Talk:VPBE/@comment-28018860-20181031123856/@comment-29964258-20181031153840

I mean, from how I see it in my games, half the time Viktor top justs loses anyways. Even if he does well in lane, it just doesn't transition into teamfights well because the top laner is usually the frontline or a diver. Instead we have another backline mage that gets blown up. And honestly, these changes are more adjustments than nerfs. They hit the base damage, but buffed scaling. What this means is his DPS is lower if you aren't building damage (tanks don't need to blow everyone up too) but higher when you do build damage (increasing the AP ratio by 15% is pretty substantial.) A nerf would be more like what kaisa has recieved. She got buffed, then heavily buffed, because she was underwhelming on release, then has recieved pretty much solely recieved nerfs, in the form of ratio nerfs, base damage nerfs, CD increases, mana cost increases. There was one buff, where they upped the AP ratio on her W, and she recieved base stat changes with most of the other ADCs. Other than those two instances, every mention of her after patch 8.6 has been a nerf.

Looking back at Viktor, These PBE changes only nerf his tank build (which imo, doesn't work as well as people seem to think) Previous changes show Hex core getting cheaper earlu, but more expensive to finish (kinda the opposite of what happened to relic shield building into targons). This is probably a buff, as it lets him get better stats and an evolved ability sooner, and doesn't delay the final evolution. There were mana base/growth/regen changes, and then the only clear cut nerf was back in season six (well alright, his Q draws minion aggro now, which it probably should have anyways). Granted, he was mostly untouched season seven, seeing primarily bugfixes. So what I see here is Riot has been buffing him recently, trying to make him viable, and people chose to bring him top, but Riot wants him mid, so they are reducing base damage and increasing scalings, which makes him less viable as a top laner, but more viable in the mid lane