Early this morning, the PBE server received a massive update with the introduction of the champion skins honoring the 2019 World Championship team, FunPlus Phoenix. Not only that, a variety of new champion icons and emotes have been added to the game, notably all of which are a “cute little bear” product of Volibear, and this bear even appears as a ranked reward.
Ranked Icon for Phase 2
Ranked Rewards for Phase 2
There are even ranked rewards for Teamfight Tactics Season 3 as well.
With these updates, we can confirm that the ranked icon players can achieve in Phase 2 of Season 10 will be of Volibear, and we will even have small ranked rewards like the emotes mentioned above. Currently, the reward will be the icon of Aphelios, and it is likely that the end of patch 10.8 will mark the conclusion of Phase 1 of ranked play.
With the tradition of testing on the PBE server before official release, it is highly likely that the icon will be available to players in patch 10.9, which is at the end of this month. Notably, the bear in the above emote does not wear a hat or armor, which is very different from the current Volibear. It is very likely that the subject of the emote is Volibear after his rework.
From the above, we can see that Riot Games is subtly confirming that Volibear’s rework will be updated in the upcoming patch 10.9? After all, that is just speculation; it is not excluded that Riot might add the icon and leave it for several patches before updating Volibear, depending on the testing progress of this champion after the rework.