More and more professional players are playing Varus in the mid lane. After Frederik “NoWay” Hinteregger showcased the pick in the bot lane weeks ago, the champion is a secret tip for the League of Legends Solo Queue. He can be played in two different ways, depending on the opponent team composition.
What makes Varus so strong? Varus has been played in the mid lane from time to time and has often been among the meta picks in the past. However, the current meta revolves mainly around common mages like Viktor, Taliyah, and Sylas.
And this is where Varus comes into focus. He deals incredibly high damage with his Q and W combination. Here you can see a clip of Cho’Gath, who takes almost 5900 health in a few seconds of damage:
AP Varus can deal massive damage through combinations with his W ability and completely destroy opponents.
It suffices for the opponent to have taken 3 stacks of his W ability beforehand, which can then be activated by the other abilities. The main damage comes from the combination of Q and W abilities and is very painful for the opponent.
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What should you consider while playing? Depending on the opponents, Varus can be played in different ways. There’s the full AP Varus, which focuses on ability power. This build focuses on the combination between the Q ability and the stacks of the W ability to kill opponents from a distance.
The alternative focuses on dealing additional damage with each auto attack. In this build, you work a lot with attack speed and must pay special attention to how you position yourself on the map and move in fights.
Here we will briefly outline the two variants. Feel free to be inspired by the builds and experiment further to find out what works best. If you’re not sure yet, use the practice tool in LoL so that the ranked games are not seen as lost right from the start.
The right runes and items for your Varus build in LoL
The Full-AP Varus:
- Your runes in the inspiration tree are: First Strike > Magical Footwear > Futures Market > Cosmic Insight
- In the second tree, you can experiment. However, bone plating and lifesaver have proven to be effective so you can endure more and take control of the lane
- The most important items are: Doran’s Blade > Nashor’s Tooth > Riftmaker > Rabadon’s Deathcap
- The playstyle focuses on hitting with your ultimate ability or getting 3 stacks on the opponent before you shoot him with an arrow
The Attack Speed Varus:
- For the attack speed build, the runes are: lethal tempo > triumph > legend: zeal > cutting down
- In the second tree, it is essential that you take the runes cosmic insight and magical footwear. This provides Varus with additional cooldown reduction and more movement speed
- The most important items consist of: Doran’s Blade > Infinity Edge > Blade of the Ruined King > Guinsoo’s Rageblade
- In case the opponent team has a lot of ability power damage, buy the end of wisdom after the Infinity Edge
- The important thing about this build is to stay in constant movement to avoid being caught off guard
Here you have a fight at the dragon, showing how effective Varus can be:
By the way, we tried the attack speed build for you. The game was played at Bronze-Silver Elo:
Who else plays Varus? The mid laner of G2, Rasmus “caPs” Borregaard Winther, plays off-meta champions from time to time in the Solo Queue. In his streams, he plays champions like Shaco or Zac mid lane.
After NoWay played Varus mid lane, caPs adopted the pick and played it himself with success. It went so far that the mid laner of G2 played the pick in the LEC and this pick helped his team to victory.
So far, Varus’s pick rate doesn’t promise much. The win rate of Varus is currently still 49.35% (via op.gg). After G2’s strategy was published and Twitch streamer NoWay showcased the pick as a trendsetter, we can only wait and see when the nerf on Varus comes, as some Reddit posts already suggest.
Have you ever had to play against Varus? What are your experiences and how did you handle them?
If you’re interested in strong picks, especially for the Worlds, this article might be exciting for you: LoL strengthens the favorite champions of professionals – and this just before the Worlds 2022
