As a Varus main myself , I would say is the lack of identity in his kit , he can be a catcher , a poke mage , a DPS auto attacker , but he always lose something and he never gets the full use of his kit , unlike Kaysa. He has some littles flaw who scale into a big problem , lack of mobility , dependent of a passive who requires Varus be in auto attack range to be full effective, which is not always the case , his ultimate gives 3 stack of the passive during the time the target is root, instead the second is hit , E don't give that much damage the slow is low even max level and the grievous wounds is always 40% , Q can be cancelled with hard cc and silence , don't even is shot, his passive becomes a little redundant late game since doesn't past the attack speed cap and results in a lot of atk speed who don't get utilized
Ima say this and i hope it aint a shite vhange but, let his E root you if your caught in the middle and give him increased range on his autos as stacks of some kind, like senna
@@makhond2498 it would give him a nice niche , as a W empowered E would really nice to see , I would make the passive bypass the atk spd cap and ult apply 3 stacks right away , this simple changes would give Varus a direction
I feel like his AP build has the most cohesiveness in his kit, since his kit was designed around Blight, but even AP loses value on his passive. If they wanted to bring Varus in line with other adcs, I would like to see some attack speed scaling on his abilities. Faster Q charging scaling with attack speed? That would tie his passive and his Q together to benefit his DPS build. They could tie crit in with the execute on the active part of W to encourage its use as an execute on adc builds. His E could travel faster with attack speed, and/or increase its slow value with attack speed/crit to encourage its use as a catch tool. It would also encourage AP varus to pick up nashors again, since most AP varus builds have dropped it for more useful items.
"If it weren't, supports wouldn't exist." Solo-queue tried so hard to never have to play support that Rito created an assassin whose only way to carry was to support AND EVERYONE TRIED TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO TAKE HIM TO SOLO LANES UNTIL HE WAS REWORKED OUT OF IT.
I think the best thing Varus has to offer is his 3 hit pasive. His whole kit should be balanced around it, it would be so fun Just move his blight stacks to his pasive and make him get a different effect depending on what ability he pops the 3 stacked mark with Q poping pasive could be extra damage W (since its moving to his pasive, give him a new ability to proc, a skill shot) poping pasive could shred the enemy's armor or give him his old aspd steroid E poping pasive could give either extra slow or stronger healing reduction It would be such a cool concept Poke Varus is too toxic but it could still be viable and less opressive if more strength is given to his blight procs Literally imagine his playstyle 3 autos>ability 1>3 autos>ability 2>3 autos ability 3 kinda like sona but with basic attacks, itd be so fun to play
If you do that, then each of the abilities should have a higher travel speed (his current Q and E travels way too slow for that kind of playstyle, heck a vayne would do better)
u want another 3 hit passive adc? that's kinda overdone.. and boring tbh. we have vayne, kaisa, akshan, jinx (with her minigun reaching 3 stacks and increasing atack speed), duh even we have rune for that- press the attack. i think he should be more like a ezreal- artillery ad caster who pokes from miles away with some sort of reseting q upon takedowns. maybe even move him permamently into midlane- he could be ad velkoz of league
There's nothing wrong with opportunity costs, or trade-offs or weaknesses...the issue is that many of the popular and often newer champs are designed to have their cake and eat it too; finding as many ways to around their weaknesses to cover them if they have them. Decent designs get tossed for the ones that are easier to draw out their full pwr.
I'm a Varus main and one of the things I love about this guys is I made a custom item page that holds FOUR separate builds that all work for him and he's the ONLY marksmen I know that can have so much success with so much comp versatility. FYI the builds are On-Hit, Lethality, AS Crit, and AP (With On-hit being a hybrid damage build)
I think Varus can still be saved without receveing an aatrox level treatment, I think if his E starts to stacks his actual W passive counting as "if an enemy stays over the corrupted land for X seconds he gains an stack" would be something nice. Not only that, removing his passive and making his actual W becoming the new passive and using the W as another "passive stack mechanic", that I doesn't have much idea about what it can be, would be something nice. In this way, Varus would become something between the lines of "Stack and kill" but without needing to be in AA range of the enemy, and although I can't talk about all the Varus mains I personally love the satisfaction for using the Q ability in an full stacked target and killing it.
@@Adam-bc2ov Yes, old aatrox was just having an meta where he could be good, and before that I don't remember any meta that he could be. However, there is nothing in this aatrox that resembles the old one. With "aatrox level treatment" I mean an treatment where the champion is just destroyed and a new one that only have the same name replace it. It's very different compared to Warwick, for example.
@@bielhelp What if blight was a damage storage passive? Like grey health, kind of, but imagine it as purple health over your regular healthbar. Imo his abilities could easily do that, and you're threatening to toss out one auto to make all that purple health disappear (on top of his regular auto damage) afterwards. The biggest problem with Blight as it is now is any fixes to it just feel like Twitch to me. And I'd rather Twitch be the Poison Expunger while Varus does his thing (pelting fools with cursed arrows at a distance and scaring them into running) better.
@@GrimoireM Maybe blight could have some "wounding effect" where it removes % max health of the enemy until he goes back to base to heal, so Varus will became something like an anti-sustain adc.
I love how usually Vars uses this series to highlight the champions positive aspects in a rather hopeful and optimistic tone but he goes „yeah No saving the guy”
Varus is one of the most fun ADC that I still play to this day. Let me tell you a secret: both builds are bad, I believe that this video is prior to the items rebalancing but even then playing "assassin" lethality Varus was the most satisfying gameplan one could ever ask. You simply load yourself with AD, Ability Haste and Lethality and that's it ! You now have an ~3 sec CD ability that deals up to 1,5K damage late game, with proper runes to fit your playstyle (Harvest, Comet or First Strike are my recommendations depending on whether you want burst, sustain damage or earlier spike) you can be a poke god that is never close enough to the fight in order to get killed but still dishes damage. The only downside is that he now isn't good at pushing lanes, but that was a trade-off people were already making by playing him AP.
Allow Varus to gain extended range on marked targets. Maybe an additional 75 or 100 range would incentivize varus to continue stacking and allow him to pop blight stacks with arrows
He has been one of the most popular ADC,s in Wildrift where everyone has accepted the the fact that he is a long range assassin which can go ap to make tanks life hell and ad to make other adcs life hell.
I only played Varus when I started playing league, he holds a special place in my heart for teaching me the game in a easy way. He’s my main and I don’t think I’ll give him up for a different bot lane champ any time soon. I hope root gives him the love he deserves
As Four main I find Varus fun as a pocket-pick. They both embody the one shot from half a screen away at the expense of sustain and the necessity for calculated positioning very well. Varus just has less of an identity as he can do a lot of other stuff besides this
There is also the same stun shot for Jhin and Varus, and Varus E is pretty similar to Jhin's E - the difference is only slowing after, not before the damage comes. O think they are VERY much alike with Jhin being more individual because of his thing with 4 and his weaknesses/strong sides. Varus has more survival abilities and stats so he is more basic than unique - and I don't think that's bad)
Keep in mind that Varus’s w does more damage scaling with the Q charge, so that %60 max health from blight does %90 max health damage with a fully charged Q denonate
They're two separate functions. The blighted quiver active, which makes Q deal missing health damage, scales with Q charge up to 21% missing health, but blight stacks don't.
@@rifewithpotatoes it’s part of the Q function that it increases Blight procs by up to %50 based on charge. It doesn’t work on training dummies for some reason, but I assure you it works on enemy champions.
Varus was the adc I started playing bot with. His divergent playstyle and the variety of builds are some of the things I like the most about him, it reminds me of kayn, maybe for his rework they could use the same idea of choosing a different playstyle based on the form you have chosen, It sure will be more balanceable than it is nowadays.
I never expected to main a obscure champion before Vars makes a video about it. Now that I think about, i dont remenber seeing many other Varus players in game.
This is a bit off topic but I noticed we have a toplaner, jungler, and an adc darkin, and if memory serves there are 5 darkin in the lore, so I’m hoping riot brings us a darkin mid laner, and a darkin support so we can have a full darkin team, and they all need double a’s in their names
I've been playing him for a few years now and I'm at 670k and I can safely say the main reason is that he suffers greatly from the nonsense of SoloQ, he requires a lot of peel and is quite slow to deal dmg, with how high damage and mobility is in this game now, it's just sadly not possible.
I started to play and main Varus two years ago when I first played League of Legends. The video's not out yet but my guess is that it'll be about Varus' lack of mobility, his very lacking abilities. His Q being the only active ability that deals relevant damage while building AD, the fact that it requires to be charged and can be cancelled by someone breathing on you makes him relatively weak as a poke mage, which used to be his specialty. Now his AP builds have been buffed and are now very strong, but they still suffer from the same weaknesses. When it comes to building and playing him crit, it simply makes more sense to play any other ADC instead.
@@gandalfpotter2149 He used to, though his lethality poke mage playstyle that I love was nerfed incredibly hard and often with the multiple Q nerfs in season 10 and the multiple lethality item nerfs and Sanguine Blade's removal.
i think a good change would be to make his q charge faster when he has build atk speed since its going to hurt less it would be nice if his dps is less interrupted
@@gandalfpotter2149 thats smt similar to kog maw which also kinda suffer the same fate as varus kog suffers an identity chrises similar to varus kog scales with ap but has attack speed to his q and instead builds ad his kit almost never synergies with each other like varus
1:47 i started playing league in 2017 and Varus was my first champ I ever played. I exclusively took him top with a lethality build (with no clue what I was doing. I just looked up a guide and saw the guide had footage of him top so I took him top). its sad to see him become such a polarizing champ. He's still my most played champ and I love his diversity between lethality, crit, on hit, ap, and even hybrid builds.
I honestly love that he has these completely disparate playstyles. If my team needs magic damage in a form of burst, Ludens, comet, manamune, shadowflame. If my team needs consistent magic damage, nashors, guinsoos, radabons. They need a crit marksman? Kraken, collector, runaans. So on and so forth. It makes him highly flexible and adaptable. I can always build items like Zhonyas or Axiom in either build and they'll help me out and keep me going. Varus is able to do a similar job to Kaisa in that way, except with a lot more safety and utility. Where Kaisa just offers damage, Varus is damage, consistent poke, executes, AoE slowing and heal cuts, and CC. All stuff Kaisa would have to lose something to go for.
I think you mentioned his W going as high as 60% in the lategame but it's important to note that his Q increases the potency of this. A fully charged Q increases the damage by 50% (of the effect) causing 60% to raise to 90% (60 + 30) and then on top of that your W's missing health damage will proc AFTER the damage of your Q.
I love the idea of Varus especially after the reworking of his lore, reworked Aatrox and Rhaast showed up, I think he can be a very interesting Darkin ADC. But as you said in the video, I totally agree that his failings is his inability to make use of his entire kit at one time. When Riot reworked Sion, they explained somewhere ( I can't remember where I read this) that a big incentive to rework Sion was that there was a lack of synergy in his kit that lead players playing him to always have to pick 1 thing to do and have no use of his full kit potential, something scaled with AD, something with AP, something with AS, so the player thinks "What am I supposed to build?" - and that can be overwhelming for someone trying to learn that champion. If you're met with a champion that says, "I can be built in 5 different ways" that takes a greater amount of time to learn BUT ALSO....you will never experience the full potential of that kit. Visually speaking, Varus is archaic, he looks terrible and not up to standard with the new Darkin lore, he looks nothing like Aatrox or Rhaast and has ass animations. I believe he does have to be reworked, but not as pessimistically as you stated in the video Mr. Vars. Being reworked doesn't mean being entirely destroyed, its an opportunity to re-imagine the Champion as they were "meant" to with the new standard of quality Riot makes nowadays. (Say what you will with the overloaded kits yes, but hey the champions look good.) I believe if they keep the conceptual idea of Varus's ultimate and his long range arrow, and design around 1 chosen playstyle, he can thrive. When I say 1 chosen playstyle, I mean it is an ideal "concept" a designer imagines when designing game play. It is sort of to say, "What will the champion play like in a perfect scenario" and that is their ultimate "gameplay moment." Like Samira hitting S rank and wiping through a team with ultimate. Maybe Xayah getting out all those feathers, dodging key abilities with ult and racking in huge feather damage through a team. What is the height of that champion's gameplay? Having that in mind directs the designer's decision. Having an unclear vision leads to conflicting kits, where its half of one thing half of the other. So they gotta pick, do they want Varus to be a sniper and precise maybe like Jhin, or high dps and aoe damage maybe like Jinx, or a hybrid hyper carry maybe like Kog'ma? Just pick something and make him handsome, he'll be top notch.
A monster-type Daarkin ADC would be dope tho. I'm tired of the six-pack anthromorph heroes. Gimme a monster that's supposed to kill people or something. Like on Varus' case, they could incorporate that lore of one of his skins (I think it was Varus Swiftbolt or something) where the Daarkin stitched up the dead bodies of his victims to patch itself up everytime it kills.
As my main ADC, I love most of his kit but I do feel his E and Passive lacking. If I HAD to rework him a bit, I would change out his e and passive to keep his power budget. Passive: Varus attacks and abilities apply Grievous Wounds for 4 seconds. (E) Varus fires a hail of arrows at the target location which lands after 0.5 seconds, dealing physical damage to all enemies within the area. Varus gains X% attack speed for each champion hit or champion entering the area inflicted for X seconds.
@@olsenfernandes3634 Not really, it's only ~300 gold value. For example Jax gets 28-88 attack speed out of his passive. That's 700-2200 gold. But to be fair he does have to stack it up. If you are about to complain and say it costs 800 gold to get the item you're also getting 15 ad which is worth 500 gold in stats. If you wanted to be really picky you could make it be a scaling debuff at 20/40/60% as he auto's more. Have you read akshan's passive?
@@olsenfernandes3634 Except it is. You pay gold for raw stats. You pay gold for grievous wounds. You pay gold for item actives such as stop watch. You pay gold to Pen armor or magic resist. Pretty much everything in the game has a gold value associated with it. There's a reason the 3 grievous wound basic items are 800 gold.
I think galeforce is an insane item on Varus and almost single-handedly saves his kit. I’m no game design pro or high elo by any means, but galeforce gives you the ability to seamlessly change between both playstyles. Not only the dash but the passive movement speed mean that you can go from dpsing to poking, or the reverse at almost any time. It doesn’t solve the issue of lethality vs crit itemization, but if you go for a 60% crit build you can still sneak an edge of night or muramana
When you mention ryze and azir being weak early and strong late reminded me of GP and why he is so strong, his early is really not that bad but spikes so hard he can be played in solo queue (at least better than those 2)
Cuz he' got both scalings, AS buffs, health % damage and really long range (which was powercrept by now but is still scary), Varus is either the most obnoxious bully or a joke.
Artillery champs are my favourite in the entire game, and varus is my fave of the bunch. I hope they can rework them into a healthy spot again. Imo, their power budget should be more weighted towards q, otherwise they don't do anything unique. Just play Ashe lol.
Disagree with the thing about ahse tbh Ashe has been turbo broken multiple times, and right now the ult cd is just ridiculous easily one of the best marksman, varus doesn't get nearly as much love
She’s not really as popular as picks like jinx, vayne, Caitlyn or MF tho, and it’s precisely because she doesn’t have the same insane hard solo carry potential as those champs. She’s a bit more team oriented than others
@@ordi8725 oh, sorry. I was high off of playing warframe when I typed that part. I meant to say that his lore needs to tie into his character a little bit more. Like yeah, he’s legit a fusion of two people but we don’t really get to see that in game. All we see is a sexy boy with darkin pants and a bow be really edgy :p
@@SaiKisaragi Honestly the old lore was so much better since it had the typical edginess of anything involved with Daarkins. Varus literally let the Noxians burn his town and kill his people just so that he can contain the power of corruption/Daarkin in his temple (because he was some sort of temple guardian or whatever). But personally if he were to be reworked, I'd like for them to really make him into a monster archetype archer, not another six-pack moneymaker. Imagine something like Rhaast but with a big ass bow and arrow. That would be sick.
Fan Made Varus Rework... I hope is not 200 years! (English is not my primary language (there could be some grammatical errors)). I heve a Google doc file were I write a lot of reworks like this one. Up to this point I tried to rework: Heimerdinger (Medium - Light); Fizz (Medium) and Miss Fortune (Light - Very light) Very light - (level Ezreal/Wukong) Light - (level Fiddle) Medium - (level WW) Hard - (level Aatrox) Complete - (level Sion) Objective: Medium +Modern +Similarities with the Darkins +Based around abilities - Based around auto attack - Hybrid damage Changes In Short: P - Living Vengeance Stance: Varus periodically empowers his next basic (like Aatrox) to gain: AA range (74-200 BASED ON LEVEL) bonus damage and a heal (10% bouns AD - XX% bonus AD BASED ON LEVEL). Consuming stacks of Blight reduces the CD. Blight: Now his old W passive is applied not by AA but by “Stance” and other abilities over the first 1.2 seconds (one stack every 0.4 seconds up to 3, (like his current R)) (it deals AD damage) (it works only on big monsters and enemy champions). Q - Cursed Arrow Charging the Q does not slow you but when you recast the Q you have a cast time (the arrow is olaso faster but a trajectory appears (like Jhin's E or like Jinx W)) now it stops at the first champion hit. W - Blighted Quiver Passive: Varus gains movement speed and armor penetration when consume stacks of his passive. ACTIVE: Varus' Q can be enhanced: The next Q slows a little, deals more damage and pierce champions. The arrow sticks to the ground at maximum range the Arrow explodes, after 3 second or when you recast the W, dealing damage based on missing health. E - Hail of Arrows Same but now also grants sight of the area and is faster when used near you. R - Chain of Corruption Now it interrupts dashes and slows and instead of rooting. If you hit a fully marked champion it roots (is also travels a bit faster) Upon impact, the tendril seeks out other nearby enemy champions now they don't stop following the enemy champions if they get out of the range because they are considered projectiles (like Brend’s R) and have a really low travel speed.
Speaking as a pessimistic Varus one trick, I hope Riot never touches him again. I would rather him fall behind and into obscurity at a 40% win ratio than have Riot rework him again.
@@gandalfpotter2149 yeah, the only problem is that you don't do jack shit on early, even a yuumi top do more in early laning phase, but when you hit that 4-5 item power spike, its so good to see the health bar of a Voli go from 100 to 0
Varus's kit is fine, but I think it can be shifted around to be brought up to modern standards. I think his W should be moved to his passive in order to give him an updated W that increases his auto range on active. I think focusing on giving varus a full artillery kit is the way to make him unique. Giving him an active to increase his auto range leans into his q/e poking a lot more. Moving the blight stacks to passive means that he can still keep his unique 3 hit procs for big hits but can land them easier due to his long range autos.
maybe with W active, he would also get longer range to his E and Q but he has to make a decision between using the time to Q further, slow with E further, or auto to get more burst with his blight stacks
I am having great success as a varus otp, I have 3 builds I go for depending on the enemy team, ap for tanks, ad for assassins and squishies and standard for a more tf depended game, the variety is what keeps me playing him.
Personally I like the fact that Varus has 3 different playstyles and I love all of them Also I don't want riot scrapping his ap playstyle with a rework
Whoever says Varus is bad fails to factor in the absolutely insane amount of damage he can do if he goes full AP. I consider Varus to be a stronger Xerath but with DPS and less self peel.
But he needs to auto attack 3 times to fully use his AP scaling, with a build focused on ability power his low attack speed will make it longer to stack. This in the late game(a mage needing to be in AA range to deal damage) is equal to death. Besides, this build only thrives on the late game, but his main flaws are also accentuated in the late game as well.
i think Varus is like an Outdated Kaisa, he has AD/AP scaling but he doesnt effectively use both well, if you AP you better commit full AP or your passive blight does nothing, if you go Lethality you better go Full lethality or else your Q will always left them whit 1 hp and if you go full DPS you better commit full dps or else you wont effectively machine gun the opponents, Kaisa can go everything and do well, Varus always loses something for doing a build.
I've recently picked up Varus after the durability update. My favorite Champs were no longer than useful due to the update, so I was struggling to find someone new to play. I love playing him attack speed and crit, it's super fun
They could really lean into the darkin/"dual hunters" background and effectively do to varus what Kayn was supposed to be. An average champion who gets an evolution choice into (in Varus's case) DPS or poke damage, with a visual change to the bow.
I think that the hybrid gameplay of varus guve him a huge versability in the lane or in team fights, in the crit build you have a good and balance dps and poke its not a sivir lethality an not a jinx but its varus and i like it
I think he deserve a full rework (visual and gameplay) But for a quick fix Riot could just make his poke spells synergies with attack speed and crit: -Q gets a crit ratio and atk speed reduces the wind up time. -E's cast time is reduced by atk speed.
Here's my take: Change his W so that all forms of damage he does applies his stacks. Get rid of his ult, put his Q onto his R, his new Q being when pressed he pops all the stacks he has on all enemies, and they're slowed a % for each stack, or rooted if they had all 3. Make his new R spammable, but it's charge time is reduced with attack speed, and make it a semi-global. There you go. He'll be an on-hit champ that's centered around first rooting people after hitting them with a few autos, then finishing them with an ult he has to briefly charge while they can't move. No more long-range engagement from an ADC, but while still offering him a form of self-peel and/or lockdown, which also synergizes with his ult to be similar to how morg ult, bind, shield, and W all last in similar duration to eachother in a way that makes it very clear what her intended goals and combos are.
"He has 2 mutually exclusive playstyles" "You always play him at 80% of his power. If you chose one playstle you lose out on something else" I completely agree with these statements. Usually when champions have 2 seperate playstyles, the focus in their kit shifts. However, no aspect of their kit becomes completely useless. Kai'sa is a good example here. Her AP build favors the burst of W and passive, but doesn't make her Q, E and R completely useless. Similarly, W is still a strong ability in her AD build and her passive shines with more frequency. Meanwhile, in Varus case, he always loses out. As an on-hit or crit ADC, his poking ability is severly lacking because he doesn't have nearly as much AD as with a poke build, reducing his Q to a finisher. As a poke champion he completely loses the value of his passive and has a hard time to apply stacks outside of hitting R because he lacks attack speed. And as AP Varus, his spells don't exist without his W at all, yet also his AA's don't hurt, making him very dependant on either hiting R or somehow being allowed to apply the stacks via AA's that don't hurt much. Unlike Kai'Sa he isn't *flexible* in what he builds, he is completely torn between multiple things. And honestly, I don't see a way to unify these playstyles. Even if they gave his spells hybrid scalings, or crit scalings he'd either become too strong or would jst go for whatever build is numerical better. What they probably have to do, is to decide what they want Varus to be. But that's not an easy thing to do, because, since he has so different playstyles, the playerbase has very different perceptions on what Varus is. If they, for example, reworked his Q to actually be a finishing move rather than a poke tool, allowing Varus to be an on-hit focused auto attacker who only uses his spells to detonate blight, the poke Varus players would be very upset. Similarly, if they'd give E a way to stack blight, allowing poke Varus to gather stacks without auto attacking and maybe rework the passive to support that poke centered build, the on-hit enthusiats would be upset. These two playstyles just don't go along because of how his kit is set up. I mean, they kind of attempted to turn him into a spellslinger similar to Lucian, where he AA's a lot but shoots out his spells inbetween. That was the idea behind the cooldown refund on blight detonation. He also kind of has item support for this in the form of Navori Quickblade. HOWEVER, his spells are not designed to be queued between his AA's. His Q deals pretty mediocre damaged if not charged and his E has a pretty horrible casting animation. Putting your spells between your AA's just doesn't feel good.
A few comments up someone suggested they make Varus with two forms like Kayn, but after reading your comment it kinda would make sense for Darkin Varus to be used for poke, and the humans he took control of to be used for auto attacks.
What if they made it tri-hybrid? His passive stays the same and boosts his attack speed after killing. His Q loses a bit of damage and instead channels or travels or cools down faster with attack speed. His W stays mostly the same, except remove basic abilities getting cooldowns reduced for the active. His E gets a new passive where for each stack of W active on a target they get slowed for an extra 0.75/1.5/2.25 seconds but in turn loses some damage. His ult stays the same. I think something like that would kinda mesh the playstyles together well; You get attack speed on kills, which can be used to apply blight stacks and empower your Q at the same time. And W loses some power to make his E much better utility-wise as long as you use AAs.
There is no such thing as objectively boring, as there is people playing yuumi which is a yawing simulator for anyone with 2 braincells,AND they like to play her, as in, they have fun while doing nothing but mash E. I know you didn't really mean objectively and you just said it to accentuate your point, but still felt the need to say this becouse I'm dumb that way.
Maybe giving him somehing like Kayne passive, sometime during the game he can choose to be poke or dps and his skill will adjust to your preferred playstyle.
Varus can be played as a long range sniper with dark Harvest his shots is death shot but he forces you to be always focused I know it's difficult but I like to play him because of that thank you for showing up to my TED Talk
My idea for a Varus rework: -Turn his W (passive) into his Champ passive and give it a crit scaling, something like "crit autos apply 2 blight stacks" (add a higher cap of stacks, something like 6). Also current passive could be changed to "When Varus pop blight he gets x% attack speed depending on the amount of stacks" - Make his Q similar to Panth's Q. Tap Q would incur in a lower damage and range but also a lower cooldown, making it a good way to consistently pop blight stacks. Charged Q would have a bonus crit scaling so crit items still feel useful to build. **An alternative to this could be to give Varus Q a charges system, like Corki's Rockets. - W (Active) could stay the same. Maybe add a new passive or some kind of synergy with his passive to make it more interesting than just being a finisher. Also activating it would reset Varus Q cooldown inmediatly. It's silly you can activate an enhancing ability effect but it just wastes if you don't have the cooldown of the spell it enhances and since it's a finisher you need it on demand. Additionally make so the next Q can only be charged and not able to quick tap (the reason behind this is to encourage some Q charging in Varus kit since I've focushed too much on Blight). These changes would be enough to make Varus more interesting to play and give him more "marksman feeling". -About his E. The other 2 Darkin champions, Aatrox and Rhaast(Red Kayn) have some kind of sustain/lifesteal, so my idea would be to leave the current E and instead of being a healing reducing effect make it a healing/shielding steal effect, like Zeri's passive but also with heals, leaving a "Blight wound" on the enemies for X seconds that steals x% of shielding and healing received while afflicted. -About his ult, idk it would have some tweaks like if you land R on an enemy with 6 (or other number) blights "it inmediatly spread to the closest enemy champ" or "it spreads faster". This way you get rewarded by being patient and exposing to danger. It might be too good of a change tbh, but I think it would be fun to have the choice of using a risky R to double its potential in teamfights.
Gotta say I don't agree. There is nothing wrong with having to choose a playstyle depending on build and not just get everything no matter what, it's almost a good thing. It lets players express themselves. You go on-hit and don't get full power from your abilities, so you work as a traditional ADC, take lethal tempo, and if you get one kill your AS scaling passive goes through the roof and you can hypercarry a fight with autos. Go lethality/poke and get great use of your abilities, no not as much damage as the likes of Ziggs, but if a brawl breaks out you can burst (without needing blight) and then you have high-damage autos driven by your passive, though not as powerful as with on-hit. Then AP, which yes sacrifices unconditional ability damage, but enables massive burst, hybrid damage, and plays more as a pick/pick follow-up playstyle. It's all about trade-offs, and the most important abilities are passive and ult. So no, Varus can't do everything at once, but he is versatile, and fun for some people :)
I have a hybrid AP varus build that literally no one else I’ve seen has built before, and yes I’m a bit proud of that fact because it’s a build that works well and hasn’t gotten taken by Koreans and saying “oh new op build” with a 20/2/5 KDA slapped onto the thumbnail. But I am very curious as to what’s gonna be on here because this guy is my pocket pick for adc if I feel like we don’t have enough tank killing potential or range
@@lajsna9936 eclipse into Nashors, and whatever ap item you see fit. Max q then e. Eclipse allows for good burst and keeps ad side relative without investing into another ad item. Nashors is just Nashors. Not too much ability haste yet but can build that after, his blight stack prices are good enough. Unlike most ap builds, you don’t need ult for huge damages and your autos will be doing just fine. Eclipse burst with electrocute racks up a ton of damn. Hope that explains it enough lol. Didn’t want it to be too long
A few weeks ago I completely reworked Varus, just for fun. I'll post it here cause why not. Varus Passive: When an enemy is damaged by another ally, apply a stack of Blight for five seconds and refresh current Blight stacks, up to a max of 5. Blight stacks are detonated, dealing magic damage, when Varus deals ability damage to an enemy. Varus's auto attacks do not deal damage to Champions, but apply blight stacks instead. Every three auto attacks by Varus, his next auto attack also detonates all Blight stacks on the target. Q (15-7): Chargeable skillshot with a max range of 1600 (slightly over 3x auto range). Charges slower than current Q, the shot moves faster, and is canceled once it reaches max range without firing. Deals % missing health magic damage. W (30-18): When used normally, allows Varus to autoattack all enemies with his maximum Q range who recently received damage from an ally for a limited time. When used during a Q charge, instantly fully charges the Q. E (30-10): When used normally, slow all enemies by an amount determined by the number of Blight stacks on them. . When used during a Q charge, grants the Q magic penetration. R (140-90): For the next ten seconds, reduce your Q cooldown by 50% and instantly reset it at half charge whenever you kill an enemy and increase the duration of this ability by 5 seconds. During this time, your Q has 150% range, moves twice as fast, and Blight stacks deal double damage.
I feel like saying his AP playstyle can "reasonably find [you] success" is doing it a massive injustice. I do not play Varus with any different styles except for AP and have gotten fairly high (diamond) on my past account. Building manamune first and then transitioning into his ap items feels much better than any other build, and having ult up fairly often with ultimate hunter makes it an ease to delete enemies from a distance or ones that try to jump on such as assassins. I'll be interested in hearing any other Varus mains input on this or their perspective on same/different playstyles.
Here's an idea that somewhat blends his playstyles while still offering diversity. P) Replaced with W passive. Popping passive stacks no longer gives damage. Instead, it gives a short burst of attack speed and an additional effect based on the triggering ability. Q) Lower damage. Triggering passive applies additional damage (this damage can be high as it relies on some interaction). W) Add a short burst of movement speed to get that perfect shot. This isn't a significant source of mobility in general due to its long cd. E) Also applies stacks of passive over time. Triggering passive adds a short root to the start. R) Unsure on the passive triggering effect, but I think it should be big (and the base ability tuned down a little in return). It could stun instead of root, could spread faster, could have a longer range on the spreading effect. The basic idea is he can still poke hard if he lands E into Q, but no longer as hard with just his Q. In addition to that, he's weaker if enemies jump on him while those cooldowns are down as he needs them to give that burst of attack speed and their valuable additional effects. He is also further incentivized to rotate between autos and abilities to maintain high attack speed and get the most out of each ability. With this he could still opt between going for on-hit or ad/lethality builds depending on which part of the kit he wants to focus on, but they won't be quite as disconnected anymore. Also his absurd poke either won't be quite as absurd or will weaken him if a fight breaks out while his abilities are on cooldown.
His E is meant to be a kiting/chase tool. Not to the extent as something like jinx W or jhin w but it’s his version of it. It’s good for short trades as well.
Varus is one of my favorite characters, but I rarely play him AD. AP varus feels amazing to play, and is not as obnoxious or boring as the poke build. His kit functions more fluidly by working around blight stacks as your main source of damage. Early game is weak, but late game you can erase an enemy from existence even if they have high health/MR. Runes are: Hail of Blades, taste of blood, eyeball collection and ultimate hunter. In percision take presence of mind, then coup de grace or cut down depending on the enemy team. For the build I start D blade and work towards nashors then death cap, followed by situational items. If you're struggling in the early game you can go manamune first item, then opt into nashors and so fourth. The build is super rewarding to play, allowing you to get picks and swing team fights through good ultimate usage and good attack weaving.
I wonder if a good rework would be making it so the stacks give ramping move speed so that he becomes a sort of chase-and-lockdown marksman almost in a similar vein as Senna. Maybe something like: Passive: Applies the blight, up to three stacks, gives move speed Q: Same, serves to detonate blight stacks W: passive - Increases the damage done by detonating blight stacks, active - same E: Same, serves to slow down the enemy you're already rush-poking and remove blight detonation R: Same, but increase corruption range if target was already previously blighted The idea here is that Varus becomes an odd sort of poke rushdown champ. He'd be a bit less committed than other rushdown champs due to his range, and his playstyle would be something like hitting with an auto to get movement towards a target, continuing to auto til they're fully stacked, slowing them and mitigating external support with E, and then using your closer range to more reliably hit those massively ouch Q arrows and R. Ultimate would serve to punish or zone those who try to intrude on your rushdown. I feel like leaning into this would also be lore fitting, considering he's the fusion of two hunters.
lt's a rule of thumb that champions with double A are the ones played more often, and Varus shouldn't forget it. Take Kayn&Rhaast and Aatrox for example, two popular champions who remember the double A thing. There aren't any other examples, really, but my point still stands.
I like the idea of changing blight stacks to appear on ability hit and extend their duration. A Q applies 1 stack, W empowered 2 stacks, then he gets in close to hit an auto attack to pop it. That would free up his passive to an auto attack modifier instead of a steroid. You kill on hit Varus, but solidified him as a long range physical damage or magic damage carry.
I personally think varus needs more incentive to build attack speed. Honestly, I want to give him the yasuo treatment of making his Q cooldown scale with attack speed
As an AP varus player, I feel like he is about setting up your stacks with AAs and ocasionaly R and Then detonating them with a Skillshot. This is unique for him as most other stacking passives can be detonated with autos or targeted abilities. His passive (P), although comfortable during laning and making him better in long lasting teamfights feels very disconnected from the rest of his kit. They could make it so that you get stacking AS from proccing Blight making you a threat in prolonged teamfights more consistently without having to kill anyone first. This would make on-hit Varus care more about the blight stacks. His (Q) feels mostly okay as a detonator for blight or a long range finisher when combined with (W). It just is quite slow and it could use having Charge time scale with AS. As for lethality Varus this is pretty much the only ability he cares about and i think this playstyle is not what Varus is about. For on-hit Varus you could add a crit scaling so this ability feels impactfull. His (W) I take as the core of this champ. The blight stacks create a unique pattern of setting up damage with your AAs and using your Skilshots to pop it. The CDR rewards skillful play and could be increased up to 50% to accomodate for high AS. The passive damage on autos for AP (for AD it is barely noticable) makes farming easier and provides some sustained damage in fights if you happen to miss a spell. (Btw. Kayle has 40% AP to AA scaling which is only 10% more than Varus. In my opinion this spell doesn't need changes (maybe apart from small balance ones). His (E) feels the worst because of its cast time that makes the slow almost non existent. They could make it better by letting you cast it while moving and giving the slow AP scaling (not unlike twitch (W)) His (R) is in a good state. It is very versatile. It can be used as a long range catch tool, a defensive root against assasins or a teamfight zoning/mega ultimate. I would only do small quality-of-life updates like still applying the blight stacks and AOE if the target cleanses the root (Olaf R, Cleanse...) or dies. In conclusion, I think that lethality Varus should be removed/not the focus. Varus should get a QOL update and his passive should be tied more to the rest of his kit. And tie on-hit Varus more to his blight stacks. (For this to work you would probably need to swap parts of his W and Passive, but that doesn't really matter)
I think the best thing for varus would be to allow his autos to trigger blight, or give him cdr based on his attack speed. As it stands, on-hit sacrifices the power that his q gives, while his poke loses out on the dps from his w. Another thing that might be beneficial for him would be to increase the slow from his e. That ability is supposed to serve as his only form of self peel beyond his ultimate, but it's not really strong enough to do so
As a former Varus main, this one hurt to watch. Varus was the champion that got me to start playing the game again, back when As We Fall came out. I saw his new splash art and was like I've gotta play this guy. I loved on hit Varus so much and I remember playing him so much. He was the first champion I ever got a pentakill on. Varus was my first real main and he will always have a special place in my heart. But yeah I agree, he's got a lot of problems and I'm so sad he's not popular so he doesn't get attention. He's one of the OG pretty boys, yet riot never wants to take advantage of that, instead let's make Talon one 🙄 I'm a strong believer Varus needs a full VGU, like Nunu and Fiddle levels. I want him to be a real darkin and I want on hit to be his main playstyle (although I doubt they'll do that considering it's the unpopular build). It would be cool if they kept the lore with Valmar and Kai but idk how they'd incorporate it into a new design. Varus is probably way off the radar for a VGU though, he's never been considered for one in any post or poll. Watching this video makes me want to pick up Varus again (despite being a supp main now) because I really to like him. He has the best song Riot ever put out (hot take but you can't change my mind) and I hope he'll get some love from Riot someday in the future.
Varus rework idea: reduce the damage on his Q, but make the fully charged version root the first champion hit, like Chain of Corruption (it only spreads if he manages to kill the rooted target during the root or until 3 seconds later). His new ult would release the spirits of Valmar and Kai, who fire weaker versions of his autots, applying Blight to everyone hit (imagine Runaan's but automatically firing). This gives him a way to fight back against champions who can't immediately burst him down before the root. It unfortunately delegitimizes his lethality build, making him a more traditional marksman, but I feel like his identity stays mostly intact. What do you guys think? Any other ideas for ultimates?
Idk i personally love playing varus. I get all the points you make, but personally i like the versatile nature of him and how simple he is. You do have to be a lot more careful on him too and depending on the play style, you have to use different game knowledge and macro to use him properly. For example, you play him differently and can have different advantages whether he is full poke lethality, full on hit attack speed, or full AP one shot Depending the enemy team you can build based on this very well compared to other adcs. Also it helps get better at different aspects such as landing and timing his skill shots and spacing because you have to. Im a tryndamere one trick with a little over 2 mil but varus is literally the only adc I can play in the bot lane with good success but maybe it is just me. I did put in a lot of effort into learning him but I love his ascetic, his skins, his gameplay, and how he is actually challenging and has no escape or dash so you have to focus a lot on spacing and map awareness for him to work. Ultimately though, I'm just a random and although i do love playing varus, I love playing tryndamere more but that being said they are the only two champs i own every skin for lol
Honestly, I'd like to see his passive and W swapped. Make the active segment of blighted quiver a Q passive or make it to where if the enemy has max blighted quiver stacks, it does the bonus damage. Making the attack speed buff an avtivatable ability would help some. We can also make his Q a new ability to where instead of a charge, it's just a skillshot with a base cast time of, like, 1 second similar to Caitlyn Q. I think E works as is more as a utility spell or give it a complete rework. E is probably the ability I'd scrap. His ultimate is very fun now but maybe make it more of a slow for 1.5 seconds into a root or stun for an additional 1 second? Something a little less consuming so much of his power budget?
I used to love playing Varus way back in S3-S4. I feel like if his power budget was shifted more towards on-hit rather than poke, he would be able to fit a lot better in a more traditional ADC role. Nerf his Q AD ratio a bit (and maybe add like 10 base damage rank 5 so the numbers don't shift too much in the early game), buff the damage a bit on his blight stack detonation and you've already helped him a lot. Another change I'd like to see on him is to shift his passive to a stack and decay system. Instead of getting a flat AS bonus on kill, with a higher bonus vs champions, give him a stack for each minion killed and more stacks (max stacks?) on champion takedown. Each stack gives like 10% AS, scaling with his level, and the stacks decay instead of losing them all at once. Then in lane he has a much clearer engage pattern: wait to kill a few minions to stack up the AS then go in for a short trade, using either Q or E to detonate stacks from a safe range. That already sounds a lot healthier and more fitting with current design standards.
Varus was shunned by many for he forgot the memo Aatrox gave him. There will always be the double A thing, Varus. The double A thing.
Halal Chaadtrox doesn't like haram V*rus 🤮👎
His name should have an A and then another A.
There was a memo
Draven draven, at the top again
Varus V-a-r-u-s there should be A and then another A Vaarus we had a memo varus we had a memo!
As a Varus main myself , I would say is the lack of identity in his kit , he can be a catcher , a poke mage , a DPS auto attacker , but he always lose something and he never gets the full use of his kit , unlike Kaysa. He has some littles flaw who scale into a big problem , lack of mobility , dependent of a passive who requires Varus be in auto attack range to be full effective, which is not always the case , his ultimate gives 3 stack of the passive during the time the target is root, instead the second is hit , E don't give that much damage the slow is low even max level and the grievous wounds is always 40% , Q can be cancelled with hard cc and silence , don't even is shot, his passive becomes a little redundant late game since doesn't past the attack speed cap and results in a lot of atk speed who don't get utilized
Ima say this and i hope it aint a shite vhange but, let his E root you if your caught in the middle and give him increased range on his autos as stacks of some kind, like senna
@@makhond2498 it would give him a nice niche , as a W empowered E would really nice to see , I would make the passive bypass the atk spd cap and ult apply 3 stacks right away , this simple changes would give Varus a direction
I main Varus in wild rifth. He is always overtune to conpensate for his lack of identidy.
Of course, he is like 3 dudes in one
I feel like his AP build has the most cohesiveness in his kit, since his kit was designed around Blight, but even AP loses value on his passive. If they wanted to bring Varus in line with other adcs, I would like to see some attack speed scaling on his abilities.
Faster Q charging scaling with attack speed? That would tie his passive and his Q together to benefit his DPS build.
They could tie crit in with the execute on the active part of W to encourage its use as an execute on adc builds.
His E could travel faster with attack speed, and/or increase its slow value with attack speed/crit to encourage its use as a catch tool.
It would also encourage AP varus to pick up nashors again, since most AP varus builds have dropped it for more useful items.
"If it weren't, supports wouldn't exist."
Solo-queue tried so hard to never have to play support that Rito created an assassin whose only way to carry was to support AND EVERYONE TRIED TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO TAKE HIM TO SOLO LANES UNTIL HE WAS REWORKED OUT OF IT.
They still play Pyke Mid and Jungle, and Top, I have seen ALL THREE THIS SEASON.
@@nicolinrucker5181 and they lose right?
@@sarunightamber701 If it's mid I've seen it win via being a second jungler. Otherwise yeah.
@@nicolinrucker5181 thank god
@@sarunightamber701 not necessarily, pyke mid is one of my favorite picks. great roaming, good early power. jung and top seem a little more troll
I think the best thing Varus has to offer is his 3 hit pasive. His whole kit should be balanced around it, it would be so fun
Just move his blight stacks to his pasive and make him get a different effect depending on what ability he pops the 3 stacked mark with
Q poping pasive could be extra damage
W (since its moving to his pasive, give him a new ability to proc, a skill shot) poping pasive could shred the enemy's armor or give him his old aspd steroid
E poping pasive could give either extra slow or stronger healing reduction
It would be such a cool concept
Poke Varus is too toxic but it could still be viable and less opressive if more strength is given to his blight procs
Literally imagine his playstyle
3 autos>ability 1>3 autos>ability 2>3 autos ability 3
kinda like sona but with basic attacks, itd be so fun to play
I like this!
If you do that, then each of the abilities should have a higher travel speed (his current Q and E travels way too slow for that kind of playstyle, heck a vayne would do better)
Riot needs to hire you or pay you for this idea
u want another 3 hit passive adc? that's kinda overdone.. and boring tbh. we have vayne, kaisa, akshan, jinx (with her minigun reaching 3 stacks and increasing atack speed), duh even we have rune for that- press the attack. i think he should be more like a ezreal- artillery ad caster who pokes from miles away with some sort of reseting q upon takedowns. maybe even move him permamently into midlane- he could be ad velkoz of league
@@sheenie8897 This idea is definitely more unique than the standard “hit 3 times something happens”.
There's nothing wrong with opportunity costs, or trade-offs or weaknesses...the issue is that many of the popular and often newer champs are designed to have their cake and eat it too; finding as many ways to around their weaknesses to cover them if they have them. Decent designs get tossed for the ones that are easier to draw out their full pwr.
I'm a Varus main and one of the things I love about this guys is I made a custom item page that holds FOUR separate builds that all work for him and he's the ONLY marksmen I know that can have so much success with so much comp versatility.
FYI the builds are On-Hit, Lethality, AS Crit, and AP (With On-hit being a hybrid damage build)
I think Varus can still be saved without receveing an aatrox level treatment, I think if his E starts to stacks his actual W passive counting as "if an enemy stays over the corrupted land for X seconds he gains an stack" would be something nice. Not only that, removing his passive and making his actual W becoming the new passive and using the W as another "passive stack mechanic", that I doesn't have much idea about what it can be, would be something nice. In this way, Varus would become something between the lines of "Stack and kill" but without needing to be in AA range of the enemy, and although I can't talk about all the Varus mains I personally love the satisfaction for using the Q ability in an full stacked target and killing it.
I think the only thing he needs to have fixed is his actual passive, it needs to be something better for casting instead of auto attacks
aatrox lvl treatment? like old aatrox was a GOOD champion current version way better
@@Adam-bc2ov Yes, old aatrox was just having an meta where he could be good, and before that I don't remember any meta that he could be. However, there is nothing in this aatrox that resembles the old one. With "aatrox level treatment" I mean an treatment where the champion is just destroyed and a new one that only have the same name replace it. It's very different compared to Warwick, for example.
@@bielhelp What if blight was a damage storage passive? Like grey health, kind of, but imagine it as purple health over your regular healthbar. Imo his abilities could easily do that, and you're threatening to toss out one auto to make all that purple health disappear (on top of his regular auto damage) afterwards. The biggest problem with Blight as it is now is any fixes to it just feel like Twitch to me. And I'd rather Twitch be the Poison Expunger while Varus does his thing (pelting fools with cursed arrows at a distance and scaring them into running) better.
@@GrimoireM Maybe blight could have some "wounding effect" where it removes % max health of the enemy until he goes back to base to heal, so Varus will became something like an anti-sustain adc.
I love how usually Vars uses this series to highlight the champions positive aspects in a rather hopeful and optimistic tone but he goes „yeah No saving the guy”
Varus is one of the most fun ADC that I still play to this day. Let me tell you a secret: both builds are bad, I believe that this video is prior to the items rebalancing but even then playing "assassin" lethality Varus was the most satisfying gameplan one could ever ask. You simply load yourself with AD, Ability Haste and Lethality and that's it ! You now have an ~3 sec CD ability that deals up to 1,5K damage late game, with proper runes to fit your playstyle (Harvest, Comet or First Strike are my recommendations depending on whether you want burst, sustain damage or earlier spike) you can be a poke god that is never close enough to the fight in order to get killed but still dishes damage. The only downside is that he now isn't good at pushing lanes, but that was a trade-off people were already making by playing him AP.
Allow Varus to gain extended range on marked targets. Maybe an additional 75 or 100 range would incentivize varus to continue stacking and allow him to pop blight stacks with arrows
He has been one of the most popular ADC,s in Wildrift where everyone has accepted the the fact that he is a long range assassin which can go ap to make tanks life hell and ad to make other adcs life hell.
I'm always amazed when a high meta champion in WR is in the WNOP series for lol PC.
yeah he has consistently been in the top 3 of all marksmen in wildrift for over a year now:)
I only played Varus when I started playing league, he holds a special place in my heart for teaching me the game in a easy way. He’s my main and I don’t think I’ll give him up for a different bot lane champ any time soon. I hope root gives him the love he deserves
As Four main I find Varus fun as a pocket-pick. They both embody the one shot from half a screen away at the expense of sustain and the necessity for calculated positioning very well. Varus just has less of an identity as he can do a lot of other stuff besides this
There is also the same stun shot for Jhin and Varus, and Varus E is pretty similar to Jhin's E - the difference is only slowing after, not before the damage comes. O think they are VERY much alike with Jhin being more individual because of his thing with 4 and his weaknesses/strong sides. Varus has more survival abilities and stats so he is more basic than unique - and I don't think that's bad)
"every 5 seconds this man could nail you with a long range missile that does 700 damage with two items"
*laughs in kai'sa W*
_Looks at Corki_
ap kaisa is useless for 20 seconds after u miss w tho
The thing is, like he said kai'sa's missile is slower and doesn't penetrate through units
Keep in mind that Varus’s w does more damage scaling with the Q charge, so that %60 max health from blight does %90 max health damage with a fully charged Q denonate
They're two separate functions. The blighted quiver active, which makes Q deal missing health damage, scales with Q charge up to 21% missing health, but blight stacks don't.
@@rifewithpotatoes they do. Yes, 500 Ap varus can
mathematically one shoot you
@@rifewithpotatoes it’s part of the Q function that it increases Blight procs by up to %50 based on charge. It doesn’t work on training dummies for some reason, but I assure you it works on enemy champions.
@@AFPgamer I guess I stand corrected, that's a really weird incentive for a trade pattern. I wish they'd put it in the w tooltip as well
Varus was the adc I started playing bot with. His divergent playstyle and the variety of builds are some of the things I like the most about him, it reminds me of kayn, maybe for his rework they could use the same idea of choosing a different playstyle based on the form you have chosen, It sure will be more balanceable than it is nowadays.
I never expected to main a obscure champion before Vars makes a video about it. Now that I think about, i dont remenber seeing many other Varus players in game.
These transitions are dope. Like that it's the abilities of the champ in question. Keep it up Vars, can't wait to see how you do other champs.
This is a bit off topic but I noticed we have a toplaner, jungler, and an adc darkin, and if memory serves there are 5 darkin in the lore, so I’m hoping riot brings us a darkin mid laner, and a darkin support so we can have a full darkin team, and they all need double a’s in their names
I want tibbers to be a darkin . It makes lots of sense in Annie's lore
@@jacekmaraj1774 how so?
Aren't Ezreal's gauntlet and Sona's instrument the other two darkins?
@@renatoramos8834 what
@@renatoramos8834 Ezreal's gauntlet was created by a very powerful mage in ancient shurima, it has nothing to do with darkins afaik
I've been playing him for a few years now and I'm at 670k and I can safely say the main reason is that he suffers greatly from the nonsense of SoloQ, he requires a lot of peel and is quite slow to deal dmg, with how high damage and mobility is in this game now, it's just sadly not possible.
Hello I am from the future- everyone is playing Varus.
I started to play and main Varus two years ago when I first played League of Legends. The video's not out yet but my guess is that it'll be about Varus' lack of mobility, his very lacking abilities. His Q being the only active ability that deals relevant damage while building AD, the fact that it requires to be charged and can be cancelled by someone breathing on you makes him relatively weak as a poke mage, which used to be his specialty. Now his AP builds have been buffed and are now very strong, but they still suffer from the same weaknesses. When it comes to building and playing him crit, it simply makes more sense to play any other ADC instead.
Honestly he plays like an artillery mage but AD (or ap like me)
@@gandalfpotter2149 He used to, though his lethality poke mage playstyle that I love was nerfed incredibly hard and often with the multiple Q nerfs in season 10 and the multiple lethality item nerfs and Sanguine Blade's removal.
i think a good change would be to make his q charge faster when he has build atk speed since its going to hurt less it would be nice if his dps is less interrupted
@@ultimatesonic47 That would definitely be nice, though I wouldn't say no to his Q's cooldown being halved if it's interrupted either.
@@gandalfpotter2149 thats smt similar to kog maw which also kinda suffer the same fate as varus
kog suffers an identity chrises similar to varus
kog scales with ap but has attack speed to his q and instead builds ad
his kit almost never synergies with each other like varus
Can we talk abt how good the editing is on this video? Literally Varus' abilities flies through the screen at each cut
1:47 i started playing league in 2017 and Varus was my first champ I ever played. I exclusively took him top with a lethality build (with no clue what I was doing. I just looked up a guide and saw the guide had footage of him top so I took him top). its sad to see him become such a polarizing champ. He's still my most played champ and I love his diversity between lethality, crit, on hit, ap, and even hybrid builds.
I honestly love that he has these completely disparate playstyles. If my team needs magic damage in a form of burst, Ludens, comet, manamune, shadowflame. If my team needs consistent magic damage, nashors, guinsoos, radabons. They need a crit marksman? Kraken, collector, runaans. So on and so forth. It makes him highly flexible and adaptable. I can always build items like Zhonyas or Axiom in either build and they'll help me out and keep me going. Varus is able to do a similar job to Kaisa in that way, except with a lot more safety and utility. Where Kaisa just offers damage, Varus is damage, consistent poke, executes, AoE slowing and heal cuts, and CC. All stuff Kaisa would have to lose something to go for.
I agree I feel he is a good champ
I think you mentioned his W going as high as 60% in the lategame but it's important to note that his Q increases the potency of this. A fully charged Q increases the damage by 50% (of the effect) causing 60% to raise to 90% (60 + 30) and then on top of that your W's missing health damage will proc AFTER the damage of your Q.
I love the idea of Varus especially after the reworking of his lore, reworked Aatrox and Rhaast showed up, I think he can be a very interesting Darkin ADC. But as you said in the video, I totally agree that his failings is his inability to make use of his entire kit at one time. When Riot reworked Sion, they explained somewhere ( I can't remember where I read this) that a big incentive to rework Sion was that there was a lack of synergy in his kit that lead players playing him to always have to pick 1 thing to do and have no use of his full kit potential, something scaled with AD, something with AP, something with AS, so the player thinks "What am I supposed to build?" - and that can be overwhelming for someone trying to learn that champion.
If you're met with a champion that says, "I can be built in 5 different ways" that takes a greater amount of time to learn BUT ALSO....you will never experience the full potential of that kit.
Visually speaking, Varus is archaic, he looks terrible and not up to standard with the new Darkin lore, he looks nothing like Aatrox or Rhaast and has ass animations. I believe he does have to be reworked, but not as pessimistically as you stated in the video Mr. Vars. Being reworked doesn't mean being entirely destroyed, its an opportunity to re-imagine the Champion as they were "meant" to with the new standard of quality Riot makes nowadays. (Say what you will with the overloaded kits yes, but hey the champions look good.)
I believe if they keep the conceptual idea of Varus's ultimate and his long range arrow, and design around 1 chosen playstyle, he can thrive.
When I say 1 chosen playstyle, I mean it is an ideal "concept" a designer imagines when designing game play. It is sort of to say, "What will the champion play like in a perfect scenario" and that is their ultimate "gameplay moment." Like Samira hitting S rank and wiping through a team with ultimate. Maybe Xayah getting out all those feathers, dodging key abilities with ult and racking in huge feather damage through a team. What is the height of that champion's gameplay? Having that in mind directs the designer's decision. Having an unclear vision leads to conflicting kits, where its half of one thing half of the other. So they gotta pick, do they want Varus to be a sniper and precise maybe like Jhin, or high dps and aoe damage maybe like Jinx, or a hybrid hyper carry maybe like Kog'ma? Just pick something and make him handsome, he'll be top notch.
waiit rhaast rework?
@@Adam-bc2ov No sorry meant more "reworked Aatrox" and Rhaast
Love this vibe, love this attitude. ‘Pick something, make him handsome, he’ll be top notch. ‘
A monster-type Daarkin ADC would be dope tho. I'm tired of the six-pack anthromorph heroes. Gimme a monster that's supposed to kill people or something. Like on Varus' case, they could incorporate that lore of one of his skins (I think it was Varus Swiftbolt or something) where the Daarkin stitched up the dead bodies of his victims to patch itself up everytime it kills.
12:14 "Playing him is also objectively boring."
aaaand ya lost me
really nice editing! love that fancy transitions with his ult
I like varus as a marksman (crit build).
you got nice DPS and astonishing burst with R+E+3AA+WQ.
As my main ADC, I love most of his kit but I do feel his E and Passive lacking. If I HAD to rework him a bit, I would change out his e and passive to keep his power budget. Passive: Varus attacks and abilities apply Grievous Wounds for 4 seconds. (E) Varus fires a hail of arrows at the target location which lands after 0.5 seconds, dealing physical damage to all enemies within the area. Varus gains X% attack speed for each champion hit or champion entering the area inflicted for X seconds.
I'm afraid that your passive is too OP...
@@olsenfernandes3634 Not really, it's only ~300 gold value. For example Jax gets 28-88 attack speed out of his passive. That's 700-2200 gold. But to be fair he does have to stack it up. If you are about to complain and say it costs 800 gold to get the item you're also getting 15 ad which is worth 500 gold in stats. If you wanted to be really picky you could make it be a scaling debuff at 20/40/60% as he auto's more. Have you read akshan's passive?
@@Vitamindmilk Grevious wounds is not the same as having raw stats.
@@olsenfernandes3634 Except it is. You pay gold for raw stats. You pay gold for grievous wounds. You pay gold for item actives such as stop watch. You pay gold to Pen armor or magic resist. Pretty much everything in the game has a gold value associated with it. There's a reason the 3 grievous wound basic items are 800 gold.
i'll always have a warm place in my heart to my belobed varus.
I literally just stared playing varus a bunch more. He's a lot of fun.
hes def fun. but i think we can agree with the point. he doesnt feel like everything is working together in his kit.
Too bad they keep nerfing his core abilities
bruh, the rare varus mid OTP is a menace
I think galeforce is an insane item on Varus and almost single-handedly saves his kit. I’m no game design pro or high elo by any means, but galeforce gives you the ability to seamlessly change between both playstyles. Not only the dash but the passive movement speed mean that you can go from dpsing to poking, or the reverse at almost any time. It doesn’t solve the issue of lethality vs crit itemization, but if you go for a 60% crit build you can still sneak an edge of night or muramana
When you mention ryze and azir being weak early and strong late reminded me of GP and why he is so strong, his early is really not that bad but spikes so hard he can be played in solo queue (at least better than those 2)
One of my favorite champs of all time, shame that the game just doesn't seem to want him around anymore.
Cuz he' got both scalings, AS buffs, health % damage and really long range (which was powercrept by now but is still scary), Varus is either the most obnoxious bully or a joke.
Artillery champs are my favourite in the entire game, and varus is my fave of the bunch. I hope they can rework them into a healthy spot again. Imo, their power budget should be more weighted towards q, otherwise they don't do anything unique. Just play Ashe lol.
Disagree with the thing about ahse tbh
Ashe has been turbo broken multiple times, and right now the ult cd is just ridiculous easily one of the best marksman, varus doesn't get nearly as much love
She’s not really as popular as picks like jinx, vayne, Caitlyn or MF tho, and it’s precisely because she doesn’t have the same insane hard solo carry potential as those champs. She’s a bit more team oriented than others
My only guess is because everyone has twelve dashes and it makes his arrows really hard to hit. Also, his lore needs a rework.
his lore was reworked already though?
@@ordi8725 oh, sorry. I was high off of playing warframe when I typed that part. I meant to say that his lore needs to tie into his character a little bit more. Like yeah, he’s legit a fusion of two people but we don’t really get to see that in game. All we see is a sexy boy with darkin pants and a bow be really edgy :p
@@SaiKisaragi yeah, don't do daarkins my friend. It'll turn you into an edgelord
@@ordi8725 daarkin smell of brimstone, sand and iron anyways.
@@SaiKisaragi Honestly the old lore was so much better since it had the typical edginess of anything involved with Daarkins. Varus literally let the Noxians burn his town and kill his people just so that he can contain the power of corruption/Daarkin in his temple (because he was some sort of temple guardian or whatever). But personally if he were to be reworked, I'd like for them to really make him into a monster archetype archer, not another six-pack moneymaker. Imagine something like Rhaast but with a big ass bow and arrow. That would be sick.
Fan Made Varus Rework... I hope is not 200 years!
(English is not my primary language (there could be some grammatical errors)). I heve a Google doc file were I write a lot of reworks like this one. Up to this point I tried to rework: Heimerdinger (Medium - Light); Fizz (Medium) and Miss Fortune (Light - Very light)
Very light - (level Ezreal/Wukong)
Light - (level Fiddle)
Medium - (level WW)
Hard - (level Aatrox)
Complete - (level Sion)
Objective: Medium
+Modern
+Similarities with the Darkins
+Based around abilities
- Based around auto attack
- Hybrid damage
Changes In Short:
P - Living Vengeance
Stance: Varus periodically empowers his next basic (like Aatrox) to gain: AA range (74-200 BASED ON LEVEL) bonus damage and a heal (10% bouns AD - XX% bonus AD BASED ON LEVEL). Consuming stacks of Blight reduces the CD.
Blight: Now his old W passive is applied not by AA but by “Stance” and other abilities over the first 1.2 seconds (one stack every 0.4 seconds up to 3, (like his current R)) (it deals AD damage) (it works only on big monsters and enemy champions).
Q - Cursed Arrow
Charging the Q does not slow you but when you recast the Q you have a cast time (the arrow is olaso faster but a trajectory appears (like Jhin's E or like Jinx W)) now it stops at the first champion hit.
W - Blighted Quiver
Passive: Varus gains movement speed and armor penetration when consume stacks of his passive.
ACTIVE: Varus' Q can be enhanced: The next Q slows a little, deals more damage and pierce champions. The arrow sticks to the ground at maximum range the Arrow explodes, after 3 second or when you recast the W, dealing damage based on missing health.
E - Hail of Arrows
Same but now also grants sight of the area and is faster when used near you.
R - Chain of Corruption
Now it interrupts dashes and slows and instead of rooting. If you hit a fully marked champion it roots (is also travels a bit faster) Upon impact, the tendril seeks out other nearby enemy champions now they don't stop following the enemy champions if they get out of the range because they are considered projectiles (like Brend’s R) and have a really low travel speed.
Speaking as a pessimistic Varus one trick, I hope Riot never touches him again. I would rather him fall behind and into obscurity at a 40% win ratio than have Riot rework him again.
I feel like they should make him look like an actual Darkin. I would have never guessed that he was a Darkin before I read the lore.
As a AP Varus player, I was waiting for this video
After seeing it, I concur totally
Honestly tho, one-shotting is so fun
@@gandalfpotter2149 yeah, the only problem is that you don't do jack shit on early, even a yuumi top do more in early laning phase, but when you hit that 4-5 item power spike, its so good to see the health bar of a Voli go from 100 to 0
Varus's kit is fine, but I think it can be shifted around to be brought up to modern standards. I think his W should be moved to his passive in order to give him an updated W that increases his auto range on active. I think focusing on giving varus a full artillery kit is the way to make him unique. Giving him an active to increase his auto range leans into his q/e poking a lot more. Moving the blight stacks to passive means that he can still keep his unique 3 hit procs for big hits but can land them easier due to his long range autos.
maybe with W active, he would also get longer range to his E and Q but he has to make a decision between using the time to Q further, slow with E further, or auto to get more burst with his blight stacks
I am having great success as a varus otp, I have 3 builds I go for depending on the enemy team, ap for tanks, ad for assassins and squishies and standard for a more tf depended game, the variety is what keeps me playing him.
Its interesting that he was still extensively played in Worlds2022
Personally I like the fact that Varus has 3 different playstyles and I love all of them
Also I don't want riot scrapping his ap playstyle with a rework
Whoever says Varus is bad fails to factor in the absolutely insane amount of damage he can do if he goes full AP. I consider Varus to be a stronger Xerath but with DPS and less self peel.
But he needs to auto attack 3 times to fully use his AP scaling, with a build focused on ability power his low attack speed will make it longer to stack. This in the late game(a mage needing to be in AA range to deal damage) is equal to death.
Besides, this build only thrives on the late game, but his main flaws are also accentuated in the late game as well.
i think Varus is like an Outdated Kaisa, he has AD/AP scaling but he doesnt effectively use both well, if you AP you better commit full AP or your passive blight does nothing, if you go Lethality you better go Full lethality or else your Q will always left them whit 1 hp and if you go full DPS you better commit full dps or else you wont effectively machine gun the opponents, Kaisa can go everything and do well, Varus always loses something for doing a build.
I've recently picked up Varus after the durability update. My favorite Champs were no longer than useful due to the update, so I was struggling to find someone new to play. I love playing him attack speed and crit, it's super fun
They will kinda have to completely destroy one of his playstyles in order for him to be "Fixed"
I think an attacspeed scaling on Varus‘s Q would be nice.
More attackspeed = Shorter Cooldown?
I'd be down for that...
@@olsenfernandes3634 i think he meant the spear speed
@@astreww why not both
They could really lean into the darkin/"dual hunters" background and effectively do to varus what Kayn was supposed to be. An average champion who gets an evolution choice into (in Varus's case) DPS or poke damage, with a visual change to the bow.
I love this idea, I really hope something like this happens
I think that the hybrid gameplay of varus guve him a huge versability in the lane or in team fights, in the crit build you have a good and balance dps and poke its not a sivir lethality an not a jinx but its varus and i like it
I think he deserve a full rework (visual and gameplay)
But for a quick fix Riot could just make his poke spells synergies with attack speed and crit:
-Q gets a crit ratio and atk speed reduces the wind up time.
-E's cast time is reduced by atk speed.
Here's my take:
Change his W so that all forms of damage he does applies his stacks.
Get rid of his ult, put his Q onto his R, his new Q being when pressed he pops all the stacks he has on all enemies, and they're slowed a % for each stack, or rooted if they had all 3.
Make his new R spammable, but it's charge time is reduced with attack speed, and make it a semi-global.
There you go. He'll be an on-hit champ that's centered around first rooting people after hitting them with a few autos, then finishing them with an ult he has to briefly charge while they can't move. No more long-range engagement from an ADC, but while still offering him a form of self-peel and/or lockdown, which also synergizes with his ult to be similar to how morg ult, bind, shield, and W all last in similar duration to eachother in a way that makes it very clear what her intended goals and combos are.
Weird because Varus has been the only champ I’ve been playing for the last few weeks and I’ve been having a fun time.
The transition that you used with Varus' ult was really cool, a little detail most wouldn't notice but cool
if you have played against a lethality varus otp, you know how terrifying they are
"He has 2 mutually exclusive playstyles"
"You always play him at 80% of his power. If you chose one playstle you lose out on something else"
I completely agree with these statements. Usually when champions have 2 seperate playstyles, the focus in their kit shifts. However, no aspect of their kit becomes completely useless. Kai'sa is a good example here. Her AP build favors the burst of W and passive, but doesn't make her Q, E and R completely useless. Similarly, W is still a strong ability in her AD build and her passive shines with more frequency.
Meanwhile, in Varus case, he always loses out. As an on-hit or crit ADC, his poking ability is severly lacking because he doesn't have nearly as much AD as with a poke build, reducing his Q to a finisher. As a poke champion he completely loses the value of his passive and has a hard time to apply stacks outside of hitting R because he lacks attack speed. And as AP Varus, his spells don't exist without his W at all, yet also his AA's don't hurt, making him very dependant on either hiting R or somehow being allowed to apply the stacks via AA's that don't hurt much. Unlike Kai'Sa he isn't *flexible* in what he builds, he is completely torn between multiple things.
And honestly, I don't see a way to unify these playstyles. Even if they gave his spells hybrid scalings, or crit scalings he'd either become too strong or would jst go for whatever build is numerical better. What they probably have to do, is to decide what they want Varus to be. But that's not an easy thing to do, because, since he has so different playstyles, the playerbase has very different perceptions on what Varus is.
If they, for example, reworked his Q to actually be a finishing move rather than a poke tool, allowing Varus to be an on-hit focused auto attacker who only uses his spells to detonate blight, the poke Varus players would be very upset. Similarly, if they'd give E a way to stack blight, allowing poke Varus to gather stacks without auto attacking and maybe rework the passive to support that poke centered build, the on-hit enthusiats would be upset. These two playstyles just don't go along because of how his kit is set up.
I mean, they kind of attempted to turn him into a spellslinger similar to Lucian, where he AA's a lot but shoots out his spells inbetween. That was the idea behind the cooldown refund on blight detonation. He also kind of has item support for this in the form of Navori Quickblade. HOWEVER, his spells are not designed to be queued between his AA's. His Q deals pretty mediocre damaged if not charged and his E has a pretty horrible casting animation. Putting your spells between your AA's just doesn't feel good.
A few comments up someone suggested they make Varus with two forms like Kayn, but after reading your comment it kinda would make sense for Darkin Varus to be used for poke, and the humans he took control of to be used for auto attacks.
What if they made it tri-hybrid? His passive stays the same and boosts his attack speed after killing. His Q loses a bit of damage and instead channels or travels or cools down faster with attack speed. His W stays mostly the same, except remove basic abilities getting cooldowns reduced for the active. His E gets a new passive where for each stack of W active on a target they get slowed for an extra 0.75/1.5/2.25 seconds but in turn loses some damage. His ult stays the same. I think something like that would kinda mesh the playstyles together well; You get attack speed on kills, which can be used to apply blight stacks and empower your Q at the same time. And W loses some power to make his E much better utility-wise as long as you use AAs.
Amazing editing, transitions, effects and display. Very well presented
As I was main varus in 2019 ~2020 I think he needs to lower direction of charging his Q by AS so he can DPS and keep his poke.
There is no such thing as objectively boring, as there is people playing yuumi which is a yawing simulator for anyone with 2 braincells,AND they like to play her, as in, they have fun while doing nothing but mash E. I know you didn't really mean objectively and you just said it to accentuate your point, but still felt the need to say this becouse I'm dumb that way.
I fucking love Varus he was my first main .. Varus needs some love Riot hahah
Maybe giving him somehing like Kayne passive, sometime during the game he can choose to be poke or dps and his skill will adjust to your preferred playstyle.
Then they might have to change his whole entire lore
@@toxicplayz2895 his lore is he's a mix of 2 dudes and a demonic weapon it's not that farfetched
Varus can be played as a long range sniper with dark Harvest his shots is death shot but he forces you to be always focused I know it's difficult but I like to play him because of that
thank you for showing up to my TED Talk
My idea for a Varus rework:
-Turn his W (passive) into his Champ passive and give it a crit scaling, something like "crit autos apply 2 blight stacks" (add a higher cap of stacks, something like 6). Also current passive could be changed to "When Varus pop blight he gets x% attack speed depending on the amount of stacks"
- Make his Q similar to Panth's Q. Tap Q would incur in a lower damage and range but also a lower cooldown, making it a good way to consistently pop blight stacks. Charged Q would have a bonus crit scaling so crit items still feel useful to build.
**An alternative to this could be to give Varus Q a charges system, like Corki's Rockets.
- W (Active) could stay the same. Maybe add a new passive or some kind of synergy with his passive to make it more interesting than just being a finisher. Also activating it would reset Varus Q cooldown inmediatly. It's silly you can activate an enhancing ability effect but it just wastes if you don't have the cooldown of the spell it enhances and since it's a finisher you need it on demand. Additionally make so the next Q can only be charged and not able to quick tap (the reason behind this is to encourage some Q charging in Varus kit since I've focushed too much on Blight).
These changes would be enough to make Varus more interesting to play and give him more "marksman feeling".
-About his E. The other 2 Darkin champions, Aatrox and Rhaast(Red Kayn) have some kind of sustain/lifesteal, so my idea would be to leave the current E and instead of being a healing reducing effect make it a healing/shielding steal effect, like Zeri's passive but also with heals, leaving a "Blight wound" on the enemies for X seconds that steals x% of shielding and healing received while afflicted.
-About his ult, idk it would have some tweaks like if you land R on an enemy with 6 (or other number) blights "it inmediatly spread to the closest enemy champ" or "it spreads faster". This way you get rewarded by being patient and exposing to danger. It might be too good of a change tbh, but I think it would be fun to have the choice of using a risky R to double its potential in teamfights.
Gotta say I don't agree.
There is nothing wrong with having to choose a playstyle depending on build and not just get everything no matter what, it's almost a good thing. It lets players express themselves.
You go on-hit and don't get full power from your abilities, so you work as a traditional ADC, take lethal tempo, and if you get one kill your AS scaling passive goes through the roof and you can hypercarry a fight with autos.
Go lethality/poke and get great use of your abilities, no not as much damage as the likes of Ziggs, but if a brawl breaks out you can burst (without needing blight) and then you have high-damage autos driven by your passive, though not as powerful as with on-hit.
Then AP, which yes sacrifices unconditional ability damage, but enables massive burst, hybrid damage, and plays more as a pick/pick follow-up playstyle.
It's all about trade-offs, and the most important abilities are passive and ult. So no, Varus can't do everything at once, but he is versatile, and fun for some people :)
I have a hybrid AP varus build that literally no one else I’ve seen has built before, and yes I’m a bit proud of that fact because it’s a build that works well and hasn’t gotten taken by Koreans and saying “oh new op build” with a 20/2/5 KDA slapped onto the thumbnail.
But I am very curious as to what’s gonna be on here because this guy is my pocket pick for adc if I feel like we don’t have enough tank killing potential or range
And the build is?
@@lajsna9936 eclipse into Nashors, and whatever ap item you see fit. Max q then e. Eclipse allows for good burst and keeps ad side relative without investing into another ad item. Nashors is just Nashors. Not too much ability haste yet but can build that after, his blight stack prices are good enough. Unlike most ap builds, you don’t need ult for huge damages and your autos will be doing just fine. Eclipse burst with electrocute racks up a ton of damn. Hope that explains it enough lol. Didn’t want it to be too long
@@alanyang7801 dam gonna try it i think
@@lajsna9936 ah damn I meant to say Q then W! Lol. Don’t do E, it’s ass cheeks
A few weeks ago I completely reworked Varus, just for fun. I'll post it here cause why not.
Varus
Passive: When an enemy is damaged by another ally, apply a stack of Blight for five seconds and refresh current Blight stacks, up to a max of 5. Blight stacks are detonated, dealing magic damage, when Varus deals ability damage to an enemy. Varus's auto attacks do not deal damage to Champions, but apply blight stacks instead. Every three auto attacks by Varus, his next auto attack also detonates all Blight stacks on the target.
Q (15-7): Chargeable skillshot with a max range of 1600 (slightly over 3x auto range). Charges slower than current Q, the shot moves faster, and is canceled once it reaches max range without firing. Deals % missing health magic damage.
W (30-18): When used normally, allows Varus to autoattack all enemies with his maximum Q range who recently received damage from an ally for a limited time. When used during a Q charge, instantly fully charges the Q.
E (30-10): When used normally, slow all enemies by an amount determined by the number of Blight stacks on them. . When used during a Q charge, grants the Q magic penetration.
R (140-90): For the next ten seconds, reduce your Q cooldown by 50% and instantly reset it at half charge whenever you kill an enemy and increase the duration of this ability by 5 seconds. During this time, your Q has 150% range, moves twice as fast, and Blight stacks deal double damage.
I feel like saying his AP playstyle can "reasonably find [you] success" is doing it a massive injustice. I do not play Varus with any different styles except for AP and have gotten fairly high (diamond) on my past account. Building manamune first and then transitioning into his ap items feels much better than any other build, and having ult up fairly often with ultimate hunter makes it an ease to delete enemies from a distance or ones that try to jump on such as assassins. I'll be interested in hearing any other Varus mains input on this or their perspective on same/different playstyles.
OMG, the transitions are amazing dude)
Here's an idea that somewhat blends his playstyles while still offering diversity.
P) Replaced with W passive. Popping passive stacks no longer gives damage. Instead, it gives a short burst of attack speed and an additional effect based on the triggering ability.
Q) Lower damage. Triggering passive applies additional damage (this damage can be high as it relies on some interaction).
W) Add a short burst of movement speed to get that perfect shot. This isn't a significant source of mobility in general due to its long cd.
E) Also applies stacks of passive over time. Triggering passive adds a short root to the start.
R) Unsure on the passive triggering effect, but I think it should be big (and the base ability tuned down a little in return). It could stun instead of root, could spread faster, could have a longer range on the spreading effect.
The basic idea is he can still poke hard if he lands E into Q, but no longer as hard with just his Q. In addition to that, he's weaker if enemies jump on him while those cooldowns are down as he needs them to give that burst of attack speed and their valuable additional effects. He is also further incentivized to rotate between autos and abilities to maintain high attack speed and get the most out of each ability.
With this he could still opt between going for on-hit or ad/lethality builds depending on which part of the kit he wants to focus on, but they won't be quite as disconnected anymore. Also his absurd poke either won't be quite as absurd or will weaken him if a fight breaks out while his abilities are on cooldown.
His E is meant to be a kiting/chase tool. Not to the extent as something like jinx W or jhin w but it’s his version of it. It’s good for short trades as well.
Varus is one of my favorite characters, but I rarely play him AD.
AP varus feels amazing to play, and is not as obnoxious or boring as the poke build. His kit functions more fluidly by working around blight stacks as your main source of damage. Early game is weak, but late game you can erase an enemy from existence even if they have high health/MR.
Runes are: Hail of Blades, taste of blood, eyeball collection and ultimate hunter. In percision take presence of mind, then coup de grace or cut down depending on the enemy team.
For the build I start D blade and work towards nashors then death cap, followed by situational items. If you're struggling in the early game you can go manamune first item, then opt into nashors and so fourth.
The build is super rewarding to play, allowing you to get picks and swing team fights through good ultimate usage and good attack weaving.
I wonder if a good rework would be making it so the stacks give ramping move speed so that he becomes a sort of chase-and-lockdown marksman almost in a similar vein as Senna. Maybe something like:
Passive: Applies the blight, up to three stacks, gives move speed
Q: Same, serves to detonate blight stacks
W: passive - Increases the damage done by detonating blight stacks, active - same
E: Same, serves to slow down the enemy you're already rush-poking and remove blight detonation
R: Same, but increase corruption range if target was already previously blighted
The idea here is that Varus becomes an odd sort of poke rushdown champ. He'd be a bit less committed than other rushdown champs due to his range, and his playstyle would be something like hitting with an auto to get movement towards a target, continuing to auto til they're fully stacked, slowing them and mitigating external support with E, and then using your closer range to more reliably hit those massively ouch Q arrows and R. Ultimate would serve to punish or zone those who try to intrude on your rushdown.
I feel like leaning into this would also be lore fitting, considering he's the fusion of two hunters.
5:20 I would like to file a complaint on Vars accepting to verbalize "Snip Snip!", yet refusing to do so with "Watch out, eep!"
lt's a rule of thumb that champions with double A are the ones played more often, and Varus shouldn't forget it. Take Kayn&Rhaast and Aatrox for example, two popular champions who remember the double A thing.
There aren't any other examples, really, but my point still stands.
Will there be a No one plays on ZOE??? I really would like to know :)
Wait what happened to Why no one plays Zoe? Just curious.
I like the idea of changing blight stacks to appear on ability hit and extend their duration. A Q applies 1 stack, W empowered 2 stacks, then he gets in close to hit an auto attack to pop it. That would free up his passive to an auto attack modifier instead of a steroid. You kill on hit Varus, but solidified him as a long range physical damage or magic damage carry.
THE MEMO VARUS!
Legit one of my favorite quotes from the memelord himself.
Everyone would play him if his name was "Vaarus".
Loved the analysis, new sub owo
If I do, I only play him mid, go ap, it's either fun or pain, but I'm just a casual, so it's alright for me
I personally think varus needs more incentive to build attack speed. Honestly, I want to give him the yasuo treatment of making his Q cooldown scale with attack speed
I really like the comparison between Kai’Sa and Varus
As an AP varus player, I feel like he is about setting up your stacks with AAs and ocasionaly R and Then detonating them with a Skillshot. This is unique for him as most other stacking passives can be detonated with autos or targeted abilities.
His passive (P), although comfortable during laning and making him better in long lasting teamfights feels very disconnected from the rest of his kit. They could make it so that you get stacking AS from proccing Blight making you a threat in prolonged teamfights more consistently without having to kill anyone first.
This would make on-hit Varus care more about the blight stacks.
His (Q) feels mostly okay as a detonator for blight or a long range finisher when combined with (W). It just is quite slow and it could use having Charge time scale with AS.
As for lethality Varus this is pretty much the only ability he cares about and i think this playstyle is not what Varus is about.
For on-hit Varus you could add a crit scaling so this ability feels impactfull.
His (W) I take as the core of this champ. The blight stacks create a unique pattern of setting up damage with your AAs and using your Skilshots to pop it. The CDR rewards skillful play and could be increased up to 50% to accomodate for high AS.
The passive damage on autos for AP (for AD it is barely noticable) makes farming easier and provides some sustained damage in fights if you happen to miss a spell. (Btw. Kayle has 40% AP to AA scaling which is only 10% more than Varus.
In my opinion this spell doesn't need changes (maybe apart from small balance ones).
His (E) feels the worst because of its cast time that makes the slow almost non existent.
They could make it better by letting you cast it while moving and giving the slow AP scaling (not unlike twitch (W))
His (R) is in a good state. It is very versatile. It can be used as a long range catch tool, a defensive root against assasins or a teamfight zoning/mega ultimate.
I would only do small quality-of-life updates like still applying the blight stacks and AOE if the target cleanses the root (Olaf R, Cleanse...) or dies.
In conclusion, I think that lethality Varus should be removed/not the focus. Varus should get a QOL update and his passive should be tied more to the rest of his kit. And tie on-hit Varus more to his blight stacks.
(For this to work you would probably need to swap parts of his W and Passive, but that doesn't really matter)
Another banger content. Your content never makes me bored bro. Keep the good work ♥️👑
I think the best thing for varus would be to allow his autos to trigger blight, or give him cdr based on his attack speed. As it stands, on-hit sacrifices the power that his q gives, while his poke loses out on the dps from his w. Another thing that might be beneficial for him would be to increase the slow from his e. That ability is supposed to serve as his only form of self peel beyond his ultimate, but it's not really strong enough to do so
As a former Varus main, this one hurt to watch. Varus was the champion that got me to start playing the game again, back when As We Fall came out. I saw his new splash art and was like I've gotta play this guy. I loved on hit Varus so much and I remember playing him so much. He was the first champion I ever got a pentakill on. Varus was my first real main and he will always have a special place in my heart.
But yeah I agree, he's got a lot of problems and I'm so sad he's not popular so he doesn't get attention. He's one of the OG pretty boys, yet riot never wants to take advantage of that, instead let's make Talon one 🙄 I'm a strong believer Varus needs a full VGU, like Nunu and Fiddle levels. I want him to be a real darkin and I want on hit to be his main playstyle (although I doubt they'll do that considering it's the unpopular build). It would be cool if they kept the lore with Valmar and Kai but idk how they'd incorporate it into a new design. Varus is probably way off the radar for a VGU though, he's never been considered for one in any post or poll.
Watching this video makes me want to pick up Varus again (despite being a supp main now) because I really to like him. He has the best song Riot ever put out (hot take but you can't change my mind) and I hope he'll get some love from Riot someday in the future.
You should do a "Why no one plays Akshan" I nearly forgot he was even in the game.
Varus rework idea: reduce the damage on his Q, but make the fully charged version root the first champion hit, like Chain of Corruption (it only spreads if he manages to kill the rooted target during the root or until 3 seconds later). His new ult would release the spirits of Valmar and Kai, who fire weaker versions of his autots, applying Blight to everyone hit (imagine Runaan's but automatically firing). This gives him a way to fight back against champions who can't immediately burst him down before the root. It unfortunately delegitimizes his lethality build, making him a more traditional marksman, but I feel like his identity stays mostly intact. What do you guys think? Any other ideas for ultimates?
Idk i personally love playing varus. I get all the points you make, but personally i like the versatile nature of him and how simple he is. You do have to be a lot more careful on him too and depending on the play style, you have to use different game knowledge and macro to use him properly. For example, you play him differently and can have different advantages whether he is full poke lethality, full on hit attack speed, or full AP one shot
Depending the enemy team you can build based on this very well compared to other adcs. Also it helps get better at different aspects such as landing and timing his skill shots and spacing because you have to. Im a tryndamere one trick with a little over 2 mil but varus is literally the only adc I can play in the bot lane with good success but maybe it is just me. I did put in a lot of effort into learning him but I love his ascetic, his skins, his gameplay, and how he is actually challenging and has no escape or dash so you have to focus a lot on spacing and map awareness for him to work. Ultimately though, I'm just a random and although i do love playing varus, I love playing tryndamere more but that being said they are the only two champs i own every skin for lol
Those Varus Ult transitions were smooooth
Honestly, I'd like to see his passive and W swapped. Make the active segment of blighted quiver a Q passive or make it to where if the enemy has max blighted quiver stacks, it does the bonus damage. Making the attack speed buff an avtivatable ability would help some. We can also make his Q a new ability to where instead of a charge, it's just a skillshot with a base cast time of, like, 1 second similar to Caitlyn Q. I think E works as is more as a utility spell or give it a complete rework. E is probably the ability I'd scrap. His ultimate is very fun now but maybe make it more of a slow for 1.5 seconds into a root or stun for an additional 1 second? Something a little less consuming so much of his power budget?
I used to love playing Varus way back in S3-S4. I feel like if his power budget was shifted more towards on-hit rather than poke, he would be able to fit a lot better in a more traditional ADC role. Nerf his Q AD ratio a bit (and maybe add like 10 base damage rank 5 so the numbers don't shift too much in the early game), buff the damage a bit on his blight stack detonation and you've already helped him a lot.
Another change I'd like to see on him is to shift his passive to a stack and decay system. Instead of getting a flat AS bonus on kill, with a higher bonus vs champions, give him a stack for each minion killed and more stacks (max stacks?) on champion takedown. Each stack gives like 10% AS, scaling with his level, and the stacks decay instead of losing them all at once. Then in lane he has a much clearer engage pattern: wait to kill a few minions to stack up the AS then go in for a short trade, using either Q or E to detonate stacks from a safe range. That already sounds a lot healthier and more fitting with current design standards.
Easy fix to Varus: His Q now works like Leona E and pulls him to the middle of the enemy team when he hits it :D