Velocity rims are junk. Floppy, soft, and cheaply made. They have gotten a bit better from when they first moved production to the US - they were truly terrible for a while. Now they're merely mediocre. That was fine when they were cheap, but they aren't anymore.

As for spoke count, it isn't 1996 anymore and I have massive respect for Sheldon Brown but he's been dead for 8 years and his skepticism of lower spoke counts was becoming fairly unwarranted toward the end of his life, too. The handwringing over 28 vs. 32 vs. 36 spokes is just ridiculous in 2016. For any rider within probably two or three standard deviations of average weight, a wheel will easily be strong enough at any of those spoke counts. And generally when a wheel isn't solid, spoke count isn't the reason. My 32 spoke wheels built around Velocity rims have been basically crummy across the board. While I've had 20/24 spoke count wheels that are rock solid on the road and off of it. The critical factor here is quality of the build and quality of the parts, especially the rim. For mediocre rims like Velocity, 32 spokes is a good idea. For decent mid-range rims like H Plus Son, you can go quite a bit lower and be fine. For the very best rims, like Pacenti or HED, do whatever you want. Just make sure they're built by someone with a reputation.