Volibear has too much counterplay. What the rework needs to address.
Volibear has been suffering for several seasons now due to the abundance of options players have to counter his kit. Historically, Volibear has rarely been better than... good.
There was a brief period in s6 where he was a top tier pick, but not only did he not see any success in pro play, but he was arguably still outclassed by more modern junglers in the higher divisions. There is a good reason why Volibear falls off so hard in higher elo. It is not remotely hard to counter a Volibear, even in the less than optimal scenario where he gets fed.
Warning: This is going to be a long post. I've got a lot to say about this champion, and I've had this kind of post in my head for a while.
Lets start with his Passive.
**P: Chosen of the Storm - STATIC COOLDOWN: 120
Volibear periodically regenerates 30% maximum health over 6 seconds when below 30% maximum health.**
This is where all of Volibear's natural tankiness comes from. Volibear does not have any shields, % damage reduction, or % armor/mr scalings built into his kit. Therefore he is forced to rely on his passive entirely to distinguish himself from other tanks.
So, how might one go about countering his passive?
First of all, there are champion picks:
Burst mages or anyone with an execute all have the option of bursting him down before his passive is able to tick up. This is made even easier with items like morello which reduce the healing. I will delve more into that later.
Champions with built in grevious wounds (far less common now) or those who commonly take ignite. Cut down his healing and therefore remove the majority of his natural tankiness.
Next there are item picks
Mages have Morello, AD champions have Mortal Reminder, Tanks have Thornmail. Each serve the same purpose, remove the only source of natural tankiness he has.
Without his passive, Volibear really isn't much more durable than a full tank teemo. It's quite unfortunate that it's able to be countered so easily.
Next in line: His Q:
Rolling Thunder | COST: 40 MANA | COOLDOWN: 12 / 11 / 10 / 9 / 8
ACTIVE: Volibear gains bonus movement speed for the next 4 seconds, doubled when moving towards a nearby visible enemy champion within 1800 units of him. For the duration, Volibear's next basic attack deals bonus physical damage and Airborne icon flings his target over and behind himself.
「 BONUS MOVEMENT SPEED: 15 / 17.5 / 20 / 22.5 / 25% 」
BONUS PHYSICAL DAMAGE: 30 / 60 / 90 / 120 / 150
Rolling Thunder resets Volibear's autoattack timer.
Volibear's bread and butter. This is how Volibear gets onto you. I won't touch on mobility creep here since this point has been beaten to death, instead i'll focus specifically on champions who do exceptionally well at stopping this ability
Champions with blocks and blinds stop the ability from going off altogether. Spell shields will eat up the ability and prevent the CC.
It is very difficult to miss linear skillshots against a champion that is running directly at you, these champions fully exploit this fact.
Knockbacks force you to cover that very same distance again. This is very hard to accomplish after your Q has timed out.
Walls and terrain cockblock you very hard. Trundle adds insult to injury by blocking your engage and then chomping on your delicious tank stats.
If you do not wish to pick one of these champions, there are other options avaliable to you in the form of items.
Items which allow you to slow him down or speed yourself up. and all have the benefit of being very strong against Voli in general due his tendency to stack health. Cleaver is here due to it's synergy with the other two items as well as the boost to kiting.
There are other items such as 
which simply give a flat boost to movespeed. Movespeed is an underrated stat when it comes to kiting. Every little bit adds up.
In conclusion. Q is a slow telegraphed ability, and even champions with kits not designed to counter this kind of ability have options to beat it in the form of items.
Next in line, W. The reason why low elo players complain about Voli. "Volibear is unfair because he can stack health and still do a ton of damage". Let's break down his ability.
First of all, this is where most of Volibear's power budget goes. This ability is the reason why he has such a lackluster ult. It does an incredible amount of damage after Volibear has built some health, and it also gives him a boost to his attack speed.
Now lets look at the downsides of this ability.
- You must auto 3 times to use his bite. This gives supports, tanks, and such plenty of time to react before their carry eats a chomp to the face.
- He must get you low first for the bite to do any significant damage. Voli naturally struggles to get you into the kill threshold on his own. Items like
help with this, but they leave you feeling very squishy in mid game teamfights. Remember, his only natural form of tankines comes from his passive, and there are plenty of ways to counter this, from morello to ignite. - The attack speed is very weak on its own. It synergizes with his ult, but as I will get into soon, ult is a very lackluster ability.
- If this ability gets shielded or blocked, Volibear loses all threat, and a mid-late game adc can legitimately 1v1 him in meele range with their lifesteal.
- Armor hurts his bite damage a lot. Volibear does not scale well with penetration items.
Again, there are champions that naturally do well at cockblocking this ability.
Heals and shields. block the bite, remove his threat.
Dont have built in heals and shields? Take one of these!
Even more healing and shielding.
ect.
You must auto 3 times to get off the bite. Blinds stop him from chomping you alltogether.
And of course:
A simple chainvest reduces his bite damage by a huge amount. And for only 800 gold.
Majestic Roar | EFFECT RADIUS: 425 COST: 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 MANA COOLDOWN: 11
ACTIVE: Volibear deals magic damage to all nearby enemies and Slow icon slows them for 3 seconds. Minions and monsters will be Fear icon feared instead of slowed.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 60 / 105 / 150 / 195 / 240 (+ 60% AP) SLOW: 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50%
Not much to say here. E is only here for the slow and a bit of damage. I suppose you could argue that the ability counters itself since it scales with a stat that Voli should never build.
Thunder Claws | EFFECT RADIUS: | 500 COST: 100 MANA COOLDOWN: 100 / 90 / 80
ACTIVE: Volibear deals magic damage to up to 8 nearby enemies. Afterwards, for 12 seconds, Volibear's basic attacks deal the same damage as bonus magic damage that bounces to up to 7 nearby unaffected enemies.
「 MAGIC DAMAGE: 75 / 115 / 155 (+ 30% AP) 」
His ultimate ability. This, unlike most ults, is not the reason why you pick volibear. The damage is nice, but you don't pick Voli to get of 5 man lightning chains in a teamfight. Ult scales with AP just like his E, and Volibear does not scale well with penetration, so simply building some MR will remove most of the threat coming from this ability.
He must get onto you in order to get this ability off. Counterplay to his Q applies here. If he cannot flip you, his ult is not much of a threat to you.
He must auto to get this ability off, and it is his main way of bringing you into kill range for his W. However, counterplay for his W also applies here. Blinds, shields, heals, simple lifesteal are all enough to simply survive through his ult.
And of course, to simply erase all of the hard work Volibear put in during the teamfight...
Go ahead and heal it all back up. Honestly, i don't know what to say about this ability. I could go into much more detail about how Blocks and dodges prevent the lightning damage from proccing entirely, but is this really an ability worth going out of your way to prevent?
Conclusion: There are just too many ways to stop Volibear from being useful in his current state. In lower divisions, players don't tend to think too much about team comps and how certain champions play versus other champions. Lux may simply toss out binds prematurely in order to get off some chip damage instead of waiting until Voli is right near her where she can't miss it. Your ADC may deside not to build Mortal reminder, and your tank may just go for his usual build instead of buying the 1 900 gold item that counters him.
However, in high elo, players are very aware of what exactly needs to be done to stop Voli in his tracks, and it's the reason why there is such a disparity between Voli's success in Bronze vs Voli's success in Challenger.
