Right now Varus is played as an on-hit marksman, which makes him a slightly different version of Kog'Maw, with less range and more cc.
I'd rather have Riot put more power into his spells in order to make him the artillery marksman that he's supposed to be.
dunder kill36 votesYeah because everyone loved AD Caster Lethality Varus so very much
XIII Vanitas6 votesLethality Varus happened because there was too much power put into his Q.
KlydeFrog3 votesyou stillcan use this build but sorta cant do to the long cd on his q and the fact that this si really only good in the mid lane.
xJLx MCHammer7 votesYeah because everyone loved AD Caster Lethality Varus so very much
It was his CD that was the real issue
He was chunking people by half HP. He always like 6 seconds to his Q lol
Salson9 votesI did, wish they reworked him into a pure caster.
Like AD Xerath/ZIggs/Lux.
dapositiveviking1 voteshow would you recommend that conversion? i could imagine a change to his w and passive but as long as he scales with AD he'll still be viable as an aa'ing carry and will have the same benefits in midlane as lucian, zed, anyone whose auto attacks benefit the same as their abilities
Salson2 votesYeah, would start with W and Passive. Then just nerf base attack speed, that way he gets less value out of zeal items.
He would also need more AD scallings on his abilities like Ult.
bleufromage14 votesI've been playing varus as my main go to since late season 2 and I have to disagree with everything here. On hit has always been a viable build, that is true, but his identity around his q was not toxic and it should've stayed the same as it was. The problem was dft was broken on him and jhin which they nerfed and they also did a piss poor job with lethality. Varus has stayed essentially the same from when I started playing him until this season where he all of a sudden became "op". The problem was game changes not his kit. Dft is going away (which was nerfed anyway) and lethality isn't optimal anymore. I think they need to revert the q bill shit they did and make him back to what he was. Varus q takes a long time to wind up so you see it coming. It deals reduced dmg as it passes through units and it's a skillshot that is able to miss/be dodged. It's not like q has no counterplay
ModKnightsKemplar10 votesAgreed. Playing him feels weird because his passive and W both incentivize attack speed builds, while his other spells incentivize damage and more damage. I would not be surprised to see him get a gameplay update that rectifies some of that, and frankly, he needs it.
It Hertz When IP2 votesI always felt like his play pattern was very direct; harass with Autos, then detonate for a kinda part DPS, part burst attack. It's really unique to Varus (though Vayne combining Q with W proc seems similar-ish), and I don't want to see him reworked to lose that identity in favor of making him another AD caster.
Kats Pajamas5 votesVarus is one of TWO champions with innate grievous wounds.
That is his identity.
500000000000000011 votesFo long term game health, grievous wounds need to go and healing should be balanced appropriately.
Over Innsmouth12 votesGW is fine on Champion kits imo, since it's gated around cooldowns and abilities.
GW on itemization can fuck off to the same hole crit should go.
Blackstone013 votesWoah, but when you play Vlad you DONT want to be countered by a 800g item?
Over Innsmouth2 votesI dont, but I dont mind being outplayed through smart use of a kit.
For reference, I'd personally address GW by removing it from itemization entirely, pre-emptively slashing all healing by 10-20% at least, then rebalancing healing accordingly.
Nhifu2 votesVlad isn't countered by executioners calling
Because by the time they have it, he'll have his sorc boots to zone players
Feathermane2 votesFo long term game health, grievous wounds need to go and healing should be balanced appropriately.
Healing is the thing that should go. Every form of it (regeneration, drain, healing, lifesteal) is toxic af and the most unsatisfying thing to play against next to stealth.
Jorencice3 votesBut then its simply (who does the most damage first)
The whole game would because a twitch fest to see who can spam spells faster.
MidEvilKnight3k2 votesThen poke would be op af and need to get nerfed to the point where it doesn't look like it does any damage. Also 5 tps would be the prevailing strategy. Just poke the other team, back and then tp to barron and take it when you have a health advantage.
SweedishGunner4 votesI miss old Varus mid, it was really unique and I wasn't half bad at it. Definitely had more skill expression than the on-hit Varus we have now.
KlydeFrog4 voteson hit isnt new its a old build...its 100% always been his strongest build.....
LordGeovanni4 votesI mean sitting back afk until your Q comes up is deffinitely not 'more' skill expression than walking up to auto attack
deadlychuck1 votes
still exists if you want that...
Dr Poro4 votesI think the on-hit version is healthier than the "spam Q from safe distance until they need to b" version. If you can make a healthy artillery varus, then that's great. But I don't think he should go back to the way he used to be.
WrÆth4 votesIf you just look at his kit, there's no way he could work as an ad caster. His on hit damage on w and passive as well as e and r scream on hit. The only reason he was played as such was because the numbers on his q were ridiculous. If they want to rework him into an ad caster, they need to change his w, passive, and maybe e.
ninjaroxas2 votesHow does his e scream on hit?
It Hertz When IP2 votesIt's more of a splat sound IMO.
Remlap12233 votesI'd honestly prefer him to be like old Miss Fortune, giving him more stacks on his W (which honestly should be his passive at this point) and have them scale with 6% of his total AD instead of the flat amount it gives, and increase the amount of stacks it can have as he levels his ultimate.
This would give him a real interesting niche. He's the close range tank buster, and the carry sniper.
Ebonbolt3 votesNah dude we clearly don't have enough braindead adcs that stand still and basically stat check enemies.So on-hit varus should stay since it's the greatest and most fun, interactive, skillful build in the history of videogames I propose that in season 8 riot makes Vayne and Draven toplaners and jhin a midlaner(fun fact some high elo jhin players already prefer mid jhin because of this cancerous meta).
Get those dirty champions with skill expression out of my role.
All praise 
Throw the rest to 
Also delete every support that isn't soraka, lulu or janna
Rockman2 votesHe's not an artillery marksman
Fear the Kayn2 votesPersonally, I'd like to see them remove his 'stacks' and just make his abilities hit HARD. His abilities are very obviously and quite easy to dodge. His Q at full charge should be a squishy destroyer, not a little tickle late game like it is now.
TwitchInMyPants2 votesVarus was never designed as an artillery Marksman and asking him to be that is asking him to be more like Kog'Maw
When he was made all the immobile adcs were either pure utility like Ashe or pure damage like Kog and Varus was intended to be someone that could hold his ground in a fight and wreak a lot of havok. Having good autos and on-hit is something they designed in. Honestly his Q feels like the most out of place ability on his kit given how high the mana cost and CD is for what ends up being a glorified W proc wheras his E is quick, responsive, and impactful even without stacks and it has a fair cost.
His autos, E, and R are all mid-range skills that benefit being near the fight and Q is anything but that, asking him to be reworked around his most out of place ability is one of the strangest demands I've heard. And I'm not saying it should be removed or anything but it feels like its role is like that of a Jinx R, its pathetic if you're trying to reduce a high health bar but for proccing W on someone running out of a fight his Q can feel like a great sniping skill. I'd rather that killing ability of Q be emphasized if anything was changed about him, like make it deal % missing hp or something to incentivize waiting for it and going for the riskier shots.
Hayaishi21 votesVarus was never designed as an artillery Marksman and asking him to be that is asking him to be more like Kog'Maw
When he was made all the immobile adcs were either pure utility like Ashe or pure damage like Kog and Varus was intended to be someone that could hold his ground in a fight and wreak a lot of havok. Having good autos and on-hit is something they designed in. Honestly his Q feels like the most out of place ability on his kit given how high the mana cost and CD is for what ends up being a glorified W proc wheras his E is quick, responsive, and impactful even without stacks and it has a fair cost.
His autos, E, and R are all mid-range skills that benefit being near the fight and Q is anything but that, asking him to be reworked around his most out of place ability is one of the strangest demands I've heard. And I'm not saying it should be removed or anything but it feels like its role is like that of a Jinx R, its pathetic if you're trying to reduce a high health bar but for proccing W on someone running out of a fight his Q can feel like a great sniping skill. I'd rather that killing ability of Q be emphasized if anything was changed about him, like make it deal % missing hp or something to incentivize waiting for it and going for the riskier shots.
His Q is not his most out of place ability. His W is.
If he's meant to play around his W then by all means he should have an AS steroid that helps him stack it. Not one that makes you wait until you participate in a kill.
If he was designed to play around W. His W wouldn't be gated by the cooldowns of his other abilities. Both of his abilities have long cooldowns if he's meant to pop blight as his primary source of damage then his cooldowns shouldn't be so long.
And this will be demonstrated when Varus goes back to the dumpster after censor meta dies. It is the only reason why his rageblade onhit build works.
His lethality build was unique in the sense that no other champion other than Xerath could match his playstyle, it made him unique and gave him a reason to be picked over the other marskmen, regardless of how cancerous it was.
His kit needs to be updated into ONE fully functional playstyle that utilizes every aspect of his kit. And get rid of the multiple Varus playstyles that only use 50% of his kit and hinder his overall power
TwitchInMyPants1 votesHis Q is not his most out of place ability. His W is.
If he's meant to play around his W then by all means he should have an AS steroid that helps him stack it. Not one that makes you wait until you participate in a kill.
If he was designed to play around W. His W wouldn't be gated by the cooldowns of his other abilities. Both of his abilities have long cooldowns if he's meant to pop blight as his primary source of damage then his cooldowns shouldn't be so long.
And this will be demonstrated when Varus goes back to the dumpster after censor meta dies. It is the only reason why his rageblade onhit build works.
His lethality build was unique in the sense that no other champion other than Xerath could match his playstyle, it made him unique and gave him a reason to be picked over the other marskmen, regardless of how cancerous it was.
His kit needs to be updated into ONE fully functional playstyle that utilizes every aspect of his kit. And get rid of the multiple Varus playstyles that only use 50% of his kit and hinder his overall power
His W isn't gated by his cds other than the exploding proc which combos well with his E and he regularly gets bonus magic damage for attacking. His passive has direct synergy with his W, the slow from E sets up more attacks and detonates your W stacks. Those 3 skills are made for short trades as well as killing and other than when DFT or Lethality is overtuned Q is never the best max, its always E.
Also Guinsoo's has been a situational build most of his lifetime, he does well with basic crit and BoRK. He's very much an on-hit champion who's midgame centric. Making him play super far back around his Q has no synergy with anything in his kit other than his R since the ranges are similar enough. If you can't play Varus without DFT and Lethality being overtuned you're probably playing the wrong champion, if you want ADCs that are poke centric there's Ezreal and Corki. If you want someone who's pure Artillery as an adc there's Kog'Maw. If you want someone who's got utility and sieging, you've mentioned Xerath. There's likely more I'm not thinking of, but these champions do not have a 20s ability as their only form of poke early game because they're meant to actively poke, not all-in for autos like Varus.
I play this champion a fair amount and reworking his passive, w and e just to appease people that liked cheesing out poke with Q is a strange demand.
Hayaishi21 votesHis W isn't gated by his cds other than the exploding proc which combos well with his E and he regularly gets bonus magic damage for attacking. His passive has direct synergy with his W, the slow from E sets up more attacks and detonates your W stacks. Those 3 skills are made for short trades as well as killing and other than when DFT or Lethality is overtuned Q is never the best max, its always E.
Also Guinsoo's has been a situational build most of his lifetime, he does well with basic crit and BoRK. He's very much an on-hit champion who's midgame centric. Making him play super far back around his Q has no synergy with anything in his kit other than his R since the ranges are similar enough. If you can't play Varus without DFT and Lethality being overtuned you're probably playing the wrong champion, if you want ADCs that are poke centric there's Ezreal and Corki. If you want someone who's pure Artillery as an adc there's Kog'Maw. If you want someone who's got utility and sieging, you've mentioned Xerath. There's likely more I'm not thinking of, but these champions do not have a 20s ability as their only form of poke early game because they're meant to actively poke, not all-in for autos like Varus.
I play this champion a fair amount and reworking his passive, w and e just to appease people that liked cheesing out poke with Q is a strange demand.
Are you seriously saying that the entire point of his W is the pitiful 26 on hit magic damage it does when you auto attack and that detonating blight it's just a bonus? Detonating blight for the % damage is the entire point of the ability. Even Ardent censor gives better on hit damage.
His q has been the ability you max first ever since they nerfed his E in season 3 until the patch early this season where they gutted his Q.
I've mained Varus since his release, played every possible build. There's no way anyone can say he brings something to the table that makes him more valuable than ANY other marksmen.
He is only good right now because of censor, after that meta dies he'll go back to being a low tier ADC like he has been for the majority of his lifetime. His on hit build is pretty bad on its own because he has to wait until something dies to use his steroid. By late game he'll fall off due to this and his early suffers against BF sword rush.
deadlychuck1 votesHis kit needs to be updated into ONE fully functional playstyle that utilizes every aspect of his kit. And get rid of the multiple Varus playstyles that only use 50% of his kit and hinder his overall power
Better idea. Stop this fucking new philosophy that every part of a kit should be 100% utilized in a kit. This is the kind of philosophy which always ends up killing games. His kit doesn't need to be "updated", half of the champion's need to be upgraded to have multiple functional play styles which utilize different aspects of their respective kits. Each purchase should increase one aspect of the champion's power, but come at the "expense" of not increasing the power of another part of the kit. I said this shit years ago when they started releasing mono-stat champions like riven and shit. It's terrible game design and is going to end up being a cancer in the game, when other champions can't keep up with extremely tailored kits. It's basically precise reason that they had to start doing the fucking class updates.
There are 138 champions in the game right now, but they've basically had a net zero change in the number of ways to play the game (probably about 150 since they had ~80 champions), because for every new champion they release with only a single functional playstyle, they either force out, or rework away, a one of the functional playstyles of another champion.
Forcing people to make a choice between two parts of their own kit is how you create situational itemization (not through OP unique passives/actives) and it's how you create dynamic gameplay (not stupid shit like RNG dragon types or turning the mobility up to 11, while making everything untargeted).
Hayaishi21 votesBetter idea. Stop this fucking new philosophy that every part of a kit should be 100% utilized in a kit. This is the kind of philosophy which always ends up killing games. His kit doesn't need to be "updated", half of the champion's need to be upgraded to have multiple functional play styles which utilize different aspects of their respective kits. Each purchase should increase one aspect of the champion's power, but come at the "expense" of not increasing the power of another part of the kit. I said this shit years ago when they started releasing mono-stat champions like riven and shit. It's terrible game design and is going to end up being a cancer in the game, when other champions can't keep up with extremely tailored kits. It's basically precise reason that they had to start doing the fucking class updates.
There are 138 champions in the game right now, but they've basically had a net zero change in the number of ways to play the game (probably about 150 since they had ~80 champions), because for every new champion they release with only a single functional playstyle, they either force out, or rework away, a one of the functional playstyles of another champion.
Forcing people to make a choice between two parts of their own kit is how you create situational itemization (not through OP unique passives/actives) and it's how you create dynamic gameplay (not stupid shit like RNG dragon types or turning the mobility up to 11, while making everything untargeted).
Then he will keep being trash. There's a reason he became meta as an AD caster in mid, and then when lethality was OP. Because his Q was the ONE thing that made him compete with other marksmen.With an attack speed build, he can't compete with Tristana, Twitch, Kogmaw, even Xayah, he'll always be out classed in that regard as his steroid and range are completely inferior to to other AD carries.
His W, the ability that you build around when you use the AS build is gated by the cooldowns of his other abilities, his steroid despite being good when it kicks in, requires you to have already participated in a kill, this is a huge disadvantage late game when Tristana and Kog press 1 button and are doing twice your DPS already.
Face it, there's nothing good about having random AP ratios strapped on abilities. Those are a remnant of old champion design, i frankly don't care which build of Varus becomes viable, but Riot has to update his kit so he has a defined playstyle.
Mark my words, he's gonna struggle a lot now that Censor meta is gone, that was the only reason he had a spot with the on hit build.
deadlychuck1 votesYou've got it all backwards.
He will not keep being trash. All of the other champions will keep being insanely fucking busted due to abandonment of this insanely important design philosophy years ago.
I'm sure that it still exists at riot, but it's clearly not what's being practiced to a dangerous degree.
Mark MY words. If they ever accomplish the kind of shit design across the whole game, which you seem to think is a mandatory direction to move the game, the game will start bleeding players, at an ever increasing rate.
Hayaishi21 votesYou've got it all backwards.
He will not keep being trash. All of the other champions will keep being insanely fucking busted due to abandonment of this insanely important design philosophy years ago.
I'm sure that it still exists at riot, but it's clearly not what's being practiced to a dangerous degree.
Mark MY words. If they ever accomplish the kind of shit design across the whole game, which you seem to think is a mandatory direction to move the game, the game will start bleeding players, at an ever increasing rate.
Riot is not gonna rework new champions into the direction you think is right. That is why they've been updating every champion into the direction they believe in and Varus should be no exception.
deadlychuck1 votesYou're right. They aren't going to rework newly released champions to fit this design. Which is why they should've just been designed in such a way in the first place. Nor will Varus be an exception to this, in the long run given the current projections, which is why I and many other players will continue to loose interest in their game.
It's not even so much a matter of "i think this is the right direction". It's that they can't keep moving the same direction which keeps bringing them away from the original design philosophies, and expect the game to keep it's integrity and identity. One of those two things will eventually need to be discarded for the sake of the other if they don't change direction.
And any game that loses it's integrity or identity quickly falls apart.
sit kid1 votesonly comes through ardent nerfs (are happening), and crit itemization nerfs (they got hyperbuffed a while ago)
XIII Vanitas3 votesOr they could change Varus' ability scalings in order to incorporate crit chance and crit damage.
KlydeFrog1 votessoooo make him like ashe, graves, jhin, ......
XIII Vanitas4 votesWho are totally identical to each other in the way they're played, right? /s
sit kid1 votesOr that. Meaning his W should apply physical damage to synergise better with lethality/deal less damage in order to make space for Q/E buffs?
KlydeFrog1 votesthis has always been varus strongest build....people are just now doing it or figuring it out ......for what ever reason.
GrReaper962 votesCause they nerfed his Q cd hard
XIII Vanitas1 votesThat's not true. Q max build was the strongest before the nerfs to his Q, DFT and flat armor pen. His on-hit build has risen in popularity because it's the strongest right now due to Ardent Censer meta.
deadlychuck1 votesMost popular != Strongest.
It was absolutely more popular for a time, but it was never stronger than the on hit style when both were played correctly. Both had their weakness, but the onhit style could always utilize a portion of the strength of his artillery, but the artillery build benefited substantially less from the base power of his onhit style.
