Varus feels like an actual husk of his former self
I'm currently Gold 2 and I have somewhere over 500k mastery on Varus and I have been playing him since I started in season 6. I didn't touch much ranked but I recently got into it and I tried my favorite "bot laner" bot lane. I swear he is actually just a shell of his former self. There was a time when his ult was really fast and managed to do a lot of work, then they nerfed it. His overall AD damage was pretty good and then they kept nerfing it to account for the top 5% of players or something absurd. Then, most recently, they gave him some lame compensation buff to his W on-hit damage while completely gutting his Q AD scaling. I know I missed a lot of stuff but as time goes on, Varus went from feeling like a real champion to just being some stupid pick that the degenerates of top lane managed to rob to terrorize the tanks and bruisers of the world with that AP bullshit that one-taps pretty much everything in the game. And then Riot had to nerf that build too, rightfully so, but still it's annoying that Varus can't even have gimmick stupid builds go untouched. Mind you, I mostly play top lane and anytime I do, it's always a sweep because people only play him top lane as a degenerate cheese pick and they don't actually understand how to play him in any meaningful way outside of going for montage one-shot plays.
I feel like it wasn't that long ago that you could genuinely have a decent Lethality, or (my personal favorite) On-Hit build that would actually feel pretty strong without feeling like I'm trying to pilot a champion that's scraping the bottom of the ADC barrel with champs like Kalista and Yunara.
I tried new builds and items - like Experimental Hexplate for his weird hybrid/AD mid/bot build, or Dusk and Dawn because it was broken for so many patches in a row, but genuinely nothing feels good to run like it used to. I'm aware I'm an actual grandpa who wants to build some crit on-hit Varus from season 6 with my little runaans running around like a troglodyte, but at least he was fun back then. Nowadays, he just feels like a gimmick character that is meant to be in top or mid lane and I'm just torturing myself trying to pilot him in his intended role against champs like Smolder, Twitch, Cait, Jhin, Jinx, or any flavor of APC that stomps traditional ADCs.
I've been sort of passively checking this sub-reddit every so often and I see a weird mix of people saying Varus is either insanely turbo broken or he's incorrigible dogshit, and with a 49% winrate (roughly, according to OP.GG and U.GG) and 5% pickrate (roughly, according to OP.GG and U.GG) I'm more inclined to think he just kind of sucks and people are trying their best. I will say, with the recent addition of Gluttonous Greaves and the change to Statik Shiv, I think he feels significantly better to play than he did say 2 patches ago, but even still, he feels incredibly weak even compared to some of the more underwhelming ADCs like Tristana or Sivir. All of this is to say that I personally think Varus needs to be buffed in some way to account for the actual chud gold players of the world because I understand he's broken in the hands of Gumayusi, but when I try and win matchups it feels like I have to work a 16 hour shift just to be slightly ahead while the enemy ADC is rewarded for just playing whatever flavor of the month broken OP bot laner is rampaging through botlane at that moment (Smolder at the moment).
If anyone has any advice or anything to improve, please let me know or if there are any items I should think about because I have been really liking Statik, Guinsoos, BotRK, Terminus (my beloved), Jak'sho, and GA/BT/Runaans but if anyone has any other stuff that's better/makes Varus at least feel better, please let me know. I just want to enjoy my favorite ADC again like I used to.