Theorycrafting AP Varus mid lane

I know its not optimal, I know its not meta, I don't care I'm having fun. Just humor me.

My current thoughts for a build path:

Why:

• Tear/archangels gives mana - because we need mana. Also gives some AP
• Sorc shoes for some much needed magic pen
• Guinsoos to proc our W more often and get more stacks off, quicker. The double on-hit procs are nice. Also gives us some AP
• Liandry's because our W %health damage combined with our E slow proc-ing the Liandry's passive is a big DPS boost
• Ludens will give us some up-front burst, along with some movement speed, mana, and obviously AP
• Rabadon's will round it out with a massive boost to AP.
• We need to stand near a fight and stack up our W, so we're going to be in combat for long periods - allowing for the 10% Liandry's damage increase to take effect.

Varus hits 925 base mana at level 18, and Seraph's Embrace gives 1400 mana. Luden's also gives us an additional 500 mana for a total 2825 mana pool - which means Seraph's Embrace will give us about 145 Ability power, plus some helpful mana regeneration and a nifty shield for safety.

Guinsoos gives 50 (+24 at max stacks, but we won't consider this in our numbers), Liandry's gives 80, rabadon's gives 120. So with those items, we're sitting at 395 ability power. Add in the rabadon's passive, and you get 553 ability power total.

At 553 ability power, the following things happen:

• Our W does 164.25 magic damage on-hit, combining with the guinsoo's on-hit passive of 15 magic damage, we do about 180 magic damage on hit. Our guinsoo's passive double-procs this for 360 magic damage on hit every other attack. Respectable damage indeed, especially with the attack speed bonus from Guinsoo's.

• Our W also has a stack component, which we can detonate with any of our other abilities that deals %health damage per stack, 5% at max level per stack. This scales an additional 2% for every 100 ability power we build, so with our build we get 10% additional max HP damage per stack which totals up to a whopping 45% maximum health magic damage if we proc our W passive with 3 stacks. That's almost half of someones HP! Not to mention we're also going to proc our Liandry's %health damage burn, so its actually probably more than half of someone's HP if they have little/no magic resistance.

• Our R also has 100% AP scaling, so at max rank it will hit for 803 magic damage. Our R also applies all 3 stacks of our W passive to every target it hits, so assuming we can hit a 5-man ultimate followed by a Rain of Arrows, its gonna hurt. Also, we can't forget that we are - again - procing our Liandry's passive for even more % health damage.

I thought about substituting for because the attack speed is nice, but this build doesn't leave a lot of room for penetration items. Really all you get is the + . So I figured the sorc boots would be best.

I also considered but I'm just not which item it could replace to give better value than the item its replacing.

For primary runes, I'd run Either Press The Attack or Lethal Tempo, with Legend: Alacrity, Triumph, and either Cut Down or Coup De Grace.

For secondary runes, I'd run either Ultimate Hat + Transcendence or Celerity + Scorch, depending on my composition. If we had a good form of initiation, I'd run UH+T. If I felt like I'd be running and gunning a lot, i'd run C+S.

So to summarize, Pros and cons....

Pros:

• Insane burst damage
• %health damage will shred even the tankiest members if they don't get enough MR (Warmogs is popular right now!)
• Nice team fight ultimate
• Great AoE damage
• Pretty decent range + Seraph's shield should keep you relatively safe
• Movement speed from ludens + boots + celerity should keep you relatively safe
• Varus has decent self peel anyway, regardless of how you build.

Cons:

• Mid lane isn't the greatest place for an immobile ADC, easy to gank
• Early levels might be fairly difficult to play
• Scaling is fairly late-game oriented, so games that move quickly will be hard.
• The build is very expensive, so unless you're doing very well or the game is very long, you won't complete it.
• Many of these items have really shitty components that don't offer a lot of value, they're only powerful once completed.

Please let me know what you think, what you'd improve, and why. I'm curious to see community feedback on this.