Volibear is an engaging tank, who can proc Aftershock extremely easily. After 2.5s, you explode, dealing damage in an aoe around you, which adds to your burst window. During this window, it increases your magic resist, and your armor - which adds extra tankiness that Volibear's kit lacks, even if his base stats make him tanky.

The meta is very fast paced these days, making Demolish an extremely useful rune. You want to be taking as many tower plates as you can to increase your income, and Demolish helps achieve that.

Volibear is primarily an engage tank, making Bone Plating the best choice for him. The longer you survive, the more cc and damage you can output and Bone Plating enables this. It also increases your sustain in lane from poke comps, and during teamfights/skirmishes.

Overgrowth increases your maximum health for every 8 minions that die near you, and an additional 3.5% max health after 120 minions. As Volibear support isn't going to be concentrating on generating gold from CS'ing like he would toplane or jungling, this rune helps increase our tankiness without some of the high cost items.

Hextech Flashtraption is the best option for Volibear, to catch enemies offguard when they think his Flash is down, and he can cast it from fog of war and brushes, surprising his opponents and using his Thundering Smash to disrupt their escape.

Cosmic Insight reduces the cooldown of everything in your set-up, and adds an extra 5% CDR to your max CDR, meaning you can have higher up time on your engage tools, disengage tools, items you buy, and summoners. Some people do take Minion Dematerializer to help proc Relic Shield's charges if against poke comps where you don't want to be going into poke range.

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Boots of Mobility > MOVEMENT SPEED These are the cheapest boots in the game, but often the most useful - especially on a support, and one that can engage at that. Volibear can decide to roam to other lanes, and catch people out, so having the bonus movement speed is invaluable. Mercury's Treads > TENACITY/AP RESIST If the enemy team has a lot of CC, or a lot of AP damage, you can trade Mobi's out for these. They offer +25 magic resist, along with reducing the effect of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds and immobilizes by 30%. Ninja Tabi's > ARMOR If the enemy team has a lot of physical damage threats, and you're the primary front line, or need some extra survivability, Ninja Tabi's are the way to go, offering 20 armor, and reducing incoming basic attacks by 12%.

Zeke's Convergence > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/MANA Zeke's is a fantastic item on Volibear as it offers armor, magic resist, cooldown reduction and an extra 250 mana. When you cast Stormbringer, you ignite an aoe around you that slows enemies by 20% - meaning less chance to escape on your engage, and giving you ample opportunity to kite them - while the ally that you have chosen to attach to, their attacks burns enemies for 30% bonus magic damage, increasing their damage output for quicker kills.

Dead Man's Plate > CDR/HP+MANA REGEN/SUSTAIN Dead Man's Plate increases your tankiness exponentially, while increasing your movement speed, necessary on Volibear due to his lack of gap closers and synergizes well with his Thundering Smash. His basic attacks deal extra magic damage - synergizing well with his Stormbringer, and slowing the enemy, at max stacks, for 1 second.

Locket of the Iron Solari > SURVIVABILITY/SUSTAIN With Locket of the Iron Solari, you gain 30 armor and 60 magic resist, increasing your overall tankiness, while providing a shield to your allies upon use - using +20% of your maximum health, which most of your core - or situational - items increase.

Knight's Vow > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/SUSTAIN You gain extra HP, 40 armor and 10% CDR with this item, not including the extra 20 armor and 15% bonus movement speed when your chosen ally is nearby. If your ally is nearby, you heal for 12% of all the damage they do (increasing your tankiness), and redirecting 12% of the damage they take, to yourself (increasing their survivability]. Usually a core item to take vs physical damage.

Frozen Heart > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/MANA A fantastic item if you're up vs a lot of quick hitting, physical damage champions. You gain 100 armor, 20% CDR and you reduce the attack speed of enemies by 15% within 1000 units. It can easily help shut down an ADC such as Vayne, hindering her attack speed, and protecting you longer.

Mikael's Crucible > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/UTILITY A good pick when facing an enemy team with hard CC that you need to Cleanse on allies, such as Impale, Death Sentence, Cocoon etc and grants bonus movement speed for 2s after successfully cleansing an ability. Increases your Mana and HP regeneration, while granting you 40 magic resist, and 20% healing power - good synergy with The Relentless Storm.

Abyssal Mask > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/UTILITY If you have a lot of AP champions on your team, Abyssal Mask is a good pick up as it increases magic damage enemies take by 15% within 325 units. It increases your survivability vs AP champions on the enemy team. You also gain 10% CDR, increases your health, mana and you gain 55 magic resist. You also gain mana restoration and health restoration.

Righteous Glory > SURVIVABILITY/CDR/SUSTAIN/UTILITY Turbo Chemtank is good for a team with physical damage threats, and also helps your engage on the enemy team, which can be useful if you're the primary engager. You gain 75% movement speed for 4 seconds when moving towards enemies or enemy structures, once reaching them, you slow by 75% for 2 seconds. You also gain 30 armor, extra health and mana, health regeneration and CDR. Generally a core item on Volibear.

Spirit Visage > SURVIVABILITY/SUSTAIN Spirit Visage increases your HP pool by 450 and increases your magic reist by 55 - great for if you're vs AP compositions. It strengthens our base health regeneration by 100%, and increases all of our healing received by 30% - great with The Relentless Storm. A good pick up if you need that extra sustain.

Thornmail > SURVIVABILITY/UTILITY Thornmail increases our HP by 250, and adds a whopping 80 armor - very good against physical damage teams. Thornmail also reflects magic damage equal to 10% of your bonus armor +25, and inflicts grievous wounds on the attacker - great for negating healing from a champion like Soraka, or the healing from an item such as Bloodthirster. You also reducer attacker's attack speed by 15% for 1s - useful against champions like Vayne and Varus.

Level 1 you will want to be levelling your Thundering Smash. You can set up an invade if your team is not afk in base - going through the midlane to the right brush, as you will not be seen by the enemy until it's too late. You can also interrupt an invade if you're caught, throwing the enemy into your own team with Thundering Smash.

When you're in laning phase, you want to be a dominant force,pushing and zoning the enemy laners out of cs'ing, with the threat of a Flash all in. Volibear is very strong in early game and you want to take advantage of that, snowballing your ADC as quickly as possible. You can interrupt an enemies dash with your Thundering Smash, such as a Yuumi's You and Me!, putting it on CD and granting your lane a very easy kill.

Be careful of poke comps, Volibear may be strong in early game but he can easily get poked down and become useless if you try to be too aggressive vs opponents such as Xerath or Brand, but these mages are very squishy and immobile, take advantage of their weak spots.

If you're laning vs a Morgana and/or a Sivir, you'll want to bait their Black Shield and Spell Shield before you make an all in, they're on relatively long cooldowns at the lower levels (26s and 22s), so you can take advantage of this. Baiting can be achieved by any means, moving in an aggressive way, getting into their face to take advantage of your Thundering Smash, or if your ADC has baited, using a spell such as Jhin's Deadly Flourish.

Keep an eye on your midlane, as you can easily roam and use Thundering Smash to fling them into your allied tower and secure a free kill.

You want Control Wards around your bottom brushes to be aware of any impeding ganks coming, and to deny the enemies any vision of where your jungler or you, may be.

Proccing your Runesteel Spaulders, you'll want to be focusing the cannon minions as priority, then melee minions, and lastly ranged.

Once you get your first back, hopefully with at least one or two kills under your belt, you want to be looking to buy Mobility Boots for the roaming potential, and proceed to build your core item components. You can set up kills for your midlaner and get them ahead, along with your ADC.
If you can't roam, you want to be maximizing gold for your ADC, and this includes taking tower plates after kills, which is why we take Demolish.


Outside of laning phase, you're going to want to be setting up a lot of wards around objectives, such as Baron Nashor and the drakes. If your team is ahead, and it is safe to do so, you can set up deep vision in the enemies jungle, allowing yourself and your team to get important picks, that allow you to take the previously mentioned objectives.

As tanky as Volibear is, you mostly want to be around your team, and helping out your ADC to (hopefully) continue his lead. You can still set up kills for him, and you're a strong threat to think about for an enemy wanting to set up a gank, as it's very easy for the tides to turn in your favor. You have good mobility to chase down enemies, flipping them back into your teammates.

During teamfights, you'll either be wanting to make the engage with your Thundering Smash, on an important target, such as the enemies ADC, or a backline mage, or you will want to be peeling your ADC from targets such as Zed or Kayn. You contribute a lot of damage with Stormbringer while being a reliable front line for your team, even with little items. Always keep an eye on your ADC, remember you can interrupt dashes with your Thundering Smash, peel them and keep them safe, while outputting tremendous amounts of damage.

Volibear's itemization is very adaptive, you can choose to go tanky frontline, protect your ADC, or even optimize for damage.

The main thing to be aware of, is making sure your teams threats stay alive, while removing, or zoning, the enemy teams threats.

Control Ward's are a staple part of any support, both to deny your enemies vision, and to provide your team extra vision. You should make sure to buy one at least every time you back, preferably to have 2 on you at all times.
Vision control is a big plus for Volibear to be catching the enemies unaware.

I hope you enjoyed, and learned enough from my Volibear guide, to play him as well as the pro's.

If you enjoyed my guide, you can check out my other guides here, in which I've covered more styles of supports, incase you want to branch out on supports such as enchanters ( Janna, Lulu etc!).

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