With the way Varus' kit plays out, it "feels" more like an AP/AS kit to me, even though he is better in pretty much every way built as AD. So I have two questions for you:

1) Did you intend for Varus to have the ability to be played as AP and succeed as well as any other champ, or is that just a side effect of granting random AP ratios to AD champs so they don't have a bunch of front-end physical damage

2) Do you feel he is viable built as AP/do you want to buff/nerf/change anything about AP Varus?


The reason I'm asking is because I like the way AP Varus plays a lot more than AD Varus, but people often say I'm trolling (I'm not) and proceed to play poorly out of spite, threaten to report, say "GG" at champ pick, etc.


*Edit
I just finished a game that ended with somebody on my team reporting me and begging everyone else to report me, for the sole reason of playing AP Varus in normals. This is despite the fact that I ended with a positive K/D ratio and a high damage done to champs. And as always, I warned in champ select that I was going AP Varus so they could dodge if they had a problem with it. I would really appreciate some feedback on this style of play/build for Varus from a Red, especially concerning if it is intended to be viable

If Varus had a way to pop his blight stacks outside of spells I could see AP Varus being okay.

If his q or e was magic damage then **** yea.

Yeah, I feel there are several good places he could be buffed to make it viable, but I'm really interested to see what Riot thinks about the whole AP Varus thing. It is in my opinion not quite good enough, but it is near enough that it feels like they want it to be a thing. Just wondering if Riot wants it viable or if they want it to just be a trollolol build.

They like ocassionally having trollish builds, such as AP mf and AP tristana. But AP varus won't be viable because he would have the same playstyle as AD varus, the only possible difference would be damage dealt, which makes a clear winner.

I disagree with that. AP Varus will do a lot less sustained damage but have intermittent super sized spikes in damage, regardless of how their dps averages out over a long extended period of time. Their damage profiles will always be much different.

That greatly changes how you play in lane. For example, an AP Varus will not want to exchange autoattack harass unless he knows he can get 3 hits in, proc his W with Q/E and disengage. If he only gets one or two hits in, then he is wasting mana and AD carries would be winning the exchange.

I take magic and armor pen masteries on him

on hit W does a lot of damage especially against taric lanes

His designer said he wanted hybrid Varrus to be a thing - getting Malady or Guinsoo's or Gunblade.

So basically what you're saying is AP Varus is worse. Got it.

AP Varus can work, but it will never be better than AD Varus unless they give his Q and E AP ratios because the two build play exactly the same way and one is blatantly superior at it. You can talk about different damage curves all you want, but the ultimate point is AD Varus does more damage, and he does it faster and with no conditions. Believe me, I want champions to have multiple viable build paths as much as anyone, but right now AD Varus is just flat out better.

I had read on the forums somewhere a while ago that his designer said something like that, but as it stands building AP is not good enough to be viable so I was looking for Red feedback to see if AP Varus is still something they want or if it is just an abandoned idea.