Reign of Gaming

I play Dark Souls when I need to unwind. At least there, if someone beats you, it's your fault that they were better. Or if you lose to an AI enemy, it's because you alone screwed up and missed a block/dodge or didn't know the attack pattern or whatever.

Viktor's thing is that he's a jack of all trades and master of none. He can do most things passably, but he isn't particularly good at any of them except perhaps for mid-game poke and small area control. He can be picked into most situations because his laser is such a good spell. However, 99% of games will not require everything he provides, or will require roaming. Viktor is not good at roaming unless the laner you're ganking for has pinked. If you can't use literally everything he does, there is a better pick.

That being said, Viktor is quite viable and I see/use him most as a situational counter to Akali. There are a lot of mids I'd rather see picked over him, but when I see a Viktor on my team I don't instantly think "Oh no, there's a Viktor, prepare for a terrible mid lane" like I would with some other characters.

RE: Viktor. I'll start this off by saying that I really, really like Viktor's concept and I think he's very fun to play. Viktor is not terrible, but there's someone who does whatever he does better. Poke? Nidalee, Xerath, Lux are three that poke better than he does. Lane dominance? Cassiopeia, perhaps. Kayle for sure. Counterinitiating? You have bruisers and supports for that. Regardless, Morgana, Galio, Kennen, and on occasion Lux and Lissandra do it better. Zone control? Maybe Malzahar's equal. Anivia does it better. Pushing and counter-pushing? Anivia can probably equal him but that's about it. Augment: Death Viktor is incredibly good at pushing mid-game. Burst? Any assassin, plus Annie and Brand and some other burst-centric casters. I think he's better than Heimer or Sion, but he's still among the weakest viable AP characters. Obviously you can win with him - he does do counterinitiation, poke, zone control, and burst pretty well - but if you want those, pick someone who does them better unless you're better with Viktor. You can win with anyone at low Elo if you're better than your opponents.

I'd have to say that in 95% of all cases, BT is the better buy directly after Brutalizer. Unless you're going up against a tank who can stack nothing but armor and do well against your team comp because you have literally zero magic damage, then I'd go LW. BT gives more sustain, and in most cases equal or more damage as a rush item. I'd usually build LW at most 1 item after BT, though.

A good Xerath will just run away the second he sees your E going out, and he won't be in range for your W or ult to hit without using E to gapclose. He can poke at you from beyond your retaliation range and farm extremely safely if he does end up getting beaten in lane. He can't really combo you, but you can't really combo him. It generally results in a stalemated lane, from my experience, provided neither mid screws up and gives the other a kill.

Elise, Xin Zhao, Cho'Gath, Darius (although he's weaker as a jungler than he used to be, from what I've heard), Diana, Dr. Mundo occasionally, Evelynn if you're confident with her, Fiddlesticks (although I haven't seen him much outside support), Gangplank (not entirely sure on this, but I can't see it being awful - he's outclassed though in the jungle), Jax, Karthus, Kayle, Lee Sin, Malphite, Maokai, Master Yi, Nunu, Olaf, Rengar (although he's been nerfed and is now a very slow jungler), Riven, Shen, Shyvana (can lane in some situations), Tryndamere, Udyr, Zac.

Do bear in mind that jungling gives considerably less gold and build accordingly. Jungle Kayle can't afford to go AD, for example.

Corki has sort of strange interactions with the ArPen/AD math stuff because of his passive, though. LW is most definitely not the end-all be-all of damage items on him, anyway, because his poke and his early burst are mostly magic damage. LW should still be built on Corki most games, but usually as a 5th or 6th item, as far as I'm aware.

Scaling health yellows are also quite common on AP caster rune pages, and movement speed quints can find a place on any rune page. If you don't want to buy that many runes, I'd suggest mix-and-matching MPen reds, flat AD reds, flat armor yellows, flat or scaling MR blues (start with flat, if you're only buying 1 set), some sort of AP blues, and movement speed quints. Then you can move on to flat AD and AP quints, the other MR blues, the other set of AP blues, some CDR blues, some scaling health and Gp10 yellows, Mp5 yellows, armor pen quints/reds, armor reds for certain supports, hybrid pen quints/reds, or whatever, based on your most common roles.

Just coming in to say this: Muramana is pretty stupidly good when combined with Karma's W. It procs every .33 seconds and isn't technically classed as a DoT (unless they hotfixed this), so Muramana procs every tick of W damage.

He's not a part of the gameplay design team. He just does art.