As someone who mains Volibear I have to say first off that you're cool and more people should play the bear. Feel like not a lot of people play him as compared to others. I always get a little more excited when I see another Volibear on the enemy team and honor them at the end.
As for the AP, IDK man. He could be stronger with something different but there a lot of champions with AP scaling that they won't be able to take full advantage of. I think they have something in the FAQ about stuff like that. But haven't you ever played AP Volibear? It's kind of... AWESOME... sometimes... Also, it just kind of makes sense to me though. He's using Lightning that chains onto enemies and he was a shaman before he became a warrior. Since Volibear won't actually stack too much AD but still greatly benefits from Attack Speed and on-hit effects this ability to gain 150 extra damage on-hit and 3 more 150 hits on more enemies really takes a shining to a champ who's in the middle of fights and swings his big ass scary paws as fast as he can. Think of it like this, 30% scaling on an ability that can hit 4 times for every basic attack within 12 seconds can add up to a lot of AP scaling. So even a little can end up going a long way. Key factor to that is positioning and not being kited. Also, although his ROAR! It also uses AP scaling, and I get why this can be annoying. I'm sure almost all Volibear players question this stuff. It's weird right because it's making him have not just have one ability that scales off a stat that he generally won't build any noticeable amount of but two of these things. That leaves him with a chomp that scales off Bonus Health and another ability that doesn't have any scaling. Seems kinda like a raw deal, at least it did to me at first. Thing is though that once you get past a certain level your mana has scaled up to the point where you can afford to use this ability pretty often if you want to. And that's pretty cool since that ROAR! has Volibears LOWEST cooldown. Looking over past games i've realized just how much damage that thing racks up and that's why most Volibear's damage output at the endgame screen shows just maybe 10-20ish percent more AD then Magic Damage. And that can make dealing with the Bear quite a bear. He's got a lot of overall AP burst. I think that's also why it has a 60% AP scaling. So, ya, you have an ability with the shortest cooldown that gives him a crucial slow he needs to keep fighting his fleeing prey and it clocks up decent damage overall and you have his incredibly long cooldown ability that has massive burst and even better team fight potential.
Long story short(shout out to Reddit i'm borrowing a joke), you switch Volibear's AOE Slow and his kick-ass-attack-speed-scaling Chain Lightning Ultimate to have AD or more Bonus Health Scaling then what do you have? You got yourself an UNSTOPPABLE LIGHTNING BEAR running around. The Nami population would be devastated.
Honestly though, don't expect much from Riot. The sweeping changes they've made to this season and the fact that he's the only champ I believe to not be touched at all this Season doesn't say much in terms of him getting some help. He's only been nerfed twice. And that was pretty long ago. I really did agree that his speed boost being changed to scale in level was absolutely fair. But other than that he's only ever been buffed up passively (not lot's but certainly far more often than any other champion) just to be on par and not be a poor choice.
This only ever happens because sweeping changes and lots of reworks happen and they don't change him until he's fallen way behind. Unfortunately this season they are dead silent about him. They don't seem to care for bear. And with no word about him being included with reworks for top laners in season 5 (i'm thinking the brusiers/tanks/reuglar top lane picks) I'm feeling this sense of dread that he's gonna be left out entirely. It pissed me off so much when they changed like so many top laners / bruisers in a recent patch saying that they needed some love.(Ziileaasss!)
just to try to get him to have a little damage besides his W. It doesn't make since for his abilities to scale off of AP.
