It seems that Riot Games has changed the way they rework their champions this year, as previously, reworked champions became just as dominant as new champions. Names like Akali, Aatrox, and Irelia completely transformed and dominated the professional League of Legends meta and solo queue for an extended period, proving this point.
Meanwhile, in 2020, the two rework projects, Fiddlesticks and Volibear, were quite different; they seemed rather “dull” and somewhat weak at launch. Instead of nerfing or removing effects like the aforementioned champions, Riot Games had to implement patches and buffs for these two names to gain enough strength to compete. Most recently, Riot Lutzburg, the designer responsible for the Volibear rework, posted the buffs for this Thunder God, all of which are significant power increases.
Specifically:
Buffs
Energy gained per level increased from 40 to 50.
Health gained per level increased from 85 to 90.
Q – Thunderclap: Empowered attacks will no longer be interrupted once Volibear has performed a basic attack. The casting time for empowered attacks will be faster when Volibear has more attack speed.
R – Divine Thunder
The disable time for towers will be adjusted to 3/4/5 seconds from 2/4/6 seconds.
The damage area radius will increase to 300 from 250.
Damage increased to 300/500/700 from 250/475/700.
General Upgrades
The crater left after using E – Call of the Storm and R – Divine Thunder will disappear faster.
The size of the champion after using the ultimate will be slightly smaller.
The mark from W – Frenzied Maul will have a larger visual effect and be linked to the target’s health bar.
Fixed bugs with Volibear’s skins.
Released the Fire God skin for Volibear which includes:
– Enemies killed by the ultimate.
– Enemies hit by E while stunned by Q.
– The amount of health restored from W.
These updates from Riot Games are aimed at Volibear’s early game phase, as the tower disable time is set to 1 second, and health and energy gained per level are significantly increased. Additionally, the change to Q – Thunderclap allows the stun cast time to be quicker when Volibear has higher attack speed, enhancing this Thunder God’s chasing and team-fighting capabilities later in the game.
It is likely that these buffs will boost Volibear’s win rate after patch 10.12 launches, as they enhance the essential aspects for solo queue, which are tankiness and initiation. Hopefully, these buffs will be enough to make this Thunder God truly powerful, instead of having a win rate hovering around 42-44% as it currently is.
