10 Indirect Nerfs that made Volibear unplayable

(Gotta resort to that attention grabbing title because no one actually cares about this champion :^) Anyways onto the list!)

1.) Season 7 Jungle changes.

It's no secret that the new jungle is much more catering towards AoE clears. Raptors hit like tiny nukes if you cannot burn them down and Krugs are as tenacious as cockroaches. Both camps reward a substancial amount of gold and exp, so not being able to efficently clear them does put you at a disadvantage.

While Voli is busy scratching away at camps and contemplating his life decisions actual junglers cough are busy plowing through camps as if they've got lawnmowers strapped to their wrists.

2-3.) Defensive Itemization

One of the reasons you picked Voli was for his amazing 1v1 and 2v2 potential. This came from his ability to build defensive while still dishing out a lot of damage. If things got hairy, you could count on your passive to heal you up and turn the tides of the fight. So what changed?

His synergy with tank items was nerfed.

At one point, Riot decided to lower health on tank items across the board, and increase armor/mr. This was done to counterbalance the over abundance of penetration builds floating around. Common builds at the time included things like and /.

This ended up buffing tanks, but unfortunately hurting Voli since the entirety of his damage is tied to stacking health.

To make matters worse, new duelist builds began to emerge which threatened to dethrone Voli as the skirmishing king. The infamous combo. This build not only reduces damage Voli's by making use of triple %damage reduction, but it also grants sustain, which allows you to heal thorugh his meager damage, effecively preventing him from ever bringing you within execute range. And as the icing on the cake gives armor which reduces his bite damage. Since Volibear does not take pen runes nor scale well with penetration items, that little bit of armor ends up going a very long way.

This eventually ended up pushing voli away from skirmishing and more towards engaging and soaking damage in teamfights. Luckily Riot caught wind of this and made sure to promptly put the bear back in his place soon after.

4.) Defensive support Buffs

A well played support/bot duo is the bane of any juggernaut. The way you shut them down is via proper peeling and kiting. This was never terribly hard to do in the first place, but as champions like began rising to popularity, Voli began finding it hard to even make an impact in teamfights.

Stop him on all fronts. They have speed ups, slows, and knock ups, knock backs, and disables to prevent Voli from ever reaching the backline. And in the worst case scenario that he is able to get there. A combination of shields and any of the following items should make it relatively easy to sustain through the volibear's damage and kill him: .

Meanwhile does not kite a Voli as well, but with proper positioning can allow an adc to heal through his damage with a combination of her W, , and the adc's lifesteal.

5.) Tank items were nerfed.

This ended up hurting a lot of tanks not named . For Voli is was the final nail in the coffin. This topic has been beat to death on the boards already so I will not go into too much detail. In short this simply made it even harder for Voli to do what he does best: building defense while still pumping out damage.

6.) Crit items were buffed.

Crit is one way that you deal with defense stacking champions. Since defense scale lineraly and crit builds scale exponentially, there will eventually come a point where a tank can no longer 1v1 a crit stacking carry. This used to only be the case late game at 5+ Items for Voli, but as Crit items were made cheaper and more powerful (ahem and warlords combo), this period now comes at 3+ items.

7.) Keystone nerfs

Toplane Voli was hit by the Grasp of the Udying nerf. This nerf happened as a result of the Sunfire Iceborne + Grasp meta that became so popular and so hated in s6.

Jungle Voli, meanwhile, was hit by the Collossus nerfs. The nerfs were absolutely justifed, but sadly Voli has not recieved any compensation buffs sense.

8.) Loss of Identity

Volibear used to fill 2 niches.

1. He was an amazing early to midgame skirmisher. This isn't as true anymore due to reasons previously listed.

2. He was an amazing bodyguard. He has a fat health pool, a bite that will demolish any squishy and instant point and click CC. These two things made voli a good asset to any team. That was until other tank champions began doing this job better thanks to a combination of .

Voli can abuse these items himself, but he has to sacrifice a lot of damage in the process. Neither Locket nor Stoneplate give health, and without the threat of his damage, his CC alone isn't strong enough to compete with the likes of ect.

Voli can chose to go a more selfish carry build...

But good luck killing anyone through with and with . Alas, the very combination of items that outclasses him is also good at shutting him down.

9.) Ghost Nerfs

Not too long ago became a popular choice for any control mage in the midlane. It gave them tons of safety both in lane and teamfights and helped cover up most of their weaknesses. Riot saw this and soon nerfed the spell for everyone.

This did bring champions like back in line a bit. But it also hurt the champions that Ghost was meant to benefit the most.

and finally...

10.) His kit is getting old

More and more champions are coming out with dashes, blinks, intangibility, and other escape mechanisms. It's becoming harder and harder for Voli to do his job. Even is being reworked to include all 3 of these things. just can't keep up, and instead of giving him a bit of help here and there to keep him relevant, he's eaten indirect nerf after indirect nerf instead.

In the end, it's hard times for Volibear players.

Here's hoping his Rework makes him playable again.