14.8 Veigar (Midlane) - Only viable Veigar guide on Tacter as of now

The other 3 Veigar guides as of now (18th March 24) are all heavily flawed or incorrect. I will try to provide a correct guide about Veigar with this article. You can safely ignore the rest of the Veigar-guides on tacter.

1. Do not take First Strike if you are getting poked before being able to proc it. Watch out for your matchup
2. Resolve secondary gives you safety against hard matchups like Fizz.
3. If you want to use Resolve secondary, go for either Boneplating or Second Wind and Resolve -> Boneplating is your choice if the enemy can oneshot you quickly before activating Boneplating prior. Second wind is your choice if the enemy has a lot of ranged poke that he can proc often, like Hwei or Xerath. Always take Resolve as 2nd option, it grants you HP from minions.
4. Arcane Comet for damage if you are able to land good poking Qs in your matchup about once or twice for every wave.
5. If you need damage, but will get outranged by your enemy, like Syndra, Electrocute will be your friend. If you land 3 abilites (Your cage and autoattacks count too!) in 3 seconds, you will do a decent amount of damage, even early on. During prolonged skirmishes without teamfights or trades in lane this rune can do quite some damage.
6. While Unsealed Spellbook is likely the best rune for Veigar it may be hard/inefficent to take this rune due to the game awarness that this rune requires. I would recommend Unsealed Spellbook, if you are already familar with control mages, have a great game sense or are in higher MMRs(Low diamond and above should be fine).
7. You really really want Triple Tonic for 3 main reasons: The first potion is barely relevant in its effect, but gives you 40 gold after its one minute duration, this may be the last bit of gold that you need for your first component for your reset. The second potion which you will unlock at level 6 gives you a great amount of Ability haste(20) for a fight. Activate if before a fight or hold it in inventory if you do not need slots yet. At level 9 the best potion will grant you one extra skill point - Which is crucial for Veigar.
8. If you use the Inspiration tree secondary take either Cookies if you dont want mana problems early or either Cosmic Insight or Approach Velocity. Usually you would take Triple Tonic and Cookies for secondary path and Triple Tonic, Cookies as well as Cosmic Insight for primary rune path.
9. If you go for Electrocute you want to go for either Taste of Blood(in most cases) or Cheat Shot first, then Eyeball collection for extra AP after kills and assissts as well as either Relentless Hunter or Ultimate Hunter as last option. The Domination tree minor runes are not that great for Veigar. Do not go for Domination as a secondary path ever!
10. If you take Arcane Comet, always take Manaflowband for extra mana, then either Absolute Focus(More damage if your above 70% of your HP) or Transedence(For Ability Haste). Lastly you should take Gathering Storm to stack as much AP as possible. You can also take Scorch if you like to play around this rune in lane, but usually Gathering Storm outvalues Scorch goldwise.
11. As shards you can be creative. People often take the late game HP shard (10 to 180HP) instead of the flat-HP shard(65HP), but often times your early before level 7 (Where the lategame shard outvalues the 65 HP one) is already decided. A 65-shard may just give you enough HP to survive an all-in or a fight. If you can play safe and play tanky Veigar(See item module) you want both lategame-HP shards. However, those are only 2 out of your 3 shards - Your first shard can be the offensive shard with attack speed to farm better or the Ability haste rune for extra ability haste. Do not underestimate shards, as the Ability haste rune alone is worth ≤400 gold.

Veigar is a weak early champion and gets outvalued due to various factors, but mostly due to his too long W animation, his lack of moblitly/dashes as well as the fact that his entire utility depends on his E (Cage) after Everfrost has been removed and predator is no longer viable. There is however, a fix to the last 2 points - Shureliyas (See item module). If Veigar is allowed to scale into an enemy composition, that does not counter him to hard, he will be one of the best champions to do so (Notice that I said one of, not the best). Veigar has an very old kit and gets outranged and outrun. While he is a weak champion that does not mean too much since (contrary to popular belief) League of Legends (as of 14.5) is very well balanced and the difference between the strongest and weakest champions is smaller that it appears. Veigar has skill-expression mainly on his cage-usage, his positioning(A bit more than many other champions) and his itemization. Veigar has a low skill-floor, but most non-main Veigar players are not good on this champion even up until high master MMR. One of the worst enemies of Veigar is the item Mercury's Treads.

The single most important thing about LoL is that you have fun. Veigar can be fun to play. One aspect of Veigar that will maybe make Veigar unfun in lower MMRs is that scaling mages cannot follow as much into enemy territory, are often on weakside, have only priority in the minority of the lane phase and can therefore be frustrating for junglers with little game knowledge. Junglers will understand more the higher you climb.