Oh, Varus. Look, canonically you’re kinda three people at once, so having three times the balance changes of other champions is only fair, right? We’re nerfing Varus’s lethality build as it’s the most pro-dominant ADC in the current patch. However, because on-hit Varus in bot lane is weak, we’re compensating AD on-hit Varus to keep that build afloat.

Last patch's Varus buffs heavily overshot our target and has resulted in him becoming one of the game's strongest top laners as well. We're sorry for the inaccurate tuning and now that we've got more room to work with, we're looking to weaken his top lane performance as much as possible by rendering him more susceptible to all-ins, reducing his affinity for the top lane role quest, and weakening his top-specific build of AP and maxing W first.

Varus isn’t doing very well in the new season so we’re here to lift up his two primary builds, on-hit and AD caster.

We’re tweaking Varus this patch in order to make him stronger in the hands of the average player while making him weaker in pro play. To achieve this, we’re nerfing lethality Varus, as it’s his primary pro build, and buffing his on-hit builds as compensation.

Varus’ strength in lane combined with his ability to choose between poke and on-hit builds has made him one of the highest presence ADCs in the pro scene. We’re looking to chip away at some of his laning strength this patch to open up space for other carries to shine.

Like with Ashe and Kalista, we'd like to make Varus's super early laning phase feel more interactive. Hail of Arrows is an extremely long range and reliable poke tool, especially when combined with undodgeable systemic damage from Comet and Scorch. While Varus has very good reasons for his E being long range and reliable (mostly for popping Blight on fleeing enemies), we can price that spell cast such that it requires those Blight stacks to be worth casting. So we're shifting his mana constraints to let him play around Piercing Arrow much more, which has higher-quality gameplay around dodging and hiding behind minions, and relegating Hail of Arrows to a more situational skill. To further create room in the early game, we're also stretching out Blighted Quiver's bonus on-hit damage.

Varus was another loser from BoRK's nerfs last patch and we'd like to give him a little love. We'd still prefer he play in the on-hit space more often than lethality, so we're playing up his sustained damage profile.

Varus’ buffs in 14.17 landed a little stronger than intended, so we’re tapping down the AD ratios he received. We still want his primary builds to be attack speed and AD focused without his Lethality ones overtaking them, and these changes should be in line with that.

Varus has escaped Pro jail and despite his recent buffs, is still underperforming. This patch we’re playing up his gold scaling with bonus AD purchases to make sure he can scale reasonably well into the late game while making him continue to build damage items in order to do so. We acknowledge that these changes will buff his lethality a bit more than his on-hit ones but currently his lethality builds are extremely weak with a significant gap between the two, so there’s room to bring them a bit closer, and we still expect Varus to always build a few attack speed items.

We adjusted Varus a couple patches ago with the goal of making him more balanceable for most players without dominating Pro play. We’re pretty confident in the direction right now but he’s now in a state where he’s a little too weak for regular players and his optimizations are unintuitive. We’re bringing down the value of maxing W first and putting that power back into places we took away, namely base AD and his passive. We’re further buffing his champion takedown passive to ensure he thrives in high-kill environments.

Varus has two builds right now: Lethality and on-hit. Lethality Varus is much stronger than most players realize, as maxing Hail of Arrows second is better but less common. Meanwhile, on-hit Varus has the problem of quickly approaching the attack speed cap of 2.5 attacks per second and suddenly doesn't have a passive any more. And all the while, Varus is the most picked bot laner in pro right now. We'd like to not only shake up the pro scene but also make Varus a more enjoyable and intuitive champion to play for everyone else. The primary change here is a retooling of his passive. Instead of granting increasingly large amounts of attack speed, it will give a smaller amount up front that should feel similar in the laning phase, but as the game goes on, give stats that synergize with attack speed: AD for autos, Q, and E, and AP for the entire W loop. We're also powering up the spell-weaving loop by giving more cooldown refund on Blight pops. Ideally, Varus will have a strong spell-weaving AD-AS item build alongside his pure lethality and on-hit ones. The secondary changes are around making his skill orders more intuitive and whittling away at his pro strengths. As mentioned before, most lethality Varus players were maxing W second, so we're making ranks in W matter a bit more for Lethality builds to close the power disparity there. Meanwhile, early game nerfs to his attack damage through base AD and Q+W damage should make him less of a lane bully. Finally, we're making it a little more forgiving to use the W+Q spell combo, giving more time to activate Blighted Quiver while charging up.

Varus currently has two viable builds: Lethality and on-hit. But despite being relatively balanced for the vast majority of players, he's dominating Pro play drafts. In order to address this, we're toning down a Pro-specific strength that will impact his early laning phase.

Varus ended up losing out a bit from the anti-snowballing changes from 13.20 so he's getting a small compensation buff in this patch. We're aiming to keep his on-hit and lethality builds at similar power levels, so he's receiving light buffs that help both play styles. We specifically like that Varus provides some crowd control, so we're playing up that part of his kit. As an extra note, lethality Varus currently looks worse than it actually is as Duskblade is still the most often purchased first item despite Youmuu’s Ghostblade being the better option. So we’re avoiding buffing this build further as we expect it to get stronger as players update their build paths.

AP Varus has been causing quite the ruckus recently, especially in top lane. It's certainly an interesting build, and quite strong, but his unique niche is "I deal 1000 + 60% of your maximum health at 1200 range." We're glad that he cares about Blight stacks, but it's just too much maximum health damage. We're hoping to keep all Varus builds viable while giving high-health champions more of a fighting chance against his high damage AP combos.

Varus hasn't been hitting the mark in either Pro Play or Solo Queue, so we're giving him a straightforward buff that should help, regardless of whatever build he opts for.

Varus has been relatively weak since his Lethality nerfs last season. We're buffing his on-hit builds back up to make his vengeance viable again.

Our nerfs to lethality Varus were a little too piercing, so we're giving him some power back to promote his lethality playstyle but at a bit shorter-range than his Q. On-hit builds continue to perform solidly on Varus, and we don't believe this buff will push them over the top.

Varus' last nerf missed the mark, so we're going a bit harder with a pointed focus on his Lethality builds, which are more reliant on his Q. (As a reminder, his Q cooldown can get partial refunds with stacks from W - Blighted Quiver's passive.)

Varus has been bullying his lanes pretty hard, especially in Pro play. These changes should weaken his early game a bit on all fronts.

Varus’ buff in patch 11.4 on his W made his Lethality builds especially powerful, so we’re pulling back accordingly.

If you ordered another underperforming marksman in distress, you're in luck—we've got Varus. Giving him some much-needed power that should help him feel more like a full combo rather than a sad side of fries.

We’re giving more incentive for Varus to fully charge his Q in combat. Extra juicy for lethality and crit builds.

Varus is a straight shooter but he’s been behind the curve, especially with builds that aren’t attack speed heavy. Giving him a nudge up.