I’ve got some good news and some bad news regarding the Champ of the Week series. First, the good news. It’s coming back next week! I know I owe everyone a Talon video and a long overdue Veigar video, but that’s where the bad news comes in. All of the recordings I have from those games is buried somewhere on a corrupt and now very dead hard drive. I’ve since replaced that drive, but I lost my LoL Replay data along with all of my video footage from those games. Yes, it sucks very much.

Back to some good news, though – I should be able to get a game or two in over the next few days with both Talon and Veigar so I can at least upload a replay for those of you using LoL replays. If I have the time, I might even do a quick and dirty video, but that seems unlikely at the moment.

So, check back at the beginning of next week for the return of the champ of the week series. If you have suggestions for a character you’d like to see next week, let me know in the comments.

With the release of Dominion and a backlog of videos for both Trundle and Veigar, I won’t be playing a Champ of the Week this week as I typically do on Summoner’s Rift.

In the interest of transparency, allow me to explain the Veigar/Trundle delay. Two weeks ago my hard drive started acting screwy. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but when I started to cut together the Veigar video, several of my clips became corrupted and wouldn’t work. After trying to recapture those clips, I realized the partition of my hard drive that housed my Fraps recordings was corrupt and needed wiped.

I now have a new hard drive up and running, a fresh Fraps install, but sadly, no clips. I’ve been using LoLReplay, which means going through quite a few games and capturing important moments without the benefit of a replay feature, which is time consuming.

The good news is that I should have time to work on both Veigar and Trundle tomorrow. I’m also planning a new feature specifically focused on Dominion, though I’m not totally sure where that one will fit.

Keep an eye on the YouTube channel for the newest videos as I have them. If you haven’t seen it, check out my Dominion commentary video for some tips and basic information on the latest game mode in League of Legends.

I really hate doing this, but I’ve had some technical issues that are going to delay the Veigar Champ of the Week wrapup by a day or two. To keep it short, I now need new hard drives in both my laptop and my desktop. Bummer.

In the meantime, I’ll give you a little teaser. For starters, I’m going to do my best to keep the video from looking like a highlight reel, but Veigar is prone to making highlight reels. It’s tough to keep the video from looking like it’s being skewed due to the nature of his combo. I did have some great teamfighting moments that I think will also highlight what he can do beyond just blowing up a target.

I had hoped it was just Fraps giving me trouble today, so I jumped into a game in the hopes of LoL Recorder providing at least a game upload for you to enjoy. No such luck. Again, the hard drive issues, but I also got stuck mid against a Kassadin. His new passive utterly wrecks Veigar through the early game, making it very difficult to lane against him. I think that’s more an issue of Kassadin’s design than it is Veigar’s. Kassadin can’t quite hang with the AoE casters like Annie and Brand, even with the increased damage absorption on his passive. Now he just pubstomps poor toons like Veigar harder than ever. If the game were draft mode, I probably wouldn’t have tried to play Veigar.

Keep an eye out later in the week for Veigar. Again, my apologies for the delays. As soon as my new hard drive is up and running I’ll be putting the video together. Promise.

I’ve been hesitant to pick Veigar as the Champ of the Week for a couple reasons. First, I love him. Love, love, love him, so I hate to use him and not have him later. Maybe I’ll just subject you all to more videos of him than could ever be necessary, regardless of this feature.

The other reason I hesitate is that Veigar reworks have been rumored for a while now, and I’d hate to do a video on him just to have him change shortly after. Then again, I see Veigar in one out of every 50 games or so, so he probably won’t be seeing changes any time soon.

Veigar holds sort of a unqiue position in the League. He’s the one champion with totally uncapped AP gain, similar to Sion’s uncapped health gain. Every time he kills a minion with his Q skill he picks up an extra AP and, once he has his ult, he gains another 1 for champion kills per level of Baleful Strike (max 5). Because of that, he can break 400 AP insanely fast.

The flipside is that his mana situation is pretty terrible, and understandably so. Make it too easy to farm and he becomes a one-shot wrecking ball by 15 minutes in. In some cases, that still happens, but more often than not, I find myself flitting around the outside of teamfights, trying to blow up an important target and provide the utility of his AoE stun. When played well, Veigar can be brutally effective in that role. He certainly doesn’t provide the team-killing power of an Annie or a Brand, but I usually find him much more rewarding to play than either of those two champions, and frankly most of the AP champions in the game.

This week I’ll be playing Veigar, focusing on his teamfighting skills and providing more utility than just the initial burst comp. I’m not going to be messing with jungle Veigar. I know it can be done, but it’s just not my thing.

Check back later in the week for more impressions of the tiny Master of Evil, and of course, the video wrapup at the end of the week. If you have any questions or suggestions, drop them in the comments.

As an apology for last week’s patch day downtime, Riot credited any player who had logged in over the past month with 350 free RP. It was a nice gesture, especially considering the scope. I’ve had a couple thousand RP sitting around for a while now for no real reason. This extra boost put me at a level that required a little spending, so I threw down on Leprechaun Veigar. I had yet to see it in game, but let me you, if you like Veigar even the littlest bit you should get this skin. He drops a pot of gold for god’s sake. It’s awesome.

So how are you spending your free RP? I thought about buying Apocalyptic Brand, but since I’m starting up the Champ of the Week column I probably won’t be playing him a ton. I can stand to wait a few weeks for a skin sale at least.