User blog comment:Deshiba/What if: Viktor/@comment-1330314-20140522040846/@comment-1330314-20140522132419

While I would usually be inclined to agree with you, the issue with Viktor is that he's meant to be built into three different champions, yet his current Hex Core provides so little differentiation there's only one viable playstyle to fall back to. Unlike, whose covers both his bruiser and assassin playstyles (there's not that much variation), Viktor's Hex Core is currently only useful when used for Augment: Death, since he's a mage and the augment gives him more damage. The other augments certainly make him stronger, but Augment: Power doesn't really help unless you build tanky, which is not the first thing you'd consider on Vik (he's naturally squishy) and Augment: Gravity's boost to utility isn't really necessary unless you're behind. The fact that Augment: Death gives pure AP is also a factor, so removing combat stats entirely on the Hex Core might give more options, but the above means that Viktor will always just naturally slide towards a poke mage playstyle, especially if you make his passive only grant AP per level.

On the other hand, what you could do is doctor Viktor's stats so that the Hex Cores complement him. Sure, he gets 7 item slots worth of stats, but if his base stats are sufficiently terrible, all the combat stats in the seventh slot will be just enough to make him okay. What this means is that you balance Viktor so that he actually has a huge chunk of stats missing (stats per level, preferably), and you fill out this gap with the relevant Hex Core, effectively creating three different champions right off the bat with clearly defined strengths and weaknesses, rather than just one slightly different effect. With the above trinkets, you can have:
 * A tanky bruiser mage Viktor with lots of inbuilt tankiness, mobility and sustain, plus an extremely powerful shield, with low to moderate damage and long cooldowns.
 * A utility mage Viktor with plenty of strong AoE crowd control and utility on short cooldowns, but squishy base stats and low to moderate damage.
 * A squishy poke mage Viktor who can reach 1000+ AP, harass from a huge distance, and burst down groups of enemies at a time, but who gets annihilated when caught and has to manage his long cooldowns.

TL;DR: you just move some of the stats and bonuses Viktor would naturally gain per level (cooldowns, health per level, base damage on spells, even the AP per level he currently gets) into his Hex Core, so that you get the satisfaction of building a seventh item while actually filling out a strong deficiency in your stats that cancels out a large part of the extra power you're getting (similarly to and his terrible armor/armor per level). The advantage to this is that you get to fill out on these stats your way, so you can really choose a strong specialization instead of piddly stats on an inefficient mandatory item.