A closer look: AP Varus (long)

Hi, I've achieved Mastery rank 5 on by exclusively playing him AP, and I want to discuss the future and viability of this variant of Varus. First of all, I will say that I find AP Varus much more fun than AD Varus. I hope Riot will preserve it just as they preserved AD and AP

Alright. Let's talk about Varus' identity. is a man who borrowed a mysterious evil power. He has a single purpose to achieve before the power eats away at him completely: To take vengeance on the Noxians who slaughtered his village and family.

Now let's relate this to his playstyles. If you don't know a thing about AP Varus, here's the basic gist of it: you build up three stacks of Blight with your autos, then you detonate the stacks with your Q, E or R. The detonation damage of the Blight scales with AP and deals %maxHP. With enough AP, he will absolutely flatten anyone who stacks HP.

-AD Varus, the most popular Varus, is a very long range carry. He sits super far back and spams Q all day, stacking his tear. Overall a very low risk style with good reward.

-AP Varus needs to get in close to auto attack for Blight stacks, but damn does it pay off if you get three stacks to proc, especially in the late game. AP has a very weak early game, and a one-time nuke with his ult. It's a very risky style that requires good spacing from your enemies, and the reward is lower than AD Varus because he runs out of cooldowns to proc the blight. He can only do his big burst once every minute or so with his ult.

So why play him AP? Because a dangerous martyr of a man, even if he is an archer, should not be sitting 1000 units outside the fight spitting out one ability over and over. In fact, I think his Q is a misunderstood ability. It should be used to finish off stragglers who survive his initial burst, not spammed annoyingly to poke down enemies. On the other hand, AP Varus is perfectly aligned with his identity. He'll topple anyone in his way to get revenge, no matter how tanky, by using his corrupt power to destroy them in one big burst of evil. This is exactly what AP Varus does when he ults a target with three stacks of blight.

It's a healthy playstyle with counterplay AP Varus is very outplayable. You can flash all his abilities to stop the blight proc, or you can mess him up when he's stacking it on you. He only shreds health, Magic Resist makes things very hard for him. I would argue it's more healthy than AD Varus' play pattern of spamming Q.

So why isn't he viable? In a meta where a Maokai W or an Alistar combo spells death for an immobile squishy, and you've got , and running around, it's just not practical to take three seconds to build up those Blight stacks within 600 range of the enemy. But that's okay.** AP Varus' play pattern doesn't need to change. He just needs clearer strengths.** Here are some suggestions:

1. Leave everything the same, but remove blight's cap on monsters. The idea here is to make him an objective slaying monster, like Kalista or Kindred, but better. This one extreme strength will compensate for his vulnerability to being assassinated and impractical, slow burst pattern against champions.
2. Increase maximum blight stacks to five. Emphasize his identity as the corrupt guy who will seriously mess you up if you let him stack that Blight.

Thanks to anyone who read, and I encourage you to try AP Varus in normals. It's a lot of fun and it would be really fun to watch if it was viable. My hope is that Riot will acknowledge the playstyle and nudge it into viability, like they did with AD Malzahar.

P.S. A good build for anyone trying this is or, then Grab a if your positioning is really good :p