Of the more unique champions able to completely take over a teamfight in League of Legends, almost no champion has the versatility of Viego, the Ruined King. While his base kit is one of the simpler ones released in the later times of League of Legends, his ability to possess and use the abilities of defeated enemy champions continually gives him a deadly niche. When Viego is in the game, both teams are constantly playing around his ability to get resets and have access to extra abilities in a short window. We’ll discuss how to effectively pilot this champion with Dignitas' Jade “Sheiden” Libut to make the most out of Viego’s potentially game-warping kit.

A Brief History

Viego has always quietly been a potential champion in the old days, with his named item Blade of the Ruined King being a near permanent staple of League of Legends, and the Shadow Isles lore ever so waiting to be expanded upon. His release began with a fairly large mix of items, between a bruiser style of build with items like Trinity Force, to players capitalizing on his critical scalings for maximum burst with the old Kraken Slayer and Collector. Many pro players opted for the bruiser playstyle when Divine Sunderer was at its peak (and unfortunately, even after Sunderer received repeated nerfs) that created a bit of a divide in how players build and play the champion.

In more recent years, Viego’s kit and builds have largely remained similar, while becoming a comfort pick for many players due to the flexibility of his item paths and the potential to pop off in teamfights with possession resets. He still remains a fairly steady presence in pro play as of mid-2025, becoming a strong staple in the ever-changing jungle meta. But perhaps what keeps him played is that he is a pro-viable champion with resets that not many other champions can enjoy. For Sheiden, it’s the most fun part of his kit, the adrenaline of chaining possessions, abilities, and Viego’s execute ultimate for resets.

If you get a reset on Viego, you're probably going to win the fight. The ability to get a reset, it's just really fun, you're probably going to kill everyone. That's my favourite thing about him, once you get one reset, the game kind of plays it for you.
- Sheiden

So What Do We Build Now?

The Collector, a beloved early rushing item for crit-based carries, is one of the better items for Viego for a reason. It provides lethality, a stat near exclusive to assassin items, while also providing a reasonable amount of crit rate and attack damage. For Viego, he wants to be in the position to snowball and get fast bursty kills, which Collector provides all the stats to amplify his damage in his short window of bursting targets down.

Collector is particularly useful for Viego because of the execute. Viego’s entire viability as a champion revolvesaround being able to reset with his passive, refreshing his abilities and chaining ultimates. You effectively increase the window where Viego is able to execute a target with his ultimate because of the execute at 5% health, enabling Viego to make plays that he might have otherwise narrowly missed.

Sheiden: “I would say only go Kraken/Collector. The execute is too important for his reset. I only go Kraken/Collector, I think Triforce/Sunderer is too weak, you need to kill them as fast as possible. I would only recommend Kraken/Collector no matter what.”

Collector does eventually fall off in stats as the game goes on, but ideally you should have positioned yourself with a strong gold advantage from the extra kills you’ve gotten from The Collector. It’s not only the measly +25 gold that is mostly an extra bonus, but the kill gold itself that you might not have otherwise gotten, as well as the opportunities gained from kills. Viego struggles to contribute if his team is behind because he is so dependent on getting that first kill in a fight, so building that lead makes it easier into the late game.

As for Kraken Slayer, it is more of a synergy kind of item for Viego. Unfortunately, It's in a slot where a few players really want to go Blade of the Ruined King, but you will benefit far more from Kraken. Kraken provides extra damage every two hits, scaling off missing health. Viego naturally wants to get as close to the execute window as quickly as possible, but also to get the execute. Due to the bursty nature of Viego going in on a target, it suits his goal of getting that kill far better than Blade of the Ruined King.

But why not Blade of the Ruined King?

To explain why Blade of the Ruined King is currently an awkward item for Viego, you have to consider how his passive on his Q ability Blade of The Ruined King (not to be mistaken for the weapon) works. Every time he uses an ability, he gets two additional hits. You’ll immediately proc the effect of Kraken Slayer every time you weave in autos between your abilities, quickly spitting out damage. His passive also grants damage based on the opponent’s current health much like the Blade of the Ruined King item, which helps Kraken Slayer reach higher damage faster because the opponent’s current health is being shredded.

Now consider Blade of the Ruined King (the item), where you get both current health hits every time you hit. In theory, this is not the worst thing in practice, because it puts the opponent into execute range even faster. But in practice, especially as of the patch this guide is written around (Patch 25.14), the damage goes down because you’re over saturating your current health damage. It even has an unmentioned drawback where if you do not build the item first, you lose damage if any other effects take priority over the item (in this case, Viego’s Q passive and any on-hit items you might start with), making it less efficient to build later in the game.

There are some exceptions where you might consider Blade of the Ruined King, primarily when the opponent has multiple high health targets for you to hit, but especially in the current state (Patch 25.14) where it only does 8% of the current health (at one point, it was 12% for melee champions!) and repeated nerfs to the AD/attack speed have left it in a more situational state. In a nutshell, Viego with his signature weapon may have to wait before it becomes considered as a better item for him.

How do we teamfight as Viego?

Sheiden: “You want to wait for your teammates, you're kind of like an ADC where you only pop in when you're able to get a reset. If they get on you, you're getting popped and your champ is useless, so don't ever get engaged on. Just wait for your teammates and use them, and do the work after you get a reset. His flanking isn't that strong, but if you can get the reset, you can do anything as long as you get it, flanking, front to back, as long as you're able to. It's really up to your teammates if you get a reset or not.”

Following Sheiden’s preferred build path of Collector and Kraken, it leaves Viego in this weird situation where he is both assassin-like in nature but plays like an AD carry. Assassins want to take out priority targets with their high burst and execute safely, while AD carries typically appreciate teamfighting with their team creating windows for them to deal damage. Viego is too squishy to front line on his own for the team, providing not too impressive disruption and is scary mostly off the threat of possessing an enemy carry and chain-resetting his ultimate.

As Viego, your goal is waiting for the opportunity in the teamfight. Do not initiate fights by yourself unless you are in a situation where you absolutely have to. You want to take advantage of the chaos of a teamfight, especially in solo queue where most players tend to focus on whatever feels the most threatening to them in the present moment. Viego wants to slip into the teamfight and play kind of like how Katarina plays a teamfight, being a massive threat that the opponent has to be wary of, taking advantage of abilities to avoid crucial enemy skills, and resetting.

Things You Can Do to Optimize Your Viego Play

To keep things concise, both Sheiden and I discussed various things you can do to ever so slightly improve your Viego gameplay.

Using your E – Harrowed Path

Harrowed Path placement in a way that will only create a small area rather than spreading across walls to avoid being seen.

When using Harrowed Path to clear faster, avoid placing it in a way that reveals yourself to your opponent (you can place it away from the wall to create a smaller circle that does not travel around the walls.)
While channeling W – Spectral Maw, you can use Harrowed Path mid-channel to avoid the cast time and set up your attack speed increase.

Using Q – Blade of the Ruined King

Weave in autos in between your abilities to maximize the damage, because you get both an additional hit that applies on-hit effects like his passive damage. This is especially important for clearing camps, because a lot of your clear speed depends on using your passive effectively. The second hit even does extra damage to monsters, which is not insignificant to how fast you clear.
Group camps towards where you’re pathing, but also where your active ability on Q – Blade of the Ruined King will hit the entire camp. It speeds up your clear time.

Using R – Heartbreaker

Use Heartbreaker creatively if you need to. It is a mini-flash that grants displacement immunity, which allows you to avoid being moved by certain abilities. A funny example is you can use this to avoid being hit by Mordekaiser’s Ultimate – Death Realm, if you time it as he casts. You can blink over walls, you can stop Sett from sending you flying with him. This ability has powerful uses!
Heartbreaker is a crowd control towards other opponents, in a similar manner to Xin Zhao’s ultimate - Crescent Guard. In some situations, you might use it as an interrupt to certain dashing abilities.
Viego’s ultimate is separate from his free Possession-ultimate, letting you cast the Possession-ultimate into his normal ultimate immediately after.

The Biggest Mistake Viego Players Make

Sheiden: “They try to frontline, start the fight, and do damage. They lose their conditional Flash, which is really important on Viego. It's really noob mistakes like that which will make it easier to get engaged on that's the most common in solo queue.”

We have mentioned this previously in the guide, but it really needs to be reinforced that you can optimize your play as much as you want, but if you make poor decisions, you’ll be punished very easily. Avoid needless front lining, and you will look better as a Viego player because you won’t be the target focus of the enemy team.

Conclusion

Viego channeling Spectral Maw and immediately casting Harrowed Path. His kit has many small nuances, but is fairly simple in practice.

Viego’s kit is actually much less daunting than some may have you believe due to the mindset from some players of “having to know every other champion’s kit when you possess”. Unless you are possessing Gangplank and struggle with his barrels, you do not have to maximize the kit of the enemy champion that well. You’re playing for resets and kills, much like many other flashy teamfight champions. As a champion, Viego is a great pick for learning decision making as a jungler, because he is so dependent on his team and his positioning that you have to learn to make the right decisions to enable his kit to its fullest potential. You’ll get punished for poor positioning much more than many other junglers due to his lack of easy escapes, which will help you improve as a player.

We thank Sheiden for his time in discussing Viego with us. If you would like to follow him, check out his socials at:

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