Veigar

Veigar is the only champion on the roster whose power stacks for good. Every kill secured with Baleful Strike grants him permanent ability power, meaning a Veigar who closes out his lane well arrives at midgame with a stat lead no other mage can replicate the same way. Dark Matter covers a whole area and works equally well for shoving the wave and poking from a safe distance.

Event Horizon is what makes Veigar playable despite being slow and fragile across the board: a cage that stuns anyone who crosses its edge, dropped to trap a pursuer or lock a target in with him. Primordial Burst closes the sequence with an ultimate whose damage scales up against targets who themselves stack a lot of ability power, making it a particular threat against other mages and ratio-heavy champions.

His power ceiling is the highest of any mage on the roster if the lane goes well: every minion or champion kill stolen from the enemy adds a permanent brick. His cage turns a chase into a trap and his ultimate executes a weakened target with an ease few spells match, especially against an opponent who has themselves invested in ability power.

The trade-off is brutal. No mobility, no protection, weak base attack range, and his entire threat depends on a precise spell order that a well-placed crowd control can fully interrupt. Early on, before he's stacked power on Baleful Strike, he's one of the weakest mages to hit, which makes him vulnerable to any aggressive lane that refuses to hand him free kills.

Your top priority is finishing minions with Baleful Strike instead of an auto attack, whenever it's safe to do so. That's the difference between a Veigar who becomes a late-game threat and a Veigar who stays an ordinary mage. Use Dark Matter to push the wave from range when you don't have a trade to play.

Save Event Horizon for two specific situations: securing a kill your opponent could otherwise flee, or protecting yourself from a gank by trapping the pursuer behind the cage. Never waste it on plain harassment, it's your only survival tool and it doesn't come back quickly. Play cautious until your stacked power has caught up to that of a standard mage.

The first spike is purely personal: the moment your Baleful Strike stacks push you above the normal curve for a mage your level. That spike arrives at very different speeds depending on how good your lane went, which makes Veigar unpredictable to evaluate mid-game.

The second spike follows your first big power item, where your full combo becomes capable of erasing a target who hasn't invested much in magic resist. The third arrives once you can chain the cage and the ultimate with no dead time: at that stage, Veigar no longer needs a perfect combo to kill, a single opening is enough.

You stay at the very back of the formation, further back than most mages, because you have no way to get yourself out of close contact. Your job in a fight is spotting the target who has invested the most in ability power: your ultimate punishes them harder than anyone else, so a target that looked secondary can suddenly become your priority.

Drop your cage on the choke the enemy team has to walk through to reach you, not on your own target: the edge stun is worth more on defense than on offense most of the time. Save Primordial Burst for a target that's already weakened rather than to open the fight, unless an isolated enemy mage offers you an immediate execute.