Hello, and welcome to my Varus guide. Though I say it's a guide, it's more of an idea and it's not quite the most viable. Even so, it has potential to be very strong, not unlike AP Yi. It can be seen as a troll build, but with the right team comp and play style, it can be a horror.

Runes are pretty standard, I don't take mana regen seals because you don't really have to spam or faceroll like most other AP casters. If you're feeling confident or greedy, you could even takes some gp10 since the core build is so expensive.

Standard 21/9/0 for AP casters.

Another alternative is 9/0/21, taking cooldowns. This is why:

Varus suffers from fairly long cooldowns. In teamfights, you want to proc those Blighted Quiver stacks as much as you can. If you take 9/0/21, you get 10% CDR right at level 1.

First item I take is Malady. Varus' Blighted Quiver essentially makes his auto attacks scale with his AP at 1:0.25. Malady gives this a further 1:0.1. Since you have attack speed, you'll also be lowering whoever you hit's MR which will make your Blighted Quiver's passive pop for near true damage.

Next is Nashor's Tooth which gives Varus pretty much exactly what he needs. The mana regen is slightly wasted as you don't really need to spam spells since they don't do much damage, but the rest is amazing.

After I get these two, this is where I start to look at adding some more significant AP so I take Rabadon's Deathcap next.

At this point, it's probably nearing late game so pick up Runaan's Hurricane so you can put Blighted Quiver stacks on several people at once. The attack speed also means you should have around 2.0 at this point.

Of course, get your boots whenever you can. Enchantment: Furor helps with chasing people down to put on those last few stacks.

The last item is really the only reactionary pick. (One of the weaknesses - not much flexibility in build order) If they have MR, then get Void Staff. If they don't, you can get more damage:

If your team is strong in teamfights and you often win them, you could get a Frozen Mallet to clean up easier. The AD isn't wasted since you're auto attacking anyways.

If it's more even, you could get Guinsoo's Rageblade. This Varus would love both the attack speed and the ability power, and his attack speed is already very high so you can get the 8 stacks very quickly.

Other Items


Unfortunately, Blighted Quiver doesn't proc this so you wouldn't get the slow. I would not recommend it.


It would increase burst, but the problem is that you probably won't get to proc it that often. Still, it could be a very solid item on Varus.


The damage increase would make just 3 autoattacks and a Blighted Quiver proc enough to 100-0 pretty much anyone. Still, you want to burst everyone down at once. It's still very viable, especially if there's a fed carry or something.

Late Game

Malady is a great item on AP Varus, but it falls off lategame when your primary damage will be nuking someone with your and your stacks. Once people start to get tankier, sell it and pick up something that gives you more AP.

Cons:
Weak laning phase - especially if enemy has poke (moreso for skillshots)
Hard to trade with long range
Really squishy
Only spell (that scales off AP) is Chain of Corruption
Core build takes a long time to get
Long cooldowns
Lots of weak matchups in laning phase

Pros:
Amazing damage -- even against tanks (300 AP does 11% per stack)
Ult does a ton of damage - also lower cooldown with the build
Not blue-reliant so jungler has more freedom
Strong against short range or melee
Ult is strong initiation

Having an AP Varus is similar to having two ADC's - You have two champions that rely on being ranged autoattackers who are very squishy. Because of this, your frontline has to be able to keep the enemies away from you. If they can make the enemy team clump up, you could potentially kill the entire enemy team yourself in 5 seconds.

Yeah, this guide is probably terrible. It's almost more of an idea than a concrete guide so I think it's somewhat unnecessary to write a guide that looks professional. This is my first guide and I'm not exactly a 2000 ELO player. If you have any (constructive) criticism or advice, feel free to comment below.

If I get some good feedback and/or I get more experience with this, I'll probably improve the quality of this.

I actually didn't see there was another guide of this and I just wanted to get this out there. I've only played a couple of games with this so I'll be sure to keep updating it with whatever I figure out in the next little while. I'm reading all the comments and taking it all into consideration, thanks :D