Tips for Varus
Not that he's hard or nothin. But I just bought him, and I wanna know if any more experienced Varus playees have any advice.
Masteries, runes, itemization? The works. Thanks.
6 Comments
I see three main playstyles.
Auto attack centric where you build like you would cait, jinx etc... with IE PD crit centric build with some AS filling in the gaps.
AD caster where you go for high AD items and use him as a poke machine.
AP varus which is more item reliant with a nashors rabadons and ludens for burst damage. AP varus relies on the AP scaling on his q and e to trigger his w to pop people with high AP. I don't prefer this playstyle and i don't think it is played very often but it can be fun to try out mid lane.
My prefered build atm for varus is
which leans toward the AD caster sort of playstyle.
also good options are 
Thunderlords if you want to crush lane. Warlords if you need to build crit to get through a tankier team. Ferver if they are not tank heavy allowing you to go life steal and runaans.
Essence reaver into crit/speed item IE if you need the damage, BT if you don't.
Yomuus into bt is similar to old legolas poke build and let's you one shot most non tanks after you land ult.
Positioning is everything. Your ult instantly kills squishies. If you don't have ult any diver will kill you unless you went double life steal.
Runes I'm still playing with. Basically I just use what my build will be lacking. I've been a huge fan of flat armor pen if I can win lane without the AD.
I'm convinced hybrid ( guinsoo gunblade) is good but hasn't got it to work.
I'm no Masters level player but hope this gets you started.
In lane just remember to last hit just before they do so you can trade with your passive and end with q. If you run thunderlords and trade 3 autos and q on them like this you will half life anyone but graves.
Ward up and don't push tower unless you know where the jungler is since you are a no mobility carry.
Remember w passive 3 auto then ability and if you ult it's ult 1aa e 2aa q.
Also I may be partial but I do consider someone with only skill shots, literally 0 mobility, and squishy hard. :P
Right-click Push Q/W/E/R
Just make sure you take in account of your w. Its so much stronger than people realize Remember you don't have to charge. In a 1v1, sometimes its better not to. But if your support signals, start autoing, and save q. Slow and proc w with e or ult to keep there. If you ult a meelee, auto 3x, e, auto 3x, and if they run, Snipe.
Largely depends on what you want out of him. sixdogman actually did a pretty decent job.
AD Caster Varus is your poke machine primarily dealing damage at max range with Qs. I would actually suggest always building Manamune because you can't always get good (safe) Crits off in a siege, teamfight or wherever you happen to be sniping from so Essence Reaver doesn't always sustain you well enough. Now I'd actually say Crit is optional in this build and AS isn't necessarily high priority.
Thus your build could look something like: 
Strong emphasis on AD and both flat and %armor pen with at least 30% CDR (you could certainly itemize for the full 40% or get it from runes) with a source of sustain and a defensive item. This is a good build in mid-lane and will definitely work in bot lane as long as your aware of the fact the a couple lucky Crits from the enemy could lose you fights. Basically you want to stay as far away as you can while you throw Qs but once you have a fully stacked Muramana and Ghostblade you've got a surprisingly decent amount of damage despite your lack of Crit and AS if only for a short amount of time. Decent Keystones for this build would be Deathfire Touch for additional poke or Stormraider's Surge for some mobility when you land good Qs. Thunderlord's could also work but requires a bit more risk in that you'l prolly need to throw in an AA and E along with a Q to get it off.
Now that build is basically pure caster and leaves much to be desired for a more traditional ADC play style. One could make a case for either IE or ER for a core crit item and one could always get both if your still looking for some heavy AD for casting. Basically any Crit/AS item is worth considering to follow that up and is somewhat a matter of preference. BT is a good high damage source of sustain and a last whisper item is still a good idea especially if there are multiple tanks/bruisers on the enemy team.
A good example of this kind of build: 
Still a fairly strong emphasis on AD with Crit and AS to go with it. This build still has strong caster elements with the sustain and CDR on ER but you could go IE over ER and then PD over RF significantly investing in your AAs and Crits but losing out on the ability to poke consistently from a distance. Once again this is pretty heavily dependent on preference and preferred play style. Now the farther away from caster you get the less you want to be in mid-lane where you will be out-ranged and/or out-bursted so this build is geared more towards bot-lane. If your leaning away from caster I would actually suggest maxing your E over Q and primarily fighting by landing 2 or 3 AAs before you drop an E and then either disengage or continue fighting depending on the situation and only using Qs if you have plentiful mana or too proc full blight stacks/pick off low health opponents. Warlord's is definitely the keystone to go with if your emphasizing Crit though you can still make good use of Thunderlord's with a couple AAs and an E.
I actually absolutely love AP Varus. The main thing to keep in mind is how dependent AP Varus is on his AAs for blight stacks and CDR to cast spells and proc more blight stacks faster. Because of this he is actually even less suited to mid lane as he tends to be even more dependent on the support of his team to get off successful AA + ability combinations.
There's a few things you could do for building him but recently I find I'm fond of this for a build: 
The main core of this build is Zerker Greaves into Nashor's so that you have enough AS to stack blight efficiently, a good chunk of CDR and some more Magic Damage on-hit. Now I build Gunblade right after that because one thing that AP Varus has always lacked is a reliable source of sustain as his Magic Damage on-hit and Blight procs work with neither lifesteal nor spellvamp; New Gunblade fixes that problem by giving you sustain off everything! The way I see it 40% CDR is a must on AP Varus because you need to be procing blight to be effective. I put some thought into this and decided that the best way to hit that cap would be Lich Bane for 10% and another 10% from runes as I don't think he benefits enough from other 20% CDR items and I feel he needs the AS over CDR from boots. And the spellblade proc is a nice bump in damage. Now you could go quite a few ways with your last two items but at this point you don't really need more AS because you will stack blight faster than you proc it and your maxed at CDR which means you mostly just want AP and Magic Pen. Put simply Void and Deathcap are going to skyrocket your damage against enemies almost regardless of what they try to build against you; the %Pen on Void working against their MR and the %health damage on your blight working against their max health. Zhonya's is obviously a good defensive option too. With this build your poke is bad and your Q should almost exclusively be used to proc blight stacks when your E and R are on CD or when they are out of range. You're going to want to run Stormraider's or Thunderlord's for keystones for the extra mobility after procing stacks or extra burst. A good thing to work on is abusing your E's ability to proc 4 blight stacks by AAing right after you throw the ability and effectively procing the bonus blight your R now gives them. The key to using this build effectively however is team composition. AP Varus works best with a strong "protect the carry"/heavy CC comp, to allow him time and space he needs to stack and proc stacks, against a tank/bruiser heavy comp. Most of your damage is %health magic damage so you tend to do similar damage to all kinds of enemies meaning you do significantly more damage to tankier enemies than a normal Varus build would but not necessarily as good of damage to squishier enemies than a normal Varus build would. Team compositions are a large factor in the success of this build.
No matter how you build him it is good to keep in mind that your 20% bonus AS from your passive may not seem like much but is a very effective laning tool allowing you a constant buff to your last hitting and harass.
Sorry about the wall of text... Good luck out there... XD