Varus is one of League’s earliest marksmen, revolving around the concept of a deadly long-range poke marksman who weaves his skills and attacks together. After his on-off status across the years, he found his niche in the Season 10 meta with the Lethality build that capitalizes on his deadly poking capabilities.

Unfortunately, this new build proved to be too difficult to deal with, especially if Varus manages to get at least a single kill before his first recall. As of writing, Varus has been banned in every single game so far in the LPL Summer split with slight deviations in other professional regions.

With Riot Games’ Champion Balance Framework, Varus is currently meeting the conditions to merit a nerf. In the context of professional play, the dev blog written for said framework are as follows:

“Moving forward, we will consider a champion balanced for Summoner’s Rift if they can be considered balanced for any of these audiences. They will be considered overpowered if they cross the top end for ANY of the audiences, and they will holistically be considered underpowered if they are below the bottom end for ALL of the audiences.”

The “top end” of the Pro Play bracket in the framework refers to champions with over 90% presence (pick and ban combined) in a single patch, or 80% presence in consecutive patches. With LPL’s numbers alone it already gives Riot more than enough reason to consider, with other regions’ presence numbers also hovering at the same percentage.

Riot Scruffy has proposed some changes for 10.14, which includes the Varus nerfs that look to significantly trim power from his Piercing Arrow (Q):

• Q max damage AD ratio 150% >>> 125-145% (by rank); Q min damage 100% >>> 83-97%; E base damage 70-210 >>> 50-210

Let’s narrow down what specific actions Varus will less likely take with these nerfs.

Firstly, tapping Q for a quick burst will no longer deal fairly lethal damage, even after grabbing items on first back. Because a quick tap instantly releases the arrow at a 100% minimum damage, Varus players are still gaining some benefit out of tapping for quick and effective damage. No matter the situation, an uncharged Q will always deal lower than optimal.

Second, changing his Q’s max damage to scale with rank is a healthy change for the amount of damage he can dish out in the laning phase. Players are incentivized to charge up for more damage and range, but if they managed to snowball out of one kill, it should not be as punishing for the opposing laners.

Lastly, the nerf to his E base damage is the icing on top as it also contributes to Varus’ overwhelming early game damage. 20 points of damage may not seem huge at first, but in the first 6 levels, every health point matters in the competition to snowball first. Players may still throw it out for the damage, but given its cost at 80 mana, it might be better to opt for its slowing and Grievous Wounds effect.

Overall, the proposed changes all look to target his early game snowball and avoid the one-sided matchups in the bot lane when Varus shows up. These changes are healthy, and while nothing is set in stone until the patch comes out, his current status begs for the balance team’s immediate attention.

He is one of the better champions in the game, despite the rampant release of champions with game-breaking gimmicks and mechanics. We hope to see him in a healthier state for pro play to promote champion diversity.