Rough draft for a volibear VGU

https://images6.alphacoders.com/674/674907.png

art's not mine

so I've been doing some thinking about how to make Volibear healthier and more unique, and what his character is defined by. So I came up with three things; flipping shit, his execute, and chain lightning. i wanted to address his sort of up-front problem; his DPS is very lacking even with ult activated, so his game plan just revolves around grabbing and bursting the easiest squishy he can get to. he's got a very one-dimensional success/fail case, so most of what i'm doing is shuffling parts of his current kit around and pushing him to a little more back-loaded, delayed power spike, while staying mostly true to the original kit.

everything's WIP and this is unfinished, but tell me what you think.

passive: Chosen of the Storm/Thunder Claws After attacking an enemy 3 times, Volibear gains attack speed and applies on-hit magic damage equal to a flat amount plus a portion of bonus AD. Magic damage stacks up to 5 times and can chain to (up to X/Y/Z?) nearby enemies. (Enemies struck by chain lightning will stack up from 0, but will take the same on-hit damage dealt from the origin)

moved to his ult to being his passive and more conditional. It's kind of similar to Darius but a little more gated, because Volibear is primarily AAs and will have an AS steroid to accompany. His primary focus is single target, but this both gives him some nice AoE to clear camps as well as situationally doing a lot of damage to multiple champions if they clump up enough. I also want to open up more traditional juggernaut items up to him like Black Cleaver, in addition to Titanic Hydra, since his itemization is quite lacking at the moment. It's focused as being a debuff to enemy champions so that Volibear is punished for switching targets unless they've been stacked up by the lightning chains, too.

Q: Rolling Thunder Volibear drops to all fours, gaining increased MS for 4 seconds. Volibear can recast the ability at any time in the next 4 seconds to grab any enemies in a circle in front of them after a brief delay, and can fling them in any direction, dealing damage by a flat amount plus a percentage of his total AD. Volibear gains X% slow resistance when moving towards enemies struck by Majestic Roar in the last 4 seconds.

changed it from being an on-hit effect to something with a delay, but now he can throw multiple units and the toss is omni-directional to open up a little more skillcap for him. So, he can choose to toss an enemy backwards and into his team, or he can grab a stacked enemy and throw them towards another champion so that he can set up to beat them down with lightning charges. The throw is going to be sort of like a skillshot; he has a min-max range where he can choose how close or far he tosses you.

W: Frenzy Health scaling lowered. Attack speed moved to passive. If Volibear executes an enemy with Frenzy, he heals for a portion of his maximum health over 6 seconds, increasing based on how many stacks of Thunder Claws were on the enemy. Heal is greatly reduced against monsters and even further against minions.

i have two different ideas for Frenzy; one is to shift it to be more of a cripple move that punishes you if you run away from Volibear, and the other is to make it harder to build up to that execution but give it some sort of lightning empowerment if he gets there, some way to spread that huge damage to other enemies. like, Lightning Jaws, or somethin'. Health scaling is going down either way, to accommodate for having better damage everywhere else and for having a heal that's up more often in fights, but requires him to get a kill. I might scrap that; I'm not sure what to do with his healing factor yet, but I don't want it to be what it is now.

E: Majestic Roar After a 1 second delay, Volibear roars and calls down a bolt of lightning onto a target area, dealing magic damage and slowing enemy champions. Enemy minions and monsters are feared. Volibear can move and attack freely during the cast windup.

I'm trying to tackle two issues simultaneously; the instant nature of his current E being a guaranteed 3 second slow if you're near him, and Volibear's all-melee kit causing a rather lopsided matchup issue when it comes to laning. This gives him a ranged tool to harass with as well as to give him the ability to close the gap more reliably if he lands it. it's different, but maybe it can work out pretty well.

R: Bear Storm (placeholder name) Volibear summons a lightning storm around himself, growing in size; Volibear is immune to displacements during the casting animation. For 8 seconds, lightning radiates from Volibear in a small radius, dealing minor magic damage and applying stacks of his passive to enemies struck every X ticks. Enemies struck with max stacks are grounded.

it's mostly a utility ultimate; it doesn't add extreme numbers to his damage, but the displacement immunity on the cast lets him outplay a Lee Sin or Janna ult, and its main purpose is both to build up stacks on multiple enemies to become an AoE threat to enemies around him in like a ~400 unit radius as well as to "lock down" more mobile opponents if he sticks to them long enough to max out on them.

again it's pretty work in progress, but let me know what you think of it and whether or not his healing should be pushed to an active ability or be kept on his passive