Talk:Varus/@comment-25532677-20151018180233/@comment-1666421-20151019071835

What build do you use?

I've been going Gunblade > Berserker's > Nashor's > any 3 of Deathcap, Void Staff, Runaan's, or even other situational items like Frozen Heart, Athene's, etc. (Fed my ass off in most of my games so far but it's a combination of really shitty micro and patchy internet.)

You go Gunblade first for a bunch of reasons: it gives you huge AP for your W and R, lifesteal and SV to help you sustain a bit in laning, some AD for extra damage (can't hurt, especially with HPen marks), and most important of all, you get the slow active. The champ most similar to AP Varus is probably Kayle, and Kayle is viable partly because she has a spell that slows a target, allowing her to kite. Gunblade gives Varus that same power, and the CD of that active gets reduced with every AA, so it becomes very spammable.

You get Berserker's Greaves, because sources of attack speed are few and far between for AP champs, and Varus needs attack speed a lot more than he needs Mpen.

Nashor's completes your core build. You now have a lot of attack speed, CDR to have your ult up as often as possible (the damage from it is insane, plus it obviously helps you stack W by rooting targets), and even more AP scaling on your AAs (45% from W, mastery, and Nashor's).

After this, you can evaluate the state of the game and decide where to go next. Anything that gives AP should be a huge priority, as the % damage from W scales with AP, so for this reason Deathcap is almost always a great purchase. Void Staff gives you % Mpen to go along with your % damage, so versus any number of tanks or juggernauts you should definitely pick this up as well - there's nothing quite like chunking a spinning Garen for a couple thousand points off his health bar.

Beyond this, it's really up to you. Runaan's helps you in teamfights - both your Q and E can proc W on multiple targets, so being able to stack on multiple targets simultaneously gives you power Vayne doesn't have. It's also one of the most cost-effective sources of attack speed in the game.

Anyone have some contrasting ideas?