I agree with this skilling assessment (w for burst poke and e for kill lanes).

I think the 3 most common varus misconceptions are:

1. skilling order (people max q.. which is never good and people dont understand well the advantages of maxing each w and e)

2. Varus passive interaction with cs (It gives him a lot of flexibility to play more aggressive with AA's in lane)

3. Varus passive interaction with teamfights (if you use your ult and e right - your passive is amazing)

I feel like adding a movespeed buff to his passive when he gets a kill/assist would help a bit.

Sorry about the language barrier.

I don't think you are right about your idea that it is better to ignore blight. Initiating with e before AA's may be appealing to you - but using irelia's bladesurge on your intended target instead of a low hp creep is first instinct as well. Case by case that use of bladesurge may actually be correct, but that doesn't stop dashing to cs from being considered better play with more followthrough options. I think the same thing applies for Varus... often if you are in small fights blight stacks give you a way you CAN outplay people for an advantage... but in teamfights laying down that CC and AoE damage is going to be a bigger deal than making sure you get 30% of someone's hp in magic damage. That doesn't mean you can't catch someone out with ult, AA twice and then hit your e to get them very hurt and locked down by cc.

As for poking with his Q.. i really don't think it is optimal at all, I use Q as AoE Creep clearing, proccing W and as a finishing snipe.

I think a lot of varus play is about the cost benefit of when to place your skills to get the most out of them... if you aren't feeling well about your choices now you might just need more experience on him until you know different scenarios to act slightly differently with an advantage from it.

Frankly - i think this would be beyond OP. Varus is already a great AD for teamfight cleanup and adding this would turn him into a quadra/penta magnet the magnitude of Kat/Darius/Lategame Trist.

Towards point 1, max Q is a gambit to make when you're losing your lane decisively or approaching to CS or engage normally is a really really bad idea. The enemy Ezreal just got 3 kills off of a level 1 fight and comes to lane with boots and 2 doran's blades. The enemy is running a Jarvan - Pantheon kill lane (instant death to reach that caster minion). In any standard bottom lane matchup, maxing Q means you miss CS as the end result of the time invested in charging your shot.

Towards point 2, well... if you're not going aggressive as Varus during laning phase, then why are you playing him at all? I wouldn't say that he falls off late-game as is often purported (refer to point 3), but I consider him akin to an Ashe who traded perma-slow and crazy utility for a strong early game and massive damage.





I disagree on one very important, but often overlooked point: Prioritizing using your E and R for optimal damage with blight stacks means more burst. This is obvious, but falls into the less obvious aspect of using his passive effectively. The faster you can get your passive online (and it lasts for 6 seconds, which is a very long time), the more damage you will do over the course of that teamfight, and the better you can outpace the other squishies and the faster you can lifesteal. If you manage to land your R on such a target after your passive procs (either by it spreading or firing it after a kill, the tendril still spreads from a corpse), you can force him to stand there as you mercilessly poke him to death.


I feel if Riot wanted to buff Varus, this is one way to go about it. A movespeed buff on his passive could edge into problematic territory in teamfights, but I feel that settling a short-duration movement speed buff onto Varus's Q or W is ideal.

Q - Upon hitting an enemy champion with Piercing Arrow, Varus gains 20% movement speed for 2 seconds.

W - Varus gains 5% movement speed for 2 seconds per blight stack he detonates with a single ability (does not stack with itself)


Varus's biggest threat to his viability is the presence of mobility creep and especially the very large number and popularity of gap closer bruisers with large burst. Even worse is that he was introduced during a time when this was already a problem, so he never got a proper look-over.



What is probably a higher priority, however, is keeping Varus's passive competitive with other AD carries who can achieve a much higher AS bonus on-demand. Tristana can get up to 90% by pressing one button, although it is on a long cooldown. Miss Fortune gets up to 50% by pressing a button as well, and grievous wounds on-hit on top of that. Graves gets an 80% built into his dash, which refreshes bit by bit per hit. Ezreal gets up to 50% just by hitting with his skills. Varus only gets 40% for killing someone, or 20% for killing a creep. All of these are on very similar durations as well. Doesn't compete well, does it?

I'd rather have his Blighted Quiver be worked into his passive and have it trigger off of an AA, and make his passive work into something like this -

Passive - gives X attack speed when minions killed and Y attack speed when champ is killed/assist
Active - activate to gain a movement speed bonus

This would provide a potential escape and fix the micro management of his quiver.

Because you're right, OP - E and R are better for initiating and you waste your Q. The damage from charge up could be argued to be used as the magic damage, but that renders the W ability completely ineffective.

Considering that his E has 925 range i would pick that up first because Q max is not going to hugely increase his damage(he's an AD carry not nidalee), his e's utility will help his team more in teamfights and because it gives him a better disengage/chance to kill while in lane

I completely agree.
I really think you can't draw the line so easily on this one. The big deal is that you(the AD carry) surviving the teamfight is more important than your team getting a kill .2 seconds faster. If you really know your limits as Varus, you are going to be more flexible as to when you can use your e to a full damage potential(the ult is going to be even harder to judge when the better time is -- i think i would personally rather land more of the enemy team in the snare than i would get 1-2 extra w stacks procced on the primary target). Also there are times that you are running an AoE teamcomp that the AoE slow/AoE damage/healing debuff on e is going to matter more than the procs. As varus absolutely thrives in AoE
teamcomps i think it isn't too unlikely for this to happen.

On the note of the MS difference... if riot wanted to buff his mobility i would be quite happy if they just gave him an extra 5-10 MS. He is already at highest base MS of any AD so the extra speed would just be fun.

As for the steroid comparison, i think you are just underestimating the reset. There are only 2 other AD carries that can have a continuous(or near continuous) uptime on their steroids - and these are graves and ezreal(why hello there trinity). Varus can easily get a good 12-24 second duration out of his AS steroid which puts him at one of the best places for clearing up teamfights. Any small buffs they make to his steroid(lets say bumping it up to 50%) can have a huge overall impact if it is spread over 12+ seconds.(Note i am using 12 seconds because it assuming either 2 full passive timers or 3 passive timers with some overlap). Overall, I think if they bring the trinity fully into line - varus wont need any help(ez is probably his hardest AD to face too).

Idk i like this about him. i think he is one of the more fun adc to play, second to graves for me.

Have you perhaps done the math behind it? I did. And unless I made a mistake (feel free to do the math yourself), Varus has bigger damage in lane if you max E and use it in a fight. Maxing W AND procing blight will provide you bigger damage against higher hp targets, but not against carries and supports you will most often face in lane.

Maxing W will be better if you trade often in 1-2 AA, but if you trade rare, but strong, E will provide more dmg and higher burst. Not to mention the utility.

So, you see... Varus's "utility" provides more damage than his "damage".

Also, if you have Soraka as your support, Q will become your best friend because you can have unlimited and EXTREMELY powerful zone. I would max Q every time were it not so expensive to poke with it.

So, optimal ability leveling is completely dependent on the lane.

Back to my point though: more often than not, it's better to use his E and R for initiation/escape and his Q for sniping than to hold them off for POTENTIAL blight proc. I say potential because all of his abilities are skillshots and there is ALWAYS a chance you will miss (especially against champs with dash/flash). And that leaves his W very ungrateful.

In your math did you factor in armor vs mr on supports/ADs. A huge part of the benefit of the w max is that it somewhat counters armor stacking

A lot of this makes sense, and is the cost when you try to add skill via combo mechanics - sometimes it can be harder than its worth.

Meddler, Varus' designer, can probably talk a bit more nuts and bolts on this specifically...I'll see if he can join the thread