BUMP!

I used to play Volibear in a more offensive direction and I loved it. But without Ionic I'm not sure what to do anymore. Nothing feels as awesome as having a mini perma ult.

I guess Statikk Shiv could work, but only if you go all in on trying to make it work by stacking up crit chance. Items like Atma's and Trinity comes to mind. But I don't know, crit feels so... out of place on him.

And WHERE IS THAT BLASTED PANDA SKIN! Or any skin for that matter. I really liked the Ursa Major skin idea that one fellow had. Looked frickin' amazing.

Voli does need a skin and I would support any skin riot threw at us because honestly it will be badass because hes a bear. In addition, now that Ionic Spark has been removed and a limited amount of AD AS items are now in place it seems that Volibear has gone from stacking AS to stacking resistances and some AS. I think riot intented to push Volibear into an Offtank/Pure Tank direction rather than seeing him as a full bruiser. However, Wit's End, Zephyr, and Sword of the Divine will all work on him quite fine.

OP, can I just say I LOVE your name, like a lot.

I just experimented with Voli on yet another game and this time I tried the new Black Cleaver on him. I know what your thinking, "straight AD isn't a great stat on Volibear", which it isn't I agree. However, the armor penetration combined with another AS item, say Wit's End contributes to both his Ult and W by amplifying the damage of his W and increasing his AS for more procs on his Ult. Think about it, a 30% reduction in their armor would make your bite deal so much more damage. Not to mention it also has health, CDR, and Armor Penetration; which all help Voli. Tell me what you think.

Bump

On Volibear? Cleaver is cool if you build around it. Trinity Force is one of the items that makes it great on him.

Get those two, and you can kill anything. Getting tanky AD items (if the situation let's you get away with being a little less tanky) makes it even more potent. Atma's gets you a 25% crit chance in total for example, while Maw's shield works wonders with your passive and your ability to stay low for a longer time makes the damage bonus it gives you much more useful.

Actually AD on Volibear is quite nice, his Q hits like a truck, since it's basically an empowered auto attack

@Iklo: Tanky Bear is Best Bear! I usually go for an early offensive setup to get ahead in kills if I feel like I can pull it off against my opponent, then use the gold to build full on tank gear. Because you need the blood money to shine, and your damage potential later scales way too poorly so you need to be as beefy as possible when that curve starts going down. And the early damage let's you soundly shut down your foes.

As far as early game items go, Phage is great and should always be bought early, how soon depends on the match up. Wriggle's against AD, Wit's End against AP. You want to start Cloth + 5 now. Boots if you are against magic damage.

@Nickwright: You're right about Q, but the problem is he doesn't scale with AD on his other skills, meaning each time you use those skills you're not using your AD that you paid for. Furthermore, a LOT of his damage is magic. So building penetration on him is very awkward since he doesn't make full use of it across his kit. Nor is he in the boat that Jax is in, where you do so much damage you just don't care about penetration.

That said, it works. It's just that Volibear is... I don't want to say poorly designed (part of him is, but far from his entirety, speaking as a designer myself), but rather that he has been left out of the loop. He hasn't been watched for performance on Live in the meta. There's been no action in regards to how players react to his kit and how they choose to play him either.

It's just a sorry mess, which is why this thread exists!