Viego: League of Legends’ Newest Jungle Champion

            League of Legends has become a staple of online play and the baseline for an entire genre of gaming. It would be a struggle to find a gaming enthusiast who hasn’t at least heard about this household title, even if they haven’t played it. The hardest thing about producing a game of this caliber is maintaining interest. Gaming is a medium where even the most popular games still eventually lose a majority of their player base (with extremely rare exceptions). This can be an issue with games where the gameplay is built around competing players, such as LoL.

            So how does League of Legends manage to maintain their continued player base for so long when so many other studios attempting to improve on their formula? Continued innovation, specifically to provide engaging gameplay. And for LoL, that means the development of new characters. Even if the base formula for their game stays the same, the team’s knowledge and expertise can be seen in the continued introduction of new and interesting ways to represent your team. And we think there are few better examples of this dedication than one of the newest additions to the roster, Viego.

            Viego is a Jungle Melee Skirmisher, and he is certainly set up with the capacity to be a serious ambush hero, dealing a lot of hurt before the other team has a chance to realize what is happening. But what really makes Viego stand out is the ability built into the core of his mechanic. Viego has the ability to “posses” the enemies he has slain.

            How does the possession work? If an enemy champion dies from Viego, or within 3 seconds of being damaged by Viego, a “mist wraith” appears over their corpse. When Viego basic attacks the wraith he possesses it which heals him and teleports him to the wraith while making him intangible. Viego then takes on the abilities and appearance of the champion that was killed and gives him a 10% movement speed bonus while moving towards enemy champions. As if this wasn’t scary enough, possessing the wraith also give Viego a free charge of his ultimate ability. 

            How do Viego’s other abilities combine with this primary one? The answer is very interesting. Viego basic attack, when used against enemies who have already been damaged by Viego, to receive extra damage for a second strike that deals a critical and heals Viego. This effect is maintained during the possession, but the critical damage is instead converted to bonus damage.

            The above ability couples wells with Viego’s Spectral Maw. Spectral Maw is a dashing ability and while it does give a speed penalty, it will pass through enemies in a row and stun the first enemy it strikes. It will damage all the enemies it hits, though. The most interesting thing about Spectral Maw is it can be chained with itself as well as any of Viego’s other abilities, making it a powerful ability to contribute to Viego’s devastating ambushes.

            Continuing the trend of making Viego an absolutely brutal jungle character is his Harrowed Path ability. Harrowed Path projects a specter that leaves a trail of mist that obscures Viego. As long as Viego doesn’t engage in any other offensive abilities he will remain camouflaged and have increased movement speed. If he does choose to attack, however, he will get bonus attack speed, making this a really versatile ability for both offense and defense.

            All three of the above abilities ultimately contribute to Viego getting his possession ability as often as possible, which does also fully charge his ultimate. But what does his ultimate, Heartbreaker, do? Well, if you have a possessed form you will discard it. Then you will blink and deal area of effect damage and knock back all but one of the enemies around you as well as be knocked back. That one enemy, the champion with the lowest health in the area, will instead take a devastating direct attack and be slowed 99% for half a second. The final insult to injury? If Viego expended a possessed form then the cooldown of his ultimate is reduced to 1.5 seconds.

            In case the ramifications of the above slipped under your notice, that means that Viego could attack a group of enemy champions with Heartbreaker, push the rest back while killing one, possess the champion he just killed, and then immediately use Heartbreaker again. In the right circumstances, a Viego player could chain two or three kills together. That isn’t even taking into consideration combining Viego’s other abilities.

            We referred to Viego as an ambush champion, and while his chaining ability does make him devastating at delivering massive amounts of damage at once and even possibly killing more than one champion, that probably isn’t how he should be played. Using Viego’s Harrowed Path and Spectral Maw to their fullest means that you should be striking and retreating quite frequently. Combined with the natural advantages of the jungle, you could be able to kill a single champion easily, possibly even amongst a group without the rest of them necessarily know when or how it happened. But they will certainly know who from the carnage left in Viego’s wake.

            And this doesn’t even consider the capacity for you to disguise yourself as an enemy combatant. Sure, the 10-second possession window isn’t a huge amount of time, but when the enemy champions see you emerge from the mist and are unsure if the person leaving is their teammate or a now Ultimate charge enemy, all you will need is those few seconds of hesitation to rack up those kills.

            We are very excited to see how Viego will fare in pro play and with updates in the coming months. We foresee him becoming a big contender. Maybe not top tier, he does have a few shortfalls like very little in the way of keeping himself alive, but we can see him easily entering the rotation of regular play in high-ranking games in the coming season.  You can also search for League of Legends accounts for sale with Viero if you want to jump straight into the action.