Overview: Varus, the Arrow of Retribution

After the recent reveal of the upcoming champion Hecarim, Riot again gave us a sneak peek of another champion - Varus, the Arrow of Retribution.


Here are the skills of Varus:


Passive:  Living Vengeance
On kill or assist, Varus temporarily gains Attack Speed. This bonus is larger if the enemy is a champion.

Q: Piercing Arrow

First Cast: Varus starts drawing back his next shot, gradually increasing its range and damage.

Second Cast: Varus fires, dealing 10/43/77/110/143 (+) to 15/65/115/165/215 (+) physical damage, reduced by15% per enemy hit (minimum 33%).

While preparing to shoot Varus' Movement Speed is slowed by 20%. After 4 seconds, Piercing Arrow fails but refunds half its mana cost.

W: Blighted Quiver

Passive: Varus' basic attacks deal 10/15/20/25/30(+0.2) bonus magic damage and apply Blight for 6seconds (stacks 3 times). 

Varus' other abilities detonate Blight, dealing magicdamage equal to 2/2.8/3.5/4.3/5% (+0.01%) of the target's maximum Health per stack (Max: 360 totaldamage vs Monsters)

E: Hail of Arrows

Varus fires a hail of arrows that deals60/100/140/180/220 (+) physical damage and desecrates the ground for 4 seconds.

Desecrated Ground slows enemy Movement Speed by20/24/28/32/36% and reduces healing effects by 50%.

Ultimate: Chain of Corruption

Varus flings out a tendril of corruption that deals150/250/350 (+1) magic damage and immobilizes the first enemy champion hit for 2 seconds.

The corruption then spreads towards nearby uninfected enemy champions, applying the same damage and immobilize if it reaches them.


Read all information about Varus after the jump! 

Varus, LoL's second longbow archer!

He was recently seen in action at the recently held PAX EAST 2012 in Boston.

He is an AD carry with potent magic damage, so we would be seeing various builds with him, ala Tristana. His designer, Meddler, explains further on the process of making this champion:

Meddler - Associate Game Designer

After Hecarim - we wanted to reveal him early so that people could play him at PAX, particularly since Gabe and Tycho did such a cool comic and judgement for him.

Varus' design started with his Q, Piercing Arrow. Right from the start I'd been really keen to try a charged shot, particularly since it's an approach that I've found to be a lot of fun in other games over the years and because it's such a natural conceptual fit with a bow - more time equals bowstring drawn back further equals more range and power. Additionally because of the charge time involved we were able to give the skill a really long range when fully charged, allowing the sort of sniper shots that really capture the sort of legendary archer feeling we wanted with Varus. 


The other thing I really wanted to try was press/hold/release abilities, and Piercing Arrow was a natural fit for that too. If you're using smart casting, instead of activating the ability once to start the charge and a second time to fire the arrow you'll start the charge when you press the key down and fire when you release the key. 

Once Piercing Arrow was working well it was time to look at capturing the rest of Varus' thematics. With his background of being consumed by a dark, supernatural power a mix of physical and magical abilities/AD and AP scaling seemed a natural fit. This also tied in well with a desire to make a wide variety of builds playable if not necessarily competitively viable, something a lot of our older champions especially do really well that I quite like (AP Trist or AP Yi for example). Blighted Quiver was the result of that line of thought, recognizing the magical nature of his attacks and allowing AP to enhance Varus' auto attacks. The Blight stack detonation mechanic then arose out of a desire to amplify the satisfaction/reward of landing Varus' other abilities, all of which are skillshots, and incentivize skilled chaining of abilities and attacks. Damage based off the target's maximum health was chosen to give Varus an edge against tougher front line enemy champions, improving his odds of proccing his passive earlier in a fight. 


Speaking of which, Varus' passive, Living Vengeance, evolved hand in had with Blighted Quiver. Given his backstory escape abilities didn't really seem like a natural fit on Varus (he's got no reason to back away from a fight anymore), so a passive that rewards fully committing to a time fight at the right time, potentially allowing you to cut through multiple enemies, seemed like a good match. I initially tried attack damage rather than attack speed, but ran into a couple of issues with that. The first was that it made last hitting minions surprisingly frustrating - a short duration attack boost that's likely to expire around the time you go for a last hit can really throw you off, resulting in minions surviving with a sliver of health. The second was that it didn't fit well with Blighted Quiver and non standard AD carry builds, while attack speed by contrast did.

 Hail of Arrows seemed like another natural fit for an archer conceptually - raining multiple arrows down upon one's enemies being a great cinematic sort of thing. The desecrated ground effect went in for both thematic and gameplay reasons. Thematically, since Varus is slowly being consumed by a malicious evil it seemed fitting to have abilities that spread such a dark touch. Mechanically, since he was to have no movement abilities having a slow was pretty important in order to survive/chase as a carry, while a location based healing debuff offered help against sustain heavy match ups that were quite resistant to his Q harass and a form of zone control we hadn't previously explored in LoL.

Finally for Varus' ultimate there were a few goals in mind. We don't generally go for ranged carries with CC/utility ultimates but in Varus' case the lack of escape abilities as mentioned made it a natural fit, in addition to supporting some interesting team compositions with the spreading mechanic for players . An immobilize worked well with the rest of his kit, allowing him to charge up Q shots and/or set up a target with Blight in order to proc his passive. Thematically it was also a great opportunity to really show off the power of the corruption Varus had turned to to get the power he felt he needed to exact revenge.

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A question. When designing him what specifically did you want his role to be? How did you want him to stand out from the others like Ashe or Caitlyn?
Do you feel like you've succeeded in those goals?

Meddler - Associate Game Designer

I was aiming for a space between the spots occupied by Ashe and Kogmaw in terms of utility versus sustained damage as far as carries without movement abilities go, combined with a desire to allow some strong synergies with various other champions and flexible build paths. Really happy with how that turned out and how his playstyle feels pretty distinctive, particularly stuff like charging up and then landing a Q on a target running for safety with 3 stacks of Blight on them for that ranged execution sort of feeling. 

LoL's upcoming champions: Varus and Hecarim

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Meddler, did you take any inspiration from DotA? Because Hail of Arrows and Piercing Arrow seems like they were inspired by Sniper and Windrunner respectively.

Meddler - Associate Game Designer

Haven't actually played DotA. Hail of Arrows is a pretty standard archer theme that dates back quite a way ('Our arrows will block out the sun' - 'Then we'll fight in the shade' etc), while for Piercing Arrow I wanted to capture some of the feeling that the TF2 sniper or Breaker's Bow in Bastion also tap into that to me just feels like such a perfect match with someone using a powerful bow.

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Why does he hate Noxus.

Meddler - Associate Game Designer

Short version: During the invasion of Ionia Varus' family, and many others, were slaughtered by Noxian troops.

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First off, in more direct relation to the thread (sorry if this argument is taking it over a bit)...Meddler, what do you feel about Varus's role compared to Miss Fortune? I've heard some complains that he'll surpass MF in her own niche of AoE anti-sustain... does he have the same superb laning phase as she does? does his magic damage fall off late game like hers does?

Meddler - Associate Game Designer

Varus brings utility and range, MF brings an on demand steroid and non skillshot damage. I can certainly see some similarities, but their playstyles are pretty different so I'm expecting both to fill different niches. His laning phase is definitely strong, he doesn't shut down healing on a single target to the same extent though.

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Hey Meddler, some of the pro players (mainly Doublelift) have said that they don't like the idea of the blight (the thing that you proc using abilities) because end-game it'll take away from Varus' DPS if he has to stop auto-attacking to use an ability.
Doublelift also expressed concern about the lack of a reliable steroid.

 I was wondering what you thought about those concerns, or if you think that Varus will just fill a role like Ashe, where he is picked only for his ultimate/utility.

Meddler - Associate Game Designer

The cast times on Varus' abilities are all deliberately short (0.25s, assuming you're firing the Q immediately at short range rather than charging it) in order to avoid lost auto attack time, which, combined with the base damage of those abilities, makes detonating Blight stacks pretty attractive, particularly if you're timing your abilities to right after your auto attacks fire off, rather than just before the next is about to start. The lack of an on demand steroid's a deliberate trade off - Varus does come with a decent amount of utility and should get access to his passive in the later stages of team fights (given his Q lack of a steroid really doesn't hamper his laning phase if well played).

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How do you feel about the AoE healing debuff...seems a bit too powerful in my opinion.

Meddler - Associate Game Designer

It's situationally very strong, especially if well timed to anticipate enemy healing, but it does have potential counterplay, since you can choose to move out of the zone rather than having to wait for the Grevious Wounds effect to expire as per other healing reduction abilities.

Sneak Peek Comic by Tycho

Varus Gameplay Video at PAX East 2012