Welcome to my guide for Volibear, The Thunder's Roar. This is the first guide that I have decided to publish on solomid, rather than simply hide it away in my computer, feel free to critique it, suggest upon it, and other such similar concepts. I do not like to read massive walls of text, so this guide is written out to be detailed but I tried to not make it rediculously long, not sure if I did or not, as I dont think a lot of people care to read gobs of text. So, on with the show.

Pros

• Great Initiator
• Doesnt Like to Die (Lot of HP)
• Lots of Utility
• Pretty good damage
• HES A FREAKING BIG ARMORED BEAR!

Cons

• Being focused can kill you before your passive works up
• Nothing to really escape
• Biggest damage dealing ability has a long cooldown
• Bloodrazors hurt
• Ignite Sucks
• Jungles Slow without Wriggles

Short and Simple, I take the high defensive masteries because Volibear is a tank, the extra heath buffs his abilities, as well as most of the rest of the tree complimenting him, his high health makes infiltrator very useful, damage reduction, armor, creep damage reduction, tank stuff. 9 in utility for a bit more move speed, reduced death time, the faster recall, and longer buff durations.

If you are a fan of Skarner or Udyr, you probably have this kind of rune page lying around already. Flat Attack speed Quints and Marks allow Volibear to swing faster, which not only clears the jungle faster, but also stacks his faster, which in turn, makes him hit faster as well. Scaling Health per level seals are used instead of armor because of how well they scale with Volibears passive , and with activated ability, good stuff for a tank. Scaling Magic per level Glyphs due to magic resist probably being something easily overlooked in my build, doesnt give a lot, so this helps out a bit with it.

Aternatives
Quints: Movement Speed(Swiftness), Fortitude(Flat Health), Vitality(Scaling Health), Desolation(Armor Pen)
Red: Desolation(Armor Pen)
Yellow: Resilience(Flat Armor), Fortitude(Flat Health)
Blue: Warding(Flat Magic Resist)

Heal is a great tool with its recent buff, plus in tune with Volibear's passive regneration and Spirit Visage, it makes for amazing survivability and turning the tables in teamfights.

Smite, well, need it be explained? Dragon/Baron Security and Jungle Clearing.

Other Spells


- Exhaust is handy in certain situations, I'd suggest it only if you were going solo top, or if nobody else has one, it can cripple an AD such as Tryndamere and keep some of your squishies from taking a lot of pain in fights.


Uhhh... What? Being as I dont play dominion, thats about all I have to say for this one.


- Volibear has tons of speed increases between his Q and Reverie, so I dont suggest bothering with ghost.


- Easily one of the most useless spells in the bunch, let it gather dust.


- Another possible seeing as attack speed and AP both benifit Volibear, although it would be more for a solo top rather than a jungler, but thats up to you.


- A good option for solo top or if you dont like heal, allows you to bounce around the map, split push and jump into teamfights or onto a ward to assist with dragon/baron, players preference here.


- This one Ive seen a lot more lately, its very handy against a team of mass CC, a good spell, but only for certain team comps.


- Mana regeneration is slim early on, but later Volibears mana doesnt suffer much, so this spell is relatively safe to avoid.

- Pesky healers on the other team? Dr Mundo or another Volibear around but nobody else has this for some reason? Completely situational, but chances are your team will have one or two.


- Amusing little spell, not something I would suggest, just, not valued as much as some of the other options.


- Ignore this one, your support should have it if anyone does.


- Volibears escape options are slim to none, if you want a way out, grab flash, if your comfy being a big meat shield with teeth and claws, let this one sit out and go crazy on them, never say die!

Heals volibear for 30% of his Maximum Health over 6 seconds when he drops below 30% Health.

120 second cooldown


This Passive, is insane, unless someone wants to focus you down (unlikely), you will be very hard to kill and has a fast cooldown, plus its based on your MAXIMUM health, so the tankier you get, the more it heals for.




Volibear gains 45% Movement Speed while moving toward enemy champions. Lasts 4 seconds.

Volibear's next attack deals an additional 25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 physical damage and flings the target behind him.

12/11/10/9/8 second Cooldown

Costs 40 Mana


This is something you have to get used to, if you play Singed, then you should have no trouble, be smart with it, if you gank someone, be sure your flinging them away from their turret, not toward it. The range for the speed increase is reasonably strong as well, so it kicks in really well.




Passive: Volibear gains 8% Attack Speed with each attack. Stacks up to 3 times.

Active: When Volibear has (3) stacks of Frenzy, he can bite an enemy to deal (90/140/190/240/290) (+20% of bonus Health) physical damage, increased by (1)% for each (1)% health the target is missing.

Cooldown 18 Seconds

Cost 35 Mana


This passively increases your attack speed per melee swing up to 3 times, and at the 3rd stack can be activated to deal a set ammount of damage, plus 20% of your maximum, PLUS 1% per 1% hp the target is missing. This attack can devastate someone running for their life, its range is larger than your average melee swing too, but has a reasonably long cooldown, so make sure to use it wisely.




Volibear deals (60/95/130/165/200) (+60% of ability power) magic damage to nearby enemies and slow them by 30% for 3 seconds.

Cooldown 11 Seconds

Cost 60 / 65 / 70 / 75 / 80 mana


This ability is another helpful tool that has a long enough range it can even be used for escaping, but is of course for keeping those pests in range to beat on. The fear in this spell also helps a lot when jungling, allowing you some freedom from being attacked while things run in circles.




Volibear channels the storm, causing all basic attacks for (12) seconds to deal (75/115/155) (+30% of ability power) magic damage, which chains to 4 nearby enemies.

Cost 100 Mana

Cooldown 100 / 90 / 80 seconds


For being Volibears ultimate, its pretty cool, this thing helps you swat people harder, and clean up minion waves, or creep camps, very quickly, the cooldown is rather short, and the cleave hits practically everything around you, a max of about 15-20 targets by the looks of it, or I just havent had more to cleave, the damage doesnt deteriorate with additional targets either, and is considered magic damage.

Prioritize in that order

The Reason for this is pretty straitforward. allows you to start off with a decent AoE, plus a fear, giving you some freedom of damage when starting out jungling, it flows with the regrowth pendants health regeneration allowing you to basically heal a little while the monsters run around feared, this I take at lvl 1 and max last. is the first to max and is again, pretty simple to understand why, faster swings, faster clearing. second to drop the cooldown and fling for a little more damage, the speed boost wont get better, but using it more often is awesome. is priority at 6, 11, 16, because well, its your ultimate :P

Initial Spawn -

First Trip Back -

Build Order from There - ->->->->->->->->

This build prioritizes more utility and tankyness into Volibear than damage, since his is scaling off his health, it still does hurt, plus flinging people around as a giant bear is always fun. I run a lot of utility items on Volibear because it helps you control fights better, can catch you up to someone crazy fast, or can give you that last umf because your just barely wore off. shuts down everything AD, and is yet, another slow in your bag of goodies. , something we dont see often these days, works with your passive , and summoner , you wont be dying very quickly... AT ALL. is an awesome item on almost any tank in the game. If you happen to be coming across a massive AD team, a or , could be subbed in instead of the , depending on your preference. Against sizeable AP, and also works on him in certain situations. Another all around side option as well is , who doesnt like a self rez, armor, and magic resist?

If you decide you'd rather have more damage on him than tankyness, you can always swap out for a , and possibly a .
works as well since the AP scales with and the slow apllies to them, not to mention 500 hp! Personally I prefer to be a unkillable madman and go full tanky, but we all have our taste for how we play.

Alternate Build
A path you may elect to take should you not mind clearing the jungle slower, you can start out with a and build out into a faster, followed by a , this build focuses more on late game capabilities and must be done as close to perfect as possible or you will fall behind in levels. Toward the late game you will want to aim into completing . The other items suggested above can also be subbed into this build as well should you desire.

Jungling with Volibear is extremely easy, I find him to be slower than someone like Udyr, but still very effective the way I use him. I start at blue golem with a leash and do a full clear of the jungle myself, using the single potion on the blue golem after I start taking some damage, to wolves, wraiths, mini golems, and lastly, red lizard. Your passive will probably kick in during the red lizard kill. With the jungling change there are a few new things to know, the Large Wolf, Blue Wraith, and bigger of the Mini Golems, will heal you for a small ammount when you kill them now, taking a bit of pain off your shoulders, the ammount increases (barely) the lower your health is upon killing them. All of the non buff jungling camps spawn super fast now as well, and yield smaller ammounts of gold. However, their health, damage, and gold dropped, scales with how long the game goes on and your level, rather than how often you've killed them. After this initial clear you can do a couple things, gank, if you feel comfortable with it, recall and then gank, or stay out there and clear more camps if your lanes are all safe, and nothing is really in a good spot to gank. Volibear also is pretty hard to gank in his own jungle, check out chapter 11, the explination there also applies to him being caught in his own jungle.

The route I note above is not the only route you can take with Volibear, but I do suggest getting at least level 3 before you attempt to gank anything no matter what route you decide to take, because its going to be much more successful with your speed boost.

Volibear is an exceptional ganker, huge speed from his , a slow in his , and a mortal striking can drop almost anything. As with any gank, make sure you know what kind of wards are out, try to make sure your team doesnt push past midlane, if the enemy is overextended even better, and you should be fine. Sneak into a brush, rush out with , POSITION yourself to fling the target back toward your teammates and slow them with , assuming all goes well, use when they are about 25% and it will probably kill them. If you are chasing someone through a lot of minions and have a worry about taking too much damage from them, activate and as long as you are hitting them it will take down the minions as you go. Volibear can also gank effectively with about half health or so thanks to his passive, if they decide to wail on you instead, let them, I explain why this is handy just below this section.

This is something I would highly suggest getting used to in any situation, you can flip the table on a lot of peoples faces if you hold onto until your passive kicks in, with them both going, you will get back up to around 60-70% hp by time your passive wears off and likely win your fight, or save your hide in a teamfight.

You're the tank with this guy, dont waddle around with the in the back of your group! Look for an opening, someone to stick their nose out, burn and , rush up and fling them, slow them with immidiately afterwards. This kind of combo makes Volibear an excellent initiator! They came to you? Ok, we can fix that. This is where work together like a golden ball and chain (it sounded like a good term, quiet you!), if you get rushed at, rush back, but make sure your team is ready for it! Obviously dont jump on 5 of them if there are 3 of you. Burn the speed boost from and initiate the same way, burn on as many of the enemy team as possible, slow them all down, cripple them, pop your ultimate whenever you are in a big mess of people and it will cleave things down ever so nicely, and save your for a low health target, as it will probably kill them.

Throughout the Game Volibear's playstyle keeps to a pretty similar pace, therefore I didnt include a early-mid-late game explination anywhere in here. Overall Volibear has a HUGE bag of tricks with this build and playstyle, he can survive forever with , and still puts out some pretty good pain on his own.

Once Again Feel free to contact me with suggestions, critique (preferably nothing compltely absurb and insulting), and any other comments. This is my first guide published, and I'll be updating it as I find new kinks and information, so please, "Be Nice, Or Be Your Approximation Of Nice."

Good Luck and Have Fun.

Guide Changes
11/30/11 - Made the guide more shiny :P
11/30/11 - Swapped Alternate and Initial Build Orders, Removed Alternate Build, Item Builds section updated (Alternate build still availible in Item Builds), Removed Wriggles Lantern Chapter.

Game Changes
-N/A-