Hi guys, my name is shukmeister and I was one of the top Volibear players back when I played. Although I have never posted before, I would like to voice my opinion now as someone who has logged 300+ Volibear games.
I very strongly believe that Volibear is in a very good place right now. Although this thread is dedicated to the issues with his kit, I argue that people just do not know how to play Volibear correctly. If you fundamentally change the way you USE his abilities, you will see an enormous amount of success.
What am I talking about?
Volibear is not a gap-closing champion. He instead functions as a CC heavy character that you cannot get away from. Think about Darius: if you get near him, you're not getting away.
1. NEVER use Rolling Thunder to close a gap. Instead, simply walk up to the opponent and start auto attacking them. You use Q only when they start running away.
2. You should NEVER use a Q+E combo. Voli has long cooldowns and this combo destroys his sticking potential. Space out your CC over a long time: begin with auto attacks, then flip, then continue sticking using the bonus movement speed of Q, then when they start getting away use E, by now they have low health so use your execute.
3. Don't be afraid to use his ultimate on one person. This is how I get the vast majority of my kills in lane. I walk behind them, ult, and use my cc to land more auto attacks.
4. Don't focus on getting to the enemy carries. You are a great peeler, and by attacking one of the enemies you hit many of them.
5. Do not stack health. I know it has double scaling with his passive and W, but attack speed is just as important. You must have an even mix of offense and defense to make use of Voli's great damage potential.
S3 items are amazing on Voli. If you build Zephyr, new Boots of Swiftness, Movement speed quints, and defensive masteries (Tenacious and Relentless), you will have no trouble getting to the enemy team. Your movement speed will hover around 440 without your Q and once you get there your CC will ensure more ultimate empowered attacks. I highly believe this is an itemization issue, not a kit issue.
Volibear is definitely a hybrid champion. With a little attack speed and a sunfire's cape, you will be putting on the pain. The best part is that people can't build resistances against you for your damage is split between physical and magic. If you land a few ultimate empowered hits, AP Voli actually has hilariously high scaling. Theoretically: without building attack speed, and assuming you can land every hit in the duration, Voli's ultimate has a 14:1 AP scaling! Realistically, however, building AP on Voli sacrifices a lot, but provides an awesome choice for a team.
This is a sweet change. However, if the player knows that there is a cast time, they must change their play style to accomodate for this difficulty. I ONLY cast the ult when I am behind and close to my target. This prevents them from running back to their tower without crossing paths with me.
Do you want to get first blood EVERY game as Volibear? This amazing guide taught me how to do it: http://www.solomid.net/guides.php?g=...ar-build-guide
- Run armor pen runes, full offensive mastery, and level up W twice before getting E. Ignite before you bite and gg!
I will probably be berated for saying that Volibear does not need many changes, but I truly believe he is very underpowered simply because people aren't playing him correctly. Hopefully some of what I said helps :P
The only change I would recommend is a slight increase in the range on his ult's bounces. His lightning rarely hits more than one person in the vast majority of teamfights.
I also love the idea of a toggle ult
Thank you for looking into this Riot! Love you guys.
Thank you for this post shukmeister, there is some great information here!
You said something about either removing the cast time on his ult or make it something worthy of the cast time.
What about make Volibear's ult activation something like a PBAoE where he is struck by a thunder that creates a singularity and attracts enemies to him? (like Orianna's ball)
Enemies further are pulled less, enemies closer are pulled more, take damage and maybe are CC`ed some way? Then you make the damage on his ult less because he would be able to stay on targets more and have a more powerful and reliable initiation.
After discussing this a bit internally, I don't think we need to do anything this extreme. It is a good idea though, something I might revisit if first iterations don't succeed.
It used to work. Volibear is very binary, give him an early kill and he will make you bear snacks all day.
But it's not healthy to a champion to be binary "I win my lane I win the game"... I don't know. This game need some champions re-balancing to fit season 3. The main thing I see that helped Voli is that, now that indomitable doesn't exist anymore, that 3 second fear REALLY helps him more than never.
This. The motivation to revisit Volibear is largely to resolve this binary nature. I will only consider any changes a success if they create more fun gameplay and counterplay than we have right now.
I'm starting to think that they decided not to work on voli just yet. Really disappointing but we haven't heard anything from volty in a long time. While the sej update thread has been informed of changes that they are working on multiple times. I feel that voli changes should come before hers because he has been around longer, tho it is only a few months but still kinda sucks
In fairness to Volty, he is busy putting the polishing touches on our next champion, and she's a real doozy. Don't take silence on his part as anything more than him being tied up for a while.
Also, I found the Volibear attack speed increase to be a nice buff to his jungle speed. Since it impacts his base attack speed, that is multiplied by all attack speed bonuses from abilities/items/etc. It wasn't intended to be a huge power spike, but rather a small buff for a champion that needed... a small buff.
Some simple Volibear playability thingies
Proof is a link to my guide with my scores. Items and masteries are not updated for S3, but all the gameplay concepts are there: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-le...ng-soon-238274
I very strongly believe that Volibear is in a very good place right now. Although this thread is dedicated to the issues with his kit, I argue that people just do not know how to play Volibear correctly. If you fundamentally change the way you USE his abilities, you will see an enormous amount of success.
What am I talking about?
Volibear is not a gap-closing champion. He instead functions as a CC heavy character that you cannot get away from. Think about Darius: if you get near him, you're not getting away.
1. NEVER use Rolling Thunder to close a gap. Instead, simply walk up to the opponent and start auto attacking them. You use Q only when they start running away.
2. You should NEVER use a Q+E combo. Voli has long cooldowns and this combo destroys his sticking potential. Space out your CC over a long time: begin with auto attacks, then flip, then continue sticking using the bonus movement speed of Q, then when they start getting away use E, by now they have low health so use your execute.
3. Don't be afraid to use his ultimate on one person. This is how I get the vast majority of my kills in lane. I walk behind them, ult, and use my cc to land more auto attacks.
4. Don't focus on getting to the enemy carries. You are a great peeler, and by attacking one of the enemies you hit many of them.
5. Do not stack health. I know it has double scaling with his passive and W, but attack speed is just as important. You must have an even mix of offense and defense to make use of Voli's great damage potential.
S3 items are amazing on Voli. If you build Zephyr, new Boots of Swiftness, Movement speed quints, and defensive masteries (Tenacious and Relentless), you will have no trouble getting to the enemy team. Your movement speed will hover around 440 without your Q and once you get there your CC will ensure more ultimate empowered attacks. I highly believe this is an itemization issue, not a kit issue.
Volibear is definitely a hybrid champion. With a little attack speed and a sunfire's cape, you will be putting on the pain. The best part is that people can't build resistances against you for your damage is split between physical and magic. If you land a few ultimate empowered hits, AP Voli actually has hilariously high scaling. Theoretically: without building attack speed, and assuming you can land every hit in the duration, Voli's ultimate has a 14:1 AP scaling! Realistically, however, building AP on Voli sacrifices a lot, but provides an awesome choice for a team.
This is a sweet change. However, if the player knows that there is a cast time, they must change their play style to accomodate for this difficulty. I ONLY cast the ult when I am behind and close to my target. This prevents them from running back to their tower without crossing paths with me.
Do you want to get first blood EVERY game as Volibear? This amazing guide taught me how to do it: http://www.solomid.net/guides.php?g=...ar-build-guide
- Run armor pen runes, full offensive mastery, and level up W twice before getting E. Ignite before you bite and gg!
I will probably be berated for saying that Volibear does not need many changes, but I truly believe he is very underpowered simply because people aren't playing him correctly. Hopefully some of what I said helps :P
The only change I would recommend is a slight increase in the range on his ult's bounces. His lightning rarely hits more than one person in the vast majority of teamfights.
I also love the idea of a toggle ult
Thank you for looking into this Riot! Love you guys.
You said something about either removing the cast time on his ult or make it something worthy of the cast time.
What about make Volibear's ult activation something like a PBAoE where he is struck by a thunder that creates a singularity and attracts enemies to him? (like Orianna's ball)
Enemies further are pulled less, enemies closer are pulled more, take damage and maybe are CC`ed some way? Then you make the damage on his ult less because he would be able to stay on targets more and have a more powerful and reliable initiation.
But it's not healthy to a champion to be binary "I win my lane I win the game"... I don't know. This game need some champions re-balancing to fit season 3. The main thing I see that helped Voli is that, now that indomitable doesn't exist anymore, that 3 second fear REALLY helps him more than never.
Also, I found the Volibear attack speed increase to be a nice buff to his jungle speed. Since it impacts his base attack speed, that is multiplied by all attack speed bonuses from abilities/items/etc. It wasn't intended to be a huge power spike, but rather a small buff for a champion that needed... a small buff.