Volibear Build Guide by Therzo

NOTICE!

THE BUILD MIGHT CHANGE

Introduction

Hello everyone, I'm Therzo, and this is my Volibear Guide. This guide took me a long time to do. In this guide I will explain how to play Volibear and how to build him.
The guide is similar to Phreaks champion spotlight but will change eventually when I tried diffrent builds etc.

This is actually my first guide and I would appreciate all feedback you guys come with.
In this guide I will explain why I choosed the Summoner Spells, Masteries, Runes and Items.

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Volibear is really fun to play with, who doesn't like to run around and dominate like a BOSS!?
Once you have stacked up some health you can eat up your enemy with Frenzy easy as pie.

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Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here.
Without jhoijhoi I would never be able to make a good looking guide like this one.
You should really check her guide out if you want to make one yourself!

Pros / Cons

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Pros + Melee Champion + Good CC with Rolling Thunder + Extremly much damage with Frenzy + Much health + Great ultimate in teamfights + Amazing heal from the passive

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Cons - Frenzy reliant on HP - No escape ability - Need items to be useful - Low damage with attacks - Reliant on a good farm - Not the best creep farmer

Masteries

On Volibear there are probably many diffrent ways that you can go with him in the Mastery Tree.
Here we would probably like to go with Phreaks Mastery Tree for jungling.

This Mastery Tree provides you with:

• Summoner's Resolve : 10 gold when you use Smite
  
• Hardiness : More armor for jungling
  
• Tough Skin : Less damage from jungle creeps early game
  
• Durability : More stacked health for Frenzy
  
• Veteran's Scars : Same as above ^
  
• Bladed Armor : Improves your jungling speed
  
• Initiator : More movement speed when you gank
  
• Enlightenment : High CDR with items late game
  
• Mercenary : Extra gold from kills/assists (good early game)
  
• Juggernaut : More health
  
• Summoner's Insight : Reduces cooldown on Flash
  
• Expanded Mind : More mana and leads to Meditation
  
• Swiftness : More movement speed
  
• Meditation : Mana regeneration throughout the game
  
• Runic Affinity : Longer buffs and elixirs

You can change the Mastery Tree in Defense so it suits you and your choice of Summoner Spells.
But I recommend you to NOT change to Offense or Utility if you're going jungling.

Example: If you are going with Heal instead of Flash for jungling you should change Summoner's Insight to Improved Recall

Runes

• Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed: The attack speed gives great damage output with Thunder Claws and stacks the passive on Frenzy
  
• Greater Mark of Attack Speed: Same as above ^
  
• greater seal of vitality: When Frenzy is active this boosts the damage on it
  
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: It's the little extra magic resist against Ability Power champions to survive better in a fight

Summoner Spells

Flash: Great escape spell, you can jump over walls with it

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Smite: Great for jungling, you can steal Baron Nashor and Dragon with it

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Heal: Other option instead of Flash, working great with the passive Chosen of the Storm

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Cleanse: Well, it would work but Flash is still better as a escape spell

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Teleport: Well, if you wanna teleport to a ward to gank it might be nice

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Ghost: If you think this escape spell fits you better and you are more familiar with it, you should use it

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Revive: Never use this spell, NEVER

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Clairvoyance: It's the supporters job to pick this

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Surge: One word, USELESS

Ability Explanation + Ability Sequence

• Chosen of the Storm: This passive heals Volibear rapidly for a few seconds when his health drop to a critical level, the more health you have, the more you get healed. This is why we want to buy a Spirit Visage
  
• Rolling Thunder (Q): When activated Volibear runs faster if chasing an enemy champion. The enemy that gets attacked is flung in the air behind him. This is going to be your opening spell when you're ganking someone
  
• Frenzy (W): When Volibear attacks repeaditly he gets more attack speed. Once he'd attacked 3 times in a row, he use Frenzy on an enemy that deals TONS OF DAMAGE!
  20% of your health is bonus damage when you use Frenzy, this is why we want to stack health and cooldown reduction, the damage is also increased by 1% for every 1% missing health on the enemy.
  
• Majestic Roar (E): This ability is quit nice in the beginning when you're jungling. When you use it you deal AoE damage, slow nearby enemies and fears minions for a short period of time.
  
• Thunder Claws (R): This ulti is really nice in a teamfight or 2v1, because once you've activated it, you blast his target with lightning that bounces to nearby enemies.
  It's a great way to kill 2 enemy champions at once!

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Items

• / : Depends on the enemy team, I usually go Mercury's Treads but if the enemy team have a lot of physical attacks, pick Ninja Tabi
  
• : This item gives you extra health and cooldown reduction for Frenzy, it also improves your passive Chosen of the Storm, Heal heal more too.
  
• : This item is so awesome! You get health, cooldown reduction, health and mana per 5 sec, magic resist and when you activate it you and nearby allied champions get 40% movement speed for 3 seconds.
  
• : Health, cooldown reduction, health per 5 sec and a lot of armor, isn't that awesome? And it's perfect counter to attack speed stacking champions, because when you activate it nearby enemies get slowed and decreased attack speed by 35% for 2 seconds.
  
• : Well, many may ask "Why Rylai's Crystal Scepter? Isn't Volibear a melee tank champion?"
  Yes, he is, but when you engage in to a fight and activate your ultimate Thunderclaw the slow will spread out to all the enemies in the fight and they get slowed. Huge advantage there.
  So this item is great, it provides you a slow on enemies and much health. The 80 AP also stacks on Majestic Roar, nothing big but still something.
  
• / : Now we wanna get either Sunfire Cape or Banshee's Veil depending on the enemy team.

Team Fights

In a teamfight where Volibear is the engager, he should aim for the best avaible target in their team, and dash to him with Rolling Thunderand activate Shurelya's Reverie while you engage.

When you've flinged the target backwards you should use your Majestic Roar to slow nearby enemies and then activate your ultimate Thunder Claws to deal extra damage on their team.
If you're close to their AD carry or just need to slow them once more, activate your Randuin's Omen


While you do all these things, your team should have probably followed you as well to kill the enemy team.

Things to rememeber when you have a teamfight:

• Never run into the enemy team alone without telling your team that you are engaging.
  
• Don't overextend to much
  
• When you're in a teamfight, try to fling up their carry as much as possible towards your team
  
• Don't fling the enemy champion you are running for away from the team, because that might happend sometimes if you don't think well
  
• Try to protect your team as much as possible

Tip: When you engage, don't try aim for your focus if he's behind the enemy team. Even if you have activated Shurelya's Reverie and Rolling Thunder and feel super fast, don't, because you'll probably get CCed and then you die.

Jungling/Warding

This is where you and your team should Sight Ward.

• Yellow: Vital to protect the jungler on your team
  
• Blue: For protection depending on which lane you're on
  
• Red: To guard Dragon and Baron
  
• Orange: In order to Counter-Jungle

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This Jungle route allows for an early Blue Buff, and it's pretty the same like on every other jungling champion. You will be able to use your spells much more which increases your jungling speed.


1. Start at Blue Buff, kill the big one first. This can be hard for Volibear, so be sure to have someone to leash (pull) it for you. Use a Health Potion and Smite.

2. The Wolves are easy. Use Majestic Roar to fear them.

3. The Wraiths deal a lot of damage so be sure to kill them fast, focus the big blue one first. Open with a Majestic Roar to fear them. Use a Health Potion if needed.

4. Pretty much the same as on every other camp. Open with Majestic Roar to fear them and focus the Red Lizard. Use Smite and a if needed Health Potion

5. The double Golems should be easy, use all your spells to kill them as fast as possible.

When you're done with this route you can either go and gank bottom lane, continue jungling on the respawned jungle creeps or recall.

Summary

Volibear is a fun champion to play. It doesn't require much to learn how to play him.
If you have any comments, questions or queries about my guide, please don't hesitate to ask any questions.

Upvote if you liked the guide, and only downvote if you feel it is absolutely necessary. Remember that this is my first guide, and it took me a looooooong time to do it.
If you do downvote, please inform me of why, so I can look over the mistakes I have made.