How to dominate your League of Legends URF games with Veigar cheese

Anyone who has ever run into Veigar in League of Legends knows just how tough he can be to deal with, especially if he gets ahead or gets into the late-game phase. Anyone who has run into Veigar in URF (Ultra Rapid Fire) knows that the limited-time game mode amplifies those strengths exponentially.

Infinite AP stacking

Veigar’s greatest weapon is his passive, Phenomenal Evil Power, which gives him bonus ability power every time he lands a skill on any opposing champion. There is currently no cooldown on that ability, which makes it absolutely busted in URF, where you can spam your skills and pile up the stacks at a relentless pace.

The existence of this passive ability also creates the possibility for Veigar to experiment with some pretty cheesy builds. After all, if you can endlessly stack AP without actually buying AP items, do you actually need to build those items?

Standard Veigar URF build

Veigar’s standard build is damage-focused and uses items like Luden’s Tempest, Rabadon’s Deathcap, Void Staff, and Shadowflame, going all-in on his traditional role as a glass cannon one-shot artist. If you are interested in that build, we went into more detail in our guide for the best URF hyper-carries that League has to offer.

But because URF allows Veigar to get essentially an infinite amount of passive AP, he doesn’t necessarily need a damage-focused build. You can still get to the point of one-shotting opposing players while making yourself harder to kill. That’s where the Veigar cheese build comes in.

Crown of the Shattered Queen

While the idea of building URF Veigar as a tank and using his passive to build up his AP has existed for a while, that strategy was greatly empowered when Riot’s mythic item overhaul landed in League. Now, at the heart of this strategy, is one incredibly powerful item: Crown of the Shattered Queen.

To begin with, Crown of the Shattered Queen has base stats of 70 ability power, 20 ability haste, 250 health, and 600 mana. These stats make it a useful item for magic damage dealers off the rip. The item is also just 2,800 gold to buy (2,365 after you buy an Amplifying Tome), making it one of the cheapest Mythic items in the game.

But what gives Crown unmatched utility in URF is its “Safeguard” passive. The ability, per the League of Legends wiki, is labeled as follows:

Become Safeguarded to reduce incoming champion damage by 75%, lingering for 1.5 seconds after taking damage from a champion.

At its simplest, this ability can be defined as “burst protection.” If you’ve ever seen highlights from the LoL Esports scene where players will hop over a wall with Ahri or LeBlanc and completely delete an unsuspecting champion from full hp, this item is meant to protect against that. What makes it broken in URF is that its cooldown, which is normally 40 seconds, has been knocked down to just around 10 seconds. This means you can survive a damage burst rotation in every single fight.

Not only does this protect you against all of the standard burst mages but it also becomes extremely effective against several URF staples. Blitzcrank’s hook combo, Annie’s flash-Tibbers, and ultimate-based engage rotations like Malphite and Nocturne are all examples of common URF threats that are completely neutralized by Crown’s 75% damage reduction. You’ll also find yourself laughing at long-range or cross-map damage abilities like Karthus, Ashe, Ezreal, Senna, and Lux. Most importantly, you will always get the cooldown of Crown’s safeguard effect before those champions get their ults back.

But enough preamble, let’s get to the reason why you’re actually here: the build itself.

Complete Veigar cheese build for URF

While this build will deviate off the standard path when it comes to the items you buy, the rest is still fairly standard.

Summoner spells: Flash and Ghost

Runes: Start with domination as your primary tree and grab Dark Harvest, Cheap Shot, Eyeball Collection, and Treasure Hunter. Select Sorcery as your secondary tree and pick up Nullifying Orb and Transcendence. Round out your page with two Adaptive Force shards and an Armor shard.

Skills: Raise Veigar’s Q, Baleful Strike at Level 1. Pick up his E, Event Horizon, at Level 2 and grab his Dark Matter W at Level 3. The overall skill priority for the rest of the game is R > Q > W > E.

Item Build: Now this is where we get into the bread and butter of this build. To begin with, your starting item will be an Amplifying Tome. You want to be ready as soon as the game starts so you can hop into top lane using the URF cannon and use your Q ability to try to get as much poke in that initial skirmish as possible. This will start you off with a load of bonus AP off the bat.

If I didn’t already give it away earlier, your first main buy will be Crown of the Shattered Queen. Once you have the bullet-proof vest that is Crown, pick up a Sorcerer’s Shoes and then start building your next trump card: Banshee’s Veil. Considering the benefits that Crown offers you, the shield Banshee’s Veil shield can effectively double that survivability.

By the time you are building your fourth item, you should have plenty of AP amassed from your passive, which means it’s probably a good time to build Rabadon’s Deathcap. The passive on Deathcap will give you further gains on all the AP you’ve collected and make you a true one-shot threat despite having multiple defensive items already.

If you don’t think you are unkillable enough at this point, you can add a third layer of survivability to your build with Zhonya’s Hourglass. Alternatively, you can also pick up a full-tank item like Spirit Visage or another off-tank mage item like Morellonomicon or Rylai’s Crystal Scepter. Regardless of what you do at this stage, you should be able to delete most carries in the game and outlast most tanks.

Of course, if you think two or three defensive items are enough and you want to pivot to more natural damage-focused options later in the game, items like Shadowflame and Void Staff are always sure bets.

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