[2021] I feel like Viego's possession mechanic is barely relevant, his strength comes more from invulnerability during team fights and ultimate cooldown resets than from using possessed kits

he's untargetable, not invulnerable

If it's true that Viego ONLY uses possession for the ult reset and its a TRAP to make use of the champions he takes over, that would be a problem I'd look to resolve in the future. Not sure that's true from what I've seen of him however.

That said, it's intended that a meaningful part of the reward for possessing an enemy champion is in resetting the R, a spell that puts a melee basic attacker directly on top of you.

Two reasons for this:

1. We avoid the OTHER problem of, "It doesn't matter how far behind Viego is, he just takes the fed Kai'sa and kills everyone." The R reset being strong means a Viego trying to pop off still relies on power that comes from his personal success/items. It means the best course of action isn't just to build straight tank every game and KS possessions.

2. I'd like the key skill test for Viego's passive to be HOW he uses the bodies. Some bodies are best to stay in and use all the spells (Taking Leona late game = you're invincible + get to chain CC their team) whereas other bodies are close to useless (Kassadin with no ult) and are best to discard ASAP in favor of getting access to your basic attacks again. IMO the passive is far less interesting if the optimal play is to just do the same thing every time, be it ulting out instantly OR staying as the person for a full 10s. The ideal possession passive to me is one that tests the Viego player's knowledge of the champions he takes and awareness of whatever situation he's currently in, sometimes you should smash that R button the second it's off CD, sometimes you should spam out all the spells then R execute the guy you just nuked, and sometimes you should stay in the body as long as possible to take advantage of what that specific kit has to offer.

Viego is intended to be more Yi/Jax like. There's a lot of mindshare that goes into taking over other champions, so wanted to make the base kit a bit more straight forward.

Right now Viego mid has like a 1-1.5% higher winrate than jungle, but that (by itself) doesn't mean jungle is bad or lane is OP. Would be kinda like saying Ekko jungle is bad because Ekko mid wins more.

We're keeping an eye on lane Viego and will adjust if necessary. We primarily want him to be a viable jungler, but hopefully we can also let him lane as there are quite a few players who enjoy him there (assuming we can still make jungle good and he isn't a flex problem in pro-play). If we needed to nerf lane further we'd likely hit the minion sustain again.

You say he killed a 15/0 Trist but her score clearly shows that she has never died

curious