I bought some RP today during the Riot RP sale and snagged the newest champ, Vel’Koz. I was stoked when I immediately rolled him in ARAM post purchase. After politely declining several trade offers, I went into the match with zero experience playing him.

First off, I personally think he is the most wicked-looking champion in game with his octopus-like arms waving as he glides across the field. Like most mages, he isn’t strong early, but once I got to about level 11, he really started to shine. He is also not a mana hog. I had purchased a Chalice of Harmony as one of my starting items and I never ran out of mana during the early game even though I was continually spamming my skills. I would guess he can farm like crazy on Summoner’s Rift with his W and I started playing with the angles of sending out my Q (it really does open up some interesting possibilities in terms of target).

The biggest challenge I had playing him was getting used to his ultimate. It is channeled (so can be interrupted) and requires you to aim with your cursor but the difficulty is that you are rooted in place during the channel. This makes you not only extremely vulnerable (unless willing to cut things short and run) but is also a challenge to make sure you are within range before beginning (or even better, closer than max range so that your targets don’t just walk outside the beam). Regardless, it is quite fun to drag your cursor to continue dishing out the damage as an enemy futilely attempts escape.

Of all the things I loved about playing him, though, the best is likely his overall damage output. I managed to blow away everyone else on the field with 153K damage in a 30-minute match. I am guessing that the addition of the true damage due to stacks of Deconstruction is a big part of that. Odds are that the nerf gun will eventually clobber him but I would highly recommend picking him up for a change of pace and the fun of piling up loads of damage.