Alright, so, this is my first guide, but I have been playing Volibear almost every game since he has come out and I will be updating this with other builds aside from the current one I found as well. Anyways, on with the introductions: Volibear, the Thunder's Roar.

Though the northern reaches of Freljord are some of the most unforgiving lands in Valoran, the Ursine have survived upon the region's barren, stormy tundra for centuries. As a fierce and respected warrior of the Ursine, Volibear devoted his life to the protection of his people and loyalty to his elder brother, the tribe's chief. When his brother was killed during a hunt on the tundra, the tribe looked to Volibear as his successor. It was an honor and a burden that Volibear had never expected, but he shouldered the charge with pride. However, by Ursine tradition, the tribe could not recognize Volibear as chief until he returned from a journey to the peak of their sacred mountain, a place forever shrouded in a thundering maelstrom. There, Ursine chieftains must speak to the storm itself, gaining clarity and wisdom to empower them as mighty leaders.

Donning the chieftain's traditional armor and enchanted gauntlets, Volibear began the long and perilous climb up the slopes of the mountain. When he reached the peak and gazed into the raging storm above, he saw a horrific vision of a Freljord utterly consumed by war. Amidst the carnage, the Ursine fell dead upon a bloody battlefield. Believing the vision to be an omen of things to come if he did not act against them, Volibear traveled to the capitol of Freljord. The Ursine had not ventured across the southern mountains in centuries and his appearance was met with unease. However, Queen Ashe recognized Volibear as a wise and powerful ally. In what Volibear considered the first step against a war-torn future, they forged an alliance. As part of their agreement, he joined the League of Legends in the name of a unified Freljord, representing the primal might of his nation on the Field of Justice.

''Few can weather the storm that follows in the wake of Volibear's roar.'' - Ashe, the Frost Archer.

Pros
-Can be one of the best solo tops.
-Can be on of the best initiators in the game.
-Can make or break team fights.
-Has the ability to rip your focus fire champion out from behind the tanks and slow them down from running from your teammates.
-Has an amazing passive that can make or break your lane dominance in the beginning and save you throughout te game.

Cons
-Is unfortunately very very susceptible against kiters.
-Being slowed or stunned in Q will ruin his opening initiation and that may actually work in the enemy teams favor.
-Being ignited or debuffed with health reduction when near 30% will severely nerf his passive to 15% hp over 6 seconds.
-Passive has a 120 second CD.

So, for runes I went with:

9x Marks of Strength,
Greater Seal of Vitality9x Seals of Vitality,
9x Glyphs of Warding and
3x Quintessences of Strength.

A lot of the damage volibear does comes directly from when he can use his W to bite an enemy. This damage is further increased by bonus Health and however much health the enemy is currently missing. The +15 extra damage runes gives a good little boost to Volibear's auto-attacks and creates an easy and large gap in the enemies health early, causing your first and second uses of W on the enemy to be devestatingly powerful and the extra HPLvl/18 will also help to progressively increase this damage a little bit all the way up to 18. The Added MR is, of course, for added resistance against the 1-2 AP Characters you will be facing in game the majority of the time.

So I went with 9/21/0 because this is a very viable solo top build for Volibear. It provides him with the tankiness and slight speed that he does need to really catch up to the enemy with Q after hiding in the brush and cause them to flash or initiate a fight to cause some quick burst damage, while still staying relatively healthy. I chose the added attack damage in the offense tree to up my +AD to 18 instead of 15, giving me that stronger harass for my W and I went with attack speed and armor pen % for W and auto-attacks as well. In the defensive tree, I went with abilities that really synergized with what Volibear is meant to do. He is meant to initiate and get mean on the person he initiates on. Enhance speed and damage reduction is good for the opening initiation on his Q and the rest of the defensive talents in the defense tree pretty much augment his ability to do that.

So, the way I built volibear was mainly a solo top Tanky DPS. Like I said, though, I will be updating this guide to provide a tank set and possibly a DPS set.

I went with a Doran's shield at the start.

You can't really go wrong with a Doran's shield. The added +Armor is pretty good for that early damage mitigation, taking off some of the added +AD runes that your solo top counterpart may have and the regen is nice for any AP solo top you might have.

After Doran's Shield I go with a pair of boots then immediately work towards my Phage.

For the phage, I get the health crystal first since the damage it is giving me on W is a lot more than trying to simply auto-attack them, not to mention it gives a nice amount of survivability.
After Phage, I make Berserkers greaves, now depending on the game, you could shy away from Berserker's Greaves for Mercury TreadsMercury Treads, the tenacity and extra MR is nice, but I would suggest this to be necesarry on when there is a lot of CC or 2+ Strong Burst AP Carries.

After Berserker's Greaves, I immediately get Recurve Bow, at this point my Attack Speed goes up to 1.6 (1.7 by the end of the game) with Recurve bow and Max W, giving me extreme dominance in one on ones and after recurve I turn it into Wit's End.

Wit's End is a fantastic item for Volibear, when used in conjunction with his ultimate, you're doing about 100+ extra damage as magic damage at Lv1 Ultimate. This is extremely powerful because it will quickly pump up how much your W does.

After I get Wit's End I complete my Frozen Mallet so whoever I do engage with, they cannot escape and the extra hp is nice and goes with my W and you will have about 3K+ hp with it.

After Frozen Mallet, I get Atma's Impaler and then a Warmog's, after the Warmog's I finish with a Guardian Angel. This setup gives me 4.5-4.8K HP and 150+ MR/Armor while still giving me between 220-250 AD and an additional 150-200 Magic Damage on that when I pop my ultimate.

Some people have been saying that TriforceTriforce would be a good item on Volibear, however, looking at how long his CDs are, without a LOT of CDR, the only ability you will be using to proc your Triforce's Sheen will be Q and it will be about every 6-7 seconds, which is a waste of the sheen and the phage that can be turned into a frozen mallet.

So, , Boots then, , then , a recurve bow into , a giant's belt and turn your Phage into a then an , another giant's belt into a and then finish it all off with a {Icon=Guardian Angel size=32]. However, depending on the game composition you could modify Guardian Angel into a or since they both help a lot defensively and banshees helps increase your W damage and FoN increases your movement speed for better initiations. I have also found that, depending on the game, if you find you're being the carry as tanky DPS, I suggest an this really makes you an unstoppable killing machine.

My Skill Sequence is typically this:

Pre-Ultimate

-> ->

Ultimate

-> -> -> Q and E whenever it is up again but ONLY after you toss them back. Try to position yourself with the toss too, it is exactly the same as singed's toss so it won't be hard to master.

For Summoner Spells I went with Ghost and Ignite.

Ghost is especially good on Volibear in combination with his Q. If you're hiding in a brush and your allies come along or you're just alone and waiting to kill your laning enemy, it guarentees they won't escape your Ursine Fury. I went with Ignite because most of the people who do come solo top have some form of heal that they have to keep them sustained up there and it is pretty good for voli when you can get them low and you're low with them making them think you will die before them then bam, your passive pops, you ignite them from healing and you take a bite out of them when they are about 20% hp and the majority of the time they will die.

For the other summoner spells, exhaust is nice, but like I said, most of the time you will have an enemy in your lane with self-sustain and you really already have a slow and since your passive acts like an exhaust when it goes off (because it heals you so heavily and quickly it seems like they are doing no damage to you most of the time). If I had to change out my ignite for something it would be but I would only do that if I was with a ranked 5's team so they could setup my ganks with wards and I can just TP down to them and own a lane for a bit. Cleanse is a good spell as well but its better used on a tank volibear than a tanky DPS volibear.

Coming soon...

Since you will be solo top as Volibear it is important to take notice of a couple of things and coordinate this with your mid/jungle, there are a couple of questions you need to ask yourself and understand before hand.

-Who are you playing against and what can your jungler do?
-When will they put a ward down if they do?
-When did the enemy player in your lane put a ward down?
-When is a good time to call out for a gank from your mid or jungler?

Its a great thing to check the time for when they went into that brush and the ward went missing from their inventory and then alert your jungler and mid when and where that ward was placed and when it will end (3 minutes duration). This gives your jungler and mid the option to go around the long way for a gank or wait out the duration exactly and get into the brush at the moment the wards vision has ended for the enemy player.

When you're laning as volibear you also want to harass the enemy player while still not missing your farm. Never use your W to eat a creep unless your enemy laning partner is not there and it is a cannon minion only then. The CD is way too long and the damage is too good to be wasted on killing a minion instead of harassing your enemy.

Ideally, you want to get 3 stacks up from last hitting 3 minions then bite your enemy laning partner once and then hurry up to Level 2 and get your Rolling Thunder. When that happens you want to auto-attack minions from this point or auto-attack your enemy a few times to increase how much damage your W will do. Sometimes its important to hide in the brush when you use your rolling thunder or ultimate as well because using these abilities will scare your enemy away most of the time and they will back off till the buffs have fallen off and as I mentioned before, kiting volibear is one of the best ways to hinder him greatly since he needs to get right in that close combat range to do some real damage.

Now, depending on who you will be fighting, you may be getting your skills like this W-Q-E for Levels 1-3. But some you will just got W-Q-W for Levels 1-3 and those are for ones that you can't quite burst down that well so you're just focusing on the harass and waiting for your jungler or mid to come gank top when you will hopefully be level 4. When you are level 4, you should try to get mid to gank for you as well, as long as your mid isn't having trouble and if you're not having trouble and your lane is extended you should try to help gank mid so you're not too far from your lane and you're supplementing a weakness your team may currently have.

And remember, it is very important that you always ward your river brush, if you're unsure of whether or not the enemy jungler or gank team is in the enemy tribush, you want to try and stay in the brush up to, that way you have a higher chance of making a clean escape if you can not fight against or counter the gank.

Well, I hope this guide was helpful to you all, I did my best to write this guide and I will be updating and modifying it the best I can from today onward. I will be looking forward to seeing if there is a viable DPS set for Volibear and looking for a fantastic Tank set for Volibear. If you have any comments that could help me polish this guide then I am all ears to your experiences with Volibear. Like I said this is my first guide and I wouldn't mind any input on how I can do these guides better in the future. Thanks for looking at this guide. If you want to add me in-game my name is RawJahn.

Please vote if you liked this guide, it will encourage me to make more in the future if you have found this helpful.