Top lane Viktor is the current flavor-of-the-week oddball pick in League of Legends, thanks to top-tier solo queue players and pro players at Worlds giving it some serious exposure.
If you’re one of the many top lane mains who picked it up, though, you might be a little bummed to find out that Riot doesn’t seem to like it too much, according to changes in the most recent PBE update. Of course, if you hate it or hate playing against it, this might come as good news, because that means it most likely won’t last too long.
The changes introduced on the PBE are interesting. They only really nerf Viktor’s top lane build. They actually otherwise buff him in a pretty big way, which means he might stay in the top lane, but he probably won’t be a counter to Aatrox or Urgot anymore. Essentially, the base damage on some of his key abilities is going down and the AP scalings are going up.
The first ability, Siphon Power, gives him synergy with Iceborn Gauntlet in his current top lane build. That’s the item that allows him to counter those heavy-hitting AD champions and effectively makes him a plausible top laner right now. Its base damage is dropping in the late-game by 20, while its AP scaling is increasing by five percent.
The second changed ability is his ultimate, Chaos Storm, which is getting the biggest rework. Just like Siphon Power, its base damage is going down, but at max rank it’ll deal 60 less damage, which is obviously larger than the 20 damage reduced on his Q. Its AP scaling is going up dramatically, though, to make up for the large hit to base damage. It will now receive bonus damage equal to 85 percent of Viktor’s AP, up from 70 percent.
In other words, if you continue building the Iceborn Gauntlet, you’ll be missing out on a lot of AP, and therefore a lot of damage. In that sense, this is a nerf, but if you liked mid lane Viktor, this is a massive buff for you. With a full AP build, he’s going to deal a lot more damage than he did before. It might be enough to actually help him enter the mid lane meta.
These changes should go live next week with Patch 8.22.
