Veigar may not be your typical jungle champion in League of Legends, but he’s a damn good off-meta jungle pick!
He’s got a couple of strengths like ganking and bursting that overshadow his weaknesses. And if you play the early game well, you can carry games even in high elo!
On the surface, Veigar is a really easy champion to play, even if you’re just a beginner. Because of this, it’s tough to “fail” as Veigar.
However, if you have no experience playing the jungle role as Veigar, you should closely follow the tips below!
But first of all, why should you play Veigar in the jungle?
Jungle Veigar – Strengths & Weaknesses
Here are a few strengths to consider:
- Incredible Ganks – Veigar can easily set up kills with his E – Event Horizon.
- High Burst Damage – You can basically one-shot anyone in the game.
- Amazing In Team fights – Great single target and AoE damage and CC.
- AP Jungler – Valuable pocket pick, especially in full AD team compositions.
Here are a few weaknesses to consider as well:
- Extremely Weak In Early Game – You have to play slowly and carefully, at least until level 6.
- Dependent On Stacking – Basically, you’ll have to use your Q – Baleful Strike to finish off jungle camps.
- Invades Can Set You Behind – It’s better to avoid them and focus on farming, even if it means losing a buff.
- Can’t Contest Scuttle Crubs – Veigar can’t 1v1 any jungler in the early game.
That said, let’s jump into the runes and items you should run on Veigar in the jungle.
Read Also: A Complete Guide on Jungle Alistar
Veigar Jungle – Runes
Electrocute
Out of all the keystones in League of Legends, Electrocute is the best one for Veigar jungle. First, because there are no keystones that actually help you with clearing camps.
And second, because all of their effects depend on fighting enemy champions. So you can’t even activate them in the jungle.
Electrocute is a reliable rune that damages your targets after you’ve hit them with 3 consecutive attacks.
Keep in mind that Veigar’s E – Event Horizon also counts as an attack, even though it doesn’t do any damage.
So you can proc Electrocute by caging your opponent, then quickly throwing your W+Q combo at them!
Cheap Shot
Cheap Shot increases your burst potential. Each time you stun an enemy with your E, the rune will add a bit of true damage to your combo.
It only has 4 seconds cooldown, so your damage is always buffed when you have Event Horizon ready.
Eyeball Collection
Eyeball Collection is a rune that provides flat damage increase. It adds 2 Ability Power per champion takedown, which means each time you score a kill or assist.
At 10 stacks, Eyeball Collection grants an additional 10 AP and boosts Veigar’s scaling.
Read Also: How to Jungle as Yasuo – Guide
Relentless Hunter
In the last row of Domination, you can go with any Hunter rune. This is because Veigar gets a benefit from every single one of them.
Ravenous Hunter helps with healing and survivability. Ingenious Hunter lowers the cooldown of your mythic item – Everfrost.
And Ultimate Hunter puts your strongest ability – Primordial Burst on a reasonably short cooldown too.
However, Relentless Hunter is the rune that gives the most value. It significantly increases Veigar’s movement speed and helps him cage enemies with his E.
Since Veigar has no mobility, it’s difficult for him to stun targets each time he ganks.
But if he has enough movement speed, he can place his Event Horizon in spots where the enemies are forced to either Flash or take the damage.
Transcendence
Ability Haste is by far the most important stat for Veigar in all roles, not only in the jungle. He gets a fair amount of AP from his passive and his items, so you don’t have to worry too much.
But more Ability Haste means Veigar can quickly clear jungle camps and use his E multiple times in a fight!
Transcendence is a rune that grants cooldown reduction throughout the game, so you should always take it!
Gathering Storm
Since Veigar is a scaling champion that works best in the late game, Gathering Storm is your go-to rune for snowballing.
It adds a good amount of AP every 10 minutes, so it’s a reliable source of power to have with you.
Read Also: Dark Harvest Veigar Guide
Optional Runes
Here are a few option runes you can run on Veigar jungle:
- Fleet Footwork – helps you with healing and kiting jungle monsters.
- Coup de Grace – increases your burst against low-HP targets.
- Celerity – boosts your movement speed and synergizes with Relentless Hunter.
- Overgrowth – makes you more tanky.
- Biscuit Delivery – improves your early game jungle clear.
Veigar Jungle – Build
Starting Items
Buying the blue pet and a Health Potion is the best way to start each game of Veigar jungle.
The blue pet, Gustwalker, provides you with bonus movement speed, making your ganks a bit easier on this immobile champion.
And the Health Potion is simply a must for keeping your health up on your first clear.
Everfrost
Everfrost is the best mythic item you can build on Veigar. It grants Ability Power, Ability Haste, Health, and Mana.
But the biggest bonus here is the active – Glaciate, which freezes enemies in place.
Veigar’s abilities synergize well with Everfrost. You can either use the item to perform your damaging combo when your Event Horizon is on cooldown.
Or you can use it to trap multiple opponents in the Event Horizon and stun them.
Shadowflame
Shadowflame is a fantastic AP item that increases your burst damage. It grants bonus magic penetration against tanky enemies as well as champions with lots of shields.
Shadowflame will give you a great opening whenever you’re looking to one-shot an enemy, so make sure to buy it as early as possible.
Zhonya’s Hourglass
Zhonya’s Hourglass is the ultimate defensive item for a mage. Veigar has no mobility and often ends up being the main target of the enemy team. So Zhonya’s will help you survive those bursts and all-ins.
It’s worth mentioning that you should always purchase Seeker’s Armguard first, stack it up, then complete the full item.
The bonus Armor will reduce the damage you take from the jungle monsters.
Void Staff
On the other hand, Void Staff is the ultimate offensive item for a mage. Because Veigar’s goal is to stack as much AP as possible, Void Staff is here to amplify his damage even more.
It grants 40% Magic Penetration, which is enough bursting squishy champions and chunking tanks.
Rabadon’s Deathcap
And in your last inventory slot, you should always have Rabadon’s Deathcap. It significantly increases Veigar’s damage output because it almost doubles his Ability Power.
Veigar is the only LoL champion that can get to 600 AP without Rabadon’s Deathcap. This means that Veigar usually gets a bonus of 200+ AP when he buys Rabadon’s Deathcap.
And that’s insanely good!
Ionian Boots of Lucidity
As for boots, Ionian Boots of Lucidity is the cheapest and the most effective upgrade in the early game.
It only costs 950 gold, but it grants 20 Ability Haste and 12% Summoner Spell Haste. This will speed up your jungle clear as Veigar and improve your effectiveness in the early game.
Read Also: Lich Bane Veigar Guide
Optional Items
Here are a few optional and situational items you can purchase on Veigar jungle:
- Liandry’s Anguish – effective against tanks.
- Morellonomicon – reduces your opponents’ healing.
- Banshee’s Veil – protects you against crowd control and damaging abilities.
How to Play Veigar Jungle?
Clearing the Jungle as Veigar
Start the game with a hard leash.
Since Veigar is a squishy champion, he needs extra help with his first buff. If you have a tanky support, such as Thresh, Leona, or Alistar, you can ask them to take one or two attacks from the buff.
This will significantly help you with your first clear.
However, expect to lose a lot of Health on level 1, especially if you’re starting from the red buff. The best thing to do is to constantly move and only stop for auto attacks.
Sometimes you can weave two basic attacks before the buff hits you once.
You definitely won’t have to Smite it, but it will take extra time before you bring the buff down.
For the rest of the camps, it’s also helpful to simply keep moving. Once the monster is at 50% HP, you can slowly start walking towards the next camp.
Watch out for the threat bar of each monster, and be careful to not reset it.
Should you contest scuttle crabs as Vegar?
Absolutely not! Just forget about it! Unless your team is there to aid you, you should avoid fighting for the scuttle crabs.
The early game as Veigar jungle should be all about farming. You can inform your teammates that your plan is to rush to level 6.
More often than not, people play more defensively when they know their jungler won’t come to help them. So it’s worth trying.
Read Also: Red vs. Blue Kayn – Complete Guide
Stacking the Passive – Phenomenal Evil Power
Veigar’s passive – Phenomenal Evil Power is the center of his champion design. It grants Veigar Ability Power when he damages enemy champions or slays monsters with his Q – Baleful Strike.
Basically, the idea here is to always finish off a monster with Q. This ability strikes two targets instead of one, so try to hit 2 monsters at the same time with it.
This will give you 2 stacks of Phenomenal Evil Power instead of 1.
Veigar’s stacking has both positive and negative effects.
First of all, it helps you build AP at a steady rate, no matter whether you’re winning or losing. But it also requires you to plan how you’re going to use your abilities while clearing camps.
For example, you should avoid casting your W – Dark Matter on monsters that are near 20% HP because it may kill them, and you won’t get to stack them!
But unlike Nasus, Veigar shouldn’t only farm monsters. You can gain a lot of stacks by ganking and damaging enemies.
So always look around the map for opponents that are either overextending or have low Health.
Read Also: How to Stack Quickly and Efficiently on Veigar?
Ganking as Veigar Jungle
Ganking is by far the most fun part of playing Veigar in the jungle role. You can constantly torment people by running in their lanes and casting Event Horizons, especially immobile champions.
Veigar’s E is one of the best crowd control abilities in the entire League of Legends. You can do many tricks with it, like placing its edges near the opponent’s current position for an instant stun.
But simply using it is enough to stop enemies from moving, which is exactly what a jungler should do.
It won’t be always easy to trap enemies in Event Horizon, though. But movement Speed helps you set up more successful ganks.
With enough MS, you can quickly get near enough to drop the wall around them, forcing them to take your damage.
But you have to worry about which angle you’re going to gank from too. You should always think about how and where you’re going to put your E.
So coming from an angle from which your opponents don’t expect you to come will give you the element of surprise, and you’ll stun them!
Late Game Team Fighting as Veigar Jungle
You can’t do wrong in a team fight with Veigar! If you follow the runes and item build we talked about above, you’ll have no shortage of damage.
In fact, your DPS will be so high that you can easily win team fights by yourself.
However, you can’t take objectives by yourself as Veigar jungle. You simply can’t!
No matter how fed you are, Veigar is still a squishy champion that gets destroyed in one stun duration.
Because of that, you should be careful about taking Dragons or other buffs when your teammates aren’t near you. So don’t start team fights in this way, unless you have to!
One of the things you should focus on in a team fight is your E. The way someone places Veigar’s wall determines whether he is a good or a bad Veigar player.
Consider this.
If you put your E on top of an enemy champion in a fight, then that enemy has two ways to not get stunned. First, he can Flash away. And second, he can circle around the insights of the cage.
But if you want to stun your opponents more often, you should drop Veigar’s cage a little bit to the side or place the walls on top of the champion.
Veigar’s E is not only an aggressive tool, though. In fact, it’s also one of the best abilities for a disengage. You can also use it to peel for your ADC or mid laner by keeping the enemies away from them.
And lastly, Veigar’s R – Primordial is a one-button-win type of spell that could win you the team fight right at the start.
You should either use your ultimate on a low HP enemy or a squishy target, such as a marksman or a mage.
Read Also: How to Gank as Rengar? (Complete Guide)
Conclusion
I hope this guide clarified some of the confusion around playing Veigar in the jungle role. As you can see, the playstyle is really easy once you break it down into simple steps.
The essential tips that you should take away from here are to play passively in the early game and to stack your passive.
The best way to gank is when your enemies are overextended, just so you can ensure that your E will trap them, hopefully forcing a Flash if not a kill.
You have a lot of damage in the late game, so use it to turn the team fight into 5v4 right from the start.
So if you were wondering whether Veigar is viable in the jungle role or not, now you know that he is! And you know how to play him!
