with him before. Buff Vivi, nerf Tristana.

(Disclaimer: All numbers proposed here are not to be taken seriously, the thought is what counts, the specifics can be ironed out later.)

the only thing tristana needs as a nerf is to reduce her passive's damage or change to skill completely to something else

as for viegar, i agree his ult does NOT hit hard enough on tanky heros with low mana pools. and apart from the mana thing, its basicly no different than baleful strike. lack of imagination i say.

for baleful strike, just buy more ap items and farm more creeps. although often times before you can get thta far, it does seem to do a bit too low of dmg.

That's my point, only one point is ever useful and once your AP picks up, Dark Matter is going to kill all the creeps anyway.

I also use Rank 1 of Baleful and then level the other 3 ranks last. However, it should be a primary nuke. That's clearly the intention behind it, but it just doesn't work out like that. Either make the Baleful Strike worth leveling over Dark Matter (since Event Horizon is a staple) or give Veigar a new spell entirely.

Status update:
I have discovered the secret to playing Veigar.

Be a coward, be the biggest coward you can possibly be and never leave the range of your towers. I just went 8-1-1 when three of my teammates were racking up 13 deaths.

Still lost but eh, what can you do.

I see the point about Baleful Strike. But, consider, I'm already pigeonholed into leveling Event Horizon and Dark Matter anyway. I think the main issue is the latter two overshadow Baleful Strike to the point where it's senseless to level it.

There are skills you can and should level to Rank 1 early game, like Teemo's Move Quick or Kassadin's Nether Blade. Both of these skills add lane control and survivability to their respective champions, while the later ranks become worthwhile after getting more items. Baleful Strike is neither useful early game, nor useful late game.

I gained all of 9 AP from Baleful Strike in my last game, using it whenever I can remember tot. Even at rank 3 with a huge amount of AP, it can't one shot a ranged creep like Dark Matter, which leaves the melee units. And they're being attacked by my own creep/teammates anyway. It's pretty much a dud skill.

Please don't play him like this. You sat behind your tower the entire game and didn't help your team in group battles once.

Baleful Strike's damage increases and cooldown decreases per level without increasing the mana cost at all. It is a better primary nuke than Dark Matter if you have trouble landing the meteor. While you say you got all of 11 AP for an entire game, I usually get that much before even going back to base once XD.

Buffing the damage on the ultimate would be going overboard--if you've farmed well enough it will do 1600 damage to targets with about 2000 mana, and still over 1000 to targets that haven't bought any sort of mana items. Sure, it's tough to get to this point, but like you said, playing semi-cowardly is pretty helpful. His stun has huge range, so you can help your team with that even while you're quite far from the tanks and blades.

I do think he could be buffed in some way--Dark Matter not playing a sound effect would be nice. Or playing a sound effect but not the visual marker. It hits hard, and it can be landed in team battles easily--if it doesn't land, simple casting it in a certain area causes people to change their tactics, even if they don't actually have to worry about the damage.

The problem is his 'anti-mage' capacity is only true if his ultimate is available. His passive doesn't steal enough AP to be significant, and since you're probably going to be in the back lines anyways, it rarely comes into play.

What if a percentage of the damage of his last spell turned into mana regenerated over time, or something of that nature? Would make Baleful Strike more spammable.

I'll quote myself from the other thread.

The cooldown reducing talents and codex alone make his lvl 5 nuke have a roughly 3 second cooldown that hits like a truck. If you play with a hero-killer build and max your nuke early instead of dark matter and stack AP items and runes, Viegar is a very big threat.