Veigar vs Smolder Counter Pick

Two stacking passives race each other. Phenomenal Evil Power grows whenever Veigar strikes a champion with a spell or finishes a unit with Baleful Strike; Dragon Practice grows when Smolder hits champions with abilities or kills with Super Scorcher Breath. The asymmetry is that one accumulates off minions in complete safety while the other’s best source requires connecting with a champion. Patch 16.13.1 reads 63.9% for Veigar over 108 games — a wide margin resting on a modest sample.

Both attack from 550 units, both pay Mana, and their opening health is nearly level at 575 against 580. Smolder’s physical damage meets 18 base armor, which is genuinely thin, but he has no hard crowd control to force the fight: Achooo! explodes on champion contact, Flap, Flap, Flap repositions over terrain toward the lowest-health enemy, and MMOOOMMMM! slows rather than stops. Event Horizon answers all three, and Dark Matter falls after a delay, which is the safest way to farm stacks against a champion with 330 movement speed to 340 and no dash outside his ultimate window. Late, Primordial Burst punishes a body that ends at 2,275 health and 92 armor at level 18, where the mage reaches 2,416 and 106.4. Difficulty ratings are 6 and 7, and early magic resistance is the correction most often skipped.