Talk:Volibear/@comment-5122602-20120610221237/@comment-173.180.154.18-20120612041953

Well! If you don't mind a little reading, I can give some advice from what I've experienced while playing him.

Volibear's kit is dependant mainly on Health, armor, and resist to support his tanky playstyle.

Health benefits his passive, his W's damage, and his overall survivability, it's very potent on him and one of the primary attributes to build on him.

Armor and Magic resist as well are important, though however much you get may be dependant on the team you are fighting against. In particular, considerations may be made towards opponents building magic damage in the form of deathfire grasp and madreds bloodrazor may warrant a bit more investment into magic resist.

Since his kit relies on him auto attacking, attack speed, damage, armor pen, and on hit abilities work very well with him as well.

He does get some magic scaling, however, both E and R are on fairly long cooldowns to reliably build mainly AP on him. His R does get great scaling - though it may only be 0.3, that 0.3 is applied to numerous targets at once each second over 12 seconds - 12 auto attacks means the bonus damage from your AP is applied 12 times. Theoretically, this can result in some massive damage, but practically it's difficult to pull off. Magic pen does work fine though, but additional attack speed would increase the damage of his ult much more easily than AP would, while working with the rest of his kit as well.

Since he has some fairly long cooldowns, CDR is also something worth considering.

For runes:

Marks: attack speed, armor pen, even hybrid armor/magic pen could work.

Seals: flat armor

Glyphs: scaling magic resist

Quints: attack speed, armor/magic pen, movement speed are all useful.

For masteries, generally a 9/21/0 or 0/21/9 set would work well with him.

Offense tree: attack damage, attack speed, cooldown, attack/magic pen are all good choices

Defense tree: armor, resist, health, movespeed, scaling CDR, tenacity and 3% health boost from juggernaut all work exceptionally well with him.

Utility tree: I've not particularily used this tree much with him, though if jungling, swiftness and extended monster buffs would work very well.

For items, nearly anything that gives health can be utilized on him, warmogs is fine, of course, but I see too many volibear players rush that expensive warmogs right off the bat, and lose out on the other stats that could be making them more effective earlier on. (personal opinion)

Armor: Sunfire cape, Randuins, Aegis of the Legion

MR: Banshee's veil, Spirit Visage

Offense: Frozen Mallet, Ionic Spark, Rylais, Trinity Force, and Zeke's fervor

Shurelya's is also good for the CDR and speedup effect.

For items that don't add health, there are many good choices:

Quicksilver sash is a good item if you expect your opponents to get those nasty DoTs and reduced healing effects on you while your passive is up.

If you do indeed build a great deal of health, Atmas impaler will easily give you plenty of attack damage - you can easily get over 4000 health, nabbing you an easy +60 AD

Wriggles is great if you intend on jungling, farming, or sustaining yourself in lane, the ward and armor do not go to waste

Frozen Heart is fairly situational, your goal is to be in the thick of the teamfights, if you have a lot of high attack speed champs on your opposing side, this will help your team drastically

If you need an offensive item, Black Cleaver or Youmuus would work fairly well on him, in particular, black cleaver will help those three stacks of your W get off along with the 45 armor shred to help tenderize for your viscious bite. youmuu's if you're up against some fairly slippery opponents, will help you keep up with them.

Wit's End is a very popular item on him, for a fairly cheap item giving him two stats he really needs, attack speed and magic resist, while giving some nice additional magic damage to his auto attacks.

For boots, merc treads, it's very difficult to pass up that 35% tenacity.

short version:

armor pen marks, armor seals, MR/level glyphs, attack speed quints.

9/21/0 for masteries, 10% armor pen, everything health related.

boots + 3 pots -> heart of gold -> recurve bow -> merc treads -> ionic spark -> warden mail + negatron cloak -> randuin's, banshee's veil.