Lucidity boots on vel?

WARNING: Pulled an all-nighter, as such very talkative, love velkoz and am not deliberately but still writing in a somewhat stream of consciousness. If you love velkoz as much as I do, you might actaulyl enjoy reading and reliving your undoubtedly similar experiences through my words. feel free to tell me how dumb i am, and what I should improve on if you're so inclined. As much as I'm stuck in my ways, I remain open to the hope that enough beratement will allow something new to sink into this head. Breaking from my low silv, high bronze idiocy into high silver, low gold level games, one thing I've continually been reminded is that I know way less than I think I know, and everyone else can teach me something, no matter the level. For example, I have about 875k mastery points on vel, because he's the only champ i've ever liked and had no reason to change or improve because i was just playing to play with friends. Only recently did i put more thought into my games and how I played them and these are the current results:

My build is probably the silliest and least efficient and I am definitely open to critique, but thought I'd throw it in just to show you a possibility depending on your playstyle. I'm talkative right now, so look my username up if you wanna skip the blurb: khuntphunt79

i only use one rune page, one mastery page, and have a very consistent build path if I'm support, and only about three branch possibilities as mid at Gold 4/5 level. And please note, the reason for these paths are to cover for my deficiencies until I improve them.

As mid, get the first gold income item for Spookies (spellthief's?), yellow trinket, and two pots as any support would do (mastery for the pot to become cookies instead) with flash and ignite almost exclusively. Before vel rework, I was just playing for fun and I LOOOOOVED flash + ignite + ulting the enemy adc for a one-shot as soon as I got lvl 6, which had the adverse affect of pretty much never making me develop any actual mechanical skills. After rework, with very heavy pressure on doing research by landing three stacks, I dropped from my boosted silver 2 (i think) to bronze 2, really worked on mechanics and mid lane (was vel support ONLY until then, would dodge if I couldn't get the position) and steadily rose to silver 1 myself and finally broke the threshold to gold 5 then 4.

My continued and everlasting problem at this point, is I cannot for the life of me restrain myself from using my abilities. Most of you probably understand the feeling, but landing a Q through a wave of minions on the enemy Sydnra, dropping the e -> w -> flash to side to avoid stun -> q -> second w -> ult while igniting, is SOOOOOO irresistable that I can't manage mana for the life of me, or get impatient and make dumb mistakes for farm early game if I don't have the cd to backup my aggression.

Confounding that with the reality that is velkoz's immobility during all-ins, I focused on positioning during my whole hit-rock-bottom-gotta-git-gud mechanical upgrade.

So, to tackle my three main problems 1) maintain damage output at a sustainable rate while also allowing for my occasional burst/aggressive modes 2) position myself safely out of the way to land skill shots and eventually ult and 3) the bane of my playstyle, is my inability to save mana, I take these steps:

1) take the mastery that gives you 5% cd, also allows you to break from 40% max to 45% max 2) take 12.5 cdr runes to start game at 17.5% cd with every other rune slot being used for movement speed for the early game jukes and

3) item prioritization

a) Support: spellthief's, two cookies (pot price but with mastery), yellow trinket. sit in lane bush closer to your tower and poke the everloving fuck out of the adc with the goal of proccing (spelling?) thunderlords in every engage. With 17.5% starting cd, at levels 1-5 I try to ONLY use my q (upgrade q -> e -> w -> q -> q) to poke out either the adc or support (focus on one of them instead of distributing your damage, if soraka, focus her for lack of self-heal to shut down early game with hopefully 2-3 kills by the time you hit 6 or 7, if against vayne adc, abuse the shit out of your q slow to bait out her tumble.) so that's early game right? by the time you back for the second time, you should have still spellthiefs first level item, sightstone, red trinket, with in my experience about 900-1100 moneys (usually dependent on if we were able to snag first brick after a level 5-6 gank). At this point, I almost ALWAYS buy boots of swiftness before anything else, even level 2 gold income item. This is probably a VERY BAD MOVE, but I have grown more acquainted with this decision's limitations. I can get back to lane quicker after a back or death, BUT still do not have much mana regen to handle continued poke with burst, so I just continue poking out with q. If they clump together I've gotten good at hitting both with a single q and dropping a quick e -> w to drop dem stacks and at lvls 6-9 this usually drops them to half health, even with tanks like alistar and thresh because they haven't had a chance to build much health yet, nevertheless any MR. Continuing the benefits of Swifties to late game, for me the in-fight move speed is necessary to poke, back out, poke, and set up for a 1-3 person knockup -> ult, without which I wouldn't be able to kite (i'd probably get a kill in the ensuing chase, but would definitely die if anyone else was remotely nearby as no escape besides flash at this point, although, this is also where improved mechanics have been helping me substantially recently, from juking lb's chain bullshit or sidestepping jinx and cait snares/traps, and ESPECIALLY enemy support cc like thresh pull, nami bubble, blitz pull, etc), peel for my adc (most likely wouldn't be able to get from one side of a fight safely or quick enough to the other to throw my knockup at a jgler or mid about to one-shot my adc or midlaner, and three, to chase down my targets. To preface this, I have a bad habit of greeding (result of tunnel vision and lacking map awareness, but I'm working on it :D ), so in order to keep me alive I need to not only need to be able to catch up with a target to land a q slow for my teammates to clean them up if its gonna be a team fight, and then reposition to get out of the way of the enemy team to prep for my (kinda) delayed re-engage/all in (i'll let the enemy focus someone on my team that I know can take the aggro or escape when they need to after baiting some enemy skills, all while waiting for the q, w, e, w, flash/run to reposition and then ult. but for ALL of this, swifties is crucial for the (well, i guess MY specifically) early and late game movespeed benefits, as compared to mobi's for example which is only a benefit out of combat if i recall.

As well, you can see why my cd isn't ever a problem with the 17.5% rune/mastery lvl 1 stats, but I don't stop there. If support, after blue sightstone and swifties, i rush to finish Spookies, and then Lost Chapter, after which I'm FINALLY able to sustain my mana addictions (at this point we're up to 28.5% cd if I recall with the purchase of fiendish codex for, or the full purchase of Spookies, but still no more cd from lost chapter). By now lane phase is probably over so I'd only be able to probably handle two major team fights without backing, so first chance I get, I rush to complete morellos from lsot chapter (usually have enough to buy fiendish codex, the 435 gold magic book [i never remember its name], and two pinks), upgrading to oracle sweeper at lvl 9 and above. BOOM, you're up to 38.5% at this point, another team fight, lane coverage or dragon and you can head home to grab morellos. At this point, if we're ahead I might pick up luden's for the burst potential ( AND MOVEMENT SPEED <3 ) and then follow it up with a liandry's. If we're against tanks, I'll rush haunting guise into liandry's and follow it up with rylai or void staff depending on if enemy escape is the issue, or bursting down tanks and bruisers. I know there have been plenty of discussion on the rylai topic, so not meaning to bring that back up, its just sometimes the possibility of slowing multiple enemies on a stray W can be worth it if games are running very long, along with the health bumps from Liandry and Rylai making you much less squishy than lvls 1-15 as support vel usually is. I used to build ROA for the health, health per level, and mana, but I've found the mana regen and cd from morellos is more important for my playstyle, and through developing mechanics and positioning (AND ALWASY MAP AWARENESS), I can survive without feeding long enough to get liandry's. By the way, I just love building liandry's so much. It's honestly one of my favorite items for no reason other than the satisfaction of the burn passive. MAAAN IT FEELS GOOD.

/r/Velkoz Thread