First impressions.

When i first tried out volibear i considered many things, that he would be great with AP, he would be tanky and dish out a fair amount of damage.

When i tried stacking some form of AP the ratio was far too low, altough the damage seemed quite nice his survivability was harshly reduced and the damage wasnt a huge increase.

Therefore i went for the original idea Phreak came out with, except altough his idea's are good there also reasonably obvious, but i decided to switch around some of the items to what i felt was a far better option for volibear.

Hello summoner's Welcome to my guide on the freshly riot made champion volibear.

In this guide i simply aim to give a detailed yet colourful guide to those who are new to the champion volibear, also wish to help develop an understanding to a fresh build for those who have not tried it.

I hope you find my guide very helpful in developing your skills with volibear and further enhance your knowledge of the champion itself.

When choosing runes people can quite usually jump blindly into runes which are the basics of a certain champion, for base mana, base armor and base magic resist, or solid AP.

But when playing volibear you want to consider the 2 main things he uses which are health and attack speed, you can consider attack power but his AP ratio is not very high and overall not worth stacking, but its always nice to have some of it here and there.



Marks:
You want to buy 9, this gives you quite alot of solid attack speed which goes perfectly with your frenzy.
Greater marks of alacrity




Glyphs:
When it comes to glyphs you can choose which glyphs you wish to buy,i felt the best options would be to go for anything that gives some comfy defense ingame, for example magic resist or health, i would also recommend heading for some solid cooldown reduction if thats what you want rather than defense.

Therefore get either 9 greater glyphs of fortitude which gives you some nice health.

Or 9 Greater glyphs of warding which gives a nice solid amount of magic resist you could also get the glyph of shielding which gives magic resist per level, but i believe having the resistance from level 1 is far more reliable than the scaling magic resist.

And finally 9 Greater glyphs of focus, which gives a solid amount of cooldown reduction, this goes great with thunder claws, but with this your losing the defense you could have.



Seals:
When buying the seals i wanted the first thing that caught my eye was the solid health and the health regen, as much as i liked the health regen i felt the solid health gives more survivability and furthermore enhancing your passive ability, therefore i went for 9

Greater seal of vitality Greater seals of vitality

You are probably thinking why not go for the solid health rather than the health per level as i mentioned earlier i do not like them, but after playing volibear a fair amount of times i felt he was best late game, and the further amount of health he has late game the better, and with these runes i managed to push to around 4.2k Health endgame with all my items, which is a huge amount.


Quintessence's
And finally you will want to consider your quintessence's, these are the special runes which you have to pick carefully but after watching phreak, and looking at the quintessence's my self i also felt the solid Attack speed was the best option so you want to go for 3

Greater quintessence's of alacrity This will give you some solid Attack speed, stacking these with your marks gives you a total of 25% attack speed... which is a lot, going nicely with your frenzy and thunder claws.

When developing masteries i had to consider many things.

Should i go in the damage tree because he uses attack speed?

Should i go down the damage tree because he uses ability power?

Should i go into the utility tree because hes good at jungling?

or finally Hybrid, a mix of defense and offensive talents, with a mainly defensive talent tree i can prioritise health, and other defensive stats but with the health his passive is far better, overall i believed a tanky build would be the best option, yet i still attempted to get some cooldown reduction and magic pen for his roar and ultimate.

If you question some of the masteries you may do since its early days and whats best for volibear is still unknown but follow these until you feel something else is nessesary.

Item Sequence in detail:

Regrowth pendant
Firstly you will want to buy a regrowth pendant, this will be built towards buying a philosopher's stone philosophers stone, which will later be used on
Shurelya's reverie for the health, health regen, cooldown reduction and a nice team support bonus giving the whole team 40% movement speed for 3 seconds.


You will then want to buy a health potion with your leftover starter hold. it will help alongside your passive to keep you staying in lane, or jungle if you consider it for a longer duration.

Philosopher's Stone You will then buy the stone as i said, by this time you should have enough to follow it up with boots of speed.

You can now choose between which boots you want, was there's i would say 3 best choices for volibear you can choose yourself, from mercury boots for the tenacity and magic resistance, ninja tabi or finally you can buy yourself some lucidity boots to get the cooldown reduction, it all depends what type of game/and play style you have.