Varus Mini-Rework
https://i.imgur.com/wlY4Ml3.png
##Introduction
Hello everyone, I hope you are all having a great day. Today I wanted to discuss changes that I believe Varus could potentially need to make him in a better place, reasoning behind why he needs those changes, and any issues that Varus had or still has.
I been playing Varus for almost 4 years now, and I will share my thoughts that came across today.
https://i.imgur.com/wlY4Ml3.png
https://i.imgur.com/9pfdAHR.jpg
##Changes
Passive: NEW - Gathering Blight: Detonating Blight stacks on enemy champions refunds half of the cost on the last used ability (doesn't apply to R: Chain of Corruption). The refund is calculated before Cooldown Reduction.
Q: REMOVED: Detonating Blighted Quiver Blight stacks on an enemy champion reduces Piercing Arrow's Cooldown by 4 seconds.
W: NEW - Hail of Arrows (E): Varus's next Hail of Arrows will have a larger duration of 6 seconds, additionally the desecrated area will continuously apply 2 stacks of Blight to all units each second as long as they remain in the area.
https://i.imgur.com/wlY4Ml3.png
##Reasoning:
So recently Varus received a change to his W where he gained an Active on it, it was suppose to be a huge buff to him but after it went live. His win-rate or his overall performance didn't seem to have much impact, practically stayed the same in terms of statistics.
When at first time I saw this change, I really liked the idea of making use of his W better, essentially making it more interactive. I also liked that Riot tried to bring back some power to his Q, which before it felt like a powerless spell (which is why people were maxing E, as well as his E provided a good slow). Right now it's better as Varus now has the sniping potential that was taken away from him when he received nerfs to his Q a while back.
So in midst of thinking of ways to improve him even further as he is currently sitting at a 47% - 48% winrate, I wanted to share my ideas to hopefully help Riot inspire some ideas if they decide to buff him in some way as they mentioned in one of the gameplay thoughts on Q&A, that Varus was still underperforming heavily even after the changes to his W (they nerfed his passive Attack Speed to compensate for that change). Meddler has mentioned that once patch V8.11 goes live and they see that Varus is still in the same spot or even worse that they might look into buffing him.
https://i.imgur.com/s8JQKel.png
https://i.imgur.com/BvAOTDN.png
What I was hoping to achieve with these changes are; is to give more dueling potential that Varus needs (because alone he can't do anything without his team), and to make the Blight part of his kit be of more use than for just one ability as it would make sense to not just empower one ability.
https://i.imgur.com/wlY4Ml3.png
##Issues:
So from my experience as someone who has played Varus for almost 4 years now, I can tell you that his biggest weak points in his kit are:
His E. I would be willing to see Riot take away the Grievous Wounds and buff the overall ability because the Grievous Wounds debuff that applies to anyone who is within the zone isn't effective because of the following reasons; A: No one is going to stay in the zone, B: The radius of the ability is way too small for the debuff to be of any use.
Both of his abilities Q & E feel quite underpowered without the Blight proc, which is where I suggest that Riot should either focus primarily on the Blight part of his kit and making it work with all of his abilities besides his ultimate ability for balance purposes, or nerf some parts of the Blight in his kit to make his abilities feel alone more impactful.
He doesn't have the ability to build just anything like Kai'Sa, he is afterall a hybrid. But he is only effective in one playstyle (On-Hit with AP), Critical Strike isn't strong at all (I never build full Critical Strike on him anymore), Ability Power alone is risky without Attack Speed because you need to apply atleast 2 stacks of Blight for the damage to be noticed, and On-Hit alone isn't good because of the nerf to his W Passive On-Hit damage.
https://i.imgur.com/wlY4Ml3.png
##Thank you for those who chose to listen to what I had to say, let me know what you think, i'm open to suggestions you might have (such as: nerfs to compensate for these changes).