LoL Patch 14.4: How The Buffs Brought Back Volibear
Volibear has been struggling in the past season. After some well deserved nerfs in Season 10 and 13 he was very lacking in his identity. Instead of the jungle players have started to pick him in the top lane where his move speed was not as important as in his ganking role. Now in patch 14.4 he was buffed again and is showing up in the meta again.
Volibear has had a very interesting path. After his initial rework he went to pick or ban in pro play but was then nerfed into oblivion. He had strong chasing and ganking tools combined with great skirmishing potential and even stronger dives. The ability to completely turn off towers has always been strong and combined with his E and Q it was very hard to outplay that.
He then got multiple nerfs on his Q move speed, which made it harder for him to successfully gank. This made the champion primarily a top laner as you can still out sustain and brawl against bruisers and tanks. Recently that has been rather weak as the meta has been bot lane focused and Volibear did not have the means to successfully get on an ADC.
LoL Patch 14.4 Welcome Back To Top Lane
It is currently Patch 14.4 and Riot has decided that the Bear is back. They gave him a few buffs that make him a lot stronger in lane but also give him some general game power.
He regained a bit of speed on his Q and his important trading ability E has got a cooldown reduction. That means more shields but also more damage for the bear.
Lastly, they shifted the power of his ultimate a bit. It disables turrets for a whole second less, but it also has 30 seconds less cooldown. These are huge buffs and can even bring Volibear back into the top lane meta.
They also changed his ultimate from CC immunity to giving him a displacement immunity. Basically, if he wants you, he will get you.
So are these changes enough? Well he went from a C tier champion in Patch 14.3 with 48.75% win rate to an S tier champion with over 50%.
He is definitely good right now and who knows. Maybe he will also return to the jungle soon!
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