Talk:Volibear/@comment-173.180.154.18-20120119004223

People think he's weak because it's not clear what syncs with him, they see "single HP scaling attack", "No AD scaling, but passive attack speed", and "Low AP scaling on weak attacks", and completely miss the point.

He's built in a way that his tankyness lets him deal more damage in more ways that just his W, it lets you stand in their team fire and counter with your lightning bounce, and here's where it's key - you're not meant to be a glass cannon that would normally fall to this, but a damage-sink. This survivability makes your lightning threatening, and will either disrupt your opponent's formation as their carries and supports start taking damage from your attacks to their tank. The fact that your W will burst someone at low health will make them even more wary, breaking up their team comp if they can't kill you. This makes him a good sink for passive damage from secondary auto-attack effects like wit's end, ionic spark, malady, frozen mallet (no direct damage, but keeps them in range of your attacks for longer, potential damage.). The bonus from sunfire cape also works well, these help contribute to making him hard to ignore when he's leading a charge of a team fight, or when bullying your opponents away from their ganking attempt, along with your abilities to take control of the position of their champs with Q and E area slow, it's hard to recover from that.

Not to mention, you can either build 516 AP to double the damage on your ult, or you can build a little attack speed and get out twice as many hits in the same amount of time.

Heal, Surge, Defensive masteries and runes, HP-based item build, get combo items that give health plus other stats - sunfire cape, banshee's veil for defense, Frozen Mallet, Ionic Spark for offense, and warmogs for beefyness, and you'll have an absolute beast of a tanky disruptor.