A little love for the bear?

****Way back in S2, Riot stated they were planning on a kit rework for volibear to make him less binary. He's a champion with very limited strategic options, insane base stats/damage, and poor scaling. In the mid game, he either reaches his target and annihilates them, or he fails to reach his target and does nothing. Regardless of how well he does in the early/mid game, he falls off extremely hard in the late game due to his inability to efficiently itemize for damage. His Q has no scaling, his execute scales with health, his E scales poorly with AP, and his R scales with poorly with AP and decently with attack speed. His kit is split pretty much 50/50 between magic and physical damage, which makes penetration an inefficient stat for him as well.

Unfortunately for volibear, the meta briefly shifted in favor of him, and so the rework was abandoned and he was slapped with nerfs. We're left with a champion who is lackluster from a balance standpoint and who still suffers from all the same underlying problems Riot was hoping to solve: his lack of strategic options, his incredibly binary kit, and his unsatisfying power arch (insane early/mid game damage while building full tank, poor damage and tank scaling into the late game).

Volibear does not need number buffs. Number buffs make him stronger without addressing any of the fundamental issues with his kit. What volibear needs is a power shift in order to make him more reliable, but less overwhelming in the mid game when he does actually reach his target.

I'm not a game designer. I don't know how to fix him. But here are a few suggestions that, in my opinion, would go a long way for him:

-Add a heal and reduced CD to his execute if he kills a minion/monster with it Volibear is an all-melee champion with no reliable source of sustain. When played as a laner, all he can really do is repeatedly try to dive and kill his lane opponent. Every second that you aren't killing your lane opponent, you are losing lane, because he trades poorly, has terrible wave clear, and has no response to ranged harass. This change would help make champions with ranged harass less punishing for Voli to lane against, while also taking some of the pressure off voli to constantly try to all-in his opponent

-Increase his E's damage against minions/monsters both in jungle and top lane, voli seriously lacks wave clear. In jungle, if you fail to pick up early kills/assists while ganking, he quickly falls behind because he cannot efficiently clear his jungle. In lane, he has no answer to champions that quickly push the wave.

-Reduce his base damage, give him legitimate scaling options I've already mentioned why I think this should happen. Volibear's base damage is off the charts, but he has no good options for increasing it. Q should scale with AD. W should have its health scaling reduced, and should gain a moderate AD ratio. Either that, or his Q should gain an AP ratio, and his E and R should scale more efficiently with AP, making him a magic damage bruiser.

-Increase his ability to actually reach targets, make him less overwhelming when he does E should be turned into a ranged slow, similar to skarners, with a reduced duration and/or an increased CD. Along with reductions to his base damage, he will be able to more reliably reach targets, but will be less punishing when he does so

-Increase his ultimate's uptime, reduce its power either reduce the CD on his ult or even make it into a toggle that drains mana per hit. The vast majority of volibear's damage is loaded onto his ult and his execute. If he doesn't have his ult up, he cannot get his targets low enough to make good use of the execute. This change would give Volibear some more clearing power, while also making him less all-or-nothing.