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Volibear Build Guide by

A storm is approaching - Jungle Volibear [Updated For S4!]

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Volibear Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (51) More Volibear Guides

Spells:

Flash

Smite

Ability Order

Volibear Passive Ability

Introduction / why you should play Volibear

In this guide I will teach you how to jungle, build, and play Volibear

Volibear is a very good jungler, perhaps even one of the best mostly because of his Thundering Smash and Sky Splitter combo to speed you up, and slow the enemies.

Pros:

Fast champion due to Thundering Smash, making it easy to gank.
Benefits from HP items thanks to Frenzy .
Has an Area of effect slow: Sky Splitter.
High damage.
Passive The Relentless Storm heals you a lot, similar to Maximum Dosage

Cons:

High CoolDown durations.
Fairly easily kited.
Melee/No gap closers.

Runes

Precision

Fleet Footwork

Phase Rush

The runes for Volibear can vary somewhat, however my favorite build would have to be:

9x Greater Mark of Attack Damage: The attack damage helps a lot for clearing jungle camps.
9x Greater Seal of Armor: The Armor also helps for early game Jungling, for when you Gank Attack Damage Carries, and Team Fights.
9x Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: The Magic Resist helps for Ganking Ability Power Carries, and late game Team Fights.
3x Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed: The movement speed helps a lot when ganking and to quickly pursue someone with your Thundering Smash.

Masteries

To explain why I picked these Masteries:

13 in the offensive tree to get Dangerous Game because this works really well when you feel like going Rambo on someone. The rest of the offense tree is self explanatory.

17 in defensive tree to get your resistances mostly for the enemy ADC and to get Second Wind which helps for the first 1-2 bursts of HP you get from your passive The Relentless Storm (assuming you get hit below 25% hp instead of just 30%).

Spells

Flash is recommended in my guide because of the sheer fact it's possibly the best escape spell.
Smite Do I need to explain this? Every jungle absolutely must have smite, if you want to replace one of these spells replace flash.
Ghost is a good spell to have to quickly gain ground with Thundering Smash.
Exhaust is actually viable for Volibear because it can slow someone down long enough to catch them as well as reduce their damage for a short duration.
Heal is a very great spell this season, given the fact that it heals you as well as briefly increasing your movement speed it's a great spell to have.
Teleport is actually a viable spell for junglers right now, having this will allow you to get into a team fight when your team needs you and the ability to split push and still be there for your team.

Items

Item Sequence

Wriggle's Lantern is probably the best item possible for Volibear because of the attack speed and bonus magic damage on hit from the Feral Flare upgrade.
Mercury's Treads are probably the best boot choice because of the tenacity, however if you're against heavy auto attackers then grab Ninja Tabi and if you're against heavy slows then grab Boots of Swiftness.
Statikk Shiv works extremely well with the passive of your Frenzy as well as Feral Flare to deal tons of damage.
Frozen Mallet is a great item to have for the slowing effect along with the HP it gives, making you tanky even without any resistance items.

Other Item Choices

Versus heavy magic damage: Rush Spirit Visage after Wriggle's Lantern OR purchase a Hexdrinker then get Spirit Visage later on.

Versus heavy physical damage: Purchase Ninja Tabi instead of Mercury's Treads and purchase Thornmail instead of Blade of the Ruined King and the rest of the build normally.

Other situational items:
Randuin's Omen instead of Thornmail.

Zephyr can be purchased end game to replace boots.

Blade of the Ruined King can be purchased early game after Wriggle's Lantern instead of Statikk Shiv when against lots of tanks.

Frozen Heart can replace Thornmail when against auto attackers.

Any other items in the "viable items" section can also be used but are self explanatory so I won't explain them here.

Gameplay - Jungling, Ganking, and Team fights

Gameplay - Early game Jungle

First off grab your Hunter's Machete Sweeping Lens and 5 Health Potions. To start go to your blue buff, then to your wolf camp then red buff. Now either gank a lane or continue farming jungle by going to wraiths, wolves and finally wraith at this point you should either gank or go back (preferably gank at least once by now).

When you go to gank a lane it's generally easiest to gank a lane that's pushed to your turret, however if all your lanes are pushed then you can go through the bushes in lane on either top or bottom to gank, this works best with a support like thresh, blitz etc or with a top like singed..

After you gank/farm if you're low health go back to base, if it was a good gank pick up Madred's Razors keep farming your jungle as much as you can while ganking lanes when necessary, try not to skip any camps if you can kill them because you want the big minion stacks for your Wriggle's Lantern.

Mid game

Around now people will start roaming which can often mean enemies will be trying to invade your jungle more. buying Stealth Wards can help prevent getting killed while farming your jungle. It's generally a good idea to help your team when they're pushing a lane together so if they are then group up with them and engage fights with your Thundering Smash when you feel like it's a good timing.

Late game

Now everyone should be done farming their lanes for the most part and the team fights should start happening. you'll want to initiate team fights now that you have Frozen Mallet, use your Thundering Smash ability to initiate, use your Blade of the Ruined King when you're near enemy so you can quickly get to them with Thundering Smash and after your Blade of the Ruined King wears off use your Sky Splitter to slow them again. Remember to use Thundering Smash to also throw enemies away from your allies if they're dying.

Skill combinations

For ganking: wait until you're pretty close then activate your Thundering Smash to initiate, then use your Sky Splitter either when you're really close, or after you've tossed them over you. next activate Frenzy to deal burst damage and don't forget to use your Stormbringer.

For Team fights: wait for the perfect moment when a hyper carry on the opponents team comes close enough, activate your Thundering Smash and possibly use Flash to get close enough then use Sky Splitter to slow them, next activate Stormbringer and last use Frenzy . At this point you will want to keep auto attacking anyone you can but preferably the hyper carries.

Change log

5/9/2014: replaced Blade of the Ruined King with Statikk Shiv in the main build.

5/4/2014: changed the "change log" to descending order instead of ascending for easier view of recent changes.

5/3/2014: finally updated the guide for S4! (Rewrote at least half of every section, updated items, runes, masteries, etc..)

12-31-2012: updated Item build and Items chapter of the guide along with summary. Happy new years eve everyone and have a great new years!

12-29-2012: updated mastery page and adjusted some of the notes on the guide. Happy holidays/merry xmas and happy new years everyone =)

4-12-2012: Wrote the "When to use items" chapter

4-11-2012: Rewrote the "Spells" chapter.

4-9-2012: Added the "Other Viable Items" chapter.
4-9-2012: Added the "Spells" chapter.

4-8-2012: Added Change log.
4-8-2012: Fixed Masteries as I had 2 points on Indomitable instead of 1 point on Veteran's Scars , and 1 point on Indomitable .
4-8-2012: Made the game-play section easier to read.

4-7-2012: Published this guide.
4-7-2012: Published the Proof section later in the day.

Summary

Thanks to everyone who read this, please comment and rate this guide.

Also check out my youtube channel Here!

Thanks to JhoiJhoi who put together a guide for BBCoding which allowed me to do most of this coding. A link to her guide can be found here

if you guys have any questions or comments at all leave them in the comments section and I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can with an answer and I'll ad it to the (unanswered questions) chapter with an answer.