Volibear only needs a small rework - my idea.

been a while.

Volibear's kit is actually fairly solid on its foundations since his last tweaks at start of season 8. He was actually good enough that he showed up in pro play for a while and became fairly FOTM across soloQ, but even without any heavy nerfs, he's quickly faded back out of relevance. The issue behind what keeps Volibear perpetually out of the spotlight he's owed is his numbers. To put it short, he has the scalings of a 2011 champion in a 2018 game. Every other fighter can quickly outpace him in damage past the early game, cheesy nuke of his W (and some can outscale him before that), and every other tank outscales him in team value through CC and other utilities. This, combined with the fact that he runs solely on base damage with no AD scaling whatsoever - even the AP fighter, Mordekaiser, has very impressive AD ratios - and, unlike Mundo, does not have the very good base damage to make that work, leaves Volibear in an awkward spot where, when he's meta, he's basically a fill-in for Poppy or Gragas when they're out of meta or banned. He currently functions more like a sub-tank than a raid boss, and is forced to play the game on a 15 minute timer before he vanishes from being a damage threat, and about a ~25 minute timer before his tank items don't keep him alive for more than 3 seconds in a teamfight.

That being said, I think there's still room to increase Volibear's satisfaction and responsiveness, so a small rework would do good both to improve playability on him and play-against-ability when vs him. My suggestions are thus;

Base stats; Please up his base HP. For the kind of champion that he is, and for not really having the sort of durability other juggernauts tend to have despite his current almost full-tank builds, 2100 HP at level 18 is simply a little too low.

Passive; For being his only means of surviving a fight, it's not really that impressive after the first few levels. Instead of flatly reducing the CD, as much as I'd like that to happen, I suggest letting him increase or extend his healing as long as he can hit enemies, up to a cap. This would offer clear counterplay in exchange for higher power; disengaging/distancing from Volibear while his passive activates and then bursting or debuffing him with Grievous heavily limits the amount he can heal, where a Volibear who can stick to somebody and who risks fighting at low values of HP would be justly rewarded with heightened survivability. It's a much-needed gameplay moment for such an intrinsically strong (on paper) passive.

Also add a visual that his passive is ready for the sake of clarity, for both Volibear and the people VSing him.

Q; No big complaints, but I'd like to have an AD ratio - even a small one. It's weird that such a modest spell is the only damage tool in the game to have absolute no scaling whatsoever; adding like a 30% total AD would be a fair addition. IMO.

W (bigger change); **Instead of his ramping AS being a passive. I suggest you make it a 2-part activation. The first activation gives him the attack speed in full; completely up front, but limited to being only for a few seconds rather than as long as he's hitting something. The second cast is the bite. **

In exchange, change the cooldown from 18 at all ranks to something like 20/18/16/14/12 seconds.

This does a few things that I think everyone should appreciate; 1.) More precise window of power that Volibear is preparing to commit to a fight or is getting ready to bite; this raises counterplay in teamfights and ganks, since you can then kite him out during the duration and then his bite threat is gone, as opposed to it being easily regained by hitting something 3 times. ADCs can breathe easy if they play well. 2.) Limits Volibear's bite access in lane - reducing the cheesy 'poke spam' he can do against weaker or countered melee matchups by sitting in the wave and biting them anytime they come to CS. 3.) More satisfying window of power - Volibear will appreciate the stronger but shorter steroid, since he is more burst-oriented than he is a DPS champion. 4.) Slightly widens his build variety; since his W has 2 casts, Volibear might be able to flex into Sheen builds to soften the damage gap he currently suffers vs other fighters; he still wouldn't use it nearly as well as champions who have very strong and spammable AA resets, but he'd at least be able to opt into it if he wants to. Build variety is very nice.

E; The recent change was good, and I'd like to emphasize the more skillful part of it. Reduce the slow duration by 1 second, reduce the damage by about 20-30 at max rank, maybe more, and in exchange, give us a scaling CD reduction per rank of E. This would help solidify Volibear's specialty as a Juggernaut in being able to counter and shut down mobility, while also being a general power-shift; immobile champions will have a more generous window between Es to get away since it's not as strong, but if they can't shake him off they'll be slowed more often.

R; Another big change. Instead of a 12 second stat stick, do this spell like what Cho'Gath got; since he's a low-mobility fighter who usually can't stick on priority targets for long, stick that ult power into a few strong attacks. Something like;

For the next 3/4/5 (just as an example) basic attacks, do X/Y/Z damage that spreads to up to 8 enemies.

IN ADDITION:

• Nerf the bounce range and/or speed, adding a visual indicator of who's been targeted by the next bolt to add clarity of who to distance oneself from.
• Give it an AD ratio; let's say 30% bonus AD.

This has the same effect as the W change; allowing us to make his ult feel more satisfying and giving clear counterplay; kiting Volibear now has a more dramatic affect on the damage he can realistically put out, while also making the cap of that realistic damage actually achievable for him, since you're never going to have the whole 12 seconds to be autoing down anything except for creep waves.

Raising the damage per hit lets Volibear fill his ult's fantasy of getting to wreck a clumped enemy team, but we compensate this by nerfing the speed and range the bounces will jump to, making it easier to briefly scatter and disrupt his AOE wrecking.

The end result would be a Volibear who's not only healthier to play as/against, but who also has a less skewed powerspike, since this change allows him to invest outside of just buying raw HP and hoping his base damage is enough to cheese, we can give him a smoother transition into mid-late that lets him be relevant in exchange for being less cheese-BS in the early game.

Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think.