League of Legends Designers Discuss the State of Volibear

The nearly-unplayed League of Legends champion Volibear once again showed up in discussions from [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

League of Legends Volibear
(Photo: Riot Games)

The nearly-unplayed League of Legends champion Volibear once again showed up in discussions from Riot Games, but it looks as though his changes will still take some time to be introduced.

Volibear is one champion that hardly sees much play due to his outdated kit compared to other champions that can easily avoid or CC him before he can unleash his thunderous damage, and he's been on the table for buffs for quite some time now. It's been said more than once by Riot Games that Volibear needs more work than just a simple buff or two, but those changes are taking some time to get right due to several factors that affect Volibear's balance.

"Volibear has a kit that causes him to be pretty one-dimensional and see wildly variant success between high-skill and low-skill play—he can be performing reasonably well at lower skill levels while underperforming pretty dramatically at higher ones," Riot Repertoir said in an Ask Riot post. "Because of these factors, he can take time to do good work on, even in the short-term. Doing 'good work' on Volibear entails trying to design more skilled play into his pattern, and so we don't necessarily just see buffing him as a good change."

In a separate post on the League of Legends boards, Riot Meddler was asked about Volibear as well with players looking for timeframes on his buffs, one of which was a potential knockback on his Majestic Roar (E). Riot Meddler responded by saying that whatever the changes may be, they won't be making their way into Patch 8.3 and will instead be more likely seen in Patch 8.4.

"Won't be making 8.3. We scoped up the changes a bit and right now 8.4 seems more likely, but will depend on confidence in testing. This is one we're taking a bit of a slow burn on."

It's also worth pointing out that these Ask Riot posts where Volibear was discussed won't be coming quite as often from now on. Riot said that it has plans to only release the Ask Riot posts once every other week instead of every week in an effort to address more hot-topic questions.

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