Talk:Volibear/@comment-26288916-20151217025216/@comment-11013454-20151220171550

Your idea is not terrible, but it functionally doesn't really help volibear perfrom any better if you really think about it. The ulty takes things he already has, changes them slighlty and devalues his passive enough to the point of needing to change it otherwise it would be op. That shouldn't be the goal of balancing.

Lets look at his ult. Realisticly, you only need it for teamfight and emergancy urgent waveclear for whatever dire reason. For this purpose, it's generally up towards the mid and late game. Early game he can get by without absolutely needing it. He doesn't need it for minions because of his E and titanic hydra further solves that problem. If his ult turns into a toggle, it needs to come with a sizeabel enough mana cost on hit to inflact that much damage consistnatly to up to 5 targets whenever you feel like it, which could give volibear potential mana probelms that he really does not need in his life. 3-5% of his HP on hit when his ult is not in thunder mode basically just robs him of tankiness in teamfights where it's very easy to CC and blast him when he takes the focus point, where as right now he atleast has a backup 30% hp that can kick in no matter what he does. Sure it would increase his overall sustain outside of teamfights but that's not where he needs his health. He doesn't need it for minions and laning and jungling and by the time you get your ulty you're busy ganking lanes more anyway. He can't the passive hp back at the same time as his damage, thats even more value he just gets out of smacking things and might as well just go attack speed items, which pretty much goes against tanking practicality.

CC is something you need to be very careful about units that usually have to tank. Most champions only have about 2 CC to them, with some exceptions like braum and leona having more and these champions cannot do as much damage naturally as volibear can without investing into damage. Volibear has two. He has a displacing flip that interrupts channels and puts targets in bad positions as well as an AOE slow that crippltes that target further from getting away. A third one is asking for trouble as he would become insufferable granted how beefy he is right now and how much damage he 'can' put out, granted with the changes you suggested he won't be as beefy and in further case what's the point of that extra CC if he can't take as much of a beating to carry it out without fear.You might as well just pick leona then because she was designed around disrupting that way. His passive is already solid, it doesn't need to be sacrificed or gutted to a watered down version that can't always be proced if you aren't hitting things, to make way for more CC that he similarly might not have a chance to proc. The only thing I could think of is giving him a passive that gives people who hit him a debuff of some kind to help him cope with the thing he could already do. LIke if someone hits him consecutively they start getting damaged by static electicity or get mini stunned. This may or may not even count spells while his current has one big boom answer to taking damage.

If your going to change his ult, change it into something else more practical instead of trying to modify how his current ult works by making it toggleable or making it passive or increasing it's arc numbers and stuff like that. Make him toss a giant mid range lightning bolt that either slays one target or can split on inpact and do variable damage. Make him create a thunder zone that damage and something else possibly to disencourage fighting him with his team. Make him cause a thunderclap around him and cause the struck targets to be silenced by the shell shock or even allow volibear to increase his attack range on these specifc targets since they're charged with electicitty. Something that gives him something he doesn't have to try and increase how he deals with situations

Of course, these are just my thoughts. I'm no expert. I could be horribly wrong =p