About Varus

So is my favorite ADC of the game, but with the recent changes to marksmen and assassins, I think he got indirectly worse. He also has some problems in his kit.

Varus is a really interesting and versatile champion. He's not a marksman like others are. His play style is a mixture of auto attacks and abilities. He's not fully an AD caster but also not a pew pew champion, but rather something in between. His burst damage can be surprisingly strong. He also packs some strong crowd control tools, which is uncommon far marksmen. He can initiate from afar or counter engage with his ultimate. He also has a high range poke and sniping tool in the form of his Piercing Arrow. However, I think he has a very high risk for little rewards. Every champion must have its strengths and weaknesses. Varus's pros come from his long range and crowd control and his cons come from his very low mobility. No matter how strong you are or how good you play him, if you are dived, you die before meaningfully contributing. In my opinion, his weaknesses simply outmatch his strengths.

This is my view on his kit and stats problems. I'm only talking about AD Varus and will not discuss AP Varus.

• Low movement speed and mobility. He stands at 330, which is not the worst amongst marksmen. and , for example, have 325. But most marksmen with 325 movement speed either have an escape tool or a really high range. Varus doesn't have any escapes and despite having an above average range, it's not like Tristana, Jinx or Kog'Maw. Varus is really dependent on his position and must play really carefully, since he doesn't have a safe back out. In my opinion, his movement speed is too low. I don't mind him not having an escape, but it gets frustrating how easily you die without being able to fight back or deal anything.

• His damage is too much condensed on his Q. His Piercing Arrow deals a lot of damage, sure, but the rest of his kit not so much. His Blight stacks deal percentage damage, which only gets good later in the game. His E and ultimate are mostly better for their CC or to proc blights stacks and not so much for the damage. What's left, then? His auto attacks, of course. He's a marksman after all. But his only attack speed steroid comes from his passive and let's be honest, safely auto attacking with Varus, without people diving you, is not the easiest thing in the world. You must play in a really conservative way. You can't all in and then out like a Lucian can, for example. To me the closest champion to Varus, when it's about long range damage, is Jayce. His EQ combo functions closely to Piercing Arrow. But Jayce has many other tools available. He's not just poking with EQ. Varus only has his Q for long range damage. You can go for the Legolas build, in which you focus on your Piercing Arrow by building Armor penetration and CDR, but you would be sacrificing a lot on the other parts of a marksman.

• Unclear power spikes. Some champions have a really strong early game but don't scale very well and must snowball if they don't want to be useless, like Ezreal, for example. Others like Vayne, have a very weak early and laning phase but scale extremely well into the late game. But to me, Varus is not particularly strong at any stage. His early game is respectable but nothing special. His late game can be good, not as good as the hiper carries. But then, all marksmen can have a good late game.

• Overall I think his play style of 3 hits and one ability is not that well accomplished. And mostly because of his long cooldowns on his Q and E. Let's say you're in a teamfight. You use the ultimate at the beginning, so you have two abilities left. That means you can only proc blight stacks twice. Three times if you count the ultimate and four if in the meantime you get your Q again.

And these are my arguments on why Varus is worse, even though he got a buff on his ultimate

• The changes to marksmen items, specially . Some time ago, rushing a Bloodthirster was the way to go for most marksmen. And BT is better on AD ratio champions, like Varus. This put auto attack reliant champions behind, since they were not getting the attack speed and crits they needed. But with the recent changes, Bloodthirster got worse. Now it's better to just rush an . But the old Bloodthirster suited Varus better than Infinity Edge. It used to give 100 AD when fully stacked, against the the 80 from the new BT and IE. Now BT is a better option if you want to be defensive and sustain, which is not what you really want as a marksman.

• The rise of assassins, one of Varus' greatest weaknesses. With the nerfs to supportive mid laners, such as Soraka and Lulu, and the nerfs to and , assassins have become popular again. And Varus has really poor escape mechanics. He only has his ultimate and his E, which has a very long cooldown, the slow ins't very strong unless you level it and has a fairly long cast time. Otherwise you must rely on summoner's spells and teammates. Many other popular champions have their own self peel, like , and . The only two strong champions that also suffer from this problem that I can think are and , but these two have an arguably stronger late game.

And these are my suggestions on how to help Varus. Keep in mind that these are just some ideas

• Increase his base movement speed

• Lower his E's cooldown and/or increase its base damage or ratios

• Smooth his attack animation

• Give him some power on something besides his Q

• I also had an idea for a change in his kit. What if he got some seconds reduced on his coolowns for each Blight stack he procc'd? Something like a passive component on his W that read "For each Blight stack detonated, Varus's other abilities get 1 second of their cooldown reduced". This idea would be to help solidify his 3-hits-one-ability pattern and would incentive players to play this way. This play style is what was originally intended for him, so why not help that? This would enhance Varus's identity. Of course his numbers and the rest of the kit could be changed to adapt accordingly.

Anyway, these were my opinions on my favorite marksman. I know some people will think "omg you're wrong Varus is op and fine as he is just l2play better". This is why I say again: this is my opinion. I love this game and I want to contribute to it. If these words can make and impact to create change, then mission accomplished