What builds are most viable for Varus in the mid lane right now? I'm not sure what happened but he seems very weak mid lane as of late. I've tried full AP and the shiv + D&D build. It leads me to believe that lethality is the most optimal or I'm garbage at the game.

^("I just wanna see the balance suggestions" -> bottom of post c:)

My yapping/rationale:

Varus is... weird. He's an ADC, an artillery mage, an on-hit marksman, an AP caster, a hybrid damage dealer, and occasionally a completely different champion depending on which letters someone decided to put after “Varus” in a build guide.

That is not something I want to remove, but I fear that some recent changes have pushed Varus towards this "streamlined" and "one way to play" reality.

My goal is specifically to preserve Varus's ability to build almost anything while making those builds meaningfully different, healthier to play against, and substantially easier to balance independently.

In 25.12, Riot explicitly cited Varus's lane strength from his lethality build as a reason for his exceptionally high professional presence. In 26.12, Riot again described him as a top-priority ADC/top-laner at the highest levels of play and specifically targeted early lethality while trying to preserve common on-hit builds, while lethality, already a far weaker build in standard play, fell into troll-level irrelevance. Earlier in 26.5, Riot directly described lethality as Varus's primary pro build while compensating on-hit Varus, which is fine, but again, lowers his unique property of being able to build in many different ways.

This history is the central problem that I'm attempting to solve. The actual problem with current Varus is not that Q is too strong, nor was it too strong, IMO. Varus should have a terrifying Q. A fully charged Piercing Arrow coming from one of the game's premier long-range marksmen ought to make someone very nervous. Removing that fantasy, as some recent changes have done, makes Varus less distinctive. The problem is what live Q is allowed to do simultaneously. It is both a safe, highly-damaging poke tool *and* an extremely effective wave-clear tool in the early game.

The particularly problematic part in terms of pro-play is this combination of lane poke and wave control: A Varus who can clear or substantially damage the wave while also threatening the enemy champion has much more lane control than a champion that specializes in only one of those things. This is precisely the type of efficiency professional players are exceptionally good at exploiting.

I don't want to make Q unimportant. It's what makes Varus, Varus. And I don't think hurting Varus' solo-queue build diversity is a good way to fix him either. We have tons of on-hit marksmen. Forcing Varus into only an on-hit build removes anything that makes Varus so special to me.

A clean Q should still hit extremely hard. What Q should not do is simultaneously provide excellent champion poke and effortless wave manipulation. That is why I'll propose adjusting it so severely. An early Q that passes through a minion loses a very large portion of its physical damage. If Varus wants the scary, high-scaling version of his Q, he has to find a clean firing line. This also means the opponent has an actual defensive tool that does not simply consist of “dodge the skill shot”: use the wave. They can do this now, but it is simply not good enough at the moment.

And, importantly, in my proposal, I maintain that Blight damage is not reduced by Q's per-target physical damage reduction. That means the system differentiates between cheap ranged poke and an actual Varus trade. If Varus has taken the risk of attacking the champion and building Blight, his reward still comes through even when the physical arrow itself has to pass through the wave. You should not get maximum value from Q merely because you are 1200+ units away. If you actually fight in auto-attack range as Varus, though, you should absolutely be rewarded. That is a much healthier form of power, IMO.

If Q is nerfed because lethality Varus is oppressive, this also hurts on-hit Varus, hybrid Varus, and any other build that uses Q's physical damage. If his power (especially his scaling) is reduced globally, the champion can become miserable in solo queue while remaining strategically valuable in pro play. That feedback loop is the thing my redesign is intended to break. The goal is not to make Varus bad in professional play. The goal is to make professional teams choose which version of Varus they actually want instead of receiving his entire kit's efficiency by default.

In my suggested version of Varus, a Q-max Varus gets a terrifying Q, but his W remains low rank and therefore his Blight engine remains comparatively weak until much later in the game. He does not get five stacks, he does not have the strongest W on-hit, and he does not have an excellent E.

An E-max Varus can have extremely strong wave clear and zone control, but his Q is low rank, his W is low rank, and E is very slow. He can control the wave without also becoming an excellent poke champion.

A W-max Varus gets the actual full Blight engine: more powerful Blight, more stacks (spoilers!), and eventually the five-stack ceiling. But he has sacrificed early Q and E ranks to get there.

Another thing I want to preserve: Varus does not need to have mediocre wave-clear. In fact, I'm perfectly comfortable with E-max Varus having extremely strong or even best-in-class wave-clear. The important question isn't: “Is Varus allowed to clear waves quickly?”; It is: “What does Varus have to give up to become exceptionally good at clearing waves?”. It also creates an actual strategic reason to choose E max rather than simply treating E as a generic utility spell- lose early-game damage, but gain wave-clear. Especially since, like, no-one ever is maxing E first or even second, at the moment.

Q's mana cost is another deliberate separation between poke and wave control The proposed Q is intentionally expensive, especially early, albeit while hurting more to compensate. This creates an important resource conflict: Every Q used for poke is mana that cannot be spent on E wave-clear. A Varus who wants to repeatedly poke with Q cannot also casually spam E into every wave in my version of Varus. A Q-max Varus can (and IMO should!) still have enormous poke. He just has to pay for it. And different itemizations solve that problem in different ways.

• A lethality/caster Varus that wants frequent Qs may need mana investment such as Manamune, which costs offensive specialization elsewhere, esp if you build it early.
• A crit Varus may use an option such as Essence Reaver to address mana and haste, but then becomes more cooldown-gated or sacrifices AD for items like Flickerblades.
• An on-hit Varus can largely ignore the problem because Q's physical damage isn't supposed to be his primary source of damage.
• A hybrid can patch several weaknesses simultaneously, but consequently has less access to the absolute peak of any individual stat scaling.
• Q also, in my proposal, has an increasing self-slow while charging, and no access to the full W/Blight stack cap unless the player actually invests in W.

The self-slow is particularly important. A short Q is weak but relatively safe. A fully charged Q is much stronger but slows Varus much more. This creates a sort of continuous risk-vs-damage decision. If Varus immediately needs to protect himself, he can fire early. If he has a perfect firing lane and can afford to stand still, he can charge. If he greedily holds the charge looking for the perfect shot, the opponent gains more time to punish him. So it asks how much danger are you willing to accept for more damage?

Also, fully-stacked Blight *should* be very devastating. That is intentional. But this should require either: investing in W, staying in attack range and repeatedly attacking, or spending a long-cooldown ultimate to generate them. That is a much healthier price IMO. In my version, the maximum payoff is higher, but so is the commitment. A Varus that spends the time and takes the risk to build five stacks should have a much scarier payoff than one casually firing from safety.

R is intentionally a guaranteed setup *starter*. R is one part of the current kit that I deliberately don't wanna over-correct. Varus is a high-skill champion. He should have an high ceiling in my opinion. But a high ceiling does not mean the baseline experience should be “If you cannot perfectly weave autos, the champion does nothing.” I see R as sort of a bridge between those two extremes. A less experienced player can hit R and immediately have an understandable combo opportunity: R hit → Q. That is the guaranteed setup starter.
But, in the interest of unique and fun counterplay, I chose to make the maximum payoff non-guaranteed: R, in my suggestion, adds Blight at specific intervals. Meanwhile, tenacity may reduce the time Varus has to aim while the target is still immobilized. The result is R guarantees that the combo starts. It does not guarantee that the combo finishes perfectly. That distinction gives new players a reliable entry point while giving experienced players a huge amount of optimization, which I think would be really beneficial. It also means an R-hit target is not simply waiting for a health bar to disappear. They can counter-play to a degree, without making R unreliable.

E serves several purposes in the redesign. First, it becomes the primary wave-clear tool. Second, its deployment speed scales with bonus attack speed. This means on-hit Varus—who already wants AS for autos and Blight—naturally gets faster E usage. Third, E gains anti-dash interaction. My intent is that Varus can predict a dash and punish it, especially on an AS-heavy build that can deploy E quickly enough to react. A good on-hit Varus can therefore have meaningful outplay potential against a champion like Naafiri or another highly mobile diver. Fourth, the slow has AP scaling. This intentionally compensates AP Varus for having weaker physical autos than AD/on-hit variants. AP Varus gains more control over the space around him instead of merely being given more raw auto damage. These additions are all meant to make E serve different strategic functions without giving every build access to the same level of them.

Perhaps the most important part to me though: my design explicitly preserves Varus's ability to build almost anything, but each archetype has its own reason to exist.

Lethality Varus? His Q is terrifying. But his magic Blight damage does not benefit from his physical penetration, and he sacrifices sustained W investment.

AD on-hit Varus? This is the sustained physical/mixed-damage marksman. He gets stronger autos, meaningful Q/E scaling, W on-hit damage, Blight, and AS-driven E responsiveness.

Crit Varus? This can become a high-AD, high-impact-auto version of Varus. He does not inherently have to buy massive attack speed (PD). A high-AD crit Varus can have fewer but much more threatening attacks. A high-AS crit Varus can exist, but is moving toward the on-hit ecosystem and paying an opportunity cost in AD scaling, which I think is a bit healthier.

AP on-hit Varus? This is the sustained magic-damage marksman. He gets more from the W AP ratio, max-health Blight scaling, and AP-scaling healing/control. He gives up the raw physical power of AD on-hit.

AP burst Varus? The nuker. He deliberately gives up much of the AS ecosystem in my new design in exchange for enormous spell/Blight conversion. His key question is not “can I attack faster?” but “can I create one enormous conversion window?”. This gives the AP player two genuinely different approaches rather than one AP build simply being the strictly correct version. I've also tried to tune it so that he does *not* become too good in top-lane. Hence why top-lane Varus will have either a weaker W (less %hp damage) or much worse wave-clear (by not ranking E first) early on.

Another goal I had is to prevent one item ecosystem from accidentally making every Varus archetype better at everything: Lethality and armor penetration primarily improve the physical portions of Varus's damage: autos, Q, E., but not W's magic on-hit or Blight's magic damage. That means lethality Varus can be terrifying with his arrow without automatically becoming equally terrifying at Blight conversion, making him more effective against squishies while preserving his weakness against high-hp enemies. AD on-hit instead has meaningful mixed physical/magic output. This gives Terminus a reason to exist for that build. And AP on-hit has a genuine choice between mixed penetration and specializing harder into magic penetration.

Meanwhile, the new passive fixes one of Varus's strangest design problems. Current Living Vengeance is interesting but IMO very messy and unclear. Kills grant attack speed. That attack speed is then converted into both AD and AP. A champion kill substantially increases the effect and raises the attack-speed cap. This creates a strange hidden stat-conversion machine that affects every build. It also means a change to attack speed can indirectly alter multiple damage types at once. My proposed new passive keeps his "snowball" ability in team-fights while having a much clearer point of strength, and avoids buffing poke/burst potential too excessively.

I gave him sustain as a passive. But the new attack healing is intentionally modest on a per-hit basis. Its value only really comes from repeatedly attacking champions, and is specifically for the nominally-lower-damage AP builds. This further incentivizes Varus to genuinely interact in lane while giving high-AS builds higher sustain as compensation for their lower safety.

I've simplified some unnecessarily weird or confusing stuff: As an example, Q timing windows are now aligned. The Q charge bar actually represents the meaningful charge period. W can be activated for the entire period in which Q is increasing toward maximum power. This is in contrast to the current system where: W activation available for the first 0.85 seconds, damage scales for 1.25 seconds, and range (and UI element) scale for 1.5 seconds. Also, R now adds stacks at clearly defined intervals. All this is so the player can understand what is happening.

This may be the most important long-term goal of the redesign: there are deliberately many independent balance levers, and they should (hopefully) be fairly obvious things to adjust to balance Varus. The ideal outcome of these changes i propose is not simply "All Varus builds are equally strong"- The ideal outcome is: When one Varus build becomes too strong, that build can be corrected, and adjusted if too pro-play dominant, without destroying the others, nor destroying that build for solo-Q.

Put simply, I want to eliminate the Varus balance death spiral: The current pattern is roughly: One build becomes oppressive in coordinated play, while Varus is generically weak in Solo-Q. That is how a champion becomes permanently stuck between “bad in solo queue” and “dangerous in pro.”

A strange build should be allowed to become viable - That's what makes Varus so special! It should even be allowed to unexpectedly become one of his best builds. The goal is simply to ensure that its strength comes with identifiable opportunity costs and that Riot has a clean way to adjust it if necessary.

Simply put: I'm not trying to turn Varus into a single “correct” champion. This is specifically why I'm so disappointed with recent changes towards being an on-hit-only champ. I am trying to make him a canvas of many potential "styles" living inside the same kit, but with clear levers to adjust each without killing the others when needed. Q Varus is terrifying from range. W Varus is terrifying if allowed to stay in combat. E Varus gives amazing wave-clear but lower early fighting ability. AP Varus converts Blight and spells into magic damage. On-hit Varus makes attack frequency matter. Lethality Varus makes physical spell hits matter. Hybrid Varus accepts lower peaks in exchange for covering several dimensions. Etc. And critically, none of those versions is supposed to receive all of the others' advantages for free.

That is the core philosophy in my attempt to rework Varus: Preserve Varus's absurd build diversity, but turn it from overlapping accidental efficiency into deliberate specialization.

The champion should still be capable of doing ridiculous things - A full-charge Q should still be terrifying. Fully-stacked Blight should still be a massive payoff. AP burst should still be capable of nuking a tank. On-hit Varus should still become a machine gun. Some builds should still be able to annihilate waves.

The difference is that Varus has to choose which ridiculous thing he wants to be good at, and each is independently adjustable, balance-wise, without killing the build diversity.

That is the version of Varus I think can retain his identity, retain his high skill ceiling, remain fun for players who enjoy his weird build diversity, and finally give balance changes a realistic chance of hitting any specific problematic points without taking the rest of the champion down with it-

My proposal:

P: Living Vengeance

Innate: Varus’ Abilities detonate Blight Stacks. Varus’ Basic attacks apply Blight Stacks. Blight can be enhanced by upgrading Blighted Quiver. Varus starts the game with Blighted Quiver unlocked, and it has an additional maximum rank to compensate.

Varus’ Basic attacks against champions and monsters heal him on-hit for (1*level; 18 at level 18) (+3%AP) health.

After killing an enemy champion, Varus multiplies his current total BONUS attack speed by 1.5. His attack speed cap is increased to 4 (from 3), and he doubles his on-hit healing (to 2*level; 36 at level18) (+6%ap) health. This lasts 10 seconds, refreshing the duration on additional champion kills.

Q: Piercing Arrow

COST: 100 mana

COOLDOWN : 21/18.5/16/13.5/11

CAST TIME: none

RANGE: 800 – 1600 (based on channel time)

WIDTH: 140

SPEED:1900

Active: Varus charges while being slowed by (1% to 40% based on 0 to 1.5 seconds of charge time) for up to 4 seconds to increase Piercing Arrow’s range and its effects over the first 1.5 seconds of the channel.

Piercing Arrow can be recast within the duration. If the charge completes without reactivation, Piercing Arrow is cancelled and refunds 50% of the mana cost.

Recast: Varus fires a piercing arrow in the target direction that deals physical damage to enemies hit. The damage of the arrow as well as any detonated Varus's ability Blighted Quiver Blight stacks are both increased by 0% – 50% (based on 0-1.5s channel time), and the arrow's damage is reduced by (33.33%-16.66% based on level 6-18) for each enemy hit (up to a capped (75%-50% based on level 6-18) reduction in total). If the first enemy hit is a champion, restore (3-33 based on level 1-11) mana.

Minimum Physical Damage:

75 / 120 / 165 / 200 / 245 (+ (70/80/90/100/110 by rank)% bonus AD)

Blighted Quiver

COOLDOWN:40, CAST TIME: none

Passive: Varus' basic attacks are empowered to deal bonus magic damage.
Bonus Magic Damage: 6 / 12 / 18 / 24 / 30 / 36 (+ 12% bonus AD) (+ 25% AP) (+1 per 8% bonus AS)

Varus applies a stack of Blight on-hit for 6 seconds, refreshing on subsequent applications and stacking up to (3/3/4/4/5/5 by rank) times. Varus’ abilities detonate all Blight stacks on affected enemies hit.

For each stack consumed, the target is dealt bonus magic damage. If the stacks were consumed with Piercing Arrow, this damage is increased by 0% – 50% (based on Piercing Arrow's charge time).

Detonation damage vs. monsters is hard capped at (50-150 (increased up to 50% by charge time) based on levels 1-18) per stack.

Additionally, each stack consumed against a champion or monster reduces the remaining cooldowns of Varus' basic abilities by 7.5% of each of their total cooldowns, up to a 37.5% cooldown reduction per target. If the stacks were consumed with Piercing Arrow, the cooldown reduction is increased by 0% – 50% (based on Piercing Arrow's charge time) (up to a 56.25% cooldown reduction per target from consuming 5 stacks against them).

Bonus Magic Damage per Stack: 1.5/2/2.5/3/3.5/4% (+ 1.1% per 100 AP) of the target's maximum health

Active: Varus' next Piercing Arrow within 5.5 seconds is empowered to deal additional bonus magic damage, increased by 0% – 50% (based on Piercing Arrow's charge time). This damage is capped at 360 against monsters.

Active Minimum Magic Damage: 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 / 14 / 16% of target's missing health

If Varus does not cast Piercing Arrow, Blighted Quiver can be recast. Blighted Quiver can be cast during the first 1.5 seconds of Piercing Arrow's charge, and will be placed on full cooldown after the charge ends even if Piercing Arrow is not recast.

Recast: Varus ends Blighted Quiver and places it on a static (not affected by haste) 10 second cooldown.

Blighted Quiver's active and recast can both be used while affected by cast-inhibiting crowd control.

Hail of Arrows

COST: 70/75/80/85/90 mana

COOLDOWN: 16/15.25/14.5/13.75/13

CAST TIME: 0.2419

TARGET RANGE: 900

EFFECT RADIUS: (250/300/350/400/450 based on rank)

Active: Varus fires a hail of arrows at the target location that land after (1-0.1 based on 0%-200% total bonus attack speed) seconds, dealing physical damage to enemies hit and executing minions and small monsters below (50-100 based on level 1-11) health.

Physical Damage: 60 / 120 / 180 / 240 / 300 (+ 90% bonus AD)

The area then becomes desecrated for 4 seconds, slowing enemies within and inflicting them with Grievous Wounds.

Slow: 30% (+8% per 100AP)

Enemies dashing in the area take extra physical damage.

Bonus Physical Damage: 50/95/140/185/230 (+100% bonus AD)

Chains of Corruption

COST: 120 mana

COOLDOWN: 100 / 90 / 80

CAST TIME: 0.2419

RANGE: 1600

WIDTH: 200

TETHER RADIUS: Centered 650/Edge 600

SPEED: 1900

Active: Varus unleashes a tendril of corruption in the target direction that infects the first enemy champion hit, dealing magic damage and rooting them for 2 seconds, during which they are revealed. Once rooted, they are also inflicted with five stacks of blight – one every 0.4 seconds (0.4,0.8,1.2,1.6,2 seconds)

Magic Damage:

225/275/325 (+ (90/100/110 by rank)% AP)

Upon impact, the tendril roots into the ground from where the target was hit, seeking out nearby enemy champions that are in the immediate area. If a target does not leave the area within 2 seconds, they subsequently become infected as well, taking the same damage and effects. A new tendril is then spread out from the infected target that is closest to a nearby uninfected enemy champion. The infection can spread repeatedly until there are no new targets.

"I aint reading allat" version

Could b missing things :P

Passive: Kills grant AS and convert AS into AD/AP -> Autos apply Blight + heal; champion kills give 1.5× bonus AS, 4.0 AS cap, doubled on-hit healing

Passive on-hit healing: none -> 1*level + 3%AP

Q mana: 50-70 -> 100 flat

Q cooldown: 16-12s-> 21-11

Q range: 895-1595-> 800-1600

Q rank-5 full-charge damage: 360 + 120% bAD -> 367.5 +165% bAD

Q through enemies: Up to 67% -> 33.3%-16.7% reduction per target, capped at 75%-50% reduction.

Q mana refund: None-> 3-33 mana if first hit is a champion.

Q charge self-slow: 20% ->1% - 40%

Q/W timing: W usable only during first 0.85s -> W usable for the entire 1.5s charge time

W: Normal spell-> Starts unlocked, has 6 ranks

Blight cap: 3 -> 3/3/4/4/5/5 by W rank

Blight damage: 3-5% max HP/stack + 1.3% AP -> 1.5-4% max HP/stack + 1.1% AP

W on-hit: 4-40 + 15% bAD + 25% AP -> 6–36 + 12% bAD + 25% AP + 1 per 8% bonus AS

Blight CDR: 13%/stack, 39% max -> 7.5%/stack, 37.5% max

Q fully charged Blight CDR: 58.5% max -> 56.25% max

W active missing HP min: 6-14% -> 6-16%

W active full-Q max: 9-21% -> 9-24%

W cancelled active: 1s cooldown -> 10s static cooldown

E mana: 90->70-90

E cooldown: 18-10s->16-13s

E radius: 300 -> 250-450

E landing time: 0.5s -> 1.0-0.1s based on bonus AS

E slow: 30–50%-> 30% + 8%/100 AP

E minion execute: None -> 50–100 HP

E anti-dash: none -> 50–230 + 100% bAD

R mana: 100 -> 120

R cooldown: 100/80/60s -> 100/90/80s

R range: 1370-> 1600

R projectile width: 240-> 200

R speed: 1500-> 1900

R damage: 150-350 + 100% AP-> 225-325 + 90-110% AP

R Blight: Establishes maximum stacks over 1.7 sec -> 1 stack every 0.4s: 0.4/0.8/1.2/1.6/2.0

Im not good, Im gold and ranking up, but I can not fucking win on this champ. Laning phase feels absolutely terrible against literally everyone, I feel like im only able to contribute when its late game and I can one shot someone. Any advice?